Retronauts - 594: Ys Books I, II, & III

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Jeremy Parish, Kurt Kalata, and patron Scott Rothman wash ashore and dive into the daily bump-and-grind as they recount the origins of Nihon Falcom's Ys series. 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 weekend Retronauts, some truly wise commentary. 94. That's six short of 600. That's like 1% away from 600. I'm so good at math. Amazing. And I'm good at math because I play RPGs. So today we are going to talk about a series that is not an RPG in the purest sense of the word, but is nevertheless an important part of the role playing evolution, the milieu, et cetera, et cetera. But first, before we get started, I would like to introduce our guests, starting with the sponsor for this episode. We're finally getting back on track with our patron request episodes, which kind of fell by the wayside because my life was chaos for like six or seven months and I could barely like stay alive. So now that I'm safely alive, we're back to making up for lost time, starting with this episode. Please, patron, supporter, purveyor of the arts, kind soul. Please introduce yourself.

Hi. Bump combat defender, Scott Rothman. So I have to ask you, are you a defender of bump combat in all its myriad forms? No, not all of its marriage forms. I mean, very much the East Bump Combat, I find fun. some of the older iterations, not so much. Where do you stand on Hyde lied? No comment.

So the defender has logged off, I guess I see. Okay. Scott, what made you want to join us for this episode, this discussion of the East series? We've given it away in case you hadn't seen the title of this episode. Yes, it's about the Ease series, Ease 1 through 3 specifically. Yes. So I played Wanderers from Wise, as I thought it was, as a young child. It was a very, like, confusing game to me, because I had only sort of basic understanding of genres at the time of, like, things are turn-based or things are action, and there's, like, no numbers involved.

And then here I was presented with this both. And it was just, like, sort of confusing to me. but enthralling also. It was something that always just like stuck in my brain this game throughout my childhood, who I thought that I thought was created by a company called Sammy. I had just all of the information as possibly wrong as I could about this game. But yeah, it was something that always stuck in my head.

And then, you know, as I got older and played more and started learning about Falcom and the rest of the series and stuff, I finally went back and played one and two, and some of the others, you know, seven, eight, not really four, four, five, or six, just because they never really made it here. But yeah, it was, it wasn't like any other game, there's not many other games that I think actually do play out like East. There's a lot of games that I think that look and feel similar, but it has something of its own. And even after all these years, it still has, like, a really strong cult following. It's a special series, and I'm just sort of excited to talk about it, because Falcom does not get as much attention. I don't know why Falcom didn't become as big as, like, Square or Enix or some of the other RPG houses that became sort of household names over here.

They just never did. I think that's probably because they primarily published for PCs first, specifically Japanese home computers. Like, if you look at almost all of their significant series, they all started on computers. Yeah, and we didn't have access to the FM7 in America. So, yeah, that kind of undermined them. I also think that there's an old school sort of mentality about most of their design. So, you know, when Square was becoming consumer-friendly and really focusing on graphics and story, you know, Falcom was still, they still had graphics and they still had graphics and they still

had story in their games, but it didn't seem like that was really kind of what they were pushing toward. That's my thought anyway. Yeah. I mean, yeah. The games were all the, the amount that these games get ported is just like comical and second, I think, to any, I can't think of another franchise that has had games ported as many times as this. But I think also potentially one of the reasons is that a lot of their series are their original series still that are just like still running, and a lot of them have continuity through, like, the beginning to where they are now. So I think that also is potentially off-putting, since a lot of that early stuff didn't come or wasn't very popular. You saw that, like, Final Fantasy's last ad campaign,

they were just, like, hammering home over. Like, you don't need to play any of the other games. It's okay. There's pitching others, but they don't count. They don't matter. They don't matter. Please play this. So, yeah, I don't know. So maybe we should throw the question to our other guests this episode, who has written extensively about Falcom and about this series in particular, please introduce yourself, and then we're putting you on the spot. Why don't you think Falcom has become quite as legendary and respected in the West as Square inix? Hi, I'm Kurt Kalata.

I run Hardcore Gaming 101. And as Jeremy just said, I've written a lot about the ease games over the past 20 years or so. I think, Jeremy, you're basically right. They were a computer company, and also the formative games came out on platforms, which weren't particularly successful. The original East, its first appearance in America, was for the Sega Master System, so that obviously didn't really take off much of anywhere. It did get ported to the PC and the Apple 2GS from a company which also didn't get a whole lot of exposure called Kiodai. I think its first, quote-unquote, big introduction was for the TurboGraphics 16 CD, where I think they even packaged it with...

It was, but how big a debut was that really, given that you were talking about an add-on expansion to an unpopular console in America? I would say big as much as video game magazines were really enthusiastic about it. As far as its consumer breakthrough, I don't think it was very much. As a Sega Master System kid, I was familiar with East, but I didn't get a chance to play it before I moved on to Nintendo. But when the TurboGraphic 16 CD came out, East came out, the magazine, which I subscribed to video games and computer entertainment, they gave the sound and music category a 10. And I'm like, I have to play this game, but I definitely don't have a TurboGraphic 16. I had heard at the time you could listen to the music on a regular CD player, which you can. But I was like 10 years old at the time.

I couldn't afford to spend $60 on a game that I couldn't play just for the music. So I didn't actually get to play it until it came out on the master system. East 3 came out on all three 16-bit platforms. So I think people at the time sort of knew it there, but the quality of the game is a little rough. Like, I love that game dearly, but it's not showing its best foot forward with that game. So I think it had kind of a bad reputation for a little while. Also, it's nothing at all like any of the other East games. it's not

after I finished I've replayed it again for this and after I finished I'm like I don't know why I like this game like the platforming is miserable the combat is like weird and awkward the version I grew up with was the S&S one

which is probably the worst of the three it has the best localization but the grinding is oh my God like the other ones you thought those are bad This one's cranked up, like, to 11. And the music, oddly, is bad.

I mean, it's not bad. It's still amazing, but comparatively, it's bad. Another reason I think Falcom kind of failed to take off was that they didn't self-publish much for consoles. Like, if you talk to retro game fans, there are games that they'd be familiar with. Like, Legacy of the Wizard, I think, is pretty well known amongst Nintendo fans. But people in a North America tend to know as a broader-run game because that's who published it. Sorcercerian was like moderately popular on the PC, but that came out from Sierra. Even, you know, the Turbographic 16 version came out from Hudson.

So you might find the Falcom logo like Placert in the front of the game, but they didn't get the brand definition. You know, Squarespace off, they were, their names were on the packaging for those things. So people knew who they were. Where Falcom is, I mean, I don't, they don't even publish anything directly over here because they came through what? E6 came out from Canami. Then they went through XE for a while, and now they're through Niponichi. So they're a small company, and they're very just Japan-focused because of that. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was made by Sammy, like I said, for a really long time,

because that's the big colorful logo on the cartridge. They're very, they like licensing out stuff, which unfortunately also means that the quality is a little inconsistent. Because some of the ports are good. Some of them aren't. Again, the Super Nintendo one is probably the weakest one. So it doesn't give a great impression. Yeah, it has, yeah, definitely has the strongest localization. But, yeah, in terms of gameplay, you're going to, I thank God I had the ASCII controller

and could just turn on rapid attack without having to hold down a button and just leave the console for a bit. I covered, I covered East Three for my Metroidvania series a few months back. And I tweeted a photo of my Super Nias controller with the fire button. bound down with a rubber band. I was like, hey, I'm leveling up. Yep. That's how you do it. You just stand there and Adal just kills the same guy over and over again.

Yeah, what Kurt was saying about the E-Series being handled by other companies, not just publishers, but also developers, the super NES version of EES 3 that you mentioned earlier, was handled by Advanced Communication Company, which was the same company that gave us Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for NES. So, you know, some questionable choices there in terms of, like, who are we outsourcing this to? So, yeah, the E-Series, kind of all over the place. The first I ever heard of it was on Siga master system, but I thought, you know, because it was on the cartridge, Y-A-A-Posophie S, I thought it was wise. So, you know, then Super NES came out. I got a Super NES, and one of the early games released for that system was East 3. So I rented it, took it home, and just got completely slaughtered in the first dungeon.

It was like, I don't understand this game. this game must be bad. And so I just had this antagonistic feeling toward E's for a long time. It wasn't until E's 6 came out and Konami brought it to PlayStation 2 that I really tried anything, you know, like gave the series any time again. And I didn't really like E6. I felt it was very archaic and bad. But I did change my tune with E7 for, I think it initially came here on PSP.

and it really felt like Falcom set down and said how can we, you know, kind of maintain the feel of East, the speed and the kind of the viewpoint, but make it feel more modern and, you know, switching to the more active combat, the swappable characters, like hot swapping characters in a split second in combat. Scott, you're wincing. Oh, no, no, I was going to say, I thought, I just thought that they like sort of really hit that story. tried of modernization with the following, with eight, was sort of just like a real sweet spot of the really fast combat of the originals, but also giving you something more to do outside of just smashing enemies over and over again. Yeah, I think the E series, the modern E series, admittedly I haven't played nine and ten yet, but, you know, like seven and eight, which at this point are kind of retro, are a great example of how you can take a sort of dormant series

and bring it back and make it worthwhile, make it matter, without fundamentally compromising what the series is about. So, you know, that's kind of caused me to reappraise my feelings on ease and also just a better understanding of the history of action RPGs, which is kind of, that was kind of Falcom's thing, really. That was what they were all about.

Yeah, I was looking at their output 19. 85 to 1989, it's just so many actual ARPGs in such a short period of time. They launched probably like five different of their own franchises in that period of time, many of which are still in some form or another with an entirely different name, maybe running today. Yes. Technically, Dragon Slayer is still around, although it's now called Trails to Whatever. But it's still Dragon Slayer because it went Dragon Slayer and then Dragon Slayer, the Legend of Heroes,

then the Legend of Heroes, then Legend of Heroes trails into something, and now it's just trails into something. It was, yeah, trails into sky, and then trails of cold steel, and then trails something, trails into Azure, then there's one that hasn't come over yet, but that's coming, and then trails into Reverie, and then there's more that's coming. Trails into Revery, they're like, so yeah, this is our planned halfway point for the storyline. But, you know, they might actually do it.

It might be the one crazy, long-running, you know, continuous narrative world-building saga that actually pans out. It didn't work for Zeno Saga. It didn't work for Sweak-It-in. I feel like there's a few others that have fallen apart. But I think, honest to God, I think Falcom is going to pull it off. And 20 years from now, we're going to be like, damn, that was like 20 novels worth of text, at least. Yeah.

Square Enix cowards for not making all final. fantasies with one single plot lack. Right. They sometimes make cute little connections, but they don't mean it. It's just a nod. Yeah. So actually, Kurt, as the accredited Falcom expert on this podcast, maybe you could talk a little bit about sort of how Falcom laid the basis for ease, because they, you know, they, I would

say it's probably their best known series, or it was until the Trails games, but it was not their first action RPG by any, in any respect, by any measure. And the company started in 1981 and basically immediately said, RPGs are what we do. And before too long, they were like, action RPGs are what we do. I mean, they started off with a panorama toe. Then they went to Dragon Slayer. And Zanadu was their first big hit.

It was a dungeon crawler where you go inside a big dungeon and you fight enemies. It has the same sort of simple combat. We just sort of ram up against enemies and it sort of does a numerical check to see if you win or take damage or whatever. It was an extremely difficult game because there are very limited resources within the dungeon. So you need to do everything very effectively or else you'll get stuck in a point where you'll just never be able to beat it. But people like that thing back then, and Zendidu got a lot of press and promotion just because it had this reputation of this impossible game. I think it sold something like, didn't it sell like 150,000 copies, which on a Japanese PC in 1984 is crazy?

Like 70% coverage, like something like that, yeah. It's a lot, yeah. The unbelievable attach rate. Yeah. So they had developed this reputation for, you know, hardcore action RPGs. But simultaneously in a different part of the company, there were two developers named Masa Hashimoto and Tomoyoshi Miyazaki. And they had developed a game called Esteka 2, which was a sequel to a previous text adventure that they did in the early 80s.

This game actually did come out in America. Again, it sort of laundered through a few different situations. But it came out in America as tombs and treasures. For the NES, yeah. For the NES. And it's a very interesting adventure game. But anyway, these guys, this game had an overhead map. And just looking at it, they're like, okay, this would be fun if we took this overhead thing and then made an actual.

action RPG out of it. So they were the ones that eventually helmed East Book 1 and 2 and 3 also, but they left Falcom. So yeah. So have these designers, what were their names, let's see, Hashimoto and Miyazaki? Yeah. Have they talked about how much they were ripping off Hydeleide with Isse? Because it seems pretty like, hey, you guys like Hydeleide? Well, here's Hydeleid on drugs. I've never seen it mentioned specifically, but I mean, yeah, Hydeleid was a big, big deal. Like, for America, we got it in like, what, 1989, like long after Zelda, where it's just this. Five years after it was a huge hit in Japan. So everybody saw it. And everyone had said, oh, cool, Hydeleid, let's make something like that but better. So then we got the original and it was, yeah.

I played it and I was so confused. It's like, what? Like, this is, yeah, I just was so baffled by it. I was like, there's so many things I have already that are better than this. I'm putting this down and going back to them. Yeah, hide light is very much like E's 3 and the sense that, you know, you first get into combat and you're probably going to die, like, within seconds. It's just ridiculously unbalanced against you until you kind of understand how you're supposed

to approach it. And the way you're supposed to approach it is to, you know, do the bump combat thing with an active sword. but then use the soft save constantly and save scum your way to every incremental upgrade, just like eking out a little bit of success here and there, save every 30 seconds or so. I was save scumming my way all the way through all three East games. So they make it very easy to do.

And I think the expectation is that you're saving constantly. They give you like four or five save files. So it's... Yeah. It's needed. It's fair. Just do it. Yeah, you save, you give yourself a save outside of the current dungeon and then use a different save slot inside the dungeon.

So that if you're down to like three hit points and you save, you don't for where you're like, oh, my God, I'm never going to get out and heal up again. Yeah, I had a system of, yeah, the first save file is for entering the dungeon. And then he's the second one as I'm adventuring through. And then once I get to my stopping point and going back, I leave that one there and then switch to the third one. So then if I can't make it, like, then I can't always just relieve or revive from like all the way at the end. But then if I still find out that I was like, oh, no, I need to get out of here and stock up or something that's still available. I like that, you know, a key tactic in this series is just like, how do I manage my save files? Not have a brother also playing the same game at the same time.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you. All right. So anyway, that's quite a bit of preamble. So why don't we talk about Ease itself? The original Ease debuted in 1987. And let's see, what was that system? The PC-88.

Yep. So it was PC-88 first and foremost. Yep. I think the series was, I think through Ease 3, it was PC-88, PC-88, and then Ease-3 was 88 and 98 within like a couple maybe days or weeks from each other. I think this is when they started simultaneously doing it for the 88 and 98, but they did it for a lot of the other computer systems at the time. The FM7, the Sharp X1, the MSX, and even the X-8,000, but that came from a different

company. But it was pretty much everywhere for everything that could run it. Hmm. So, East, you know, kind of, it was way ahead of its time in that, you know, you have the trend of movie franchises to get to the final chapter and they're like, actually, there's so much here, we got to split it into two. Well, that's how East started. The first game was supposed to be one game, but then it was so big they had to make it two. So you have basically the first of the Deadly Hallows in East One and then the rest of the Deadly Hallows in East Two. But, you know, we didn't necessarily understand that here in the U.S. because we only got East 1 until like 1991, 92 when it came to TurboGraphics. So what a mess. But let's pretend for a moment that we're happy kids living in Japan with access to home computers. And we see this game come out.

We're like, oh, my God, Ease, this must be great. And we knew it was called Ease because we had the Katakana, and it had the pronunciation right there. Ease, okay, cool. Ease, what is this? Who knows? But it's about a redhead guy who has a lot of amnesia and bumps into things. Yeah, I mean, that's essentially most of the game is at all bumping. 80% of the game is at all bumping into things, I would say.

Although, actually, I guess the first game doesn't start with him having amnesia, does it? No. It depends which version you play. There's a couple different introductions, because they, like, Really? The PC engine one has him, or has him getting off the boat, like arriving at town and getting off the boat. Yeah, that's what I'm familiar with, yeah. Yeah, but I think the other ones just have him starting in town, but I can't, now I'm having for remembering.

Yeah, they do. But even then the, depending on which version, like, there's certain versions, and this is the plot of the anime, is that, like, there's this land called Astoria that they can see, but nobody goes there because there's a. storm and then he gets on a boat anyway and then the boat ends up crashing and he wakes up and that's where the game begins. He finds that it's haunted by monsters and he's like, I just got to go save these people. And a lot of the other versions of the game, he's just an adventure and then he visits Asteria and he's like, oh, there are monsters here. It's saved them. So it gets rid of all the boat crashing stuff. But yeah, the old versions of the game, they just start off with him in the town. The TurboGraphics 16 one, there's a little cutscene of him on a boat.

And then the later remakes of East Turnal and East Chronicles, you actually play a little bit of segment where he gets off the boat and goes through the port town and shuffles over to the opening area. Okay, so the amnesia came later. But the bumping, the bumping and grinding, that's what East is all about. The bump and grind, yeah, very much so. So, like, not too long ago, there's this one developer who used to work at Hudson named Hiramasa Iwasaki.

He was the programmer for East 1 and 2, and he's been self-publishing little anthologies about the history of the East games within the past couple years. So I've been importing and just going through and translating what I can of them. And there's a lot of very interesting facts here. One of them is that it was always supposed to have bump combat in it. It's supposed to be like the explicitly name check Jaraga, but it is a lot like Hyde lied. But at some point during the testing phase, there was a bug in the collection. collision detection. The way the bump curbat works in this game is that if you hit them head on, the enemy will have priority over you, so it'll likely do damage. So you're supposed to hit them

slightly off center or from the back, and that will give you the advantage, so you'll do more, and it's less likely that you'll take a hit. But because there was a glitch that mess with the collision detection, that's what caused them to see, oh, this is actually a neat mechanic. We should implement this in our game, and that's how it was born. Sort of like the whole Street Fighter two-combo thing. I was going to say, yeah, a lot of our best video game ideas have come from bugs that they were like, actually, this is better. Okay.

And then there was also, you know, the Ninja Guide and Final Boss level restart glitch where they were like, oh, this is horrible and abusive. Let's keep it. Jerks. The funny thing about that was that it was from the programmer, too. Like, the designer was like, you got to fix this. And the program was like, no, it's staying. That is a programmer.

Yes. Yeah, you know, I feel like the the off-center thing actually kind of carried over in other games like Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past. Link does not attack kind of dead center in his body. He's, you know, he's left-handed. So he swings from one side, and that's, you know, it kind of affects how you approach enemies and how they block against you. But, yeah, we should maybe go into a little more detail about how, what it means to have bump combat. But it's really pretty much derived. You mentioned Duraga and Hyde lied, but even all the way back to the original Dragon Slayer in 1984. And before that, you had Rogue, where it was really just basically, instead of choosing to attack actively with an attack button, like in Zelda, you just press against an enemy. And the computer is like, well, these two guys are pushing against each other. So clearly, they hate each other and want each other to die.

so they're attacking, so who's stronger, who has the better defense, and who takes more damage? And you just kind of keep doing that until one or the other of you whittles down their hit points. And then, you know, Ease is a more advanced version of that, basically. Yeah, it's actually, I think about the combat of Ease and that, just like the speed and it's simple. I was going to say Ease, but that was too much like Ease. Simplicity. The simplicity of it is really like what ties the entire game together because like grinding is so

integral and how much traversal and backtracking you do, you're essentially always fighting people and if it was any kind of slog or you had to stop and do anything, I think the game would just be so, so, so tedious that I think it only succeeds because of how breezy the combat is. It makes me an interesting comparison to the Zelda games

Because the Zelda games The dungeons are very puzzle oriented Whereas these, they're still items to hunt for and stuff like that But most of the dungeons are more like Combat and building up levels than You know, figuring out which blocks to push or things like that So it gained a very, especially in later games, this is true Very arcade-like mentality

Which was kind of uncommon for a lot of action RPGs Because when you think of something like Secret Amana or Trialsamana, the combat of the game's always a little ropey. Like, they were trying to mix, like, a turn-based and real-time stuff, and it never quite worked, whereas this one is just very straightforward. It's very simple. Yeah, it's actually, I didn't realize that some of the East people went on to found Quintet, which very much makes sense. Because the other game that I always think of is Soulblazer, the combat, just because so much of that. is like the combat in that game is also somewhat stilted and awkward and a lot of how you fight enemies is like by holding in the shoulder button and just positioning yourself in the right spot

so that you can hit them and they can't hit you. Also I think the equipment screen in that game is also very similar to East. There's a lot of like as I was playing it the more and more. I was like actually there's a lot of through lines to Soulblazer from these first two East games. Yeah, the East menu system, I wanted to talk about that because, you know, when you first start playing East, you start into town, you have to buy stuff, you have to spend gold. There's clearly an experience bar once you start getting into combat. But it does feel very, you know, much like an action game. Like it doesn't feel RPG-ish in the more traditional sense. But you do have an inventory screen. And, you know, So, you know, you have the ability to equip items and to boost your armor and equip better swords and things like that. And it uses a very simple sort of grid system. It's like a four by five grid or something. It's, you know, just basically you highlight the most recent item you've picked up, you know, the most powerful item in your grid.

And they're all kind of arranged in terms of power. So it's very simple and intuitive. But basically you want your highlight to always be on the thing that's furthest to the, right in a line, because that's going to be the most powerful thing you have. But that was actually really widely imitated. I've played a few NES games recently, like Crystalus, Willow, in addition to Lagoon for Super NES, which is just like, what if E's were bad and slow? But yeah, Soulblazer definitely has that as well. Like this game really was influential, maybe not in the ways people would necessarily think, but it came up with a lot of design ideas and just how to handle

what it means to be an action RPG and really put an emphasis on both action and RPG in a meaningful way that would carry over into a lot of other projects. This is such a small thing, but this kind of thing always, I just always appreciate so much that when you start the game, Adel has no, like his sprite has no equipment on him. And then as you put on a shield,

there's like a tiny little shield on him. And then you put a sword and it's a tiny little sword. And even in three, they probably took this from Zelda. At a certain point, when you get like a strong enough armor, Adel's armor changes color. And there's also like one sword that when you get, it gives it like this little very faint red glowing outline. Just like the nice little attention to detail that is really hammers home the like actually changing equipment that like you have items in an inventory. something else that I think that system does in sort of a nice way. It provides a lot of information to the player without, I think,

I'm realizing it just because gaps in the inventory are so glaring that, you know, is very obvious when you've missed something, especially with a spell. Equipment, you can sort of pass over because a lot of it is bought from shopkeepers and you might just save for a more powerful one and skip a shield. although at this point now when I play the games if I don't have the whole thing filled out, it irks me. But also on the-

You've got to get that to 100% completion. Yeah. But they also have a secondary, or some of the games have a sort of secondary item screen of not your equipment, but sort of like the items that you've collected along the way. And they don't function in the same grid, but they are in a grid that also sort of provides that same information

of how many things you've collected, how many more things you have to go. Yeah, so it's one, it's one. What was I going to say? Damn it. Someone jump in. Oh, Shopkeeper graphics. One big thing here is that every time you walk into a building,

you can actually see the person you're talking to. There's a unique illustration of them. And that was, I think, something carried forward from Zanadu, where that was a wizardry, like, RPG, where you would visit different places and basically enhance your character. And each of those screens had a custom illustration of whatever the shopkeeper was, most of which were traced from a manual from an Ultima game.

sort of got them in a little bit of trouble. Most of that came from Ultima, not wizardry. Like, literally directly from... There was a lot of stealing back then. It was fun. Yeah. Some were gorgeous than others. So all the shopkeepers, but all the other important characters when you visit them,

they also have their own illustrations. So the presentation was very fancy for something of this era. Yeah, it's got the frame, too, which is a nice touch. It's a nice touch, but it's also like a way to work around technical limitations. and basically reduce the actual resolution of the world that you're dealing with. Yeah, I mean, that was my assumption for the early games, too. But they carried it into four and I think five as well, which I think was probably getting past the point where they may have needed to do that.

And it's just sort of like, oh, no, this is our aesthetic now. Yeah, yeah. Four was the last one. And, yeah, those were native PC Engine and Super Famicom games. So they definitely didn't need it. But I was also, with those conversations, it has something that I think a lot of early RPGs don't have in that there's sort of like long-term context with a lot of the characters and that they don't just always say the same thing whenever you talk to them, depending on how far you've progressed into the game or what you might be doing for them. Now they offer up different information in a way that is supposed to guide Adal. they do their best to give you

like a pretty good bit of information there's a couple different ways that you can like if you're stuck you can always go talk to a Gobon and he'll like give you a little tidbit about the latest item I think it's always the latest item

that you've picked up or like important item that tells you maybe what you might need to use it for it's not full proof there's definitely a lot of aimless wandering especially because of the dungeons and their design and how similar it all looks. But it actually does, I think, like a pretty good job of guiding the character along for

a game so early on. It's sort of the benefit of the game world isn't very big. There's two towns, one of which is kind of a small one. There's basically three dungeons. So the fact that you're always going back and have to revisit these towns just because it's part of the narrative as compared to something where you're always adventuring, I think that's how it ended up like that. but it helped you get to know who the different characters were

and I think, you know, give you more attachment to them than you would a generic NPC. Yeah. And you see some of those characters, some of them return in two, which was like a nice little surprise, some actual like continuity across the, very direct continuity across the games. They start doing that again with even more with later games.

Like the guy that you find in Darm Tower, I forget his name. Luda Jemma. Yeah. He pops up again in, like, E6. Oh, wow. They just, like, randomly, there's a lot of that stuff. It's neat the way that they've sort of built up these small things over the years.

Yeah. I mean, doggie's always with them. Or doggie, aka Colin, depending. I was so confused playing the piece of engine for the first time. And, like, this guy talking about, like, oh, if you don't know Colin, then I don't want to talk to you. I'm like, who is Colin? And then, like, it pops in, like, that's dogy. And I don't say, oh, okay.

They just appeared localization choice. Yeah, there aren't a lot of games, I think, that take the time to build up NPCs into actual, like, oh, I remember this character. I like this character. But it's always nice when they do. Like, Mega Man Legends is one that stands out of my mind because you keep talking to people and they keep changing their dialogue and you have a little quest for them. And then at the end of the game, they all come out to wave you and see you off as you fly off, which is, you know, it's heartwarming. It's, it's, you know, just a nice touch. I'm trying to think.

We were talking earlier about how you're, how Adal's Sprite changes as he levels up and, you know, gears up. What, what games before this did that? I'm sure there must have been some. But the only thing I can think of before this, or actually it was contemporary with this, was Fizanadu, which was kind of a Falcom game, but kind of not. The NES game, where like as you get armor, you know, and better weapons, like your guy. like really changes over time. I mean, Legend of Zelda does a little bit. You get the bigger shield.

You get the bracelet that changes you to white. I can't remember. It's a ring, yeah. The ring, yeah, looks like a bracelet. Yeah, the ring. That's a little bit, but that's not like quite the same. But other than that, I can't really think of much. I'm sure something like Black Onyx, I think, had like your characters changed as they got equipment

and they start out basically naked, like in a t-shirt and, underwear or something, and then, you know, they're, but they're like little stick people. So it's not really that, it's not the same as an action character who has lots of frames of animations. So, yeah, it's, um, it's just a lot of great little details put into East. Like, it really feels like Falcom was taking a lot of what they learned and really kind of crammed it into this one game. And, you know, they, that includes learning that, uh, people resonate with very, very difficult games. I've never actually beaten East 1. So I've never seen East 2 because I've only played the turbographics version. And East 2 is on

the disc with East 1, but not with a menu or anything. It's just like they go back to the proper original, you know, the Lord of the Rings was supposed to be one novel, not three. You can only read it if you watch it, if you read it all the way through in a single book. I had a, when I went back to replay these, I had beaten East Book 1 on my analog pocket and then had since updated it and had done a wipe on my SD card and forgot about it. And then I was like, oh, cool, I'll just pick this up and play two. And then where is my safe file? How do I play two?

And I'm like, oh, no. So I was like, all right, well, I'll just run through this again. There's a workaround for that. Because when I first played the TurboGraphic 16 version, it was on Magic Engine, the emulator back when it first came out in 1997. And that emulator at the time had a glitch what made it. impossible to beat East 1. You would just get up to the final boss, and it would freeze.

But because it was one of the early games, like you could save it to the system memory, like basically every other CD game. But there's also a password system built into it. So somehow I got a password that started off in East 2. I was looking for that. I was looking for that. And I found one.

And I typed it in and it just kept telling me it was wrong. And I could not get it. It was one of those ancient, you know, incredibly long passwords of, like, different cases and stuff like that, because it, it maintains, like, everything about it. So it's, it was rough. But that was the only way. And even then, East One is, I say the game world is short, but the, the Darm Tower, the last dungeon, it's like half the game. It's, like, I think most, all of the East games sort of play out like this to me, where they're like, brisk, tight, really fun. And then you get to this one point and you're just like, God. Like, for me, like, the first one is when you. hit Darmtower, two, God, the canals into, just because it's so big and everything looks exactly the same, just so easy to get lost. And then three, think the last island is also just like such a chore.

Because even if you're fully, like, leveled up, and it's, they expect you to be completely leveled up and maxed out by that point. And so the enemies are not, you can't, like the other ones, just grind up and then just plow through them. They're like, no, we're expecting you to be fully powered up now. So if you're not, you're dead. Yeah, the cruelest thing they did with East design is give you a level cap. Because you can grind all you want and just annihilate everything in your path, like turn bosses into basically sleeping babies that you just, you know, steamroll over. but at some point

you run out of the ability to boost your power and then at that point you have to play fair and you know that's like the halfway point of the game they're like oh yeah

well you have to really slog through at this point yeah they do have there are some of the bosses actually like which is nice at the end that you can't just like walk into and insta kill them

there's some of them that take a little bit of thinking and figuring out or require you to use magic and stuff, which is also nice for a game that combat feels normally so limited that they actually found some ways to vary up the boss battles. A lot of them, some of them are actually pretty interesting, too. It's pretty impressive. I just want to say that I do not advocate steamrolling over sleeping babies, just so there's no confusion. Anyway, one of the important things we haven't mentioned is the way you have the auto healing system works,

which is that it's basically taken from hide lied. If you are standing in the field outside and not actively moving, your health will pretty quickly regenerate. So it allows you to kind of take risks in the field and, you know, be a little reckless with your combat, although not too reckless because literally like any enemy you run into, if you're not a super high level, if you bump into it at the wrong angle, hit it with the wrong pixel. You don't have mercy and invincibility in this game.

There are no eye frames for anyone. It will just rip through you in a matter of half a second, and you will be left wondering, why is there a game over screen? I had full health. But, you know, you still have to play kind of sensibly and cautiously. But the regeneration system does kind of, you know, encourage you to take a little more risk on the field. And it makes the process of navigating the world feel really breezy. But then in dungeons, your health does not regenerate automatically. So that means once you enter a dungeon, you pretty

much have like this much health. And you've got to play smart. You've got to play carefully. You need to kind of keep an eye on where the exit is at all times. Like how can I make a B-line back? I'm trying to think. The enemies in dungeons don't respond on the same. screen that you're in. Like if you're in an area. Yeah, no, if you, uh, but if you zone out. Yeah, it has to be a certain distance, uh, away from, uh, away from Adol for the, uh, the enemies to respond, but they will just respond infinitely. So yeah, the dungeons just, yeah, you end up having to like, um, it really reminded me

of like Etri and odyssey where you, like, dip into the dungeon and fight what you can until you're about to die and then run out, heal up, do it again, and just you keep doing it until you can get a little bit further and a little bit further, until you're like, oh, I'm actually comfortable in here. And then you usually make it to the end. And then on your way out, you're just like, get it out of my way. Like, just pushing everyone aside. I don't have time to fight you.

Please leave your alone. Yeah. Of course, you get to the end game, and there is no getting stronger. So you're just like, I got to get through this somehow. Yeah. A lot of the dungeons, I feel like a lot of the design, unfortunately, some of it definitely comes down to padding. There's a lot of dungeons, or like a lot of rooms in the dungeons that are just empty rooms.

That, I mean, I guess, sure, for realism, there's a lot of, like, rooms in places that are just, like, rooms that people use. But in an RPG, you expect, oh, if there's a path going off to this room, there's something in here. But a lot of them are, no, it's just that. I found myself using the, like, Windows 95 maze screensaver logic of just, like, hug one wall. until you get either back to, like, either you explore the whole thing or it's one that won't work and you end up back at the start and then you have to figure out a different strategy. But it works for some of it.

But some of those is just, you just like, it's caves and you go into a door and it's just these tiny little rooms and then you go in another door and it's another tiny little room and you go in another and then there's three doors. And it's just like if you're not keeping track of which one you went into, it's just so easy to get lost and start running around in circles. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of that one cave in Final Fantasy 4 where you have to like strip down all your metal because it's like and there's there's all these doors. If you go in the wrong room, the door will try to kill you. Yeah.

And they all like there's nothing in the rooms to get. So there's not even a reward for dealing with that. It's just like, oh, I went into the wrong room and then a door wiped out my party and I don't get. And now I have less health. Yep. I love it. At least you have healing items and magic and final. fantasy. So, you know, we've talked about how East 1 really merges. It just kind of flows directly

into East 2. And that all kind of is through the story, I would say. So I will hand over discussion about the storyline to the professionals because you guys seem to have thoughts and opinions and facts about these things based on our notes. Like, do you feel like there's anything interesting or notable about the East storyline, or is it just standard RPG fair? I think the overall story is pretty standard

RPG fair. There's, you know, this prophecy of whoever can get these six books is the person who's supposed to save us. But the actual, how it actually plays out, like beat by beat, feels different

to me than I think some of the other contemporary games. where there's actual, like, the one quest that always sticks out to me is the mayor of the first village, someone has stolen the bell for the village, which he's very distressed about and doesn't want any of the other townspeople to find out, although I don't see how they wouldn't notice, like, their town bell missing. But there's a group of thieves that he suspects and, you know, standard RPG fair. It's like, you're in the first town, you're trying to get good with the mayor of the town

and like, oh, this bandit of thieves did this thing and you know, you go and you kill them and you come back and then you're good with them. But like, you get to the thieves and they're like, whoa, whoa, we wouldn't do that. Like, we don't, like, we like the townspeople. We steal from bad people. And then you're left being like, oh, huh,

well, now what? And you like, you kind of have to just, it just like throws you for a loop that you wouldn't kind of expect from a story that was, you know, this early on in RPGs. I mentioned before, but there were some OVA adaptations of East Book 1 and 2. And I dug out the old DVDs of them pretty recently.

And the stories of them are fine. Like, in a lot of these games, it really is more about the experience of playing them and interacting with the world. And when you stripped out of it, the stories are like they're fine, but if you're explaining it to somebody else, it might not necessarily, doesn't seem that special when you compare it to other fantasy stuff of the time. But there are lots of, like, little things. things like Scott mentioned.

One thing that was introduced that pops up in all the other subsequent ease games is that each has either a heroine or multiple heroines that is sort of a potential love interest for at all. And because these are, like James Bondfix, he's too much of an adventure to get tied down by anyone. So he always

leaves him at the end. But that is a recurring trend. And it was especially a big thing in East 2. Because the opening of East 2 is where Adol climbs at the top of Darm Tower, and then magic takes them to the floating city of East. And he's greeted by this girl named Lilia. And there's this big scene of this, you know, Doite anime girl staring right at the viewer. And that was a big, like, Moe moment that sort of defined how the player would feel about this character.

And Lilia, she doesn't, like, do much. She's just kind of sickly, and I think it's kidnapped at the end of the game. But stuff like that was important for something of the era. Yeah. She's actually, her sickness is super weird. She's sick and she's like on the verge of death but doesn't know it and doesn't know it until you're like, hey, take this medicine. You're about to die. And she's just like, oh, thank you. Like, very awkward interaction. But I do want to talk about the actual, sort of the source behind the series name, which is actually based around a very obscure facetive mythology. It's, like, British mythology, I believe. Let's look at it.

Like Celtic, maybe? There's a lot of interviews with a lot of Japanese developers. There's this book, I just had it to dug it out. It's like the book of imaginary places or something like that. And they just source a lot of world legends from it. And there's this tiny little entry at the end for a city on East that was located in France in, like, the fourth century. And the story behind that was that it was surrounded by water. there were a whole bunch of dams, and the princes of the kingdom got swindled into giving

the keys of the dam to some outsider, and she unlocked the dams, and it flooded the whole city and destroyed it. And that was pretty much the gist of it. But I guess they read this and it was like, oh, this would be interesting, but instead of having a story, the city be flooded like Atlantis, let's say it was under attack by monsters and it just floated up into the sky. There's a little thing. In the text for the book, they mentioned that it was by this real-life town in France called Plomark. It's probably pronounced differently in French. But it sort of got went through the Japanese transliteration to turn into Promo Rock, which is a town that's featured at least in East 4.

I don't think it actually shows up in East 1 and 2, but they made up name-checked it. So they sort of built that into the lore. Interesting. Yeah, but I kind of feel like East really is, you know, knowing that it comes from that book, It feels like it's Atlantis for people who start by turning to the last page of a book first and read the ending. They're like, oh, here we are alphabetically at the end. East, that's interesting. I guess, you know, there are no mythological places to start with a Z.

But I don't know. It's just interesting that they pulled from that particular line of mythology and legend because that's not something that, you know, you even see a lot. in Western writing, but especially in Japanese writing. You know, you have the Shinemagame Tensei games that are like, we got to get gods and demons from every walk of life and every culture

in here. But, you know, when you're not going for that whole broad thing, I feel like developers and writers usually stick with kind of more familiar topics. So just the fact that you know, they went kind of to this obscure corner of lore and legend

is interesting. Yeah. I will say, Um, the, what's nice, I think also about the series and as a whole, as it's continued to live on and, like, gather new fans, you know, they have put out these re-releases and ports and stuff, which have greatly, um, expanded, uh, the storyline. Um, there, I mean, like, East starts, you know, with the, the story of, like, these two trapped goddesses. But you can also go back and play East Origins, which came out, I think, like, 2012, I want to say. Um, and that's, like, super prequel. like thousands and thousands of years before of like the story of like the goddesses and like all of their backstory and stuff like that. It's the old republic version of. Yeah. They've built up, you know, a real world like around, around what started as more sort of bare bones there. So the first East ends with Adal fighting his way to the top of the tower, defeating Dark Force, Dark Falls. Dark Facts. Dark Facts is in Fantasy Star. My bad. There's Dark Facts and Priest Fact are the two bad guys in that game. Are they related, do you think? Like brothers? I can't. I can't remember. I mean, it's like one summoned the other, I think.

Okay. So, bros. All right. So anyway, East 2 begins with Adal waking up in the land of East. He finally got there after climbing the tower and beating the boss. And you feel like, oh, that's it. You know, like, congratulations you won. But evidently not because there's this whole second game to do, which I know nothing about because I suck and can't beat Darm Tower. That Darm Tower. Yeah. It's one of the reasons I was always a little oaf about East Orton, because East Orton, the entire game takes place in Darm Tower. It does. It does. And that game also follows the Falcom trend of, what if we made this game way too hard. It's brutal. And that one's like real time combat. And you need to be real. I beat like the first boss. And that's it after like hours of playing. I don't really remember much of the story of East 2. Like, you just, it's a little bit more linear because there's the town and then you just go through like a quest through the caves to give the books back to the statues, right? Like, that's the first thing I do. Most of it is, yeah, the first thing you have to do is grind to level three because there is a chest that's being blocked by two enemies that like, if you just walk into them, you just like tink off of them until you're level three and you can actually damage them.

But yeah, so you have to, it's about Adel's there with the books, and he has to return the books to the statues, the goddess statues. Can't quite remember the purpose of that. I can't either. Yeah. Yeah. It's what you do with the books. What's going on over there, though, is that there is a demon trying to be revived.

Adol is collecting these statues because they need these statues to revive them, or so they think. But it was actually like breaking the seal on the statues, and Adol inadvertently revives this, like, this evil being. And then, or am I starting to combine storylines now? Now I'm getting confused. Yeah. I don't quite remember, but I mean, it's, after that, it kind of goes through like video game Elemental World because you go through the ice area and then there's a fire area. Yeah, and then it's kind of like the big endgame blur. Yeah, there's like sacrifices that people are trying to do to revive evil demon and Adel wants to stop it, basically.

The thing I remember most about it is you get the transformation magic, which turns you into a little, like a kangaroo sort of thing. It's definitely the best part about the game. You have to use it multiple times. It turns you into a goon, is the official. like what the what the monsters are called. They're all called goons. And everyone treats you like a friendly. And you get like all kinds of conversation about what's going on at the moment.

A lot of times, you know, they're complaining about Adal being like, oh, this guy's invading. We need to find him. He's pissing us off. There's a couple times where it's like, there's one time you have to, you approach this fence. And you're like, look, I killed Adol. I have his sword and armor. and they're like, yeah, there's no other way you could have gotten that other than killing Adel

and they let you in and then you can just take it off instantly and then just it's, yeah, it's some goofy stuff in there. The Transform Magic is a real treat. We didn't talk about rings or magic, which I guess we should also probably talk about. Yeah, the magic is a big thing for East 2. Yeah, so East 1 has a ring system

which essentially each ring has its own power. And while equipped, it will steadily drain Adel's magic power until it runs out. You can eat these like seeds to refill it. And then in two, it gets converted to essentially just spells where Adel has to like unlock the power of magic and then is collecting spells throughout the game, which functions similarly. And then three, it actually rings and magic get combined into like. a single system. But, yeah, magic in two

gives Adol a ranged attack, which is really bizarre and also necessary for killing a lot of bosses, but it's a bizarre feeling, shooting this fireball out at people. It makes it a little less, the combat a little less bumpy.

I mean, how does that work compared to other action RPGs? Like, you know, in Hydeleid, you have some magic spells, but they really suck to use like you have to hit you know on any as you have to like tap through the menu with the select key to cue up the magic spell and then you cast it and then it's done you have to do it again and if you wait too long to cast it it resets it just it's horrible like is it better than this

um it works like any other equipment essentially um so like the the rings are just another thing uh you equip in the screen uh while they're equipped they drain and then while they're not they do nothing um got it in two it's also the same thing where you equip them so there's a couple of spells in there there's a fire which is the one that shoots the the fireball um you have a teleport spell thank god um because it allows you to uh teleport to any town that you've been to um and they're actually a little liberal in the interpretation of town um and let you teleport to a couple extra places. And then there's some that are just, there's a light one and that transform one and they just sort of drain steadily while they're active. But yeah, you have to open the menu and like select it or deselect it each time you want to change, which is a little cumbersome. But you're usually not like switching between spells very often. It's usually there's a situation that you need a spell for and you put it on. That situation's done. You take it off kind of thing. You don't really need to be flipping around through them. a lot, fortunately.

Are there any other significant mechanical changes between East 1 and these two besides the rings? Or is it pretty much like, here's the same game, but with ranged attacks and you know, prepare to grind all over again? I think if not for the rings, there's zero. I think like it's essentially like I would consider it one game, if not for the change of like

rings to magic. Because there is like some difference in there. But other than that, I think it's exactly the same. Yeah, it's built on the same technology. So, yeah, it's not a whole lot different. So any other final thoughts about East 1 and 2, notable things, like the fact that the villain is a demon named Keith? Oh, no, the Keith is, Keith is an ally. Oh, oh, really is he. Yeah.

Oh, my bad. At one point, you're running, you're like looking around, you're in a dungeon, you need a key. or access to something, and you run into someone, and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm stuck in here with this demon. He's named Keith. And it's like, what? He's a nice demon, though. He's trying to help me get out. He says we need to do this. And it's like, all right, cool. And you do it. And then I kind of thought it would be a one-off, but later, like, you bump into him. He's like, hey, I'm Keith. And it's like, oh, yeah, you're the demon. And he, like, helps you out multiple times throughout the story. He actually ends up being pretty important.

He's there throughout till the end of the game. But he's not actually a demon. He is someone that was turned into a demon. I had assumed it was just like another goofy localization choice because there's a few. But no, I actually looked at the Kana and it's Kisu. So it's like, no, it's Keith. But he's a human that was turned into a demon.

But yeah, Keith is great. And then, oh, yeah, the last also, so yeah, Yeah, Gobon and a Ruta Gemma from the first games show up at the end of two. It kind of like ties the whole story together where it turns out that some of these people are the villagers in the town that you started in one Rance or Lance Village, depending on your localization, are like descendants of the original priests of East. Yeah, and then those people who are up on East have been like stuck up there for like hundreds of. years and then they're finally sort of like reunited with their families as it's they said reunited with their families but it's been 700 years so I think they mean their descendants families but it's a nice through line that these characters pop up again at the end to help you

and if you play the turbographic version they are mostly voiced a lot of voice acting in that game especially for 1991 but no subtitle the localization of the voice acting is also really good for the era. Like, they've really put a lot of budget into, I think Alan Cummings doesn't he voice a couple of characters? Oh, I'm not sure. Oh, no, Jim Cumming. Maybe, like, they got, like, known Saturday morning cartoon actors to do it.

I could see Jim Cummings. I think this is one of the only cases where localized games got that effort to it because so many other Sega CD and Turbo Graphics XVI voice acting was really bad. Yeah. The villains in the game are absolutely. incredible like no cringing at all whatsoever just solid uh voices uh some of the some of the ally people it's a little there's like one or two people that it feels like they're like hey does anyone here want to do a voice line um but for the most part it's it's really good um

and the localization too yeah the dialogue too is all like it's not stilted at all it's like actually localized not you know a direct translation or anything like that there's one little trivia tidbit with the two goddesses Fina and Leia or Rea that localizes a lot of different names Rea was originally named Colbelius who was named after Golvelius the compile action RPG which was

pretty popular in the MSX and also ended up on the Sega Master System somebody talked them out of it because it does sound a little silly but it does go to show that at least were conscious of this games and we're fans of it. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at the voice cast, and it seems like they actually hired some notable voice actors from the era, such as Thomas Hayden Church, but also Michael Bell, known for things like G.I. Joe and Transformers and so forth. So, yeah, they put some budget into this game. And it just seems like, you know, they actually gave a crap. That's nice.

So we've mentioned, you know, the different versions of this game. Let me put the question to you, what is the best way to play East 1 and 2, you know, regardless of how. how you acquire the software. And then, is there a way to play it legally on modern day systems? Yeah. So, well, for one and, and my answer is the same for one and two. It's the TurboGraphics CD East Book 1 and 2. For 2, it's the only official English release of the game until the remakes came out.

But for East 1, the music on the Turbo Graphics, is just, it's so good. I think they actually used that music for, like, some of the compilations that came later. It's more refined, better visuals. It's got cutscenes. It's got voice acting. Just really nice. There is also, as we said, the Sega Master System version, which it's fine.

Obviously, the master system doesn't have the audio capabilities of the thermographic CD. But it's totally fine. don't play the Dosser Apple 2GS versions. I would not recommend them. There are modern versions. They did a remake of them. East Chronicles 1 and 2. There's some very questionable localization choices in there.

If you look at the achievements, you'll see. The game's still great, but there's some weird gross stuff in there. They do like to do that with video games. Yeah. What do you think, Kurt? The Turbographic 16 one, that was the first one I really played. I think if you want to really get what it means to be a late 80s, early 90s action RPG, it's the one that has the most vibe of the era.

The music is a big part of that, too. As far as official releases, I mean, it was on the Wii and WiiU, I want to say virtual consoles, but those are dead nowadays. They are. I think the last official one, I'm pretty sure this showed up on the TurboGraphics 16 Mini It did But those are

I'm pretty sure hard to find nowadays They're expensive There was also There were also I think a round of them released There was a round of remakes released in 2009 I think as well That was like the DS one Oh those are bad

Oh they're bad I never played that so okay Yeah Yeah They're sort of like the Chronicles releases Except the Chronicles releases are Completely 2D with like SVGA graphics This one they

use the sprites, they downsized them, and everything else is the weird sort of 2.5D, but it's very bad DS2.5D. It just, it looks and feels ropey. The sound is miserable. It's, it's not a way I would recommend playing it. Does it look as weird as the Sharp X-16,000 version? That version has its own specific, I guess, charm. No, it's, it's, yeah, it's not good. Yeah, for context, uh, that one has, it's like all Sprite background, but the characters are like 3D models. They're like live action. It's a really weird, awkward combination that sounds amazing, but just is the most bizarre

looking game I've ever seen. I mean, the Windows versions, it's on Steam, and that's probably the most accessible one. There are certain things about it plays a little smoother. The way it controls is a little better. Like in the old games, you can only walk in four directions. This one, you can walk a full 360 degrees. The bump system is always a point of contention, but this one, it feels smoother.

It's a lot more generous in how its hit detection works. And also, when you bump it, enemies, there's little sword swiping animations, and you can see the damage happen to it. It feels a lot smoother. So if that's something that you might find off-putting, then those are probably the best versions to play. I mean, it has some good music to it, too. I think that version lets you pick from OSTs where you can pick like the original FM synth I don't remember which other versions it offers

but it has new arrangements it doesn't have the Turbo Graphic 16 audio because that was all the property of Hudson I think it does have the sharp 68,000 audio and there's I think one other but yeah it lets you customize it pretty well you might be able to skip to east two in that one I can't remember

But yeah, not a whole lot of official ways to play the East nowadays. East 3 is a little bit better, kind of. Yeah. Okay, it looks like East 1 and 2 Chronicles is on Steam. So, if nothing else, like, that's a way to go. Yeah. So actually, this is eight, like, full 360 direction and bump combat to me actually sounds hard, like a lot harder. Because I was actually thinking back to, like, I played the Famicom, and

the TGFX version. And the Famicom one, it's like, it's like you're either fully aligned, your 50% offset, or you're next to them. And it's like there's, it's just like, because it's how the movement works. The TGFX one, there's like all kinds of how far sort of offset you could be. But the Nintendo one makes it really easy because it's a lot easier to see if you're lined up and when you need to stop, like if you're going to collide wrong. But just being able for everything running in 360 degrees seems maybe it's, maybe it plays out fine, but I'd, curious your experience with that compared to the sort of four-directional. It's very generous.

It's much more forgiving in saying, okay, you got this hit and more dependent on leveling and things like that. So, you know, if you're at the okay level, you'll probably steamroll over them. Gotcha, got you. I'm going to be able to be. All right. So that was East 1 and 2. Now on to, oh my God. It's so we've been talking for so long. I was going to say the main chorus, but I don't know if we have time to really enjoy this sumptuous feast. But let's talk about East 3. East 3, the game that made me hate East for a decade. That's always a good sign. This originally wasn't... I blamed that on Jekyll and Hyde, so it's fine.

This wasn't originally supposed to be an East game. It was developed to be just some side-scrolling action game. And then at some point, somebody stuck an Adol Sprite in there, became the adventures of Adol, and then it became East Spinoff, and then it became East Three. Huh. I did not realize that, but that does explain a lot. So it wasn't, it wasn't like them deliberately saying, oh, Zelda did the change to a side-scrolling platformer.

clearly we must do that as well. It was just one of those things. From what I read, they wanted to make a Zelda 2 like game. It was name check specifically. So that was a big inspiration. Right, but not necessarily like, let's turn Ease into

a parallel version of Zelda. Yeah, that's correct. It started out a little differently. I mean, if you just look at the downthrust, you can't not think that they had any influence from Zelda too. So does this game, it's a total different, it doesn't even take place

in East, like most of the games don't because Adol adventures off somewhere else, but he becomes best buds with Dogey, the thief, and he adventure off to Dogey's hometown, and there are problems occurring there, and then Adol has to save the day. There's another

girl in town, and her older brother is doing all these evil concoctions to resurrected Dark God. That's kind of the gist of the story. It's a complete side-scrolling game. There's only one town. There's no, map, really, like, there's a map screen where you pick your different selections, but it's not

something that you really explore. There's just a handful of different dungeons you have to go through. The dungeons aren't very complicated. They're very straightforward. Like, there might be a couple of branching points in some, but compared to how maze-like they got to be in the first two games, they're not as complicated. It's also not a very long game, like, especially East 1 isn't that long. But this is, you know, we can beat in a couple hours.

I mean, assuming you can survive. I mean, there's a lot of... This is grinding included. Half, yeah, almost all of the experience is grinding. Because in this game, you can jump. You do have a sword button. What I like is that you can hold down the attack button and you'll keep swiping your sword like a buzzsaw. And I think that's one of the reasons why combat in this game feels fun, even though so much of it is very dependent on your leveling.

there's you get into a nice rhythm um where like you know the enemies all have their sort of like little different patterns and so you're usually always holding down the swing button just constantly going um and then you know sometimes you'll need to like duck um because if you duck you'll dodge the enemy's you know sword point and you'll be able to still hit them sometimes you need to do a little bit of a jump um but you almost get into like like a dinge guidein pattern where you're just like running just straight and just like mowing things down at least if you're strong enough to too. If you're not strong enough to, then things go very differently. As the other games, there's still no no invincibility frames. Adol also doesn't have like any coyote time. Like, it is so hard to jump off some of these ledges without just plummeting. I'm sorry. What is coyote time?

Oh, uh, coyote time, uh, it's a mechanic in video games where you can actually jump even after you've run off the ledge a little bit. a la, like Wiley Coyote, how we can run off and, like, stand in midair. So a lot of games let you actually jump further than it actually looks like you should be able to so that it is less frustrating for players. This has none of that, which is why it's like a lot of the times when you're trying to jump, you'll just go straight down. That's why you don't buy Acme games.

The physics are a little strange. I don't think this is a proper jumping animation. you just kind of like float up and down. Yeah. The only, yeah, the only jumping animation is if you do the sword thrust, because you can only do that in the air. But otherwise, yeah, I think he's just like standing there. Yeah, he's basically like walking but not on the ground. Yeah, the automatic sword attack, you know, hold the button and automatically attack. Aside from being essential to grinding with the old rubber band, that's to me the thing that makes this. feel like ease. If you just hold down the attack button or, you know, figure out some way to have it hold down for you, then you just kind of focus on jumping and navigating. And it's pretty much like bump combat. It's, you know, bump combat from a side view. And you stab enemies and if you keep your distance, then it's fine. So you kind of have to get a sense of how enemies move and what their attack patterns are and kind of your own limitations and range. And basically,

all your actions around that. And it does create a very unique sort of space management, spatial awareness for a platform action game that I can't think of another game that plays and feels exactly like this kind of in the moment-to-moment action. No, it has, it has, there's a lot of different things that it sort of like feels like and reminds me of. I mean, there's definitely Zelda 2 in here. There's symmetric. and Castlevania stuff. I think the

castle zone is 100% Castlevania. I was like the music, the enemy is the graphics. Did someone play Castlevania in the middle

of making this game? And they were like, wait a minute. We need to do something here. Yeah. That was exactly. I was like someone played Castlevania

in the middle of making this game. But that area is great. And then until you get to the area after that where it's pitch black unless you have the Firestone equipped. And then you have this floating light that is in like only one ray and you can't control it and

worst design just absolutely terrible it just completely like the game you're just like breeze in along this game and then just wrench right in just maddening um i don't i don't understand i mean the the first east also has its uh pitch black cave it does have his pitch black cave yeah a thing they like they're like hey you're enjoying this game well too bad here's a pitch black cave for you to deal with it sucks i did i there was a spot in uh one where i thought they were after uh pitch black that they were going to throw ice physics in there as well but it was not i actually ice physics just uh just icy ground they do throw in teleporter puzzles though which i am not okay with everyone loves those now i mentioned earlier the the levels weren't particularly complicated but that one is definitely the exception but it's the last level so yeah it's actually it that one's you have to to, uh, I had to like open the map because I was just like going around. I didn't, I was like, I'm just going around in a circle. How am I going around in a circle? Uh, like, this doesn't make any sense. And then you realize that there's a part where you drop down and as you're

falling, like you have to go into the side while you're falling. That's the only, that's the, the path forward. Um, which you can't see unless the light happens to shine on it. I love the music to this game. Like, again, the music is so central to why the, the grinding and the action of this game feels so fun. The first two games were composed by Yuzokoshiro, who's like a legend among video game music, and another Falcom employee named Miyako Ishikawa, and nobody knows what happened to her, because she worked on those games, she worked on East Three, soundtracks of those games, all phenomenal, and then a lot of people left Falcom after East Three, but she didn't seem

to go anywhere else in the industry, and it's such a tragedy, because, again, the music, like, I think it makes East Three. Like my cell phone ringtone for the past 15 years has been Be Careful, which is the track for the Tigray Corroy, just because it's such a cool track. Yeah. There's so much hype behind it. The song, it's like the perfect first dungeon song.

It's like has this nice, like creepy slow intro as you like see these like little things like crawling on the ground and you're just like poking around like not really sure what's going on. And then you've killed a couple. And then it just like ramps up into this just, oh my God, just killer. Absolutely amazing. And I was, like, I spent time a while ago, like, listening to each of the songs on all of the different platforms, because this game's imported to so many different things. There's so many different versions of these songs. And they all have, like, their own, you know, charm and uniqueness to them because of the hardware that they're playing on.

And even, you know, the S&ES one, which is, it's very frustrating because they kind of loved it. From a technical perspective, it's still, the music's still great. Advanced communication did? Are you serious? I would never have expected that plot twist. Yeah. I mean, after all the poo throwing and door hiding, you know, it's a... I first played this game on the Genesis, and the sound hardware on that is reasonably similar to the PC-88, so it sounds very much a lot like it originally did. And then I played the Super Nintendo one because, you know, Super Nintendo had the sample-based sound chip. I assumed it would sound like Mega Man X or something like that.

And it does not. It's a bummer. It doesn't. But it is still good. And then, yeah, the TGFX version has, the turbographic version of this game is so frustrating because, like, it would, it would be the one I would recommend for almost anyone getting into it because the difficulty is toned way down.

And while it does kind of screw with the pacing a bit, because it's like, you don't have to do that sort of like venture in as far as I can retreat to heal. you can kind of just like push through the dungeon. But this game uses a lot of parallax and it's very in love with it. And almost every version of the game handles it gracefully, except for the Turbo Graphics 16-1. And the talent, it seriously gave me a headache. Like, I was like, I'm going to force myself through this because I want to play this.

I couldn't do it. It was just, it's so jittery and something about it just actually made my head hurt. And I had to put it down and go back to the jet. Just this version. The original PC versions, it was a, like, it was a real programming showcase that they could do parallax scrolling. Because the introduction of the game is even, like, Adel walking across this, you know, ruins and there's always different columns scrolling at different rates, like, then with the text introductory scroll. Yeah. That was usually, like, just getting the PC 88 to scroll smoothly at all was very technically impressive, too.

So to have that was a big deal. It was like, wow. When hit the 16-bit platforms, those things. Like, they did parallax everywhere, so it wasn't a big deal. But it is super smooth on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. But since the turbographics couldn't handle multi-parallax scrolling natively, they need to do some hacks to make it to work. And that one, it just doesn't look good. It's very headache-inducing.

But have you ever played Ninja Guideon, the PC engine? Because the parallax scrolling of that is worse, completely unplayable. No, I have not. I fortunately have not. It's like everything works in reverse. It just doesn't look right. Huh. Yeah, the PCA8, yeah, I mean, like, if you look at that version of the game, like, at all doesn't really, like, walk.

He, like, advances forward, like, frame by frame. It's, like, very jittery and stilted looking, except some of the, but, like, some of the animations, like, his swordswing animation is, like, perfectly smooth. And, yeah, that parallax animation is also perfectly smooth. It's amazing some of the stuff that they were able to pull off on that hardware. Yeah, I don't know if it's a coincidence or if there's something to it. But last time I was in Tokyo and stopped at the beep shop in Akihabara, you know, it's down in a basement. You go down there and it's just, you know, time forgot this place. But they had a huge display of PC88 copies, maybe reprints of East 3.

and they had a bunch of systems set up running just demos of E's 3. And it's a like technically kind of amazing that they managed to pull that off on that system. It looked really cool. Like it, you know, it's definitely deficient in some senses compared to the technology of the Supranes or Genesis. But there's just that aesthetic to it where it's like high resolution, low color, low scrolling, but just like hyper detailed in some really kind of. weird different ways that I was just I was mesmerized by it yeah that actually so I forgot to mention this beep actually put out a version of East book one and two for the sharp x68,000 um like

two years ago uh it's like official and everything um I bought it when I was there last and then left it at my friend's house uh I forgot to put it in my suitcase so that and Perodius are still sitting my friend's apartment in Tokyo and I have to bring that back with me next time I go over there so that I can try out their version. I think it's mostly a port of the

actually I guess I'm not sure what it would be because it looks like the original stuff. It doesn't look like the X68,000 for East 1. Yeah, I think it's a brand new. It's like they took the PC 88 or 98 and then they ported it like newly to the X68,000.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I saw they've like fixed some bugs and some other stuff in there as well. So, yeah, I really want to play that version once I can get my floppy disks back. So, you know, we talked about the kind of bump combat and the sort of Zelda II style of the action. But if I'm not mistaken, magic is gone in this game and it's back to the ring system, correct? Yeah. So magic and rings have essentially been fused into, uh,

a single system, but it's really just closer to, like, the rings from one. Actually, the rings, I think, are almost exactly the same as the rings from one, except for, there's a ring in one that you need for storyline purposes and will kill Adol if you wear it in the wrong context. Oh, nice. And this one, they've just replaced it with one that very quickly drains your ring power, but it gives you, like, full invulnerability. so yeah. Yes, I find that one very useful against bosses.

Yes. I see, it is, but I usually find that most of the bosses have a spot where you can hide and safely get in like a whole bunch of strikes. And I always just feel compelled that I have to use the like the power one and just get it over as fast as possible. Fair enough. But that's usually my, my boss approach in a lot of these games and like Metroidvania stuff is usually. Root Force. So Symphony of the Night has spoiled me in that way. I feel like the dungeons have a lot more storytelling in them than in East 1 and 2. You kind of got some driblets of text or, you know, dialogue and story hints in towns and you'd go and visit the bandit hideout or whatever and talk to people. But then you enter dungeons and there was really not much in the way of text. Maybe like,

you know, some hint or something or maybe you'd meet Keith or whatever. But, you know, in terms of actual story events happening, it just wasn't really the way East 1 and 2 is set up, but East 3, and maybe it's because it takes away the world map, or like the overworld and just replaces it with an abstract map where you go from point to point and you jump there immediately. I find that it pushes much more of the storytelling into the dungeons. And so you have story events that take place there and kind of create these points of no return, which can be very jarring if you bumble into one and you're like, whoa, I don't have all the much health actually, and this is not a good time for me to be kind of, you know, locked into this dungeon

until I can complete it. But it does feel like they really put a lot more of the narrative into the action exploration portions. Yeah, there's one part in like the ruins where the end point of it is you're spying on Chester from above and he's doing his evil machinations and then he sees you so he chucks you over the cliff into what is basically a big lava pit and that is the next dungeon

and then later on you get in the snow area you get I think trapped in a cave in with him like I forget what happens there. That's in a that's actually back in I think back in the first cave when you have to go back for like the dark statue but yeah it's when Adol gets the last

statue Chester comes in And he's like, give me those. And I can't remember what causes the cave-in, but there's a cave-in. And, oh, my God, the sound that they did for this on the Genesis is, like, the craziest soundcape of just harsh noise that the Genesis can make. It is incredible. I went and listened to it on some of the other systems, and it wasn't nearly as a, like, the turbographics one was just, like, some rumbling sounds. this is like all kinds of weird sharp high pitches and like just doing all kinds of stuff that the Genesis can do

but yeah there's a lot more going on in the dungeons fortunately I was going to say Jeremy to your point before a lot of the boss fights give you an extra like screen where like the boss music starts but then you still have another door to go through before you actually have to fight it and also a lot of the bosses you can actually leave the boss fight which is, I mean, you have to be able to because you can stumble into boss battles

that you can't win, either not a high enough level, don't have the right combination of items or whatever. So you might have to cut your losses, retreat, go figure out what it is that you need and come back, which is an interesting mechanic. I can't think of many other games where you can start fighting the boss. And like, wait, hold on, never mind.

I got to go figure something out real quick. Yeah, Crono Cross does that. Like, you can run from the bosses any time, And they'll just, like, stand there and like, okay, we'll kill you later. I'll wait here for you. Yep. Since there's no real overworld, each stage has like an introduction section where there's nothing to do. It has its own music to it, but your health doesn't regenerate in the dungeons.

So that's where you have to retreat to whenever you want to regain health. Yeah, it basically saves you the trouble of going back to the town or something to regenerate health. Unless you need ring power, in which case, you got to go back to town. or you could just go in and kill some more dudes yeah you can you can recover ring power from killing some people and then once you use an item you get later on that will you could take it to the the magic lady in town and then she starts selling you potions that will refill your ring power as well

but the music on that the music on the entry thing for each of the levels is the same but it's incredible and those areas are some of the most beautiful scenes in the game. The last one, like the boat, when you're taking the boat to the island, like that is one of the coolest things I've seen on a Genesis before. That scene, just incredible, incredible stuff. So what do you think of the Oath at Fulgana? Which, you know, to clarify for listeners, is the modern-style E-7-ish remake of East 3?

It's a bit odd. don't like the music as much because it's like an orchestral sort of like rearrangement and it's not really like that's not the music that I want like the sharp the noise of like the you know the early computers is really like that's how the music is really sort of tattooed my head they also there's some weird localization choices as well like doge when he first sees Elena is just like who you've sure filled out and it's Just like, dude, like, this is the start of the game and we're starting off with this. Like, I was able to find a way to change the dialogue all into Japanese, but there's no subtitles.

So I just didn't really have an idea what was going on, but I didn't have to listen to Dogey being gross. So that was a little bit of an improvement. If you don't like the 2D, it can make it kills what's like really interesting about East 3 and that it's, Like, there's not, there's a lot of other games that do the same things as it, but I think it does more of them in different ways, if that makes sense. It has a lot of combination of things that make it the sort of different experience that it's not always good, but it's very different and it's very much its own thing. And I think that that deserves some credit.

And it kind of just is like a reduction back to sort of like the rest of the main series when it goes into that other engine. See, I feel like that's a strength of it, that it kind of unifies E's three with the games on other side of it. But, you know, if you love this game in its original format, I can understand why you might say, hey, it didn't need to be reversed, you know, reverted. Me, I love, this is probably, Phil Gaon is probably my favorite East game. Because all the, all these games work in different generations. So this is part of the generation that E6 came out. It introduced platforming.

Well, it didn't introduce platforming, but that was a version where it has sprites, but it still has, you know, 3D backgrounds with like an overhead view. E6 was a little rough in its balance, whereas this one is a lot, it's a lot more polished. And this was followed up by East Origin, which all runs in the same engine. And East Origin, I felt, was a little long and exasperating. But I think it takes the foundations of bump combat and actually makes it feel better because you have a proper attack button now, even though it's on the same little Adol's little monster of destruction, it just hacks up anything as long as you're at the right level. But in the broadest series of E-Sings, on E-7, they started to get more RPG-ish in its difficulty balance and its storytelling, which meant that the games were a lot longer and a lot easier. This middle generation of six, Velgonon, and Origins, they still feel very arcady. And you still need to level up and grind appropriately because you still get smashed if you don't.

But there's a real, like, challenge to it. And like, it's the same reason I still love Castlevania. You do need to pay attention to boss patterns and things like that if you want to win. So it feels a little richer in the way that the subsequent runs don't. It also helps that since it's... It's based off E.3, and East 3 is not a very long game. Oath of Oth and Volgana isn't much longer. Like, there's more to it.

Like, the characters in the town have more personality. There's a tiny little map that links everything. But it's not, there's not a whole lot more. But you can beat it in like six, seven, eight hours. Whereas everything after E7, they're more RPG length. And Falcom keeps throwing more and more stuff at it in ways that tend to blow them out. And sometimes the bloat is good. Like, East 8, I think, has a very good story.

and it's fun to explore everything. But it's also a little much. Like, I don't know if I'll ever go back and replay all of East 8. Whereas East Ophalgana, you know, you can play through it in a week or so. Like, they actually just ported it to the Switch in Japan, and they haven't announced it for localization, but if they did, I would handily buy it again. I know, which, Scott, which version did you play?

The Windows is a PSP one. I play the Windows version. Because I don't, I can't keep them quite, straight because they were produced a little bit different by the localizer, because sometimes XC would patch stuff in between them. The PSP version is a little gentler and it's difficulty. Plus, it does off, you can

change the soundtracks again, so you can play with like the PC88 and X68,000 music if you don't like the re-orchestrations. So I still go with the piece. I like the orchestrations a lot in that version of the game, but I still stick with the PC88 one because... Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's

so good. Yeah, all right, I'm maybe Yeah, I'll have to give it another shot. I mean, yeah, I bounced off it pretty hard and at first part of me was like, oh, cool, this game I love, but reworked into like not this very bizarre format. But then I started playing and I'm like, wait, I like the bizarre format. Yeah, and I still have a weakness again for the Genesis one. It's even shorter, so it's another afternoon game. Yeah, I grew up, like I said, I grew up with the SNAES one.

I don't know why. this game has a, is a positive memory in my history as a young kid who was like before that playing Zelda. And, you know, I don't think, I don't think I played East 3 probably until like 95, I want to say. So I had already played, you know, a good bit of JRP's and stuff. So this just very much threw me for a loop. And I think that's probably why. Yeah. So how would you recommend that people play East 3 today because I don't think that one has been reissued on in its original

form on I don't know I don't think there's accessible systems I don't think there's a real 2D version that you can I think the Japanese version of the turbographics mini may have actually had it now that I'm thinking about it yeah this was a black sheep of the series

even back in the day at least until East 5 came out which was even more of a black sheep but I don't think people are really keen to remember it that much so Falcom is like just just play Othofalgana instead Yeah it's I when I was when I was doing like research for this Public sentiment is very negative about everyone is just like It's boring it's grindy the controls are terrible like all of this stuff

And yeah but there's something there's something about it So any, any final thoughts on East one through three, before we call it a night, before we call it a night. or an afternoon or whatever time of the day it is. No? Okay. No, I don't think so. No, I don't think so. In that case, that was Ease, one through three.

Remember, it's pronounced Ease, not wise. There is a clinic in Ebisu in Tokyo called Ease. It's a, I don't know what it is. I've always been curious. Like, can I go get Arb there? Maybe not. I got Arb. I got Arb.

Anyway, thank you, Kurt, and especially Scott, for showing up for this conversation about Ease 1 through 3, a series that we've never surprisingly really covered in proper depth before. Maybe we should all play East 4 and East 4 and East 5 at some point and do an episode on the trilogy of East that we never got. There are four East 4s. Yeah, there are four now. What are you going to play them all? There's four, there's four, and then there's two remakes. I think officially there are 17 East games Okay, so East 4 was

the Mask of the Sun and the Desert City Kiffin or whatever, right? The Desert City is the fifth one. It's the one they'd be licensed out to, they gave it to Hudson Soft and someone else, I can't remember. Tonkin House. Yeah, and they both made four. But Al-Otokam was like both of you make four. Like it was, oh, because like I mentioned earlier, like there was a big staff exodus after East 3.

I think from what I had read was that Falcom didn't really pay their people enough, which is kind of the story of everything in the video game industry. So they all left off and formed their own stuff. So Hudson had a big success with all the East games because they were, you know, big sellers. And they were like, are you making East 4? And they're like, we don't have the capacity to do it. So they created a like a scenario document. They created artwork and a story outline and characters, and they stole some musicians, so they composed the music, and they gave all that stuff to Hudson to make East 4. At the same time, Tonkin House, who published East 3 for the Super Nintendo, they also wanted East 4, and Hudson gave them the same documents.

I think the Super Famicom one stayed closer to the documents that they made, whereas Hudson basically did their own thing with it for the PC engine version. So even though almost I've already agrees that PCN version is better, Mask of the Sun for a long time was like the Canon one because it's a little closer to Falcom's intention. Way down the line, we actually didn't talk about Taito released their own remakes of East three, four, and five. None of them are really particularly good, but they did their own spin on it. I think it was called Mask of the Sun subtitle, A New Theory.

And again, it changes up a bunch of stuff. And then, because Falcom likes revisiting their own stuff. They did another remake, which originally came out on the Vita. It's now on the PS4 in Windows called Memories of Celsetta. And now that is the canon version of East 4, because it's the only one Falcon did themselves. Okay. So maybe we do have to have an episode on all of these games. So we'll reconvene a few years from now. Yeah. It's one official canon, too, which is shocking, I think, to me, at least from the time that it started, that that wasn't, I mean, that is still a rare thing.

Zelda only has it because it was like a weird marketing thing that people were stopped talking about and like, hey, we could sell a book. But yeah, it like, it's, they've had this timeline pretty consistently throughout it. There's been a little retconning here and there because of the multiple versions, but for the most part, it's, uh, it's like a pretty consistent world and go play it. Go explore it. Thing like that. All right.

So that's a topic for. another time. For the moment, this has been Retronauts episode, I think I said, 594, and I have been Jeremy Parrish. And if you are curious to hear the other 593 episodes of Retronauts, not counting the one-up years and the micro-episodes and so on and so forth, you can go to, well, lots of places, but I highly encourage you to go to patreon.com slash Retronauts, where you can subscribe to Retronauts and get every episode a week in advance of the public feed at a higher bit rate quality with no advertisements. And for a little more, a higher tier, you can get biweekly bonus episodes that are only available to patrons, as well as a weekly column by Diamond Fight, and some other stuff like Discord access. It's pretty good.

You can also, if there's an availability, subscribe at the level. Cool people like Scott subscribe to where you get to request episodes and even potentially be on episodes. That's Patreon.com slash retronauts. Anyway, that's my pitch. Scott, tell us where we can find you online. If indeed you want to be found online. Sure, yeah. All my stuff has sort of been aggregated now at go to harry's video games.com.

It's a video game rental store project that I'm long-term working on and will hopefully go under fruition. But all of my YouTube content and whatnot can I'll be found through that. Nice. And Kurt. I'm at Hardcore Gaming 101.net for the past 20 years or so. We also have a site podcast called the top 47,858 games of all time, where you've ranked down. I don't even know how many, probably like 1,300 or something. So games. We have talked about a couple of East games. I know there's an episode on Oath

Falgana, which I try to defend against other people who don't like it as much as I do. And East Five, which is probably the worst game in the series. So that game didn't perform as well. Oh, that's something to look forward to. I also helmed a big book about Japanese RPGs called A Guide to Japanese RPGs, published by Bitmap Books. There's a whole big chapter on Falcom and how they got their stuff. start, all of Falcom's other action RPGs, all of the East games up until East 9. So, so yeah, it's a 650 pages, very large. That's a chunker.

All right. You can finally find me, Jeremy Parrish, online, all over the place as Jeremy Parrish, YouTube, Retronauts, limited run games, other stuff, occasionally from time to time. I'm also on social media. Sometimes I post on Blue Sky under J. Parrish, I believe. Blue Sky, B-S-K-Y, busky, dot app. I can't remember how that works out, busky dot social, whatever it is. I don't know. If you're on Blue Sky, look up Jeremy Parrish, and it's probably going to be me or someone talking trash about me. Anyway, that is it for this

episode. Thanks again, everyone for listening. Thanks again Scott for making this episode possible and also Kurt for making this episode possible with your knowledge and wisdom. And to me, for being a warm body recording things. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.