Retronauts - 560: Metroidvania's First Decade & A History Of Epoch

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Another live presentation from Long Island! Jeremy Parish, Nadia Oxford, Diamond Feit, Kat Bailey, and Jared Petty mull the prehistory of the metroidvania genre. Then, Jeremy Parish and Kevin Bunch dive into the history of Epoch, the original also-ran. 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

This week in Retronauts, if I've known the audience was going to be this big, I actually would have prepared. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this big. panel at Long Island Retro Expo. We are here once again as retronauts. And in this case, it is me, Jeremy Parrish. And with me, we have a panel of luminaries. I can't believe we crammed this many people in here. And yet we did.

Please introduce yourselves. Hi, I'm Nadia Oxtur. I'm the co-host of the Axe of the Blood God RPG podcast. And I was actually in the last panel yesterday. And I was drinking Sonics blood. Today I'm drinking Crash's blood. It's a wampo fruit flavored. The exanguination panels, is what we call these.

Hi, everyone, my name is Diamond Fight, and my middle name is Tan Saku Action. Yeah. Anonymous space hunter, Kat Bailey, and also the host of Axe of the Blood God, which is sort of a sibling podcast to Axe of the Blood God. We had a panel yesterday. I like that we had exactly the same number of people, but we were just sitting different chairs. And it was an Axel of the Blood Got the Projects. But now it's Retronauts.

I'm Jared Petty of Limited Run Games, and occasional hosts at Top 100 Games podcast whenever we get around to make them. And this week, we are here to talk about the first. first decade of Metroidvania games. No, there were actually no Metroidvania games in the first decade of Metroidvania games because the proper canonical Metroidvania game is Castlevania Symphony in the Night. And we're talking about 1981 through 1990, and that is seven years before Symphony of the Night came along. And so you may be asking yourself, what the hell are these idiots going to be talking about for an hour? Well, I'm glad you asked, because we are going to be talking about the games that created the foundation for Symphony of the Night and other games that

that have followed in its footsteps, its backtracking footsteps. And we're going to be tracing the sort of creative influences and the different branching game design concepts that fed into that. Because when you look at Symphony of the Night, you don't get to Symphony of the Night without obviously Castlevania

and obviously without Metroid, but you also don't get there without the legend of Zelda a link to the past, which Koji Igarashi, the producer of many of the Metroid like proper egavania games has said was his biggest design influence on those games and I actually had a really cool opportunity a few years to go to sit down with him and you know just play around with the link to the past and watch him kind of play through it and kind of start to get his wheels for the game again and at the end he was like oh I need to go and just go home and play this game

there was a real enthusiasm there but if you look at a link to the past and compare it to some of these games you really see how that game codified the structure of what we think of now as Metroidvania games or search action games or map formers or whatever ridiculous name you want to add in place of Metroidvania, which is also a ridiculous name. It really is. It is. And I did not come up with that word. You can look at my blue sky profile and it says, did not create a word of Metroidvania.

I had to go on to Reddit to the Metroidvania subreddit and say, no, guys, I did not create this word. Please change that subreddit title so that it does not. credit this to me. However, I did create the official Metroidvania logo, which you can see behind us here. It's very good, very stylish. I like the theme. I tried to capture the essence of the map and the backtracking. The red squares are very nice touch. Yes, thank you. That's your safe point. I'm so glad you gave this explanation, Jeremy, because I was ready to come in Biosnide and tell you about how the first decade of Metrovina somehow predated both Metroid

and Castlevania. So I was like, what, you know, what are you talking about? We're just going to talk about, you know, so thank you. No, no. That's why I left you all in the dark so that I would catch you off guard by what we actually plan to talk about. No, that's actually not true. We are going to talk about, you know, action platform games, exploratory platform games throughout the 80s. Really, that was kind of the peak of 8-bit exploratory action games. But also, we're going to look at the evolution of action RPGs and even RPGs and

adventure games and kind of how those all fed into this kind of funnel that created the greatest subgenre of all time, the Metroidvania. So first, let me ask those of you in the panel, do you actually like Metroidvania games? And what's the appeal for you? Let's start at the far end and work toward me. I adore them. For me, the appeal is, I think of a Metroidvania is a game where I'm exploring an area, learning things about it, traveling back through those areas.

And also for me, what's really compelling about the genres and symphony is that it's atmospheric. The best Metroid Media games are action-oriented exploration games that are also atmospheric. I like getting lost in the world, literally. And that's what these games are about. They simulate being lost. They're always going to guide you where you need to go in the end. But you're exploring and wondering what's going to be around the corner and what this thing you can't do yet means. So for me, that's kind of the

epitome of what I want out of an escapist medium like video games. Metroidvanias are my favorite kind of video games. Yeah, I also really love Metroid-Vanias, going back to probably at least Super Metroid. And if you want to count Super Metroid as a Metronvania, I see it as an inflection point of a lot of interesting parts of gaming

and it's sort of a bedrock genre. I love how flexible it is and then especially during kind of a dark time when 2D games were very out of style Metroidvania has definitely held the torch I think in a lot of respects a lot of them are gorgeous a lot of them are deep

and a lot of them have fantastic music so I really enjoy a really good Metroidvania one day I will be Hollow Night I promise Good luck on that. I've given up on that myself. Gosh, do I like this game genre?

Yeah, why not? No, seriously, I love it. Yeah, I don't know if I can say anything that Jared didn't already say, but I'm definitely the type of person, you know, if I'm playing a video game, if I'm watching a movie, if I'm watching television, if I'm reading a book, if I'm having a daydream,

I do like the sensation of going someplace else, You know, I can't afford to travel as much as I'd like to travel. You know, I'm very happy to be here in Long Island. But, you know, when I can't actually leave someplace physically, it's great fun to sort of, you know, put aside a few hours and then just mentally go somewhere else. And the more realized that place is, the more engaged I'm going to be. You know, if I can tell a completely unrelated anecdote. It's like, early this week, I was going through a bunch of, you know, movies that I found on

American streaming platforms because I'm here in America for the first time in a while. And I was watching Marathon Man. And in Marathon Man, there's a scene where, you know, a bunch of bad guys get together with like a big fountain and there's like a staircase at the fountain, but like it's shed in red light. And I almost stopped

the movie to find out like how to look up like what the hell are they doing. Where is this place? Is this real? Is it a disset? Is it like the Peewee's play? Is it like the Peewee's big adventure like dinosaurs? Do they make this look colored to make it look cooler or is it always as cool? And it just completely grabbed my attention away from, you know, the actual plot of the movie, which was like,

you know, Nazis killing people. But still, stuff like that always drags me in. And, you know, a good Metrovini game, in my opinion, does that all the time. You run down a hallway. You come across a statue. You come across a door. It's a funny color. You come across a little thing that's like, you know, it runs away, but you can't get it. Like, what is that thing? Do I have to come back for that? Is it, you know, is it important? Is it just atmosphere? I don't know. So all those things, I love, you know, the mystery of it, the surprise of it, and, you know, again, in a good example, I love a game where you start off and you meet things and they're dangerous and you're maybe a little frightened of them. And then an hour later you come back and you just wipe the snot out of them, just an absolute joke to you. And I love that feeling because that makes me feel like, oh, I'm strong now.

First of all, I've got to say these games look sick on this big-ass screen behind me. like I'm just cringing my neck to look at Castle's holy crap I'll really want to play it on here Zork and IMAX who would have imagined What an age we live in But yeah I definitely adore Metroidvania games I always have is probably one of the first genres I didn't recognize it by name of course

I didn't have a name for it but I realized very quickly I like games where you chase a narrative And say something like Castlevania Simon's Quest like that just lit up my brain I'm sure we'll get into it but I love getting lost like everyone else here said but I also just love uncovering the mysteries of things, like, why am I here?

What is going on here? Like, why is this shape like this? Like, again, we'll get into Simon's Quest, but the narrative that is going on in the background as you get close to Dracula, like, that's really incredibly done for its time. So I just love stuff like that. I love looking at, I love looking up stories. I love just kind of observing what's around me and getting the best and the worst out of it. Can we brought that up? Can we just talk about the last village before you get to Dracula's Castle?

Let's live here together. Yeah, exactly. Just one person out of their mind living alone. Nope, bye. As for myself, I have a theory. I think it's more like fact that the game that you play and really hit you when you're between the ages of 9 and 11 is the game that you love forever and is kind of like the platonic ideal of what video games for you should be, which is why elder millennials always go back to Super Mario Brothers 3, which is why younger millennials just love Pokemon, etc. et cetera. For me, that game was Metroid, the first game I bought for my brand new NES back in 1987 or so. And I didn't really get it at first. I expected it to be like, you know, an arcade game.

And it was very confusing that I started going up this shaft of platforms, and it just kept going and going and there was no end to the stage. And I never went to the next stage. I just kept traveling around through corridors, and eventually I ran out of places I could go. And I didn't really understand. But a few months later, I went back to it because, you know, I was a kid and it was the only game that I played or owned. I couldn't afford another video game for a while. So I decided I had to get the most out of it. And it kind of clicked with me. And then I started realizing like, oh, I have some graph paper I can make maps here. And to me, that just, I think, cemented this love of liminal spaces of, of, you know, I love traveling. I love, I love going to airports and like passing through. And, going to new countries and cities. And video games, you know, especially Metroidvania's, let me do that. But I have the benefit of knowing that there is a save point, and if I die, I will go back to the save point, which is not something that actually occurs in real life.

So that's a big part of the appeal of Metroidvania-type games for me. So the corollary to this question is, what do you feel is the first game that really captured all of the sort of core tenets of the Metroidvania game, the action, the plastic. platforming the adventure, the RPG components. You know, obviously the first Metroidvania game was Symphony the Night, but in the 80s, there were lots of game developers kind of throwing all these ideas together into a blender and seeing what came out. And you had things like Castlevania 2, like you mentioned, or Zelda 2, Wonder Boy 3.

All these games are great. What do you feel is the first game to really coalesce all these different concepts together into something that is still compelling to this day. Sorry, Nadi, I'm going to put you on the spot this time. I don't know what came first if it was Zelda 2 or Simon's Quest too, but certainly one of those. Zelda 2 came first in Japan, and they came out here at the same time, roughly. Right. But still for me personally, I feel like even though they both have their arguments for being the first and best kind of progenitor,

I'm still going to go with Simon's Quest and mouth off about it because just it does have that narrative like you were saying, where, is to get closer to Dracula, the landscape gets more and more bleak. And Konami, for my money, nobody else used the color palette as well as Konami on the NES. Like, they were just masters at that. The sky gradients and the way they kind of put together an old run-down village is by mashing together some nasty-ass pixels. Like, that's talent. But yes, as you get closer to Castlevania, like a fight was saying,

that you have this totally abandoned town named Gulash, which is how... As the person of Hungarian descent, that was hilarious. and it's just this broken down town and it's the closest town to Dracula and there's just one person there who says let's live here together and it's so creepy for an NES game and it makes it very clear that you are getting in dangerous territory and behind that is another town

where this was a big shock to me as someone who's played RPGs and everyone's like oh hello welcome to a little town you get to a town the next closest town to Dracula and everyone's telling you to get the hell out like don't hassle Dracula you're going to make things worse for us and that was a new experience for me as well. And again, as someone who chases narratives, that was just like, holy crap, what is going on here? I started my fan fiction bug early, I suppose. But you also brought up a really good point, Jeremy,

about how you don't like this game, you figure it out too bad. You're not getting another one until your birthday. So you sat down and he figured it out. But I loved getting lost and seeing these stupid impossible drums and saying, oh, how do I get there? And being too stupid to realize I had to wind around and go the other way. And now I could just allow me a very quick anecdote. We're talking about Igarashi a moment ago a major inspiration when I interviewed him he told me a major inspiration for

symphony night was Castlevania 2 and the reason was is because he wanted to do that adventure style game again and Konami said we don't know and he went back to him he said well look at Castlevania too look at Simon's Quest that's Castlevania can work into an adventure game and he said okay yeah yeah I'll give it a try

and then I told him that I shipped Alacard and Maria I literally did I said are they together and he said that's up to Konami and I I don't think he was saying stop asking me I just had to shoot my shot. What can I say? That's actually really interesting because I remember interviewing Igarashi at E3 a long time ago, I think when they were demoing Portrait of Ruin. And I mentioned

the fact that he and his team had revisited the original Castlevania in the Castlevania Chronicles for PlayStation, and they'd revisited Castlevania 3 with the bonus mode of Dawn of Sorrow. And I said, are you ever planning to create a game that revisits It's Castledonia 2. And he looked really concertated and was like, doesn't everyone in that game lie to you? I don't think anyone would enjoy that.

So it's interesting that you say that game was influential on him because when I asked about it, he was like, I kind of want to stay hands off. But then, of course, the next game was Order of Ecclesia, which is totally Castlevania, too. Absolutely, it's a great game. So he just lied to me. He was probably mad also because I told him, like I said,

the first paycheck I ever had, I spent on two South Park shirts and Castlevania is simply in the night. And he thought that was funny. So maybe he wasn't mad. I guess he just warmed him up better than I did. Aw. You know, everyone has really good Igorashi stories.

My only one is that I met him and told him I need my daughter, Shanoa. That's all I got. Oh, did you tell him? I did tell him. Oh, what did he say? He seemed impressed. My only igorashi story is I once peed next to him at a urinal. I haven't done that, but I did have a similar story with Reggie.

Yeah. Anyway. New panel idea. Who have you peed besides? aspect of video game conferences. Anyway, what about you in terms of the first game to block this down? Oh, boy.

I mean, I'm so tempted to just keep talking about Castlevania, too, because that was a game, you know, if that was, you know, the timeline you mentioned, that's pretty close, you know, in my timeline, you know, when I played that game. Because I had played Castlevania the first one at a friend's house, and I was like, well, this is a really cool game, but it's also super hard.

Yeah. And I can't really get very far. And even today, even with Save States, I can only get, like, close to the end, but I can't actually quite beat it. So one thing I liked about Casperated, too, is it's not that you get necessarily that strong, but, you know, it's like the game prioritizes, you know, atmosphere and mood and sort of just, you know, vibes, as the kids say today, over, like, difficulty, you know? Like, we talk about, you talk about those last few villages, and then you get to, you know,

the final castle, and the final castle's empty. Yeah. There is literally nothing there except. The creepiest music, so good. Which I got to say, you know, we can talk, this is a sidebar, if you will, but, you know, that was originally a disc system game, and it came to the NES. And some disc system games really lost out when they switched from this system to NES, or some games had, you know, more chips in Famicom, and they came NES, and they said, oh, we're not paying for that. But in Castlevania Tuesdays, I think the NES got much better music. Yeah, me too.

Because if you listen to the Japanese version of that final castle music, it's missing like a whole register. I don't know music terms, but like, there's a whole part of the melody just isn't there. And they're like, no, no, it's not right. Yeah, but then they made up for Castlevania 3. We really got boned on that one. Yeah, unfortunately. But yeah, like that's, like that whole finale just blew me away. And it really didn't, you know, it didn't have to be something that, oh, I had to fight through or I had to fight Dracula 10 times to me.

He was like, no, no, no. I went through the final castle. I was scared of my mind. I found Dracula. I was scared of my mind. And then I killed him. It's like, all right, good job, you know? garlic on the ground and then you just sits there like a fool yeah and um you know and the game

has you know has things built into it like if you if you didn't get there fast enough you die or if you get there at nighttime or for his daytime i think that changes things but you know there's lots of other ways you can actually does encourage you to you know play it through it again if you didn't quite get it right yeah but i think if i'm really thinking about this i probably feel like you know the seeds were planted for me earlier because before I had an NES, I had a common owner 64. And I played a lot of games on Commonor 64, which

I didn't necessarily buy, you know, there's no cops here, right? But, you know, these games just came to my house. I'm not going to say I, like, sought them out or I was pirated them because there was no internet, but I would get these discs, you know, by means. And I had these discs. Farms them from a friend on a duplicate disc. Yeah, probably.

Honestly, I can't remember. Because, like, who, you know, at that age, what, you know, what drive do I have? I can't go anywhere. I can't, like, you know, send away for things. I guess if I was at someone else's house and they had a disc, maybe I took it. I don't know. But somehow I ended up with a game that was on your list and it really sparked a lot of members for me, which is called Impossible Mission.

Not Mission Impossible. No. Impossible mission. Now, I'm very curious, if we can get, there's a lot of people here, show of hands. How many people know what I'm talking about when I say Impossible Mission? Okay. Keep your hands up. Keep your hands up.

How many of you actually beat the game? Yeah. Yeah. It's in the name. Right. But isn't there a glitch in most versions of the game that prevents you from actually finishing it? No, only the 7,800. Oh, okay.

I'm not going to blame glitches. I'm going to blame me being like, whatever, eight years old and not knowing what the hell anything was. But I know that it was a game that was definitely platforming, definitely action. You don't really have any weapons, but you've got to avoid things. You're looking for stuff. I do not know what you're looking for. But I do know that each room has sort of different waves of enemies. different threats. Some enemies are very passive. Some enemies are aggressive. Some rooms just have a

giant ball that chases you. And it's like, what the hell is this thing? And this is before I ever saw, you know, the prisoner. So maybe it was referenced that. I don't know. But all I know is anything that can kill you will kill you in a single hit. Or you can fall down holes and it has like a digitized scream. It's such a weird game. And I don't really know what you're even supposed to do. But at that age, I didn't care. I just wanted to figure it out. And I never did, but I still enjoyed messing around with it and trying to figure out what I could possibly get out of this. Because there were some rooms that didn't even give you anything. Like it was a good. I think it was

a room with like a chess board in it and like you start pushing buttons and like it makes like a Simon puzzle thing. But then like it just stops like, okay, did I win or did I lose? Like I don't know. You're alive so you probably won. It didn't kill me. That's true. What you're doing is grabbing codes that help you solve those puzzles, which opens a center room where you can finish the game. Excellent. Can you fax that to me in 1985? Kat, what about you?

Where did these elements first crystallize, in your opinion? It's funny to hear all of this Castlevania, too, nostalgia, because my first Castlevania was actually Symphony of the Night. Growing up, I didn't really have access. When I went to stores, you kind of had what you had, and there was never a Castlevania game in these stores, because it was a very popular series. I just remember the angry video game nerd completely dunking on Castlevania, too.

He kind of regrets that now. Yeah, but now it seems pretty beloved. Is it cheating if I say the original Metroid? No, it's the progenitor. To me, it's a mom. I mean, it's a different game from Symphony in the Night for sure. So when I played this game long, long ago, when I was maybe five or six years old, I was very intimidated by a, because of hallmark of the Metroid Games, this exploration, of course,

but more of the point breaking the linear stage-based structure on which I have become very used to in with Super Mario games. And so Metroid was a wholly new experience. I could go backward. What even is this? What do I do with this world? There's no map. I don't know what to do, but if you want to look at the different aspects of it, of course, there's the nonlinear exploration element.

There's a powering up aspect. You become more and more powerful throughout the game. Starting with just the ability to turn into a little ball and go underneath things. And then you get the ability to shoot up to the ceiling, thank God. And then you get missiles. And by the end, you're quite powerful, actually. That, to me, is a strong sort of RPG element. And then, of course, as we know, there is a lot of platforming in the original Metroid.

To my knowledge, the original Metroid predates Castlevania, too. It does. That to me is maybe we're a lot of these elements crystallized, but I also want to shout out so much of the Falcom works, which have been so heavily influential, especially once you get into the Fax Anadu games. I believe I saw in the notes, E's 3, Sorcerian, that kind of thing. And it tends to get lost when we are talking about it because in the American cultural context, we don't know as much about Falcom,

certainly not in the 80s because the Japanese PC tends to be a major blind spot, but I don't think you can understate the influence that Falcom's games had on a lot of games, including Zelda. I love that Jeremy just had the legacy of the wizard ready right there. Well, I put together a B-roll, I think, any game that I expected us to talk about, except somehow I forgot to put Castellini 2 in here, hi. Goodness gracious. That's why I should have slept a little longer this morning.

Three personal criteria, two mechanical, one thematic. It's got to be action-oriented. It's got to be something where I'm doubling back and gaining abilities and let me go new places as I explore. And thematically, it's got to be atmospheric. If I'm stealing that, you know, that's a personal thing. If I'm going for the Metroid-Banias Symphony Super Metroid feel. So that's, I'm really tempted to say things like adventure for Atari 2600.

Yeah. Or Raiders of the Lost Ark for Atari 2600. Both are which games about collecting items, backtracking, finding things. But the thematic vibe isn't there in the Duck Dragons. and isn't there in raiders. I love those duck dragons. They try. Oh, Adventure is one of my

one of my very, very, very, very favorite things in the universe. I love that game. I think it's a work of true supply genius. But my answer isn't nostalgic because it's a game that I knew less about until a few months ago, and I did a Retronaut's episode of Diamond. And that's something called Below the Root,

which is a 1984 game for the Apple 2, that was a game that a Retronauts listener and wanted us to talk about. It's from Spinnaker Software, which I knew a little bit about. I played a lot of Spinnaker games back in the day. But below the route is, it hits all three of those. It is thematic as all help. It is a side-scrolling, exploratory, gain new abilities, multiple paths, epic,

covering hundreds of screens of exploration, where you're using a link-like glider to travel between branches of a giant tree, visit villages, meet people, gain psychic powers that let you bridge to previously inaccessible areas.

It is, I'm doing it an injustice. Look this game up. Below the root is as Metroid as Metroid. And it's an 84 game. I have stunned. I've been playing it

since that episode, just completely captivated by it. I'm always ready to get the Apple too, like the justice it deserves. I love that little thing. Below the root is, I think, It's not a stretch.

A lot of these were like, oh, we see the beginning of it. You put that alongside Metroid, and, oh, no, these are the same kind of game. You could believe they were made by the same person. And I will say, you know, I mentioned that Metroid, the original Metroid, was the first game that I bought for my NES, so really big influence on me and, you know, kind of a revelation. But I want to say that the game that really made me stop and say, oh, this is a, a thing. This isn't just like

some weird game about a space woman who blows up jellyfish and it's just a total one-off like no other game will ever be like this and that was, let's see if I could find out, yeah, there we go, the Goonies 2 which I borrowed from a friend and

it totally surprised me because it was that same style of game as Metroid, but there was even more to it than that. There's an inventory system in this game. There are, there's dialogue with characters. There's the adventure game scenes, which really...

Okay, so I feel like a really important thing to understand about the fact that so many of these games that we're talking about showed up on NES. And that is because, for whatever reason, this kind of exploratory action game really seemed to take hold with Japanese developers and Japanese audiences. I mean, there were some games, you know,

like below the route, Impossible Mission, that are Western. and they certainly have their place, but there was just this really great, profound love for role-playing games in Japan, and the thing is those were mostly on PCs. And so what you have in these exploratory action games is people attempting to reconcile that depth of role-playing games

for very expensive computers in a form that works on inexpensive consoles like the Famicom. You know, that was 150 bucks as opposed to 1,500 bucks. So kids could own it, younger audiences could own it, but also they had very limited cartridge space. So they're taking the action format

and kind of warping it and expanding it, pushing it out, to include whatever RPG components they could. And so you end up with this really unique place in video game history where action games suddenly there's

this branch of them where you're not just running from left to right to save a princess you're running from right to left and then right left to right and then up and down and traveling to the backside of the map and collecting items and going into your inventory just like you did in Zelda except instead of being you know walking around

from a top down view like adventure or you know something like berserk not berserk venture you're doing it in a Mario kind of style side format and you You know, that traces its origins all the way back in a way to Atari's pitfall and Pitfall 2,

which don't have the inventory system, but are very much about exploration and kind of figuring out how the world works together and making your way through. So you have, again, like these NES games that attempt to combine accessible, inexpensive, low memory capacity action with the depth and sense. substance you expect from role-playing games and adventure games that you see on personal computers. And this really only lasted, this trend only lasted for a few years. And one of the reasons I cut this off at 1990 is because that's about the point where you see this style start to fade. And action games kind of just become action games again on consoles. And everyone kind of started to jump over into creating Zelda clones, weirdly enough. So in, you know, 1989, 1990, you start getting games like Willow and Utopia and Golden Axe Warrior that literally just look at the original Zelda and say, well, we don't want to do that Zelda two thing. That's been done for a while. Let's go back and literally just make a straight up clone of Zelda and jump on from here. So the 1990s are kind of this other phase of action RPG evolution where they do have more of that Zelda feel and you have games like Secret of Mana, Soulblazer, just tons and tons of games along those lines. And very few action.

action platformers up until, you know, you've got obviously Super Metroid and a few others, but then Symphony the Night kind of shows up and everyone stops and takes notice, stops and takes notice. And then a few years after that, you start to see more games start to build on that action platformer style. So it's just kind of interesting to see how market tastes and technology and just the needs of the audience sort of resulted in this trend and how it evolved and changed over time. Anyway, that's my monologue for the episode. I was thinking, thanks.

I was thinking, for talking about hardware, in 80s hardware in Japan, you know, the MSX... Didn't scroll. Right. It didn't scroll. And, you know, there were several games there that, you know, like the Castlevania that was made on MSX is, looks like Castlevania on NES, but doesn't really scroll. Has you sort of looping around to try and get keys and find hidden items. So it's not quite what Castlevania. too did, but it certainly has a lot more, you know, inventory management and, you know,

exploring, basically. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, you've got Metal Gear, which is not quite a platformer, but it's also, but it's extremely inventory and extremely about searching around and getting lost and, you know, smoking cigarettes. I don't know. It's like, it's, I don't know. That's just the 80s, man.

Tell you what. Highway to cool. But, yeah. I feel like that's got to be an influence in there too I know a lot of those games either didn't come to America or came to America in sort of weird bastardized forms

but still I feel like this is probably a thread there and also you mentioned 1990 and I think you scroll past it Kristallis is that's that is so Zelda-like and I'm kind of surprised I never actually played it until a couple years back

because it's also extremely East-like like you compare this part right here to the footage that I have of East 1 where is that Come on, little guy. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Come on, Adol, we're in there somewhere. Well, maybe not.

Maybe I remember messing around with footage for this. I saw you had footage of E's 3. Yeah, but that's not the same thing. Oh, well. Oh, that's what it was. I did a weird thing. Okay. Just show you.

There we go. There's east. Yeah, all right. So, we wasted lots of time on that. This is East 1, and Adel is just bumping into dudes, taking them out by not doing anything except running. That's like, you know, the very beginning. beginning of the jogging athletic craze, exercise craze. So they're saying, you know, just

exercise and you'll be powerful. But Crystallis does exactly the same thing. Like, it doesn't even, it's not even shy about it. It's like, hey, yeah, this is, this is Adol, but he can actually start. There are actually bosses you cannot take on until you are a certain level. Like, they will just block your attacks. Whereas in ease, if you go to a boss and you're not at sufficient level, it will destroy you. It'll just step on you. When I think of Metrogvenias, I think a lot about the influence of classical dungeon crawlers and actually when I was

doing research for this episode something that was on my mind was definitely rogue in games like that because even if you would consider rogue maybe not strictly a classical role-playing experience

that is its own sub-genre I mean obviously they come from a very similar place and it's worth noting about how eventually we would end up with games like Deadstals,

Metroidvania Rogue lights and the elements of Rogue, while they weren't working their way into Metroidvania's early on, would eventually find their way into more modern games. And these games were being circulated around American Computer Labs right around this time

as well. So it's all part of the kind of primordial soup, I want to say, of the modern Metroidvania. Well, it's interesting because Because roguelikes are really, like, kind of conceptually the opposite of a Metroidvania. With a Metroidvania, you, like, the entire idea is that the environment, the world is like a puzzle box that you have to solve your way through by getting the right items and, you know, going to the right places and figuring out how to use the abilities you've gained with, you know, other abilities or with, you know, places in the environment that you can find new access to new places. whereas a roguelike is, you know, dynamically generated, so you can't really do that.

And it's been interesting to see people attempt to reconcile the two, like with Rogue Legacy, which has the look of a, you know, a Castlevania-type game, but doesn't play like it at all. Or something like Kazim, which I really like. I know it's kind of a controversial game. Some people like it. Some people don't. But I think it's really interesting that James Pritzuzzi,

the developer, put together a, really, really authentic, convincing-feeling clone of something in the night. Like, it plays. It's one of the few games that really just captures that essence. But then threw some randomization into it and did that by basically saying, like, here are the key points that are always going to be the same. But how you get between those points is always going to be different. You're going to have different rooms, different enemies.

You're going to find random pickups at different places. And, you know, there's going to be these random seeds. So you may not have a tool that you expected when you face this first ball. or the second boss, but then in the next game, you know, the next time you play, it might be something much more useful or something much less useful. So it kind of forces you to improvise a little bit. Yeah, I did a panel yesterday with a streamer, Ash said hi, who specializes in retro streaming. And she said, one of the kinds of streams you really enjoys doing is, or are randomizer streams

where people have written, you know, written software to modify popular retro game. and randomize the location of gates and items for something like linked to the past, for example. So you pop in and nothing's where it's supposed to be. There's a path through the game that works, but you don't have to approach it without the memorization aspect. And I love the idea that people have found ways to... Oh, oh, I'm so sad. I'll stop talking about randomization.

No, actually, Jared, thank you for being that up. Because that is one thing that – it's so funny how that fits this genre particularly so perfectly. And if you look online at Twitch and YouTube especially, you'll see a lot of people who specialize in playing those old games with these randomizers attached to the point that I think newer games are even including the randomizers in them. I think Bloodstain now has a randomizer feature included with the game. Like they built it in there. I don't know if it's as good as the fan-made one, but I just know that they're putting it in there. I think there's a really nice touch. But, you know, if we're talking about Simpleton Night, like,

there are so many randomizers for Sima of the Night. There's different presets. You can start at the game where, you, like, you already have all the wolf powers, or, like, the bat powers are magnified. You have, it's easier, like, lower the MP rate for them. So I personally, I'm always on there watching YouTube and seeing people who are, like, they race them. Like, they generate seeds, and, like, two, three, four people are racing the same seed,

or they'll set up a tournament where they take turns fighting each other. with different seeds each time and, you know, to see who gets up with the most ones. So it's like, I've, you know, that's a game I know really, really well, but each time I've watched a new spin on it, I'm like, oh, geez, where's the Merman's that you're going to be? Oh, is the creature going to have something this time? Nope, he didn't have it again, you know. And just to reiterate for the listeners at home, because they couldn't see me, when Jeremy

said Kazim, I did a little fist pump because I think Kazim is a great game. I don't know why people don't like it. I played the hell out of that game. Really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it. It's not retro yet. but it certainly has a lot of the same spirit. Is it 10 years old yet?

No, no. But Jeremy actually didn't episode with the guy who made it before it came out. So we were ahead of the curve in that one, and I think we were correct to do so. Yeah. Jeremy, I just want to respond to your point really quickly. I do agree that there's a puzzle box element to some Metroidvenians, but I tend to think more about the action aspects and the exploration, especially in games like Hollow Night and Dead Cells and whatnot.

And to me, Symphony of the Night also emphasizes a lot of those elements as well as powering up. And I think that it's steadily becoming stronger and finding the right items to be able to do so in exploring and rogue lights are a big part of that genre, especially in games like Angman and whatnot. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I've got it on the screen behind us, Romancea,

which is Dragon Slayer Jr. by Falcom. And one thing that I've really come to realize is that all of Falcom, Falcom's games in the 80s, are really, they look like action games, a lot of them, but none of them really are. They are RPGs that just use action as sort of a facade. Like, if you're really, really good, you can make it through Ease without stopping to level up. But really, the best way to play Ease is just to grind for experience points and build your levels up because the action is pretty rudimentary and pretty limited. And so you just want to become stronger. Romancea looks like an action game, but you really can't approach it like that because the action isn't very good. But it's very much an action.

It's very much in the RPG vein and also the adventure game vein. I mean, it takes a lot of the exploration and finding objects and figuring out where to use objects on other objects of the adventure genre. That, you know, you saw it kind of perfected in games like Shadowgate. And another really big influence here was the Portopia serial murder case, Portopia Rinzoku Setsujanjika, and I've just tortured that. But anyway, this is the game that kind of gave Chunsoft Uji Hori, Uji Naka, not Uji Naka, sorry, Uji Nāori, but Koichi Nakamura, that's it. Kind of their format with which they went on to create Dragon Quest,

Like the same windowed style, the same kind of concepts of world exploration and stuff. And they turned the RPG into something that was accessible for anyone because when you die, you lose half your gold but none of your experience. So you just keep throwing yourself at bad guys over and over again until eventually you power up. So yeah, like for sure, Kat, what you're saying is totally there. Like Dragon Quest was a huge influence on all of these games, not necessarily directly, but just because Dragon Quest became so big. with the Famicom audience and was such a huge hit everyone wanted to do that

and so people did make literal Dragon Quest clones that generally weren't very good but a lot of people said how can we do this but in the form of something people want to play like an action game and you came up with Zelda 2

and Fizanadu and things like that you know if we want to talk about late 80s games that kind of look like Dragon Quest I think we have to give a quick shout out to Sweet Home Yes because Sweet Home is a 1989 game sort of based on

but not really based on this movie that came out the same year and it very much has an RPG feel in that you've got this sort of overhead view and the characters move around but you've got a team of five people and they all have different skill sets

different inventories and it's kind of a horror game because you're in this big house and there's spooky creatures and there's some monsters and ghosts and if one of your party members dies that's it, they're dead you can't get them back

and you might lose their stuff and maybe you can't make it to the end now and of course sweet home Some people know, but maybe they don't. Sweet Home eventually led, with a Capcom game, eventually led them to try that theory again, but this time in 3D, in a big spooky house, full of monsters,

yes, Resident Evil is basically from Sweet Home. So I forget who pointed this out. I wish, if you're hearing this, God bless you, but someone pointed out that the roots of survival horror are indeed Metroidvania adjacent, and that sort of blew my mind because, yeah, a good survival horror game absolutely locks you, in a place and like oh i'm in this weird house what's in this room what can i do here do i need to

find another item to come back here and that's another genre that i absolutely love and a tie back to the other thing people also are doing lots of resident evil randomizers and i think maybe even silent hill randomizers i don't know but like survival horror games also then themselves the randomizer effect where you're exploring weird places but now you don't know where you're going they'll even randomize the doors themselves so you open a door in the mansion and all of a sudden you're in the laboratory with the naked zombies like it's all you're all you're It can be very confusing, but to expert players, they'll figure it out. They'll figure out the right path, and they'll backtrack, and they'll backtrack,

and eventually they will shoot the tyrant with a rocket launcher. Don't stop talking about randomizer, that guy's going to snore again. Let him snore. I've got an empty water bottle. I do think you raise a good point there. You know, we touched on this at the beginning, but these games, things like Resident Evil, having those roots, I mean, really, it seems like if we go all the way back to adventure, Adventure is just trying to make an action-oriented version of the first several years of video games,

which were PC text-based adventures by and large. Not all of them were that way, but very many of them were. And it's a translation, again, very much like Jeremy said, about the NES translating RPGs. These games, an adventure, were an attempt to translate heavy memory-oriented text-based adventures to a piece of hardware that could barely run palm. And the technical limitations allowed Warren, you know, inspired Warren Robinette to create an action-oriented take on it. So I think we're looking at very similar roots for all of this. It does, I think, I'll really go back to that.

Hey, you know, you're standing in front of a mailbox, like in a house. You'll likely be eaten by a grue. And that's where this stuff comes from. And it's kind of a lovely lineage. We're going to be. So let me wrap with this panel before we take comments and questions. By asking everyone here, do you think any of these games still hold up? We've looked kind of at a very light overview of action adventure, RPG-type platformers and so forth throughout the 80s and talked about our favorites.

But, I mean, does someone who is picking up Castlevania 2 for the first time with no? guide in the year 2023. Are they going to have a good time? Do you think any of these games actually hold up and are strong enough to play in the year 2023? And I'm going to go first on this one.

Strider is not one of them. But I will say that I just revisited Wonder Boy 3, the Dragon's Trap, for Sega Master System. And you know, this game was remade very, very faithfully, in 2017, and reviewed

well. You go back to the original and obviously it doesn't have the modern, beautifully animated graphics, which does actually take something away from the game. Like the animation really did a good job of kind of filling in some of the gaps. And they made some fine-tuned changes to the physics. But other than that, this game is basically the same thing that came out in 2017 and was a lot of fun to play then. And it turns out that once you get kind of your head around the sort of weird physics and controls of this game, the very specific controls, it is a lot of fun to play. It does hold up really well. And to me, it is kind of the first truly great game in this genre, which is a little, it feels a little heretical for me to say as a kid who grew up on

the NES playing all these games. Yeah. I feel like this is the one, the first one where the developers, Westone in this case, really just got everything, the RPG, the adventure, the action, the platforming, the sense of discovery, the difficulty, like it's all there and all really balanced really well and all really well thought out. And the transformation element with the different characters that you become kind of brings forward that Metroid element of your body is the weapon, your body is the tool that, you know, allows you to pass through and survive the game and advance. And yeah, so I will go to bat for Wonderboy 3 despite not being European or originally a master

system owner. So that's my opinion. Nadia, what do you think? Honestly, I still think that if you handed Castlevania 2 to someone, especially a Metrovania fan, they would get something out of it, even without the guides. Because I know the villagers talk shit, but I feel like it doesn't really

make a problem with the game. I still figured things out myself. But that as well as, I want to give more... Even the crystal at the cliff? That's kind of a pain in the butt. But that's what Nestor was for That's the thing Like I know a lot of these games are

Blamed or like you know They're called obtuse They're called confusing But I mean Back then they were all kind of like that We all, it wasn't just Castlevania in the cliffs It's like we all had to run to our guides We all had to run to our game genius

We all had to run to each other in the schoolyard And say what the hell is going on? I don't get this But I will say also Zelda 2 I wanted to give more shout out too as well I actually still kind of on my Switch, just play Zelda 2 once in a while and start a new game, have a good

time. And one thing I really find interesting about Zelda 2 is there's very specific roadblocks and I like overcoming them like going through Death Mountain the first time getting the hammer for the first time. My brother, like just, I, that was so incredible to me that my

brother and I, like that I got the hammer that we, did anyone grow up with Hammer Man, the cartoon? We just start going, hammer, hammer, hammer man, hammer, hammer, and like that, you just kind of remember that kind of joy you feel when you play a video game because that challenge it was very intense and I still feel like people could probably get something out of that today but I will

also say very quickly one of the things that I really liked about a lot of these games in this genre is that they were they tended to be a lot more forgiving than action games and I wasn't obviously the best gamer in the world like I am today obviously but I like the fact that Castlevania 2

was so forgiving like if you died you would lose your hearts if you died like too many times but you were always put back exactly where you screwed up and for someone who didn't have great reflexes especially at the time stuff like that really encouraged me to keep going

and see more of what this game was about not all Metroidvania's did that early but a lot of them did Nadia when you say Harriman are you talking about the cartoon based on MC Hammer? Yeah it's really terrible okay but did you know that in the link to the past in Japan the hammer item is literally called

the MC Hammer? No get out of town I'm not joking Hello, man, I was right. Yeah. The prophecy is fulfilled somehow. You know, if we're talking about Cassavina 2 at length again, I guess we should probably mention the fact that there is at least two, maybe three or four different fan-made, like, revisions of Cassidy 2 out there right now. And one of the things I think is funny that, you know, they all have different, you know, pros and cons. And most of them, you know, they make an effort to, you know, they rewrite all the dialogue so no one lies do anymore.

or they actually make the hints make sense. They improve, you know, the inventory system or the weird thing where the hearts are now your currency instead of, you know, instead of powering yourself weapons or whatever. But one thing I've noticed, whenever I play these things, they always, like, super hard. Like, someone's like, oh, we got to make this game hard. And I'm like, no, that was, that's not the point of the original game. You know, the original game is not really, you know. You die and continue on the exact spot where you fell. Right.

But, like, there's only really three bosses in the entire game, and two of them, you can just walk past them. So, walk past death is my perfect. See you later. Right. The Green River appears, and you just leave the room, and that's the end of the fight. There's only one thing we say to death, not today. Whereas the remakes are like, oh, now you fight, you know, Frankicide's monster, but he's huge and he's jacked, and he electrifies the floor and is raining, and it looks awesome. There's metal music in the background.

I'm like, okay, but how many times we're going to do. do this fight again and again because he's too big and I can't get past him without starting over. It's just, you know, I appreciate the people making all these games. I think it's really cool and I think it's both a testament to the fact that the original game is really obtuse and hard to get your wrap your ring around, but it's also just as hard to try and remaster and improve upon. Yeah. Because you think you're improving a bit really, you're just kind of adding new obtuse elements to it. Although we're talking about obtuse, I mean, how the heck did, you know, holding a crystal and getting a tornado

become a joke, whereas crouch down on a white block and you go into the background and then you get a flute, like no one... Right? Right? That's even less... That's even less intuitive. I don't understand. I wouldn't... You didn't need that to win the game. That's the difference. That was... It was a movie, wasn't it? It was the wizard.

That was the thing everyone remembers about it. All right. Well, I'm sure... I'm sure Fritz Savage is very happy to hear that something to the wizard. That probably got him. sense. Right? Yeah. So what was your answer to the question, though? Oh. To these games holds up. Lopty doodle.

Gosh. Well... We have to back track now. No, no. We'll go right back for the red door. I mean, can we count Metroid if we do zero mission? I would. Yeah, actually, I think that's totally fair.

I think the original NES Metroid is, like, there's some things about it that don't work at all. Like, if you fall on, you fall into lava, there's a really good chance you'll never get out. Yeah. Especially in certain rooms. Like, you will really tall chambers. Right.

Or like if you're fighting Crate and Cray knocks you in the lava, it's a very good chance you will never get out of the lava. And it's incredibly enraging. But Metroid Zero Mission sort of fixes a lot of that. It takes a lot of the lessons they learn from later games like Fusion, like Super Metroid, and applies it there. And yeah, there's a little handholdy stuff where all of a sudden the Choso statues give you like glowing icons on the map to tell you where to go.

But it's still a challenge to. get through. You still have to explore and look around and get more items. And then it throws this wonderful curveball at the end. It's like, oh, you thought you beat the game. You didn't beat the game. You're still here. And, you know, that sort of final act has its issues, too. But overall, I think that that game is a really wonderful revision of the Metroid games. And it's funny because almost all the Metroid games kind of like do the same Metroid thing again. Like they have the same, you know, you keep going back to the same places. You keep fighting, craed over, like, what is this guy? When does he just die? You know, he's, he's,

He likes to hang out in the ground. Even after he dies, they bring him back as a cyborg or a frozen block of ice that turns into an ex-parasite, et cetera, et cetera. I guess. But I'm just, because of this sort of Metroid cycle that keeps happening, I guess, you know, I do think that Zero Mission stands out as a sort of this really fun, you know, sort of take on the original game. And I wish, you know, they've done, they've been doing a really good job of keeping up with old Metroid games recently. I think Nintendo's finally realized that, hey, people actually like. Metroid. Let's sell it to people. But, yeah, at this point, I would like to have more zero

mission, and maybe that, maybe the Sam... I mean, Metroid 2 is 1990, so that also is a game that's got its problems, and fans like to remember... Sorry, it's not relevant. It was 91. It's excluded. Are you sure? Believe me, I know this is okay. Okay.

Do I get to... Do I go on the panel if I say I prefer zero mission to Super Metroid? No. That's strange, but it's okay. Anyway, Kat, let's jump on to you before we run out of time here. Oh, I mean, I thought I was going to be really smart and be like, well, we haven't talked about a little game called Wonder Boy, but then Jeremy. You can say the original if you want.

That's kind of a strange answer, but you can go with that. What I was saying, like, Wonder Boy 3 or Wonder Boy in Monster World, both really good games that still hold up quite well today, certainly better than Castle Media 2 and Zelda 2, I'm sure. I'm sorry to say that I did not really grow up with those games so I don't have nostalgia hooked to them and when I went back to Castlevania I found it a little unbearable

I'm not going to lie but here's the thing we've become very inured to quality of life we like to call them and we think that we have to have them but I think it's really helpful to put yourself into the mindset of these games when they came out and if you cast your mind back to then, you can actually have something really special, which is why I was thinking

about Nadia talking about how we learned all of this stuff on the playground through osmosis and whatnot. But yes, I do still need a guide to actually play some of these games. The Falcom games had great music, but I think they are also, don't hold up super well, I don't think, but so I'm just going to be a little boring and go back to the Wonder Boy games and especially the original Metroid. That's good. Thank you. And finally, Jared.

Yeah, I think Adventure, Level 3 still holds up. Atari 2,600 Adventure, level 3 is the randomizer level. It changes the game every time you play. So you don't quite know where the items are going to be. And my evidence for that is that when I taught English in Japan, I would bring it in for lessons with my high school kids, and they would beg to play after weeks because they got hooked on it.

It's a simple but eminently understandable exploration game. It only takes a few minutes to either succeed or fail, and then you just hop back in, and it's different the next time. So I think that game is still fun. And then I talked about Blow the Root earlier. I'm floored. Like, I truly missed something special. I'm an Apple II guy in general,

but that game is still fun. Apple 2 emulation is a pain in the ass. But it's worth it to play that. It is something, that's a special video game. All right. Do we have time to take any audience comments and questions? This is kind of from the PC side. What do you think about this kind of cross-contaminated back to PC

for some of the RPG, the long-running series like Elder Scrolls, and the D&D ones that did, they did, They ended up, Eldish Colts did Battlespire. They did Red Guard, and from the D.D. site was Al-Qaeda in the Genius Curse. I don't know how successful those were, but yeah. I will leave that to the PC people. Ultima Underworld comes to mind immediately,

which is a little after our time period here. But, yeah, they're influenced by the console action-oriented design, absolutely. And we don't have time to go into depth on that, but there's plenty of evidence that those things deeply influence the folks that created Ultima Underworld and the other, early games that became our modern two hands in front of you, you know, RPGs. Gun or sword. I mean, sorry, just before you go, I just have to say that if we're talking about computer

games and getting lost, then I got to talk about Ultima 4. Like, that is a game that I played for literal years, never beat it, don't know how close I got, but, you know, talk about, they give you a whole world to explore, and they give you a lot of tools to get around, but it's also like, good look, you know, you find your own party, you find the dungeons, you've got to find, you know, ruins and mantras and temples to sort of, you know, chant and just like, it's all this stuff. And I, I loved, I loved that game because it really did make me feel like I went somewhere and, you know, sailed around this little world and there was evil and just, yeah, great game, even though it's not, you know,

mechanically similar to these games, but I think it certainly had the atmosphere. All right. So, I'm sorry. Unfortunately, it's 1.30, so we have to call it a day, but And feel free to talk to us after. We're approachable human beings, and we'd love to chat with you. But thanks, everyone, for coming. I have to say, I admit this panel is a little self-serving because currently I'm working on a book about the first decade of so-called Betroidsvania Games.

So please look forward to that, probably at the end of next year. And I do have advanced copies for sale of my book that's going up for sale at the end of this month on the History of the SG-1000 by Sega. So swing on by if you want to pick up a copy of those. That's all the self-promotion for me. Thanks again for coming out. And we'll see you next year. Thank you for me.

Thank you, panel. Thank you. Well, everyone, thank you. niche topic, but it's a cool topic. At least it's one that's been kind of an obsession for me for the past couple of years, and it's of great interest to my counterpart here. I am Jeremy Parrish. You may know me from many things on the internet. I'm here for none of them, just for me. And with me here, I'm Kevin Bunch. I do the Atari Archive video channel and book, and this is a whole other

continent of old video games. So, Epoch is the company we are talking about today. That is obviously clear from here. And this is a topic that I kind of fell into accidentally as I've been working on covering

the history of Nintendo games, Game Boy, NES, etc., and branching out into Sega. And once I branched out into Sega, I realized, you know, if I'm going to do master system, I really need to do the SG-1000, it was only out of Japan, which you know, the master system evolved out of, But if I'm going to start looking at these Japanese-only master system or precursors,

I had to look at the other companies that produce consoles that only came out in Japan. And the first and foremost of those is epoch. It was, in my opinion, I think you can make an argument that it was the original Japanese console maker. And these days, it's not much of anything in terms of video games. But it managed to release some games that actually made it pretty, they were pretty big. over here and products. So even though none of its consoles

reached American Shores, and none of these games that we're going to talk about reached American Shores, Epox still kind of has a place in American video game history. And also, it just paved the way for systems like

the Famicom and the SG 1000 and master system and so on and so forth. Like without Epoch, would there have been in NES? Probably yes. But they, you know, kind of they got the wheels spinning two years before the Famicom ever came out.

Kevin, what's your interest in that one? So, I think you're right. I think this was the first company in Japan that was putting out home video games. You know, in the mid-70s, they put out... We have it right there, Electro Tennis. Yeah.

I've got a little video demo here so you can see what they did. Yeah, so this was 1975. This was, for context, the only real Americans putting out video games at this point were, like, Magnavox and Atari. And, you know, there were a couple, like, little fly-by-night operations just trying to dump off pawn hardware. But Epic, you know, they've been a toy company since around 1958. Their big hits were tabletop and board games like baseball board. It's like a pinball-pichinko baseball mashup.

They had a few other things like foosball. They called it that one, like soccer board. They had golf board. They had a bowling game. So they were no strangers to like these kinds of, you know, games and looking at new kinds of game technologies and approaches. And they became really interested in video games. So this is something they apparently co-developed with Magnavox. I'm not sure, like, how they split that labor.

but even Epox's own timeline on their website mentions that Magnavox was involved in developing this, and supposedly under the hood, it's very similar to the Magnavox Odyssey. Really? Interesting. Yeah, but I mean, this is very much a console of its time. Look at that girthy boy. He, that thing is huge. It is massive, and all it does is play Pong modes, basically. But it was the first console manufactured and sold by a Japanese company.

for a Japanese audience and really kind of lit the fuse for what would become one of the most important regions for video game development and, you know, a country whose creations and creativity continue to inspire the world today. So there it is. That's the beginning. A gigantic red pong clone. It's so cool. My favorite thing about this is that it doesn't have a wire that runs to the TV. It's a wireless, like, UHF signal, yeah. I had no idea. That's amazing. You know, Sega actually released something like that for the Mark 3, the Japanese master system, the FM transmitter. Like, you could not do that here.

That would be 100% an FCC violation. Like, you've written about how much FCC mandates and rules affected the outcome and the evolution of the American industry. Yeah, and Epic just did it. No one's going to care over here. Yeah, like, who cares if our neighbors are also seeing electro tennis? It's fine. I'm having a good time. That's great. But this was a success for them, clearly, because

they continued to develop these standalone consoles on a pace of about once per year. This is their first really big hit, baseball. Or I think it was called Pro Yaquiu game, but that means baseball in Japanese. And this is actually

not the baseball console. It is baseball for the Cassette Vision console, but it's the same thing and we'll talk about that later but this was a big hit for them and I've actually like there were a ton of these in the market I managed to find a really really nice

when it's beautifully preserved and it's just a cool little device it's got just like the baseball stadium kind of recreated in miniature as the console itself it's great but it's also a very unconventional system because you have like a little controller you pull out for the batting team

and all they do is just tap the button, but then the fielding team, you've got these dials and stuff and buttons. It's really interesting and lopsided, and to play it, you have to kind of like shift who's doing what with the system. Yeah, the famous asymmetric controls on that thing are super interesting, and this one's pretty cool too. Yeah, this is another big hit for them. No prize, if you can guess what game they were riffing on here.

This is clearly one of the Invaders clones that came out of Japan. Pan, I think this was 1980, is that right? I believe so. But this is TV Vader, and this also is not captured from a TV Vader device. It is captured from the Cassette Vision console, but again,

it's the same thing, because they were having great luck with these standalone devices, but at some point they kind of realized that, hey, maybe interchangeable cartridges are the way to go, and they probably realized that because they had the genius idea of taking

the Atari 2,600, putting Japanese language stickers on the box and selling it in Japan. So when you look at histories, most of the time you see Atari entered the Japanese market in 1983 with the Atari 2,800, which was a rebranded 2,600. But that's not true. Epoch actually did this in like 1979, 1980. And according to some of the research that you've come up with, Like, they're the ones who came up with the idea for Space Invaders for 2,600? They came up with it at the same time that someone internal to Atari was like, oh, this game's cool, I should make a clone of it. And I'm not sure exactly what the timeline was and how that all affected each other.

But the end result is that Space Invaders for the 2,600, was one of the very few games that actually sold in Japan. It was like that in Superman for whatever reason. Everything else, total flop. Yeah, actual Space Invaders' ports to consoles didn't hit Japanese systems until 1985, six, seven, seven years after the Invaders' Mania. Years after that had kind of become, like, ceased to be a really big thing over there. But this obviously was a huge hit because it was a device that played not Space Invaders,

but a convincing clone. You can kind of see how they mixed it up a little bit. Their system, I don't think it had the power to render all the information. invaders. So what they did was they invader just, it rendered just a row of invaders, and it kind of becomes this push and pull thing where you're blasting invaders back whenever you shoot them, and they change colors. So you get that idea of rows and colors that you see in the actual space invaders, but, you know, within the limitations of the system. So that was a, like I said, a huge hit for them, and at the same time, they started looking to other hits in Japan, and

And one of the first things that was really big in the 80s was Nintendo's Game and Watch. And everyone got into the Game and Watch market, started making miniature devices. You know, the tabletop VH, Vs, what is it, vacuum, fluoresce, VFD. Of VFDs, yes, VFD devices, like, you know, you saw a Colico release here. But lots of handheld devices, too. Epoch had quite a few of these that were successes on the Japanese market. Some were, like, handheld VFD devices or LED devices. But the one that really saw international success, it was a huge hit in Japan and here, was Epic Man, which, again, no points for guessing what this is. It is very clearly Pac-Man. But this is the first video game that I owned. My parents, like, they saw me obsessing over it at a display at best products. So they secretly tried to buy one for me to give me as a gift, but I think they opened it up to try it out. And I heard it from across the house. I was like, I know those sound effects.

So I dashed to their room and they were like, okay, you got us, here you go. And by the end of it, I could master, like I could do a perfect game, all 99 points, no lies lost. It's very pattern-based like the original Pac-Man, but it's got some cool elements. Like the bridges, you can hide under there, but also ghosts can be under there. So you have to kind of watch out for that. There are, you know, the corridors that pass instead of on the sides, top and bottom. And if you look on the right, lower one, on the top left one, you can see a little barrier there. And the barriers switch back and forth.

So there's kind of this dynamic element. You don't know from second to second, moment to moment, which of those paths is going to be safe for you to traverse. So if you're trying to escape from a ghost or monster or whatever's on there, then you can't be sure that if your timing is off, that you're going to be able to get away. but it's really amazing how much they crammed into an LCD screen here because you know you have to have your guy you have to have the objects you collect which in this case is fruit and energizer stars and you also have to have the monsters that overlap with you so they kind of created a grid-based system let's go back to that

there we go oh there we go a grid-based system where the fruit are on one grid and then Epochman and the monsters are offset so they're kind of in the same space but Epochman is small enough so that when the monsters eat him, they're inside their body. So it's just a really clever feat of engineering on an LCD screen. It's a really genuinely good

Pac-Man knock-off. And, you know, at the time, if you wanted to play Pac-Man, you could go to the arcade, you could buy... Actually, this was before the Atari version for 2,600. You could go to the arcade or you could buy this, and you would have Pac-Man to play wherever you wanted. So it was a massive hit

sold millions of units, I believe. Yeah. They did. so many of these little handheld games and to your point that they crammed so much detail into these. I was looking up a video of Dracula House last night which is one of them that they did and that's a game

that has just like this little horizontal display and it's like a three-part game. There's like the first part where you have to break into Dracula's labyrinth and then you have to collect all the diamonds in there to and avoid getting attacked by a wolfman and a bat and then

you get to go to the four coffins and one of them has treasure in it and one of them has Dracula in it and if you open up the one with Dracula you have to run and you know just really just really inventive uh approaches to these games i will say that their knockoff games tended to be more successful creatively and mechanically than their original creations like oil gang i can't figure this game out i own it these are my hands here and what you can't see on camera is my absolute befuddlement trying to figure out what I'm trying to do and what the mechanics are. Why do I keep dying?

So anyway, yeah, that was a big deal for them. But around the time that they started producing these, they also said, it's very expensive to make these standalone consoles. It's not a good economical system. So they looked to Atari and said, let's work with interchangeable cartridges. And as a result, they created the cassette vision console, the first console to come out in Japan in July, 1981. Sounds about right.

And they had a very limited staff. They had like a designer and a programmer and an engineer, basically. And so they could produce one game every three or four months. So there were not a lot of games for the cassette vision. And in its three-year lifespan, it had 11 games. It would have had 12, but the racing game was full of bugs. and they had to cancel it, which is a shame because it looked pretty cool. By the end, they were doing crazy things with this hardware.

This is basically Pong hardware. And they were, you know, making baseball games, Space Invaders games, Pong games. Okay, the obvious stuff. But by the end of it, you get Scramble clones, Donkey Kong-alikes, elevator action rip-offs. It's just amazing what they were able to do with ingenuity and I think a lot of internal suffering for the developers. And, like, you brought the cassette vision itself. It's up in the museum. If you were curious about the cassette vision,

you can play it next to its child, the super cassette vision, out in the museum. And we'll have a... I brought all the games so you can try out all the different games throughout the show. Even the light gun game

that uses an alarmingly realistic looking mouser. Like, I don't know who said, we should make a gun for this system, a light gun, that looks exactly like what the Nazis used. But God bless them.

Anytime I see that, thing, I want Indiana Jones to come and just like whip it out of my hands. But it's totally worth trying that thing, or at least just looking at it because the controls on this thing are bonkers, because they're trying to cram in all of these like functions that all of these dedicated

consoles had, because this machine has the most bizarre and arcane internal architecture. I did not think to include an image of this system here in this video, which I should have. But again, you can go out on the floor and check it out and put your hands on it. But yeah,

it's a really interesting system because the console itself is basically a power supply and a video output. The CPU and the RAM and the programming code all exist on the individual cartridges. So when you power on the system, if nothing's

in it, it does nothing. You have to like plug in the cartridge to even get the power on light. But yeah, it's not a totally unheard-of system. The Milton Bradley Microvision uses that and the Gacken TV boy also. It was an approach that people took for a while for some strange reason.

But the cassette vision was full of clones of their own games and other games. This is their consoleized version of Epic Man called Packpack Monster, which I don't think is actually as good as Epic Man. But it's okay. But this system, like if you look at the system and use the system, this is not a game designed for the layout of that console with the four rotary dials and a string of buttons

and a line along the bottom. Trying to do these four-directional games is tough. So in 1984, they released the Cassette Vision Jr., which was the cassette vision, but with the simplified controls, it has a cross-pad basically built into the system. So things like this work a lot better,

but there are some games that do not work, including the light gun games, the Pong clones, a few other things that required the rotary dials. So kind of a lot of, a lot of compromises, but the Castet Vision Jr. was $50 cheaper than the cassette vision. So, you know, it kind of made up for it. And also the later games in the system's life are all meant to be used with kind of the cross-style controls, including this one. The previous one

that we had on the screen, Kikori No Yoshaku, is a knockoff of an S&K game. S&K's first original arcade creation. It wasn't a breakout clone, which has now been lost to time. So this knockoff of S&K's Yosaku is really like the most authentic way to play this lost arcade game. S&K did put it in as a bonus feature in King of Fighters Battled a

Paradise. If you plug it into a NeoGeo system, a Neogeo pocket system, not the color, you can boot into that game, which is a feature included in the Switch collection. If you set the settings right, you can play that. So it's kind of cool that, you know, they've at least sort of tried to make up for that loss

of history, but like you said, is real history. And if you have a Yosaku board, please, for the love of God, uh, dump that. Hey, hey, ho, hey, ho. Hey, hey ho. I'm going to go. Hey, hey, ho. Hey, hey home.

Yobo was a hat. I really want to play Yosaku. Acu. Yeah, so the Cosette Vision, there's a lot going on of this system. It's actually, it's really cool. Like I said, they only released a few games for it because they had such

limited staff, but I feel like with every game, whenever they tried to rip things off, they at least tried to be creative about it. I mean, obviously, look at this game. The resolution of the system is really low. You have, like, okay pixel resolution, but it always

exists in big chunks. And also, there are limitations on what they can do with the lines. So a packback monster has these weird, jagged lines in the back, which is a failing of the hardware, basically. So you have this very limited space, and what you have to do in this game is pass over the dots to collect them and pass over energizers to power yourself up so you can eat monsters, which, you know, that's kind of standard fare.

But each time you pass over a dot, it changes color, and you can't pass over the same dot consecutively. forces you to move around, cover the entire screen, and creates a lot of motion in what is a very, very constrictive, tiny Pac-Man clone. It's also really, really easy. Like, even on the hard difficulty, I don't know about the challenge. Well, I think that's compensating for the fact that you're playing it, like, you know,

not even Wazda. It's, you know, just, like, four buttons in a line. It's true. Most of your deaths are going to be because you push the wrong button. So this one is, is this Galaxian? Yes. This is not, well, this is called Galaxian, but it's really, what, Mooncresta? It's Mooncresta, but things were a lot looser with copyright and trademark back then.

So this is Galaxian, which again, you know, it's your typical kind of Invader-style game, but it does have this extra mode where you have to launch yourself into space, and actually what you want to try to do is dock with that UFO at the top. This was a bad early recording, and I messed up. But, yeah, that's the goal. So, you know, this is kind of working along with a lot of standard concepts that you saw in video games at the time. But, again, they always put a twist on it. Here's a Pingo knockoff called Monster Block.

But there's this numeric element, and if you manage to kick like numbers together, you get special bonuses. And also, sometimes, well, at all times, one of the walls is colored. blue. And if you kick that wall, it'll cause everything on the screen to shift in the other direction. So there's like this avalanche effect. So even though it's pingo, it's pingo, but with

a little spiciness, I would call it. And that's kind of the cassette vision lineup in general. Like something, but spicier. Let's jump ahead to oh yeah, their amazing scramble clone. Remember, this is Pong hardware. Here's a scrolling shooter with a boss.

On a pong clone, that's really remarkable. Okay, this part doesn't look remarkable. It's not the most impressive scrolling you've ever seen, but the fact that it scrolls at all is pretty stunning. They were not able to incorporate the bomb element of scramble that I could tell, but everything else is there. You know, it's smoother scrolling than you got on the SG 1000s. That's worth something.

This one's called Monster Mansion. Obviously knocking off Donkey Kong. There's even like the little rolling things you have to avoid. also sometimes little space invaders come out there's that little invader guy who comes out every so often on whichever level you're on so he kind of tracks into you apparently that's supposed to be a sword not a cross

it looks like a cross to me kind of brings a religious element in there but basically you have to hit these little balloons or whatever that are hanging on the off the top of each ceiling and once you do that then a ladder appears and you can go up and cause Satan or whoever to fall

and then you can embrace your girlfriend. This is their elevator action clone which is kind of based on the previous game that we saw but it's way harder it even uses like the same building graphics. They reused a lot of code here yeah but this this one you're kind of the mechanics are the same

but you have to rely on these elevators while avoiding those little bird guys yeah the further you get into the library the more esoteric and complicated the games get this is at the very end where they were really just pushing this hardware so hard, so, so desperately hard. And you have to respect the hustle, but I don't think I really like this game all that much.

Yeah, this would have been, what, 83, 84? Something like that. So 1984 was kind of their big year. I think that was the year that they decided to go for it. I mentioned the Cassette Vision Jr., which came out basically at the same time as the Famicom and SG-1000 and undercut the prices on those systems by about 50, 60%. So it was dated, but it was dated. but it was cheap.

They also came out with this guy, the game pocket computer, which is, it's not like the Milton Bradley Microvision. It is a proper handheld system with a built-in display and interchangeable cartridges. And I don't know why this system failed,

but only five or six games came out for it, and it basically disappeared like that. But this was like Game Boy, five years before there was Game Boy. I have to assume that it was just too expensive. Yeah, I've never heard too much about this thing. there's a built-in art like a graphics mode that you just saw

and of course it has Mahjong it also has a proper licensed release of my personal favorite game Sokoban that would become the bane of anyone who collects or covers handheld gaming and it started here on a game pocket computer

but for whatever reason this system was a bomb like it's considered a massive failure and it just it astounds me because this is, you know, a precursor to Game Boy that was coming so far in advance. Maybe Sokobon is what got it. Maybe people just weren't ready for it. Yeah, that could be. Anyway, so that's the Game Pocket Computer.

Also out in 1984, basically at the same time that the first third-party games showed up on Famicom, and Sega released the Mark 3 version 2 model, which is much sleaker and had interchangeable controllers. You have the super cassette vision, which obviously is a big step above the cassette vision technologically, although kind of tilling the same field here, another invaders clone. Actually, they launched with two invaders clones. They had Astro Wars and Astro Wars 2, Battling Galaxy and Invader from Space. But again, they're trying to sexy things up by putting some extra spice in there. In this case, you have nine lives, but you have all of those.

lives at once. Those pods at the bottom are your backup ships. So the enemies can actually zap your extra lives as they're invading. So it's kind of rigged against you. It's sort of unfair. I feel like this version, this is Astro Wars 2. So again, you have an invaders clone, but it's more of a Galaxian clone, and it's pretty damn good. But the Super Because I'm interesting because it has much higher resolution graphics. It has color. It has built-in RGB-out support. So if you have a good television or like a SCART system, you can plug in and get really, really pure video. This is an unmodified actual hardware capture. It just looks gorgeous. It has a very simple audio chip. I have kept

the audio off on this video feed for your safety and sanity. You do not want to hear Super cassette vision music, but it did exist. You don't want to hear cassette vision sound effects, period. They are... Pretty brutal. But, you know, they kind of started from a familiar place. They had a big hit with TV Vader, that mini-consul, and so they were

like, well, new console, we got to put Space Invaders on it. Maybe, maybe that's why the Game Pocket computer failed. Yeah, could use Space Invaders. No Space Invaders clone. Did they at least have Pac-Man? That's the real question. They did not. Oh, see, there you go. But yeah, you know, again,

baseball game, but in this case, again, this is like July, September, 1984. So this is the first game to kind of look at Nintendo's baseball from late 1983, which kind of changed how people approach the format. And they were the first ones to really rip that off and say, ooh, let's do it like that. And this would become kind of the de facto Japanese console baseball style once Namco released Family Stadium in 1986. But again, you've got Epoch out here two years before that, kind of leading ground in borrowing ideas from other people.

Yeah, this machine does have a very interesting lineup. You've got some arcade ports that did eventually show up on the Famicom, or in some cases didn't. I don't think Famicom ever got Pole Position 2, I think. It didn't.

Pole Position 2, I think. Yeah, pole position 2. So if you did not import a 7,800, you had to get a Super Cassette Vision to play that game. And they had some really interesting, like, anime licenses, well, manga licenses, I guess, at this point. Yeah, let's look ahead to, ooh, we're going to skip right past the Majong. Go back for Mahjong if you really want to.

There we go. It's got a loop on the third game. This is not the first ever loop-on game, but this is kind of an endless runner-type game. Not really endless, because you do have goals, but I don't know, kind of metro-crashes, cross-ish. How would you describe it? Um, yeah, I'd say one part Metro Cross Uh, geez.

The first time I saw it, I thought, oh, it's going to be like pitfall because there's the above ground and the below ground. But no, you don't actually do anything above ground. That's just for, um, Inspector Zinigata and his police cronies to drop stuff on you. But you're obviously like running and trying to collect treasure. So it does have that pitfall spirit to it. But Luban, of course, is no helpless little man.

He can, he can punch bath out of the air and he can knock bombs out of the ceiling of the sewer, as one does, to deter the crocodile that's perpetually chasing him. You know, importantly, this is the pink jacket, Lupin. So it's a little bit goofy. That was at the time, the zeitgeist. But, yeah, that was one of the first original games that they released for Super KitZEvision

and showed that Epoch was really kind of starting to branch out and not just doing things internally, come up with their own ideas. They were looking to build some brand synergies. Ah, there we go, Lupin. You did it. He made it. Ganbara. Anyway, another scramble clone

called Nebula, which is pretty cool. But I want to get to the more of the license stuff. There you go. The first ever Dragon Ball game. And it's a shooter. Yeah, they said, let's make a Zebby-style shooter, which is interesting because it's a

shooter, but it's also a melee shooter. Because, you know, he's got oh, Dragon Ball fans, what's his stick's name? Noinbo or something? like that? No-boyeen. Anyway, he's got his wobbly stick and he can fly over Yomcha's

face and look, they didn't turn the Onigiri into a hamburger. So you can tell this is a Japanese release. Anyway, yeah, so you have Dragon Ball. The epoch would go on to release a lot

of anime licensed and television licensed games. That would be kind of their thing. Like Sylvanian family or Silvanian family was like this cute little animal forest thing, not like Animal Crossing, but something different that was a huge mainstay for them for years to come.

They did like 15 Doraimon games. They were all over the place. Yep, Doraimon. Yep. But they also licensed games from other companies. This is, I believe, the first release for a console of any Falcom game. This is Dragon Slayer, the original. Tiny little window.

I mean, I forgot to resize this from the YouTube capture that I borrowed. But, you know, they had to kind of window it. And it's a very complicated game, but they would actually go on to release it, Dragon Slayer again, for Game Boy, when they started publishing for other company's systems after realizing, oh, the SuperCesivision's not doing it for us. They did a couple Dragon Slayers on Super Famicom, too, if I remember.

Well, they also did Dragon Slayer Guidin, which I don't know exactly what difference that is to Dragon Slayer, but they licensed Mapy, Pole Position, and SkyKit from Namco. So at some point, I think they got tired of, like, the Samisdat versions of games and actually said we should have just, you know, pay people to release their games that have you know, name recognition and the people

will actually buy. But at this point, it was 1986, and, like, the writing was on the wall for the Super Cassette Vision. It's cool that they actually went to the trouble of doing this, although as someone who actually had to pay cash money to get a hold of these games, which are very hard to come by and very expensive, I resent. sent it. Especially you, SkyKid. God damn, SkyKid. Sean Baby was right. SkyKid sucks.

Oh, I love SkyKid. I love SkyKid. Sean Baby, I'm... I just mean the character, Sky Kid. Oh, yeah. It's okay. But, you know, you have your usual golf games.

This is one of the first golf games to kind of use a swing style, like a swing meter, except it's the meter is your... I guess she's not a duffer because I think that's like an old man. So whatever you call, call a young lady duffer. That's

your swing meter up there in the corner. So not quite up there with Hall and Nintendo's golf for Famicom but, you know, still it's golf and people love that. And God, do people love Mahjong except for me? Yeah, you know, so

there's a mix of interesting licensed and original games and knockoff games for Super Cassad Vision, such as this here, which is called elevator panic, which is clearly another elevator action clone, though, much more directly inspired by the original elevator action. My least favorite thing about it is that every time you die,

it gives you a scroll from the top of the game down to where you are now. And that's fine at the beginning. But once you reach the bottom and get to the weird, like, obstacle death course at the end where you die constantly, it's really annoying to have to scroll for like 10 seconds and then have two seconds in which you die. A little dizzying too watching that. They didn't always get it right.

How would you describe this? It feels like this is Punch Boy. You're a little guy who punches things. You've got a big purple glove. You kind of look like Chacken from Chacken Pop, but it plays nothing like Chacken Pop. You can punch the rocks, but punching eggs, I guess,

punching the eggs does not cause the dinosaurs to die. But if the eggs roll back into you, you will die. So what you have to do is either punch the dragons up close. So kind of a dig-dug thing, or use these little springy board things to kill them by punching them from the other side. And those are kind of like the dots in Pack-Pack Monster, where you can't hit the same one twice in a row. Like after you hit one, you have to hit another one before it'll activate again.

Digg-Dug mixed with Pango, mixed with Pac-Man, mixed with, you know, probably too much alcohol on a Tuesday after you. I don't think I included it in here. I didn't. Okay, but if you look in this footage, you can see a house in the center, and as you play through each stage, you're getting closer and closer to that house.

And then the final stage of this game changes format, so it actually is kind of like a pop-eye or Donkey Kong-style game where you're climbing ladders and there's like little ghosts in the windows and you have to like jump up and punch them and reach the top.

They were all over the place. They were drunk with power with the amazing capabilities of the super cassette vision. Yeah, like they tried that kind of stuff on the original cassette vision, like the Monster Mansion game, the Donkey Kong clone,

every stage has like a unique way to approach it and how to get through it. It looks identical, but it's a different gimmick each time. So this time, they were able to actually make it visually distinct. Right. So unlike Astro Command, this actually looks like Scramble,

and they actually give you two forms of attack, but they don't, again, they never copy things directly. They always mix things up just a little bit. So you have the straight ahead hit scan type attack, but you also have the ability to hit things below you. The thing is, though, it's not an arcing bomb. You hold down the secondary fire button,

and basically whatever your projectile is, the bomb or missile or whatever it is, will drop. And then once you release the secondary fire button, the missile will arc forward or fire forward, at the level that you release it at. So it requires a lot of concentration and forces you to split your attention between what's happening on screen

and just how long you're holding down the secondary fire button. I don't know that it's necessarily successful, but at the same time, look at some of the graphical effects they have here. They had, you know, parallax scrolling across different planes. They've got that kind of Exerian-style,

like shifting backgrounds on different levels. like they were they were really kind of doing some fancy stuff this was the beginning of 1985 or even late 1984 and there wasn't a game that looked and played like this on the competing consoles so I kind of feel like they

came out fighting you know came out swinging with super cassette vision they just didn't necessarily have the clout or the marketing power to pull it off you mentioned some of the like how it's always a little bit off with their stuff

and one thing I found reading through one of the interviews that at Box staff done his fellow Hiroshi Harah who works. He was the main game designer for Cassad Vision. Yeah, and he did some of the handheld games too. And the way he described it is

that they didn't have any sort of market research whatsoever. They were just, you know, they'd go to the arcade and they'd play some games like, oh, that looks cool, maybe people will like it, or I've got an idea for a game, I'm going to slap it together. And a lot of their games kind of have that feeling to it.

Someone on staff thought this was a really cool idea, and they made it for themselves, and kind of just hoped someone else would care. And sometimes it worked out. Kind of a precursor to the early indie game scene. Like, I just want to do this thing. And it turns out that, you know, all of what every indie wanted to do was make a Metroidvania game, and people were like, yes, more of that, please. So that's how things are going.

Yeah, they should just made a Metroid game for the Super Cassette Vision. I'm sure if it had lasted into 1987, they would have, honestly. But they did kind of bow out in 1986, and at that point they switched to third-party game development. They naturally... All right, so they jumped over to Famicom, and the first game they made was, of course, a baseball game. But they didn't actually make that many games for Famicom.

Instead, what they did was they focused more on Game Boy, and they published a lot of games and produced a lot of games for Game Boy, and they kept going back to the same well of ideas. This was released here in the U.S. as Cyraid, courtesy of ElectroBrain. But this game is actually based on a super cassette vision game called Pop and Chips. Would you say that's a fair assessment, you in the audience, with the Super Cessette Vision? I see the shaking screen. Yeah, yeah, the shaking screen and the way you're moving stuff around.

The little guy who pops out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the little guy who pops out, like you saw the little guy who pops out. Like, you saw that dude in, it was Elevator Fight for Cassette Vision. So they keep kind of going back and, you know, just borrowing all these old ideas from their previous work. And it's kind of interesting to just see how, like, they iterate on game concepts. Someone there is like, this is fun, I like this, I'm going to keep doing this. This game would see life again on Game Boy Color.

They re-skinned it based on a children's variety TV show in general. I can't remember the name of the show, but it's exactly the same game just with, for some reason, television TV personalities, children's TV personalities. Yeah, they were publishing Game Boy Color stuff. It's surprisingly late. I remember R-type D-X was them in Japan. Oh, wow, okay. That's a pretty solid port right there. Yeah, so here's the Game Boy version of Dragon Slayer.

a game that I don't think is possible to beat on a single set of batteries because it just takes so long and there's no save feature. So I think the only way to finish this game is to play it on Game Boy, Super Game Boy, or, you know, on an emulator or something. But back in the day, I don't know if anyone

could have actually finished this game. It's a weird one. And also, it was like 1990. Dragon Slayer was so old at that point. There were like 10 Dragon Slayer games. They were on Legend of Heroes over on TG16. Who knows? This is Parasol Henby.

This is based on a manga and anime property. It's an OK platformer. There's a lot of monkeys and mushrooms. I don't know why. Let's see. What else is there? Anyway, yeah. So, Epox spent some time as a third party doing some good games and some less good games.

But they kind of found their second wind, the new hit that they were looking for, with a non-consul, non-portable game product called Barcode Battler. And I feel like everyone in here has heard of Barcode Battler because it was a pretty big hit in America. And that was the product they released. I think in like 1987. I read 91 for the first version of it. Oh, wow, I didn't realize it was that late. Okay, so 91.

We didn't get the original Barcode Battler, but we did get Barcode Battler 2 in the U.S. Here's a, I believe, European commercial for Barcode Battler 2. But the idea was you had this like, it was kind of before Pokemon. Pokemon. You had these two devices that you could link together, go head to head, and you basically scanned barcodes, and that would give you stats for a monster that would create. I mean, you know, Monster Rancher, basically, but this was early 90s, and people would go out, kids would become inspired to go out and find which barcodes were the most powerful barcodes for Barcode badmler. They would buy products just to get the barcodes from like a candy or, you know,

rom it or something because everyone had discovered, wow, this was like the really powerful barcode. I know Epok licensed out Zelda and Mario for like a set of these barcode battler things. I have them. There was a super Famicom

adapter. Never came to the U.S. but the Japanese super NES actually could use the barcode battler, like connect to it and supplement games, which is I think kind of based on an idea that Bondi did with the Datak device that

plugged into the system and you could plug little mini video games into it. It was all, you know, Bandai products like Dragon Ball and that sort of thing. But it had a barcode scanner and it came with a bunch of cards and then you could also scan random other cards to create stats for your characters. And you literally could not

play these Famicom games that you spent a lot of money on unless you scanned a barcode into it. It's an interesting little corner of history and Epok kind of sparked it. And they made it big with it. But, you know, eventually, even that sort of fizzled, that fad died, people did it better, like, you know, Jalico with Monster Rancher. That was Jalico, right?

Was it Jalico? Let's say yes. Anyway, I think if you want to see more fun Barcode Battler stuff, I know season 16 of Game Center CX has a segment. Oh, nice. That's like gambling on Barcode Battler. matches. So it's like, all right, who's going to win this one? Is it going to be the Super Mario Bros. Barcode or the Sonic the Hedgehog barcode? Let's find out. That's amazing.

Yeah. But they did eventually kind of fizzle out, but interestingly, Epoch kind of went back to its origins in its final days of making video games and started releasing more standalone consoles in the early 2000s. And these were all kind of precursors to the Wii in a certain way.

were very casual oriented, very inexpensive devices. They were self-contained, but they had a lot of motion elements. There's an interview that Kevin's mentioned, and I think Brian Clark is going to release the translation of that online soon, so you can read the whole 30-page thing. But they talked about how, like, the company president swung a baseball bat controller way too hard, let go of it, and it smashed into the TV, and they were surprised it didn't break. So, you know, three or four years before that was in the, you know, the thing happening with Nintendo Wii, Epoch was, again, paving the way. So they kind of, you know, they started the Japanese console industry,

and they sort of started the Japanese casual console industry. But eventually they've just got out of video games altogether, and I don't think they've made anything in, like, 12 or 13 years. Yeah, I think their last console that I could find anything on was in 2007, and it was a standalone Tetris unit. Really? Interesting. Yeah. But they're still around.

they still make toys and such and I believe they just put out a licensed baseball board for Super Mario Brothers. So like the baseball board franchise still going from 1958 just now it's got a plumber. So again if you would like

to check out Epic Cassette Vision or Super Cosette Vision for yourself, both of those devices are out in the old esoteric corner of the museum at the show. I strongly encourage you to check it out. I had my cassette vision modded for

S-video at great cost and you have never seen, no one has ever seen cassette vision video that looks this nice. So please make the most of that. Enjoy Kikori no Yosaku and it's 16 pixel resolution on a, what is it,

like 27-inch screen, my God, it's huge. Like every pixel is the size of your fist. It's so good. And they're so crisp. I love it. It really makes me happy to see that out there. So, yeah, definitely check that out. At some point, we'll set up the Mouser, and I hope no one gets pulled over by security guard. I had a tense moment with TSA this morning, checking my luggage, but it's all good.

It made it here. Epoch, yeah, just a really an interesting little company. I've put together a complete video series on the Cassette Vision and several episodes into Super Cassette Vision that I've been releasing for my video patrons on a one-year exclusive timeline, but the first episode is public this weekend. So check out my YouTube channel, which is just called Jeremy Parrish. And check that this weekend, and you'll be able to see basically a more polished version of what I've just said here about Kikorino Yosak. You can pay you money and see the next few videos early. That's true. That's true. About to dive into Gaken TV Boy, which is even more esoteric and

unnecessary than Bikisivision. But thanks everyone for taking the time to listen to us talk about the Cassette Vision and Super Cosette Vision and all the other cool stuff that Epoch did and that no one remembers except the three of us. God bless. Yeah, yeah, I mean, sure. All Japanese. Yes, elderly Japanese people

and the sub-engineerians at this point. The folks who were really into TV baseball. Yes. But I hope that I have made a convincing case for the fact that this is a significant and important part of video game history that does deserve some uh a little bit of enshrining just a little bit not too much

scosh to you see japanese scotch okay Thank you.