Retronauts - 600: Toe Jam & Earl

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Patron Scott Rothman presses Start to join a bunch of weenies (Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Kevin Bunch) in their randomly generated conversation about Sega's most jammin' Genesis franchise, Toe Jam & Earl. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, your best buy is at T.J&E. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. That opening reference was for the really old people among you. If you know what that was referring to, my God, you're old and also congratulations on having lived this long. I am Jeremy Parrish, and this week for episode 600, 100, 100 of Retronauts, we are talking about another patron request game. That's right. We're working through our backlog of patron requests. We are so backlogged.

It's terrible. But we're getting those off our plates. Thanks once again to our patron this episode. Please introduce yourself. Scott Rothman is a weener. I cannot comment on that. I don't know you well enough. Who else is here this episode?

Yeah, you. Why not? Local carrot man, Kevin Bunch. Nice. And finally, dialing in from Planet Funkatron, also known as the United Kingdom. Yeah, it's not the good kind of fun, unfortunately. Yeah. Hi, I'm Stuart Jip, and I'm going to just do this.

Hi, for Steve, Z. Okay, that's all I wanted to do. I'm out here now, bye, see it. Have you considered... That was on point? Have you considered a higher sampling rate for yourself? No, we have not. I'm happy with my 16.

Fair enough. Okay. Well, yes, in case you could not tell from the preamble and from the title on the El episode that you have downloaded, we are talking this episode about ToJam and Earl, all of the ToJam and Earl games, a game series, which I have close, fond, personal feelings about because it's just, you know, the theme is very, very relatable. My grandfather was named Earl, and I often have Toe Jam. So, you know, it really speaks to me. But Scott, you're the one who requested this

episode. I have to ask, what is it about Toe Jam and Earl that speaks to you? Why did you say, I am going to throw money at the retronauts so that they have to talk about Toajam and Earl? Yeah, Tojiam and Earl, I was a Genesis kid growing up with two brothers. Having a series of games that was like specifically designed for more people to play and was like very friendly towards that, especially when you have, uh, dueling brothers. Um, it's, uh, it was, it's just a very different experience than anything else. And it's something that's really stuck in my head, uh, for a very long time. So the three of you had still had to do like a round robin thing, right? Yeah. Well, the younger one, he, he wasn't into, he was more into sports games for a longer

period. So he was kind of off doing his own thing. Uh, the boring brother. Okay. Yeah. That's fair. Um, so, So it was you and your older brother? Yeah, so, of course, he was To Jam. I was Earl as it goes. But, yeah, I've kind of, you know. And which is which? I know, but for the sake of our audience, who are Toajam and Earl?

And then we'll introduce the other panelists here. But I feel like, you know, because their name is in the title of the episode and the games, they probably deserve an introduction here in this section as well. Yeah, there are two aliens from the planet Funkatron, A toe jam is a red I don't even know how to describe the shape Like a weird fork Like the top of a tri?

I don't even know He's like just a weird red stringy guy With shoes and eyeballs Stuff to him Like I would describe his upper half As being kind of mollusk-like With the eyestalks But then his lower half

Is kind of like Mr. Eric's from the Star Trek cartoon like one of the rare tri-pedal creatures you see that only shows up in animation because it's pretty much impossible to create something like that with practical effects unless you meet someone who's really messed up.

You just get something with four legs and take one of them off. It's easy. Oh, that's right. I forgot. I've got a friend who did Halloween costume, his toe jam one year as a kid, and yeah, they had to build a third leg for him

operate, which is above and beyond what I would have done for Halloween. I'm not going to make the obvious joke here. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you run into some problems really quickly with creating a third leg for someone. Roll some of us, too. Yeah, so clearly the kind of character who can only exist in animation. So that's toe jam. But what about this Earl fellow? Earl is a large, yellow fellow.

Usually wears a beanie. It's got shorts on, no shirt. He doesn't need a shirt. He's kind of, he's big, slow, got a really deep voice, bigger old. I feel so seen when I look at him. Your skin is that kind of orangish tone. I noticed that about you. Yeah, I don't get many vitamins.

Slightly jaundiced. Okay, so that's toe jam and earl. Well, thanks, everyone. No, why, okay. Why does it make a difference as? to who plays Tojam and who plays Earl. Is there a difference, at least in the first game? Yeah, I think there is.

They have stats, as I recall. Tojam is smaller, he's faster. Earl's slower, can take more hits. I think they have different luck, too, but I can't quite remember about that in the first one. I know in the third one, they very clearly have all of their stats, like, visually laid out. Oh, that's right. And they do like the Tracy Lerner. Olman's show, like, vibrating letter thing.

Yeah. If I remember, Earl also is not picky about what he eats, whereas O'JM only wants to eat certain things, which is, you know, a problem when it comes to healing. Another reason why he represents me so well, I think. All right. So, and why does Luckstat, the Lugstat, why does that matter in this game? Because Tojiam and Earl, at least the original, and then the others are essentially, a rogue-like and there's lots of

randomness, especially with the items in which you pick up everything starts as a unidentified present in which you, sometimes you have the ability to identify them, but more often than not you have to just trial by error and... That is known as Use ID.

Would you consider Tojam and Earl the first rogue light? Is that where it exists in the spectrum? with video game history? I don't want to make that claim, but it's... Do it. Be definitive. Come on. I can't think of much.

Before it, that is... That as explicitly cites, like, Rogue as an influence and so clearly wears it on its sleeve as, like, the core gameplay loop of just one run. Nothing carries over. You're just in this for this one run. Do the best you can. The only thing you really learn is... The only really gained is sort of just, like, knowledge about the game and how it works.

Yeah, all the different elements sort of interact with one another and such. Yeah, but nothing carries over. It's almost like an anti-rogelike, and that rogue is very combat-heavy, and these games are very, well, the second one, and the third are somewhat combat-heavy, but the first is very, you usually don't want to be interacting with the humans because they're awful will make you do bad things, distracting you from getting your ship parts. It's just like real life.

Ha ha, ha, ha. I think it's okay to be somewhat definitive here because if we're looking at the rogue genre and, you know, the rogue-like genre and rogue derivatives, they really didn't exist outside of kind of like the really hardcore computer space when Toadjam and Earl debuted in October 1991. I'm not sure. Sorry to the button. There's also, I want to say, sort of vermilion this one, I think, or facial labyrinth or something like that. I forget the name of the game. Yeah, yeah, fatal labyrinth. I'm not sure if it predates this or not.

It does. And there's also a dragon crystal, but this is, um, toe jam is probably the, I would call it light definitively because it is deviating from the sword and sorcery kind of thing. It's a much more casual, enjoyable sort of experience. So if no one else is prepared to be definitive, I will, this is definitely the first road light. And if you've got an example of another one, I don't care, shove it up your ass.

No, I was going to say the only, the only rogue likes at all that come to mind for console gaming before Tojam and Earl are Fatal Labyrinth which was also called Oh crap What was the Game Gear version called? Kevin, do you know? I just totally blinked out

I've covered it on game gear Yeah, right Stuart, what was that? Yeah, if only someone had written about every single Game Game game ever and retain the information Oh well, so you're disqualified then There's Dragon Crystal, I don't know if it's that Dragon Crystal, that's it, yeah, yeah

Oh, it was Dragon Something. Yeah, that's the same game as Fatal Labyrinth. Right. I'm not familiar with Fatal Labyrinth, but I know Dragon Crystal, so I was like, yeah, it's the same. It's the same. I want to say, yeah, it's the same. It's just they renamed it for Genesis. It's good.

For some reason. It is. So that was 1990. And then earlier in 1991, Konami released Cave Noir for Game Boy. Yeah. Which, I would consider Dragon Crystal a true rogue-like. It's just, it is, you know, it's a roguelike. It's got the turn-based battles and everything.

I'm very limited in a lot of respects, but it's there. It's like, you know, developers saying, hey, there's that neat computer game. Let's do that. And then Cave Noir is a little more on the rogue light spectrum because it's not as pure a rogue-like. I haven't spent a lot of time with it, but I know that it's kind of flirting with some rogue-ish concepts, but not quite all that. there. But then, yeah, Tojama and Earl, to me, is kind of what we think of in the modern day as a rogue light, which is that it has a lot of rogue mechanics, a lot of randomization, things like use ID, et cetera. But it's not turn-based. It varies from the kind of straightforward

combat system of rogue. It has kind of different objectives and feelings. It has multiplayer, error, which, you know, Rogue didn't do that. So it's, it's to me one of the very first attempts by console developers to engage with the concepts of Rogue, but to do it in a way that is more appealing to the console audience that doesn't want to sit in front of a keyboard and, you know, memorize, like, what every single key on the keyboard does to, you know, use purple potions or whatever. It's very straightforward. You can control it with three buttons.

And it, you know, it's real time. And it's got a, it's got a personality, which is harder to convey in a classic roguelike where everything is made of asky text. So, yeah, it's a pretty significant game, in my opinion. And that, you know, the kind of the revelation that, hey, you know, Togey M and Earl is trying to be a rogue-like game on Genesis was where I sort of turned around my opinion on it. like I'd played it before and thought, oh, this is okay. But then John Harris, who was on our rogue episode many, many years ago, wrote about it in his

column at play on games at watch. And he, you know, made a really strong case for it being an early interpretation of the rogue genre, the rogue like genre. And, you know, viewing it in that perspective, like, it just never occurred to me because it's so different from what you think of as a roguelike. But it really, it really does. that randomization and those mechanics. And, you know, the mystery dungeon series wouldn't launch until 92, 93, I think.

So it was still, that's kind of like the definitive console roguelike, but that was still a couple of years away. Like, Tojama and Earl was really sort of at the cutting edge in a lot of ways. Yeah, I mean, I came to it similarly because the second one was the one that I played the most when I was a kid. I didn't have access to the first one until later. And when I did play it, I sort of was like, I don't really get it. And then, of course, later, we get things like The Binding of Isaac and stuff, which is one of my favorite games.

And coming back to it through that lens, I'm finding like, oh, I see it's one of these games, just 25 years earlier. I was going to say they totally missed the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, of, you know, the, yeah, that's still going. That's basically every genre, but roglight, uh, if only they had waited 20 years to release their significance this game, they would have been perfectly timely. Mm. Who, I mean, you know, foresight, but, yeah, next time. Yeah, I, I also started with the, uh, second game and didn't play the first one until, uh, you know, you know, college, basically, but boy, it was an experience. I remember being really interested, having read about the first game when I was a kid,

but I didn't have a Genesis, so I had to play whatever my aunt owned or one of my friends owned, and then I finally got to try this at a friend's house and just like, ooh, it's just immediately. I'm like, this game is so cool. We were just like, hang out

and I'm like, oh, what do you want to do? Let's play toe jammer, Earl. It's always a different experience, and it's so laid back even for like a rogue style game like it's it's yeah it's not easy but it's also not uh you know braining you over the head at every opportunity yes it's it's like it feels like low stakes i guess that a lot of you know the stuff in other games that would theoretically kill you is just in this sort of maybe like a minor setback or something you know you get knocked off an annoyance yeah it's an annoyance you get knocked off the world i mean sometimes

you actually have to jump off to get somewhere but But, you know, you get knocked off and it's just, you just get sent down a level or maybe more depending on where you fall. But, yeah, it's just like, it's just a fun, slow, relaxing experience, even as difficult as it actually may be to finish. But I'm not even, like, when I play, I'm usually not that pressed to even finish the game. It's just sort of just like, what's going to happen this time is really more the fun of it. Yeah, I think that's another reason to call it a rogue light because it doesn't. have the fundamental tension of a roguelike where the world, like the difficulty curve ramps up faster than you can actually match. So, you know, really, I would say pretty early

in most roguelike games, you need to really start making tactical use of the few things that you have available to you and really start considering, you know, how can I get through the situation. What can I afford to sacrifice now? You know, can I use this scroll or tool or weapon or whatever? And Tojama and Earl doesn't have that, but I don't think that's a detriment to the game. Not every game has to be like punishingly hard. Sometimes you can just play a game and have a good time. And that really seems to be the fundamental spirit of Tojam and Earl is, hey, why don't you chill out with these weird alien dudes and just kind of wander around throwing tomatoes at earthlings

and avoiding bees and, you know, get back home. It's cool. It's just kind of a unique vibe, really. That's why I think it's why it sticks in so many people's heads because there's nothing else much like it. And there certainly wasn't on the Mega Drive or any of the other consoles I can think of, really. Yeah, it's good. I'm not going anywhere with that part.

Yeah, I have to admit that. I came into this game pretty late because I misjudged it just based on its presentation and the marketing around it. You know, the name Tojam and Earl, to me, that kind of said, oh, this wants to be one of those gross out games like Bougar Man or something like that. And to me, that was immediately a, no, it's no Bougar Man. But that was, like, that was the impression that I got from it just because of the name. And it just, it felt, you know, like, I, I don't want to do that.

I'm not, I'm not eight years old. It's not, you know, that's not interesting to me. And also the hip-hop influenced artwork, a very kind of like that late 80s, Memphis style graphic design, lots of flat colors and a lot of hip-hop lingo. I misread that as being disingenuous marketing speak, like very pretext. poochy, as opposed to a much more genuine, like coming from a more genuine place, which I discovered later. But it just, like, everything about it just turned me off. It just seemed, um, the way it was presented in market, it just seemed fake and insincere and obnoxious. And then it turns out the game is nothing like that whatsoever. Um, so like, how could I have

known? You know, we, we only, we only know what they, they tell us when they try to sell to us. and Sega blew it. They presented this as something that it's not. And what it is is much more appealing than what it is presented as. Sega's had, I mean, for better, for worse, had a really strong guiding hand in sort of where this game series has gone. We'll get to it. But their marketing arm sort of made a lot of decisions for the team, unfortunately, that, you know, if they had one idea and ended up having to go another, for game two and three,

but they still managed to make something that, you know, two is still, I mean, it's my first game, it's Kevin's it's two, it's all what got us into the series, so there's still something amazing there, even though it's sort of been pushed into a marketing. Yeah, I mean, we'll get to it in more detail, I'm sure, but two is just a,

in an or generic sort of framework of a sort of side-scrolling platform where they threw in as many ideas and silly things and personality as they could. So it delivers on that level. I think the whole series delivers on that level. It never really falls out of being characterful, which is the main appeal for me. Greg Johnson's, I mean, through all of his games,

his, like, personality and humor is very apparent, and it's definitely one of the shining moments of, or just, like, the high points of all of his games. They're all funny. They're all very well written. There's just always little things to find, and interact with that you are like surprising in interesting ways. So, yeah, he's really got something.

I will say that the marketing misfires that turned me out to this game were not unique to Sega. This was how everyone marketed video games in the 90s. You know, the 90s were, in some ways, it might be like the best time that humanity will ever experience again. the world was at an unprecedented level of peace generally and an unprecedented level of wealth and happiness and just everything looked like it was going to go really, really well. And marketers aren't great at selling happiness, like genuine happiness. So they just invented horribleness to sell to us.

So they did things like, hey, here's a Yoshi's Island commercial where a guy explodes. Isn't that cool? Hey, Kirby, he's pink and he's. It just, you know, it was a bad time for marketing. I was reading an old EGM from the 90s yesterday, and it was like a commercial for some kangrophy junior baseball, and it's just like exactly what you'd expect. It's like, so rare you can taste it. Here's a massive, hideous, distorted human face where the baseball shrubbed into its mouth, like horrible, more formed. It's horrible.

They're all awful. The whole magazine is ads, and they're all like that. Yeah, yeah, the famous chili dog farts ad for Virtual Boy Baseball. Yeah. Good times. Good times. Love me some marketing. Somehow, I decided to go into graphic design, which is adjacent to marketing in the 90s, you know, not occurring to me. You said you could do better. I worked for a digital marketing agency, so it's fine. It didn't occur to me. Yeah. I mean, I tried marketing for a year before going to limited run and realized, oh, it's still bad and I don't like it. But it's really bad. it was it was it was it was bad in a very different way in the 90s like marketers just made everything seem worse than it was and and thought somehow that would be appealing but you know I I will say on the marketing team's behalf toe jam and Earl 2 does seem to be the one that

most people did jump into the series with so maybe they were on to something with their tweaks Thank you. So why don't we talk about the video games? And before that, why don't we talk about the people who created the video games? I believe the name Greg Johnson has come up, and he's kind of the mastermind here. I had the opportunity to meet him about 10 years ago when he was promoting an unrelated game called DokeyDoki Universe, which was very much a game about, you know, happiness and peacefulness and good vibes and nonviolence. So it's just kind of a passion for him.

There's a pretty extensive bio of Greg Johnson in our notes. So whoever wrote that, I'm going to let you take it away. Oh, sure. Yeah. So I guess Greg first sort of came into the industry with two games, Star Flight and Star Flight 2, which are some basically some space simulator pseudo RPGs

like I said his humor is very apparent his art style is very apparent already here and like you see these like big portraits of these aliens and stuff that you're talking to and they're all like goofy, wacky designed that would look

right at home on Funkatron is this like the comedy version of Star Control basically so Star Control basically? So Star Control 2 definitely pulls a lot from Star Flight 1 and 2. Star Control 1, I don't think, has any real connective tissue. Humor, okay. But it's the same also sort of like, you can see a lot of the same sort of themes and stuff here in this game, that it has a lot of replayability.

It's a lot of just sort of about like poking around and figuring things out, seeing what different interactions are possible. Coming into it, I didn't, I didn't play this. game until, like, very recently, um, uh, it wasn't something that I had ever heard of or grew up with. And as such, it was very sort of, definitely like opaque and sort of hard to get into, uh, in this day and age. It's very manual. Like, you have to move tile by tile. You also have to individually scan tiles to like, look for things and then click to like, it's very, very manual. Yeah. Um, but, uh, Kevin, I think you said you spent time with Starfleight two. Star Flight 1.

Oh, Star Flight 1. Yeah, this is one of the games that I got to play around with in college, because, again, my friends had a Genesis, grew up with one, and we're really into the library. And it is a really, like, cool, open-ended RPG. Well, not open-ended. It does have an ending, but it's, like, exploratory. You do whatever you want.

And, yeah, the aliens are really goofy. They have very, like, weird ways of, speaking and the way you approach them, you can be friendly or hostile or obsequious, where your captain is just like basically begging for their life at every opportunity, which is extremely funny. And, you know, the aliens react differently on what you're doing. And some of the designs are just really out there. There's a, like, a fish species that's a bunch of religious zealots against air breathers.

So you have to sort of beg for your life so they don't, uh, immediately. murder you with their much more powerful ships. And some of the, there is some really goofy bits of humor in there. Like, you mentioned in the notes that in the computer version, you know, there's the code wheel to stop people from pirating the game. And if you mess it up, a police car will chase you down in space and give you one more chance to put in the code properly. If you don't, they will destroy you. Yep, it happened. I couldn't find the

At first I was like I got to the screen and I was like Oh no it's a it's an anti-piracy thing And I don't have the manual And I went like looking on archive.org and all this stuff Trying to find like a copy of it and I couldn't So I just like typed in some random number And it worked and I was like oh cool

Like maybe the Dothbox version had it disabled There's up nope it happened later Yep But yeah they have bootleg uh Starship Enterprise floating around in there, which I've never actually come across, because I don't really play the PC versions very much, but it's in there. So the Megadrive version, Star Flight, that's got to be reasonably unique on that console, right? Like, I can't think of anything else much like it.

It didn't get Elite. I can't think of anything else like it on there. The only other RPG I can think of its, like, Future Space, is Technoclash, and there's nothing like it at all. Yeah. Star Control 1 is on Genesis. Oh, okay, right, right, yeah. So, you know, if you kind of lump these together a little bit into the similar space, then... Yeah.

Yeah. I will say, though, like, I mean, in this game, you do actually... So, I mean, when you start this game, you'd, like, create a party and everything, like, pick-crate a character sheet and, like, she was there. I mean, it's very paired down. You don't, like, roll for stats or anything. Each race or class sort of just has their own predetermined stats with a very funny, like, silhouette illustration of them. And then you, like, assign them to different roles in your ship, depending on their... abilities and weaknesses and stuff like that.

So, and then depending on their stats, your things work better or worse, you know, and, you know, Greg Johnson being Greg Johnson, much as in the tow general games, there is kind of that like thumbing your nose at this, this capitalistic system. Yeah, very much so. Because all of your space exploration is funded through capitalistic endeavors. So you keep getting these really goofy memos every time you've read, visit the star base about like, oh, here's this disaster. Oh, here's, here's like your pain and all this fun stuff.

It's really, it's a comedic game. Yeah, your goal is actually theoretically supposed to be like going down to these planets and exploring them and researching them so that you can report back to this sort of like organization of what is inhabitable for like colonization. And like, I had to, another time I got stuck basically and had to call for like an SOS and basically got stuck with a huge bill for being rescued by them. Oh, yeah, that's another thing, too, is you have, like, a billing sheet that's essentially of, like, all of the things that you've bought in the game, like, you know, the ship parts and

stuff like that. It also has the game itself is listed as a line item. But then this also, this, like, rescue fee or whatever, and it was, like, negative $10,000. And it's like, I don't have any money anymore. I can't, I have to restart the game. So how do we get from the comedy capitalist space RPG to the chill pacifistic hip-hop Rogue Light? Yeah. What's the what's the, the through line there? Yeah, I said, uh, Craig Johnson, he said that, you know, before Star Flight during college,

he was a big fan of Rogue and that has been, uh, he explicitly said that that was a big influence for him, and especially in Tojam and Earl. He made both of those games for EA, and after that, he said that he was looking for, it was weird, because I hadn't played the games at first when he said he was looking for something like more laid back and, you know, relaxing. And so when I was going into Starfle, I was expecting a very sort of, like, serious, like, realistic sort of simulation than was met with, like, even more goofiness. which was great.

But, yeah, he was looking for, it is, it is like a difficult, intricate technical game still under the veneer of comedy. So wanted to make something that was more simple, more laid back that touched on, you know, what he liked about Rogue. And, you know, from all of those things together in a pot, out comes Toe Jam and Earl. All right. Any other thoughts on the Greg Johnson Oove before To Jam and Earl? We should probably also mention his partner, yeah. Yeah, Mark, yeah. I was saying we should mention Mark as well.

Oh, right. Yeah, the other guy. Yeah, okay, sure. Mark's, I mean, he gets forgotten a bit because he kind of dipped out of the industry after, I think, after To Jam and all three. So he hasn't been around to sort of, like, keep the legacy going as much as Greg has. But he was a video game program for a bit. I think some people sort of saw him as this mastermind of mostly because of the, of what he was able to do

in the first Togeyam and Earl with like the split screen stuff which we'll talk about in a bit but he got started I think like the first thing he worked on or one of the first things he worked on was like the night trap prototype which is you know

like the VHS one yeah I think so yeah okay the origins strong origins there so he got his start on the Nemo I feel like everyone was working on the Nemo probably the people I talk to have been involved in the Nemo

right Um, but yeah, he hasn't, um, hasn't really stuck around in the industry as much. Um, he's definitely sort of, I mean, he's definitely a very integral part of the game, but it seems like he sort of always let Greg be the, the driver of the, uh, the series. So Greg is the ideas guy and, uh, Mark makes them happen. Mark, yeah, he's the, the implementer. So the, the Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak of the, uh, that's, that's not fair. I feel like Greg is a much more kind and sincere person than Steve Jobs.

Then again, most of us are. Yeah, I think so. Anyway, so. So, so back to. kinder things. Yeah, so Tojiam and Earl, as you mentioned, is a technical Marvel for Genesis.

It does a lot of randomization that you didn't really see in console games. It has the cool split-screen effect, which is dynamic, which you also didn't... I can't think of any game that did that before where it could come together and break

apart. I was reading in the interviews, when they were talking about it, I think Sega told them, like, It's not going to work. You're not going to be able to do that on this hardware. And they were like, yeah, we're going to do it anyway. Did they just straight up rip that off for Sonic 2? Is that what happened there?

Oh, I don't know. Something 2 is just fixed, squashed split screen. I remember seeing this being championed in some of the later Lego games and being like, no, this has been done before. This really isn't that remarkable. Yeah, Sonic you get either both of them together with tails and then tails can't do anything. or, yeah, in the verses, you get the really, really weird aspect ratio. Gotcha.

So how, yeah, like, would you like to describe how the multiplayer split screen works? Because it is really cool and just very freeing. Yeah, I mean, so a lot of games, you know, the opposite of this that always comes to mind is, like, Contra 3. Because with, like, ratchet scrolling with the screen where it's fixed to whoever's moved, or it just moves up at the farthest person, but that person can very easily kill the other person by moving the screen too far. You can't move

in opposite directions. Even the original Contra, if you're doing the waterfall stage and you go too fast and the other person doesn't, bier. Yeah, right. Instant death from just jumping. Sibling punches with thrown. Yes. And this is why

Togamineril is great. Because there's no, like, as soon as, if Togay Minerl walk too far apart, The game, so it starts in a single screen with both of them together. As soon as they start to veer too far apart, the game breaks into a split screen so that the two of them can sort of individually walk off on their own, do their own thing. You can even, like, go to different levels and just freely explore the entire game independently of the other person, which is bizarre. I can't think of anything else that lets two people interact with so many different things in a game. at the same time.

But it's great because, like I said, yeah, it just lets people freely explore. There's no, like, no, come over here. I want to see this thing. And, like, and Togeyman Earl is very much like, wait, I want to go see that thing. So having that freedom is very core. It's integral to the game, especially when they explicitly designed it as a, they said that they explicitly designed it as, like, a two-player experience first. And it has a one-player option.

It feels placed around two-player. both being able to explore different paths of the island trying to find the two things that you need and the shippiece and the elevator. Yeah. Do you share the present pool or is that split as well? I can't remember. I think that's split.

Okay, that's cool. Right, right. So let's talk about the presence because that is a core part of the Tojamb and Earl experience and a big part of what makes each session of the game so different from the others. You know, you do have the random seeds for level generation and placement of enemies and placements of objects and so forth. But, you know, when it comes to the presence, that is really kind of the lottery element of Tojama and Earl that makes every playthru so unpredictable.

Yeah. So, yeah, the presence are essentially your items in inventory. They're just sort of lying scattered on the ground. you walk over them and pick them up. As I said, use ID. It's a new thing I know now. Cool. So yeah, they're all unidentified at first when you use them.

One of the presents that you can get is to identify other presents if you're not feeling so risky. But yeah, so you use them. After you've used one once, it is sort of forever identified through that run-through, so that when you pick up that same present, it's detailed in your inventory. about what it is. So, yeah, there's a lot of experimenting that you have to do. One, because you typically don't know what it is in your inventory.

And even if you do, the names are, you know, what does super high tops do? Like, the day is just, they're all just a bunch of random items that seemingly, until you actually use them and then like try to have them interact with different things, you don't know what they can do or what their purpose is. So there's a lot of trying to figure out what items to do what with. So if I'm not mistaken, there are a lot of different sprites for the presents that you pick up. They're basically treasure boxes, but, you know, wrapped in a bow. And they have like yellow wrapping paper with blue polka dots or green wrapping paper or whatever. And each of those will be consistent in a playthrough, right? Like when the seed is generated, the green present is always going to contain the same thing.

unless you acquire the randomizer, which scrambles the association. So it works kind of like rogue in that if you pick up a blue potion in rogue, you don't know what the blue potion does until you use the blue potion. And then from that point on, any time you, you know, if the blue potion is like a potion of invisibility or something, anytime you pick up a blue potion, it will just be called a potion of invisibility. And it's pretty much the same thing here. So I'm looking over the list of items.

I had no idea there were so many. It says presence available intentionally leaving out what they do. Is there a reason that that has been left obscure here? Are you avoiding spoilers? I left them out because, I mean, I guess so. That's the fun of the game is, I think, a lot of it is figuring out what these do for the first time and getting to see, like, the reactions and interactions for the first time is a big enjoyment of the game. So if people don't know, I would like to let them enjoy that for the first time.

Let's let them find out independently what the Icarus wings do, because that's a real puzzle. They're right there. Yeah. I mean, tomato rain is a bit, uh, tomato rain is a bit, you know, that's a bit long. Beyond the nose. It's a cloud of tomatoes, yeah. Okay, so I know you don't want to spoil all. of this, but...

We can. I mean, it's fine. Well, no, no, no. I was going to say you mentioned something about interactions. And a big part of any roguelike is the way objects interact and the surprising interactions you can have between elements of the game world. I mean, that's even like a Shiren game, or especially a Shiren game. I remember Scott Sharky's review of Shiren the Wanderer for DS. It was basically just like, hey, here's some, like, random shit that happened. to me, and it was weird and unexpected, and I love this game because it killed me in a way I never could have predicted. How much of that is there in Tojamb and Earl? Because, you know,

this is a largely nonviolent game. And video games do revolve so much around killing and destroying and slashing and shooting and burning and bombing and things like that. So take that away. And is it still possible to have video game interactions? I thought, you know, that was the entirety of our vocabulary. yeah um i mean it's actually fun i think i mean it's at least it feels like it when it's playing in the first one that most of the items actually just do bad things to yourself rather than to other people um but no there's lots of there's things um that you know will uh like distract uh the humans that are around if you're like um so i guess we should also probably talk about just like how the land works first also because that's sort of integral to how you end up having to play um so there's like these essentially every level is the sort of set of floating islands that you walk across. The one thing I really do not like about this game is having to walk to the end of an island to have it see if it grows out to like attach to another piece of it. It just forces you, I feel like sometimes just walk all the way to the edge of every little

spot to see, but it's a minor grievance. but so there's all these like a lot of times these very narrow corridors and stuff that you'll have to sort of scoot by and there's people in the way so there's lots of ways that you can maybe sneak past them or distract them or just move them out of the way or things like that lots of just different interactions that they're all I mean you can also theoretically kill them with tomatoes but most of the is that like an allergic reaction thing like tomato doesn't seem that that dangerous to me most of the time. I assume maybe like they get tomatoes and they're placated, or they remember that scene from Lord of the Rings and are so horrified that they just give up and die. Tomatoes? Either or.

Not very just stressful. Tomatoes, however. No, never mind. Yeah, I was just going to say, like, the wandering around using these items, it's interesting because you do have all these different types of humans and how you deal with them does change. You know, I know early on, they're fairly harmless. Like you have, like, the hula dancers, and all they really do is stop Togam and Earl and have them dance with them for a little while. And, like, occasionally you'll come across the boogeyman who will just sort of try and sneak up on you. And then once you get into the late game, when you're hunting down the last ship parts, if they have cruelly not spawned yet, you're dealing with, like, ambulances chasing after you.

And this is the game that has, like, the evil dentist? Yeah, I think so. It's just... What does the evil dentist do to you? Is this, like, a little shop of horrors kind of thing? Yeah, he's coming after you with a dress. will. And they get a lot more aggressive. They're like homing in on you a lot faster. They move quicker than Earl certainly can. So you are really burning through your presence at that point, just like trying to find anything that'll help you deal with them or get away from them, even if it's possibly going to end up being bad because you used a randomizer and don't know what anything is anymore. It's a great, it's a great game loop. that part of it is I think what is a very fun I think throw line back to like

rogue like games is that those situations of just like oh god I'm cornered and I have a couple of items and I don't know what they do but I don't have any other choice other than just whipping these out and seeing what happens and sometimes it's great and sometimes you kill yourself and that's that's the fun of it so have we talked about what you're actually doing in Togeyam and Roll. You're collecting parts for your spaceship. Is there anything beyond that that is the objective? Or is it just you got to get all the parts? It's like once you've got them all, that's it. The game you win, right? You don't have to exit or anything. It's just like, that's it. The ship's done. Well done. Here's all the money. But I feel like the thing with

Tojama and Isle is it's not that easy to make it sound good when you're just describing it. Because It's a sort of unique experience. And when you're sort of saying, like, here's what you do is mostly you pick up these presents, and mostly they just do bad things and make your life worse. But there's more to it than that. It's hard to get across, I think, without sort of showing it or having a controller in your hand. I think it's one of those more than the sum of its parts kind of video games. I mean, it's sort of alluded to, but things like the tomato rain, that is dangerous to you,

but also it can help you if you're being pursued, because it can take out the enemies behind you. And once you've uncovered it once, if you then get it again, you can use it more sort of strategically. But you've got to be confident in your own sort of zigzagging, your ability to move to get out the way. And I hope you don't get yourself stuck in a corner and have no choice but to maybe jump, even

jump off the wall and then make your way back up again. Yeah, jumping down to a lower level, always an option if you need to get out of a bad situation. Better than dying. Also, yeah, the one thing that I, that they fixed this in the second game that I wish in this one

is that your oxygen is limited to the maximum amount of health that you have, like if you want to go swimming. So if you've taken some hits and you jump in the water, you typically just instantly lose a life. And then, I mean, it just responds you like right where you are and you can just keep on going. But in the second one, they at least give you different life and water or life in oxygen. And the second one, you regain oxygen by making out with big fat fish.

That's awesome. You do. Yeah. And this one, you know, the only way you recover hell is just by high-fiving your buddy. Food, too. Food hails you, right? Also. Yes, and food.

But it's not as fun. High-fiving a buddy is food for, like, the soul. So how did, how did Togem and Earl do? I mean, it seems to have gotten good reviews, but did anyone actually play it? Or is it one of those that, you know, people discovered a few years later through emulation were like, oh, how did I sleep on this? everyone I know present company included

started with the second game I think because it got a lot more of a media and advertising push from Sega and I think it was just as it was more at the height of the megadrive as well I find when it came out the mega drive was much bigger

that it hadn't it wasn't it was relatively sort of relatively new wasn't it when the when the original drop was that 91? Yeah Yeah, I mean They had been around for a bit, but it wasn't

at its powers, I would say. Yeah, I think it depends on your region. The Genesis had been out here for two years by that point, and it had pretty good traction. And basically, this was just at the point that the Super NES had launched. So Genesis had like two years of just pretty much uncontested 16-bit dominance in the market at that point. So it had started to really pick up some traction, some momentum.

But I know in the UK and Europe, it arrived like a year later. So it was still kind of the shiny new thing over there at that point. Yeah. I find with Toja Man O, it's like the original. It's quite, I don't like to say this because it sounds so much more critical than it's meant to be. But it looks quite, it's kind of like cheap. It's like that early Megadrive kind of they haven't quite got it yet. Like maybe the art was made by.

programmers maybe, you know, it's not, it's not very, I mean, compared to the sequel, which looks expensive, like, and like beautifully cartoony and like much more well realized visually, I would say. It's just that two phases of the Megadrive. It's like the early Nez games and then the sort of middle Nes games, the stuff before Maria 3, you know, that's kind of the Vibega off of it. And I never knew anyone who owned it, but I also knew this game existed. It was in my head because it was so unique, you know, you knew it existed, you know, as you I mean, I'm pretty sure it was getting, like, in the UK, it was getting comic books in Max Overload magazine as well. It was quite well, it was quite a well-known.

Yeah, I get the impression that it wasn't a huge seller. I mean, this was about the time that Sonic 1 had come out and, you know, everybody knew Sonic 1. But it did well enough for Sega that they were promoting it and they got, they gave it a sequel, or they funded a sequel anyway. Yeah, the interesting thing is, supposedly, you know, from what I've read, Sega wanted To Jam and Earl to be mascot characters for the system. But it arrived like three months after Sonic the Hedgehog, which, you know, sort of immediately became the Sega Genesis guy. So, yeah, it kind of reminds me of, you know, PlayStation marketing where they were like, we need a mascot and they just never really figured it out. Whereas here on Genesis, they were kind of doing the same thing, except, oh, they had, you know, Sonic. So they lucked into it.

And they, they had their guy. But otherwise, it was just sort of like, hmm, other systems have a mascot character. Why can't we? What makes an appealing mascot? I know it's a weird snail alien with three legs. That's going to, you know, he's got, he's got a flavavav clack around his neck. It's going to, it's going to, it's going to, the kids are going to love it. But, you know, Tojab and Earl have a lot more interesting friends than Sonic.

So I think maybe we're in the bad timeline. That's true. Stuart, where do you stand on this? I'll say, maybe shots fired on that one. Is there a bat with boobs? No, I think there is. So shut up. There might be, actually.

Yeah, there might be. Yeah. Or maybe like a fish person with boobs. There's got to be. There'll be some boobs in there. Right in readers. Yeah. I feel like just given the aesthetics of the Togeam and Earl series,

there definitely have to be, some things in that direction. Anyway, we don't have. Very wholesome, I think. Very wholesome. Wholesome, but, you know, still a little kind of joky. Three pushes it a little more,

but yeah, definitely. I mean, it's not like, one of the things that, I mean, Jeremy, you were talking about it before that, you know, like video games killing, all of that sort of stuff is sort of the commonplace. But that was something specifically, Greg, was like, I don't want that.

He's like, there's so much of that. You can get that anywhere. I'm trying to make something explicitly not that. Thank you. And then Sega said, okay, that was nice, but why don't you do something completely different and go back on all of those ideas for the sequel? Yeah.

So what do we think of Toadjam and Earl, panic on Funkatron, Funkatron, Funkatron, Funkatron. I think it's awesome. I really like it. I love this game. It's great. I'll let me phrase that. I like it for about six levels, and then I never stop because it's so long. I'm just like I'm done with it now.

The levels take so long because you spend so much time combing through every single tree and bush and doing all the minigames and doing the... ...and all that stuff. Yeah, they managed to translate the feel of chaos into a non-randomized game quite well, I think, because it's not just that you're shaking out the trees, collecting presents, some of which run away from you at high speeds, or shaking out the earthlings and their unique kind of attack animations they have like the tourists take photos of you

and then you're standing there all like dazzled and goggled and you're getting possessed by a ghost cow and then standing there going moo which is hilarious by the way all that stuff there's so much personality in there but unfortunately the sacrifice I think is that random nature the problem is it's a bit like Yoshi's Island

and this is no one else is ever going to make the comparison so bear with me I consider this game a bit like Yoshi's Island because to get the good ending you cannot skip anything You have to look in all the walls. You have to do funk scan everywhere to find the invisible doors and stuff. And it's just, after about six levels, I'm exhausted by it with it.

And that's not, it's a great, I really think it's a great game. I think it's maybe too much. They tried to do too much there. That's my opinion of this game. So we're fundamentally failing to address the fact that. Fundamentally. Wow. Amazing.

You should trademark that. Register that domain. We are just kind of skipping right past the fact that this game is presented and plays in a radically different way than the original Tojama and Earl, which was a top-down sort of, you know, three-quarters perspective game where you roamed freely across landscapes. And for Tojiam and Earl, too, it's a side-scrolling platformer. Although, aside from, you know, some of the specific challenges, I think calling it a platformer sort of does it a disservice. And for a long time, my impression of this game was secondhand and negative, but I, you know, preparing for this episode, I really sat down to engage with it for the first time. And it's really different than the original, well, all the other toe jam and Earl games. but it's still very unique in the very toe jam and earl sort of way.

It is not an action platformer in the classic sense. Stuart, you compared it to Yoshi's Island. And it also kind of reminds me of, I don't know, there's a few other platformers that I've played that are very much about meticulously combing spaces and really, really spending time in each screen and just sort of moving in a very measured pace. And this, I kind of feel like it might have been maybe one of the first ones to really do that and pull it off. It's not about just like pure breakneck action.

It's about exploration and discovery, kind of, you know, in the way of something like Milan's Secret Castle, where you're poking through every corner except not stupid and bad, like Milon's Secret Castle. In this game, you have this funk scan I mentioned already where you pause the game in press. I want to say B, and it will show you what's hidden on the screen. It will show you where the hidden things are. So if there's an invisible door... A full decade before Metroid Prime, my God.

Oh, it's so nice. But, like, one of the early, like, what you're doing is you'll find, as you're exploring, I'm not going to say Metroidvania because that, it's not. It's a linear laid-out platformer, but the exploration can sometimes get. give that vibe. Like, you find the Funkaportemus, or like a shrine to Funkaportemus in one of the early levels, and it will, for example, be like, this gives you infinite Super Jars for this stage. Like, it was like an upgrade, you know.

So the game really does reward meticulously combing it, using the funk scan everywhere, trying to warp through everywhere. It's, it's, there's something incredibly intriguing about it, especially when I was a kid. I always wanted to play it because you'd always find some new hidden thing in there. Even just like jumping in the right spot can make a load of. food appear or make a present appear somewhere or you'll press a switch and then it'll make another switch appear and you'll press that switch and then another switch will appear and that will go on for minutes.

It's very bugs bunny, the switches. Press here, yeah. Yeah. Even in the first stage, you can fall into the water and just go explore in the water. You don't die when you fall into the water. You can swim around. But in the first stage, you don't have to. It's just like there's an underwater space that's there and there's some stuff. in there, but it's not stuff that you actually have to complete in order to finish that stage and move on to the next. So, like, even right away, the game is saying, hey, you know,

if you have a hankering for exploration, you can poke around and find stuff, and it might be beneficial, and it might waste your time, but, you know, it's there. Go check it out. I'm sorry to go on and on. I'm very enthused about this one, because, like, the way it knits in the personality is so cool, just like, for example, going to someone's house and just like ringing their doorbell and they'll come out and they'll be like hey well how's it going blah blah blah blah here's a hint for this level or the scenes where you can uh you kind of jam with someone you'll like do a little dance like a rap with them and that's one of the earlier implementations of like rhythm action that i can think of as well i mean i'm sure

there were rhythm games before it but like in the middle of another game just going like hey let's let's do this let's lay down this beat and then the game will grade your performance and you'll get items or whatever all the way down to the fact like to exit a level you've got to jar every single earthly you can't just get to like the exit it will be like you have to get all the earthlings

which is kind of maybe one of the things that's less cool about the game because sometimes that can be quite frustrating when you can't find the last one

that's just in some random bush you've got to check or something but then like you get to the end of the level and the little guy will be there and just be like

do you get everyone you're like yep sure to throw the sack of the people into the ship then you jump on a massive spring that will launch up until you hit the camera

and then you fall back down and land somewhere else on the planet And all of it's just silly and threaded together like a story. Yes, someone mentioned Looney Tunes, and that is absolutely the aesthetic they're going for. And someone also mentioned earlier that this game looks expensive. I mean, it is a beautifully animated game. Colors are so good.

The sprite designs and the animation are phenomenal. Yeah, it does look, you know, almost like a generational leap above the original game. I do think that comes at a cost. I think this is a game that really, you know, for like the modern take on Tojama and Earl, on HD systems with widescreen, I feel like this game design would fare really well because you'd have a lot more space around your characters. I haven't played this one two player, but I can't imagine how well it plays with two people crowded into a single space. It's a little cramped. How does it work? It is fun, but it's more problematic because you can't split up from one another anymore.

It's more like counterlock you in place. So there'll be a sort of like, I want to move on. No, we have to check every single one of these trees. Yeah. The funny thing is, though, is that you get the same animation as if you're walking into a wall. So if you are trying to go into opposite, they both of you are like pushing on the side of the screen, trying to push it in the opposite direction, which plays out really funny. It is fun in multiplayer.

It's just much more prescribed and much more. linear and much more. We have to do things this way. It's the only way to succeed because the randomization element is missing. It does let you split up on a couple of things. If you do like the fungus jumping competition thing,

it'll let one of you do that at a time. And the hyperfunk zone. Only one of you can go in. Yeah, thank you. Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, right. All right. But again.

Oh, also, Stuart mentioned two things. I wanted to go back to The doorbell thing, my favorite thing to do as a child, you can keep ringing the doorbell, and the characters get increasingly annoyed with you. And they're like, Togam, don't you have something to do, right? Like, are he supposed to be getting the humans right now? Just keep bothering them.

And actually, I just realized this recently that the, like, the boom, shakha clap is actually a through line from the original. It has the original game in its, like, the thing we can play, the soundtrack and stuff like that. It also gives you, like, eight audio samples. Oh, yeah. Which are boom, three of them are the boom chikah and clap.

But then you can also, there's, like, a one that says, like, toe jam and big earl, and you can just, like, make your own little audio tracks with it. But, yeah, it's a fun through line that's, I think, also made it to the third one in that, like, the little rhythm weapon that you have. It might be worth mentioning, even that, of course, you just have, but, like, the music sort of avoids the pitfalls of all. lot of Mega Drive and Genesis music, and I'm a fan of that sound, but you know when it's done badly, it sounds like shit, we all know that. But because this game is so heavy on kind of

samples and the kind of, almost slap-based kind of sound like Seinfeld-ass music, it just works. It sounds really good. They put a lot of effort into that music, and the tunes that return from the first game and for the second one have been sort of spruced up nicely as well. I do like the fact that the Boom Shakar clap thing is like, this is so minimal, but boom and clap are on B and C, respectively, and the Shakar with the two A's. It's just a nice little bit of interface I enjoyed. I like letters. Yeah.

Yeah, FHF7 handles the bass sound really, really well. I can say the soundtracks at both of these games is, they're some of the best on the Genesis. I really like them. And just the compositions alone are really good. There's been some fantastic covers of them, just really funky stuff over the years. and I just want to throw out that there are some great remixes of the Tocham and Earl soundtrack

with just like other, just mashed up with other songs that you can find online. Like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme mashed up with one of the Togemon Earl songs. I'm like, wow, this just works so much better than it has any right to me. Is that Silva Gunner doing that? No, it's just some random YouTube channel like, I don't know, 14 years ago. um i have been got by silver gone on like 50 times i'll be like hey this sounds a bit oh you motherfucker just every time now this is a story all about how my life got flipped upside down and i'd like to take a man and just sit right there i'll tell you how i became

the prince of the tom-com bellet uh but we also mentioned the earthlings of it and i guess It's worth noting that, yeah, this game, you're on Funkatron, which is where you ended the first game. You got like a little bonus stage where you could wander around and talk to the aliens. And now the aliens are sort of front and center, but also a bunch of aliens or a bunch of humans stowed away on your ship. So now you have to go catch them in little glass jars, which is hysterical because you're just pelting them with jars until they finally go inside one of them. they're like the little cartoon eyes blinking and you pick them up and throw them in a sack

You have to pick them up too Or else they'll break back out I think it kind of dodges this sort of combat focus in a sense Because like the jars are almost like homing It's so slapdash Like if you hit the B button while there's an earthling on the screen You're probably going to hit it So it does still become more about exploration

And then the actual jarring is almost like a The formality Especially as you can use the Funkfack or the panic button if you really have to. The panic button is great, by the way, every game should have that. Yeah. I just realized what game evokes Panic on Funkatron for me, and it's Luigi's Mansion, where you're exploring thoroughly everywhere, you're scanning, you're capturing things

and trying to, you know, collect them all. That's, like, I feel almost like Luigi's Mansion is, you know, Panic on Funkatron as survival of horror as cartoon. Yeah, humor front and center, too. Like, it's really got a through line there. That is actually really spot on. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would have to say, like, if you are a fan of Luigi's Mansion and my God, why wouldn't you be? This is a game worth trying out because it presents things in a different way. It has a different sense of humor and tone. But it does kind of scratch that like, I think, Stuart, you call it a tidying up kind of game. Like, you just got to tidy everything up. I mean, the game is sort of friendly in the sense that you do have like an arrow on the screen

telling you which direction the nearest earthling is and then it will flash red if you're in the big in the area and even then sometimes it's hard to find them but it does make the combat less of a concern because you can get super jars that will instantly jar anything in one hit as well

and they're not that hard to find and as long as you're not just spamming the jars everywhere like a maniac which I have to admit I do I am doing you you're not really going to have trouble with the enemies I mean the only ones that could be problematic there's like the tourists that take photos of you but if you press down, you cover your eyes

so that it doesn't stun you. Another little detail that I love, incidentally. But, you know, it's a very simple combat game. And I think that they kept the focus in the right place. It's just that it's, for me, it's just a bit too much. It's it too long. Having saved plates in the modern versions for it, like that's a bit of a blessing.

It means you can take a break, come back. Although there's never passwords, weren't there for this game. Yeah, they were passwords. Yeah, I was going to say this has passwords, yeah. Yeah. I think I just got over it by the time I was like stage seven and the levels were really complex, and I realized there were still like eight more levels. The levels get really long, like, in the back half.

The last level is like, it's almost like four independent levels all stitched together. It's, it's too much. Good value for money, I guess, if you're a kid, but I've got to patience for that anymore, unfortunately. I don't know if it's just a Siggy Genesis thing or what, but the level structure and the feel of them reminds me a little bit of Echo the Dolphin, where everything is kind of, you know, intricate and kind of, you know, expansive, yet at the same time, kind of complex to work your way through. I don't know. Maybe that's just me being superficial. But you do get stages around the third or fourth stage where it suddenly becomes not just integral to finding secrets, but to even exit, you're going to have to go into invisible walls. You're going to have to teleport

through the walls and, like, find your way through almost invisible mazes to get where you need to go and go into complex underwater areas that will bring you up into different areas of the stage and do these switch puzzles that will make a platform up here somewhere, maybe even off-screen. It's, you know, I mean, I remember getting stuck for a long time, so I didn't know you could super jump for a long time by holding down and then jumping. What? I didn't know you could do that. Oh, that's why I couldn't make that jump.

Yeah, that's why. Yeah. So like Mario 2? I have always, what I've, dokey, dokey, what was it again? Dokey dokey something? Oh, yeah. Doki-Doki Funkatron. Yeah.

Sir, you just blew my mind. I've always used, the panic button makes you jump higher, so I've always held on to my panics to get for those jumps that are too high. Well, it just seems like such a simple game that I wouldn't normally think to do that. And I think I just ended up going like, right, I've just got to look at try and find the manual. Oh, I see. That's how you do it.

Yeah. I remember the Super Jump animation's a little different, too. Like, they're really flinging themselves up. It's really funny. All right. Well, I know what I'm doing after this. yeah you mentioned like the levels and those were designed someone put this in the nose those were designed by evan wells

who went on to work on gex crash and jack and jackster which is quite the resume the murderer's row of mascot platform games i feel like gex is the game of 2024 so that's very timely oh boy i gotta say i can i can see the linkage between this and gex in terms of like stage design although this i feel like i like the stages in this better So I have to ask, not having spent a lot of time with this game, what's up with the parking meters?

I could have read the manual, but I didn't. So what is up with the parking meters? They're essentially switches except you have to spend one coin to use them, and a lot of the time you'll spend a coin only for another parking meter to swing up that will require another coin. And in a sense, it's almost like a gamble of like, is it going to be worth doing this? Because sometimes it's totally not. Other times you'll unlock a door to the hyperfunk zone, which I'm not doing that voice again. which we've got to talk about the hyperfunk zone though it's so good it's so good it's pretty great I was going to say real quick also you don't know how many of those meters you have to put in

and there's a chance you might run out of coins before you can finish it too and then you're just left with like oh I just wasted all my money and didn't get anything although they are the only they're the only thing that you could use coins for is those parking meters there's nothing like a shop or anything like that it's all just those yeah so yeah um hyperfung zone but you need yeah the hyperfund zone is the best thing ever. I've got to talk about the hyperfunk zone. I'm so hyped about the hyperfunk zone. It's a bonus

stage on rails, auto run, side scroll left to right, except the graphics have gone weird, sketchy, like, I don't even have to describe it. It's like... Super squiggle vision. Yeah, super squiggle vision, like tripping balls, kind of, like sort of thing, where you're

running through these stages that are all over these undulating hills as your timer is counting down. And the only thing you can do is press a button to become intangible. Like, you'll shrink down into just like a squiggle. And the reason you do that is to avoid these walls that will stop you and slow you down

or exits to the hyperfunction zone that will take you back to the main level. And if you're able to do that and successfully dodge them, you can get item after item after item. And it's not randomized. You can memorize it. But you end up going so quickly because you need to be moving so insanely quickly in order not to run out of time,

that you end up just blurring through in a flash And what you're most likely to do is basically press the button at the wrong time, miss all the items, and end up getting walked back into the stage. That's what I tend to do. Yeah, I have saved stated through it. And, like, I don't understand how any human could have the means the reactions of which it's actually necessary in order to succeed. But it's just a little bonus area, really. I was able to do it when I was 10.

I've only managed to get, like, half partway through the third stage, which I think is the third is the last one. See, it's divided up into, like, three segments. There's a couple different things you can run into. There's, like, the weird squiggle wall, Stuart mentioned, that slows you down. There's a lightning bolt, which makes you go really, really fast, almost uncontrollably fast. There's, like, portal cutouts that, like, send you flying back to the real world. There's clocks that give you extra time, and then there's all the presents and stuff that give you all the items. It's great.

I was just going to say I was going to mention some of the other mini games Yeah go for that Yeah So I mentioned some of the others Like the push button puzzles and stuff like that And the beatbox There's also the

There's these like patches of fungus That are around on the ground Usually there'll be like a parking meter by one And you put it in And it drops you from the sky And like three little judges pop up in the bottom corner Like holding scorecards And you like do all these

flips and acrobatic stuff. And then after a certain amount of time, it ends, and they all hold up, like, a score based on how well you did. And you get items, depending on the quality of it. You've got to land on your feet. That's the, I think you can, I'm not sure if you can trick by landing on your back and then flipping back onto your feet again. But you can, as long as you, like, I think as long as you keep bouncing,

because you can land on your back and, like, bounce back up and keep going. As long as you don't stop bouncing or go off the fungus. And they get increasingly difficult. too. There's some where they have like small ones and there's like a split in between so you can like bounce back and forth between them. And then towards the end there's one and it's just like this big

and you essentially have to do it like the jumping mechanic works a little bit like Castlevania and that if you at the top of your jump if you haven't been holding left or right you will fall straight down. So you essentially just have to let yourself get all the way to the top and then start spinning on your way down

because if you try to do it beforehand it just sends you careening off the end. It is not to similar to one of the mini-games in the Aquatic Games starring James Pond. Thank you very much. Well, it isn't. All right. So overall, a very different game than the original Tojama and Roll, but it's kind of nice to hear everyone so positive on it.

After years of seeing nothing but people dumping on it and how it's not enough like the original. Yeah, it's refreshing. It is flawed, but the sheer sort of joy of it. it does override those flaws for me. Like, I can always play it for a bit and always have a good time. I don't have to finish it. It's like the first game. I don't have to finish it.

It's just the fact that it's not random now, obviously, is a slight knock against it. But I love it. I love this game. It's one of my favorite games, I would say. In defense of not finishing it, if you don't, so like there's this one other collectible throughout the game, Lamont's favorite things.

To get the real ending, you have to get all of them, and there's a lot of them. If you do get them all, there's like a really funny scene at the end where Tojam is like, trying to convince Lamont to come out of the funk zone back to Funkatron. And he's like, I got all your favorite things. And he's like listing them off one by one. And they're all just like really weird, bizarre things. And Lamont's like, oh, I love that. And just like reacting very positively.

If you don't get them, uh, you just like get to the end. They're like, hey, all the earthlings are gone. And then like the color like goes black and white again. And makes the like, uh, noise. And then like flashes color on and off a few times. And then the game just ends. Like, that's it. So the whole thing is that, like, what the humans there, like, Lamont's funk power is, like, draining, uh, which is like what's draining the color out of the world, uh, which happens a couple times throughout the game where like the background will, you'll hear like a hongk honk sound and it goes into black and white. So yeah, if, if you don't get the good ending,

the ending is really kind of bleak. And of course, if you finish the stage without getting the item, then you've missed it. You need to restart. You know, you can absolutely tell they added that honking sound effect because someone was like, oh, this TV is screwing up. They're like, uh, we should probably do something with that. Yeah. At first time it happened, I was like, what, uh, what's going on? But then they dress it like five seconds after it happens. Everyone's like, what happened to the color?

Like, oh, good. It's just them being artsy. Not my 1970s, uh, RF TV. Yeah, they're screens up in the black and white. That's also taken from a jane. pond game, isn't it? Tut, tot. It's taken from the

worst ending of Castlevania, too. Thank you. Ah, okay. All right, so following up on the greater success of Panicon Funkatron, Sega and the creators of Togemonerol

naturally created another game, which was a subgame of another game. I've never played it because I don't own a miniser, so someone help me out here. Nobody does. Yeah, I don't either.

Ready, yeah, ready aimed tomatoes. It's a very simple game. It's essentially just like a shooting gallery. The screen just slowly goes from left to right. There's a bunch of humans running around. You've got to shoot tomatoes at them. And you have to get a certain amount of points to advance to the next stage. It's very basic, but it definitely has, like, the toe jam mineral charm is very much there.

It's got the music's there. the sounds, seeing humans getting splatted with tomatoes is funny. I don't know how much time you could actually spend playing it, but it's a neat little, a neat little oddity. I mean, that's pretty much on brand for any Sega light gun game. They're all very slight. I say this having played many of them recently on Master System. Gangster Town, not so slight, but the rest, slight.

Very much a we have a light gun too. Just maintaining the through line of history. I don't mean to be fastidious, but what? Wouldn't this have come out before, Panicom Funkertran? This was like December 92, wasn't it? The menace? It's somewhere in there. Is it?

Oh, I thought it came out. Oh, maybe. I apologize from my facetious nature. No, I, no, it's good. No, I mean, we need someone to be anal retentive so we can avoid the anal retentiveness in the comments. Thank you. For saving me. I do all the hate comments up front, so nobody else has to.

We mentioned it, so they can't get us for that. Yeah. You know that British guy. He sucks. It doesn't know anything. Except the proper chronology of Toe Jam and Earl sub-games. And lots of stuff about James Bond. Yes, which are apparently the same thing as To-Jam and Earl. So we move ahead into a new millennium because To-Jam and Earl took a nap throughout the entire 32-bit generation. In fairness, they were tied to Sega systems, and there wasn't a lot to do on Sega for 32-bit if you were, you know, a West.

developer. Japan, different, but Saturn, not so much of a big deal here. And then Dreamcast wasn't really around long enough for Tojam and Earl to make a showing. So we move along to the third party era of Sega history where they said, okay, we wave our little flag, no more consoles, we'll just make stuff for Xbox and GameCube. And they did. So if I'm not mistaken, Tojaman Earl 3, mission to Earth, Earth, Earth, began as a Dreamcast game, but then ended up on Xbox, is that correct? Yes, that's correct.

So, like I said, the Dreamcast wasn't around long enough. R-I-P. The Dreamcast proto, you can play it. It's out there. It is. It is interesting, just for the record. It will crash eventually, but it will be. I guess we should talk.

Yeah, so with this game, they wanted to essentially, again, try to go back to the roots of the original game. Right. So you have Tojiam and Earl. That's the legend of Zelda of the series. You have Panic on Funkatron, the Zelda 2 of the series. You have Ready Aimed Tomatoes, the Link's Crossbow training of the series.

And then you have Mission to Earth, a link to the past of the Tojama and Earl series. Did I get that correct? Yeah, and we got the chronology wrong too. Has this become a touchstone of video game design? the like kind of the the hallowed platonic ideal of video game design that people hold a link to the past up to be? Yes, yes it has.

Let's not look into that at any level. As long as there are no follow-up questions, yes. I mean, I would maybe like, if I had ever played this, if I'd ever had the ability, the capacity to play this, then I'd maybe be able to agree with more detail. But unfortunately, it's locked to the Xbox and I've never owned on Xbox and you can't emulate it, I don't think.

So, bummer, because I'd love to play this. You can. Oh, you can. Okay. Well, I'm off to do that, though. I thought Xbox emulation was still, like, one of the great frontiers of emulation. It's definitely up there in difficulty with, like, PS3 and stuff, but it's definitely come a long way.

I was able to play with emulation. I will again express my amazement over this, because Xbox, like, the whole thing was it was off-the-shelf part. You think it would be so easy to. emulate. And yet, something weird happened. You're telling me that right now, I could, in theory, go and get an Xbox

animator and then get hold of the ISO or whatever for this game. And then within 24 hours, I could remove it. Yeah, you got it. You did. Yeah, yeah. But could you complete this game in 24 hours? I feel like you might be selling yourself short there, Stuart.

I could complete it twice in 24 hours. Probably beat it multiple times in 24 hours, yeah. But, yeah. So they were trying to sort of hark Back and back to the original in an updated 3D fashion, again, Sega sort of stuck their nose in, being the like 3D platformer mascot era, they sort of shoehorned them into having like a hub world with unlockable levels. I mean, Floyd and Brothers worked out so well for them, so clearly they wanted to just build on that strength. Yeah. Secret Floyd and Brothers podcast.

It's all Sonic Adventure once. fault, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so it ends up very, like, you know, like banjo-kazooey kind of stuff where you have to get X number of items before you can unlock the next level and such. The individual gameplay actually does sort of like individual level moment to moment does sort of actually play out a lot like the original game in that it's just a lot of walking around. You're trying to find X number of things or very specific things to finish the level. There's some humans that are very annoying, but they're sort of secondary to your...

That's realistic. Well, it depends on the stage, because, you know, the whole premise of this is that you've been sent out back to Earth on a religious crusade by Lamont to convert the humans to funkiness. Yeah, there's... Yeah, so the one, Lamont's record collection has gone missing, and you're tasked with five. finding that. And he's like, while you're down there, would you mind converting all of the humans to funkology? Like, just like kind of a sly ulterior motive in there. This actually is a bit of a throwback to the second game originally was supposed to be about, I think, To Jam and are like finding their missing music collection before it was converted to a 2D

platformer. So in Toadjam and Earl 3, are you riding around in pairs on bikes while wearing a white shirt and handing out pamphlets. Do you have a minute to talk about the wonderful world of funkology? Funk. Yeah. Please subscribe to the funk tower. I've heard that the mont

disappears people. Do you have a funk-foo move, which, depending on how strong it is, will take a certain number of hits to convert humans, or maybe not, if you're not a high enough level or a certain type of earthling. You have these, like, notes that you can shoot at

people so you have like a ranged attack um and then yeah there's this like a oe rhythm one where you like puts out a jukebox and you get to do like the uh boom chic clap thing again and if uh like you convert uh the humans that are sort of like standing around you into funkology so once they're converted uh they sort of leave you alone um and stop bothering you except for the boogeyman they keep coming back uh which is unfortunately they sometimes they will give you stuff too once they're converted like yeah it doesn't happen that often You can talk to them and stuff. The doorbell, doorbell ringing is also back.

You are like trick or treating. Everyone has a bag. They like ring the doorbell and like hold out this bag. Ask for, ask for money. It's really funny. Or you like items or whatever. It's really cute because everyone's like, oh, your costume is so nice. It is interesting the things they pull in from Tojab and Earl 2,

even though this is very much more in the vein of the first game. Because you even have some of the platform. because it's a 3D platformer, more or less. I don't think it's particularly good because it's that era of 3D platforming where it's a little bit janky, but it works as well as anything could be expected in 2002. There's also a level-up mechanic in this. Like, there's a level-up mechanic in the first games.

They're just, like, point-based, and I think they just give you more health or something like that. In this one, you have to find the carrot man. who was in the original game, he identified presents for you for money. And in this one, he can do that, and then he can also level you up once you have enough points. And once you've leveled up, your attack improves, and you can more readily convert humans with your funk fu, which is sort of like a little short-range wave. And yeah, there are some enemies that are resistant to it, even once you're a high level. So in those ones, you just have to make sure you have notes on hand or a specific item that you can use to convert them, which is really awful towards the late game.

But if you're playing it with two people, usually one of you has enough gear that you can make it work. Some of the gear, they also, if it's like stage critical, they keep giving you. There's like, it'll be lying around on the ground. There's a lot of ones where you need like spring shoes to actually get anywhere. And, of course, if you miss it, if it was just an idea you'd picked up, you'd be S-O-L. But there'd be, like, a couple of them lying on the ground so you can just keep picking them back up. So I think we've kind of failed to mention the fact that this is not just To-Jam and Earl. It is To-Jam and Earl and another character who is newly introduced here, if I'm not mistaken.

Justice for Leticia. Leticia, yeah. Luanda, I think, is in the second game. and she comes back in the back in the groove. But I don't think Letitia's mention in the first. She's in back in the groove. Yeah, she's not. I mean, she's not. I don't think she's mentioned in the first

two games. Oh, no. Yeah. She's new for this. Luanda's there throughout all of it. But Latisha, I don't, I think she's new for three. So how does Leticia differ from Tojam and Earl aside from being a lady? But they just, all the characters have their own stats in this one well, more defined than the original, um, different speeds, different funkfoo, different luck, different health, stuff like that. So she just has her own sort of set of stats.

I think she's like the fastest where toe jam is sort of in the middle and then Earl being the sort of big slow guy. The girl character being the fastest and jumping the highest is the cliche, isn't it? As it is on Sega platforming games, yeah. I want to just note this because I, again, I haven't played this. I've only watched it. I love the fact that when you select your character, they do like a little. freestyle. It's so cool.

Like, each character's got a little rap where they tell you about themselves. It's just kind of cute. I liked that. Yeah, that's great. And through Xbox Live, which was newly debuted at that point, there were a couple DLC characters you could get Geek Jam, Earlebot, and Sotechie, which also had their own stats mixed up even more. Not to be mistaken for Sudecki.

Oh, God. That's correct. Did the DLC characters have their own freestyle raps as well? I don't think they do, but They do have, like, really goofy voice clips. So you do get that. It's funny. You get to see, there's a guy who's just, like, standing around shirtless wearing, like, one of those, like, advertising things over his shoulder with, like, an Xbox Live logo on it.

Like a sandwich pod. Yeah. You go up and talk to him. I think he buys, uh, I think he can buy, I think he has levels also. There was, like, extra levels that he can, you can download from him. There's a couple stages you can get through him as well. See, because I never had an Xbox, that's not always. plays my mind that they were doing dLC the soft ps2 era that's kind of crazy to me

yeah they were definitely up early on that and i believe all that stuff there's like an xbox demo disc that has it on there too because again they couldn't guarantee that everybody had oh that's cool internet so you can still yeah you can still get this stuff pretty readily even if you don't want to uh mod your xbox the names'll teach you and i'm in the house now breaking it down the best i know how you know i'm new But I noticed much Yo, something was missing here The female touch

Gotta get busy Gotta do it good Y'all stay back Because the Tisha is in the hood So I'm looking here And sadly, it does not appear that Tojam and Earl

Mission to Earth is playable on Xbox series Backward Compatibilities No, it's not That bones me out Because I would definitely have got on that It's the big, egregious gap from all of these old Sega games, I feel like.

Yeah. Because, like, Panzer-Dragoon Order got backwards compatibility. I forget what the name of the other one was that they did on Xbox, but I feel like that at... Gun Valkyrie. Didn't Jetset Radio Future? Yeah. A Jetset Radio Future. It's sad a bummer, because on the 360, you can get, or you could get Tojam 1 and 2, right?

Yeah, but not three. But not three. Not three. Yeah. Three, like, it's got this reputation, and I feel like that's probably a factor. Yeah. What is that reputation? I think it's definitely has a negative reputation as sort of being like, I mean, until I actually went and played it, I had the impression of it that it was just generic, like, 3D platformer.

And that I, because of that, I was like, I have this theory that if you grew up with an N64, you really like collectathon 3D platformers. And if you didn't, you hate them. But I didn't. So I have no interest in playing that. It wasn't until I learned that it actually has a lot of the stuff from the original that I had sort of any interest in it. I actually was very frustrated because I went back and poked around in the Dreamcast version. And the Dreamcast version would have been amazing. It would have been, I think, just absolutely perfect.

It's so close to the original. Yeah. It's basically like the original. but in but looks and moves around like three does currently and yeah no levels it's all just sort of like one continuous thing with the randomization and all that yeah it's very streamlined yeah um so i mean i i do like this game um the the personality and the characters and the humor is vol very much still there um the soul sisters whenever they chime in always makes me laugh a lot um The characters, they have a lot of funny lines, but as it is in this era, you start to hear them, like, 800 times after five minutes.

I feel like the addition of voice acting doesn't really do it any favors in that respect, because I didn't really need to hear them talk. It's just kind of like, I don't know, it's like when you play a friggin' a bug's life on the PS1 and the stupid hand doesn't shut up that grain the whole time. It seems a bit like that here, based on the footage I watched where, no matter what you do, they've got some crappy little comment about it, and it's just like, Oh, shut up. Yeah. They talk a lot. Yeah. Some, like, the interactions that they have with the humans are usually pretty funny.

Yeah. But the thing is that you just keep hearing them over and over and over again. So it starts to tire. I don't know. I got to say, Earl constantly saying, I guess I better check my presence always made me laugh. Because it's just like the weirdest line reading. It's really funny. There's a couple of things in these games that always, as a kid, the biggest things were always the doorbell and getting hit in the head.

with the garbage. I would just sit there. I would turn on the kiddie mode and just stand under the thing, holding it up and just watch it. It is funny. What is kitty mode? Kitty mode is a feature in the second one

that essentially makes it so you can't die. If your life runs out, it just instantly refills. I think it lets you play like the first five or six levels and then it just boots you back to the curb. Oh, I never got that far in it, so I didn't, yeah. Yeah, well, it's enough. That's enough of the games.

Yeah, it's fine. It's actually not a bad way to play it, too. No, it's really not. I do think it was a mistake to hide the randomness mode for Togam and Earl 3 behind finishing the game, because it is a pretty long game, and it's on Xbox, so it does save automatically, I think, automatically. You can save it any time. You can save pretty readily, yeah. Yeah.

Basically, whenever you want. And with two players, it's a pretty fun time to get through it, but with one player, it's such a long game. I could not have finished this game with my level of patience if I hadn't gone through it with a friend of mine. Like all the other toe gemerneral games, multiplayer is where it's at. Unfortunately, this did not have online play because it was a 2002 game, and that really wasn't really... So the Xbox, I mean, this is a game with three playable characters more if you can count the DLC. The Xbox had four controller ports for Halo. Oh, two?

Was it only two? No, no, no, I don't know. It was four, but this game's only, I was, yeah, this game's only, but this game should absolutely be three player. It's absurd that it's not. Like, you can't put three people on the front and then only have it to be two players against the law. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if, like, the frame rate would have started chugging or if there was some technical reason behind it, because physically, yeah, the Xbox could absolutely do that. Yeah, it's definitely unfortunate. Well, now, now that I know this is emulated, but I can finally play it, and then we can do a podcast about two-cham-n-all series, and I can give an informed opinion. I do want to also note the final boss of the game, the anti-funk, once you've gotten through the end of it. And in the finished game, it's just like a giant evil skull, which it's cute.

It's very, like, stylized. But there are some beta builds of this game, including one from like three weeks before it went gold. And in that one, it's just basically finished. Other than this one change, the anti-funk has sort of a KKK hood. a Ku Klux Klan shape to his head which I think Scott you added in like a

quote from was it Greg Johnson about that Yeah it was apparently It was that wasn't the intention But once they sort of realized it They're like oh actually this is funny And we like it But Sega was like

Absolutely not Yeah that really is That's really telling of the time that they saw that and went, yeah, let's leave it in. Yeah. Well, we're like, the better villain. Yeah, what better villain for Togey and Earl to defeat, then? But, yeah, the final boss fight is, I mean, all the boss fights in this game, they're fine.

They're a little unnecessary. I think they're very sort of emblematic of, again, sort of the issue in that. Like, I like the changes that Sega had them made, not all of them were bad. There's definitely some good stuff in them, but I think the things that were sort of most detractive. to them are the ones that I think were trying to, like, make sure kids weren't, like, afraid or confused of these games. So, like, with two, you know, turning it into a 2D platform or something that kids were a lot more familiar with and that was sort of the ilk of the era. And then three, you know, they felt like they had to make it into, like, these stage worlds and there's, and there's, yeah, like, each level has a boss and there's, like a boss at the end of the game. The first game, there's no boss, like we were talking about before.

The game just ends, which I think. I think there were any bosses in the second game either. No, I don't think so either. I think it's just collecting all the humans. And that feels very atypical for a game of that era to just not have a boss and just sort of like it just ends at some point when you've done everything. So, yeah, the boss fights are definitely a bit slow. The combat is the worst, I think, aspect of the game.

Your character has like this, they like stop moving when you try to do the funk-funk-foo move, which just sort of stilts it a bit that you can't keep running and swing it. If you could, I think it'd be a lot breezier. But, oh well. It's cool. It's cool. You should try it out if you can get this game running. And if you can't, there's always one more

ToJam and Earl game, which came out like five years ago now. Has it been the long? I think it has, yeah. Back in the groove. Back in the groove. I kickstarted this. And this is actually the Toad Jem and Earl game that I've spent the most time with because it's, you know, readily accessible and has a lot of the modern niceties

that you want in a game, you know, quality of life features. But it's pretty much the original Toadjam and Earl on a modern system with modern quality of life features, which that's not a bad thing. I think it's pretty sweet. I went back to it earlier today and tried it out again, and I thought it was a lot of fun, although it has actually had a quite big patch

since I last played it, I think. Yeah, it's pretty much the original, except the only thing I don't like about it is I don't like the kind of tween animation that everything has, so it makes it look cheap, but it doesn't affect the gameplay, so I was happy with it. Basically, Tojam and R, plus quality of life,

plus a bunch more random features and things from the second game that they brought in, like messing around shaking trees and looking through pressing buttons and all that stuff has been playing. I think it's just a really nice mashup of the first two games. I think it's cool. Yeah, it's got four player also and online,

online multiplayer, and you can drop in, drop out. It's really, like, they basically just went back to the first game and just like, how can we remake this with all of the modern niceties and, like, things from the original, the rest of the games that sort of everyone liked.

Yeah. And they really put it into a really nice package. I actually, the art style, I actually kind of, like, it has this sort of, like, flat, like, almost. I don't know. I kind of like it, but it's very much different than, like, back in two, which, I can't, I just can't get over how pretty that game was. Especially, like, the areas with, like, the flowers, the flower petals. Oh, yeah. When you have, like, the witch dropping the, God, that witch is so annoying, who drops the, like, laughing powder on you.

And then just, like, the chuckle they make them. It was very funny. But it has, there's this beautiful parallax and, like, lit, sunlit sky and, like, all of these really bright, popping colors and it's just smooth. Just such a good-looking game. For Back in the Groove, they bring in some stuff even from three, don't they? Like, the wise man leveling you up instead of just, like, being a point system. And, yeah, I had a blast with this. I think that, honestly, as much as I do enjoy the original, I would say play this over it for a more, a much breezier,

experience while you're still getting kind of the same gameplay, because it's still not really aggressive, it's still more about evasion and a set for use of presence, although the first game is still fun. It's still worth a go. It's just that this is a very strong contemporary version of it, I think. It's already got online play, so that makes

it significantly easier. You don't have to set up anything. And it has four playable characters, is that correct? Are there, like, DLC characters now? I think there's about 9. I think there's more. Yeah, there's like an earl, there's like a throwback earl, there's all kinds of stuff. And they have stats again and whatnot. Yeah, I feel like there's, I can't remember how many characters.

This game has had so many updates, even since the last time I played it. So I think they finally settled down on all the updates, but there's a lot here, even if you haven't played it in a while. Yeah, my understanding is it did all right, this one. Yeah, no, yeah, it was a Kickstarter. It was very successful. And, yeah, no involvement by Sega on this one. No, yeah, they did it all themselves, which, you know, it was nice they got total freedom and finally got to make the game that they, you know, wanted to all this time. Because Sega doesn't actually own Toe Jam and Earl is the weird thing here.

Like, they published the first three games, and they were, like, the big publishing partner for them. But it's also why Toe Jammer Earl didn't show up in one of those Sega and Sonic All-Star Racing games. because I remember hearing that they wanted to do that on the Sega side, but they couldn't work it out with Greg Johnson in time to include them. If you buy the Sega Mega, sorry, I hate to say Mega Drive, Genesis, Sega Mega Drive classics on the PlayStation 4 or a Switch or something, I'm reasonably sure that they're on there on. They're Toy Jam 1 and 2, am I wrong?

Is that just on PC? I can't remember. No, they're there, I'm pretty sure. Right, cool. One is on Nintendo Switch online. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. One is, two isn't. Yeah. But one is, which is great, because you can also,

you can play multiplayer with that, too, online, which is fantastic. That is awesome. I mean, I just, I know that it's on the PC version of Mega Drive Classics, but I don't know if that's because they're available separately on there or something, or if they packaged it in. Because I'm just trying to find whether or not, like, these games are available in a contemporary service and preserved, because Switch online, you can't, you know,

that one that goes offline, it's going to be gone forever. but yeah they're on both they're on both versions they're on console on Steam so that you can get them on PS4 on Xbox on Switch right now basically which is cool yeah it's only tow gem mural three that's currently getting screwed over another banished game yeah one thing uh the amount of like humans and presence that they've built up uh over the years

um is pretty staggering and the amount that you get to see in the uh in the last game is fun because it's basically like a full through line of everything that they've done up to this point sort of cramped together back in the original gameplay. How many presents are in Back in the Groove? I actually didn't look that one. Three has too many. It's like 30 or something like that.

I'm not sure about Back Into the Groo. Also, Back in the Groove introduces like broken presents that might explode in your face if you open them and amped presents that are more powerful versions of the presence, which sometimes is really bad because you can get like an amped rain cloud, and it will just destroy you for about five minutes straight. What does a rain cloud do, if you don't mind spoiling it? It follows you around and electrocutes you with lightning,

though it can also get enemies as well if you're sort of clear of it, I believe. There are a lot. There are 64 presents in Toe Jam and Earl back in the groove. Wow. That is a lot. Yeah. So do you think there's room for a toejammin' Earl 5, or do you think this concept has been explored as thoroughly as need be? I mean, back in the group definitely feels like sort of the capstone on the original concept.

I don't really know where you could take. sort of the original concept from there, at least in sort of that 2D space. The only thing I would want, and I know I've mentioned it already, is if they were to do back in the groove Redux, but have the budget to do it with Sprites rather than, like, you know, pixel art rather than with tweened kind of animation. And, you know, I don't hate the way the game looks by any means. I think it fits the vibe, but I just wish that it was better animated because it just looks cheap when you're moving around. It's a shame. But honestly, yeah, I don't know where you go from here without just doing a full-scale gameplay change,

we're doing a second side scroller, which you know I'd be up for. That's where I was going to go was that, yeah, the other two games, though, you know, a 2D platform or a 3D platformer, I think there's room for some exploration and stuff in there. I think the two would definitely benefit from some tighter level design, but also something that's, you know, probably wasn't possible back in the day, but has come up a lot now is like procedurally generated 2D levels and stuff like dead cells and all those, other sort of rogue, like, light games that have become popular as of late. I'm usually not that big of a fan of them in that context, at least like in the Metrovania context, because I typically like those to be specifically designed and sort of orchestrated. But for something like this, I think it's a good fit

in that they could have, you know, procedurally generated 2D levels with earthlings spattered all over and different types. They could add more kinds of jars and all different, you know. There's a lot of things they could do with that, that I think you could have split screen yeah like Jeremy mentioned also higher resolution more zoomed out you know it would help that game a lot I think yeah and I know and split screen as Kevin said that would be a perfected version of Panicom Funkron for me I think and I would love that I would be all about that for real I very much would enjoy that all right well any final thoughts

or do you think we're done here okay we're done all right yeah No thoughts, brain empty. Okay, excellent. That is the way it should be at the end of a retronauts recording session because that means you have emptied your brain into our listeners' ears, which they may not have signed up for, but here they are. So thanks, everyone, for taking the time to talk about toe jam, Earl, Letitia, and other assorted weird aliens who like to get funky.

Peebo, yes, exactly. Peebo, right? Peebo, Riceon. Exactly. This has been an episode of Retronauts, which you, the person listening to this, can enjoy on the internet in a variety of places, but most importantly, through Patreon, patreon.com slash Retronauts, because that is how we afford to eat. It's really cool. So please support us eating by making more podcasts. We will do both. We love doing both. We love making podcasts and also we love survival. So, yeah, check us out. There are cool rewards for subscribing to Patreon. You get every episode a week early at a higher bitrate quality than on the public feed with no advertisements.

That's always good. For $5 a month, you also get a ton of bonus content, like weekly bonus content, more retro stuff than you could possibly hope to absorb. That is our promise to you. We are oversaturating your brain with our words. Yeah, retronauts. Patreon.com slash retronauts. That's the spiel. Scott, as someone who has supported Retronauts through Patreon and showed up on the podcast as a result of that, where can we find you on the internet?

Yeah, you can find me mostly away from Twitter these days on blue sky. find me there at harry's video games.com and on the website harrysvidiogames.com. All my stuff is linkable through the last portals. I have to ask, who is Harry? Harry is my grandpa. Oh, okay. Yeah, he's the one that got me into video games. He was playing Zelda before I was born and stuck a controller in my hand when I was three.

And there I went. All right. That's awesome. And speaking of awesome, Stuart, just kidding. Oh, no, actually, Stuart, please, yeah, no. You're not so awesome. It would be awesome if you would tell us how we can find you on the internet. Oh, well, if you go to limited run games.com, you can find my tremendous book,

all games are good, which does not feature to Jamminol, to my knowledge, unfortunately, but it should. How did you overlook that one? I just don't know, you know. I just, I got it. You can only fit so much funk in the book, and there's a funk quote. and it needs to be divided between the different games. And if I put that in, it would be all funked up. You know, that would be a problem.

So, yeah, all games are good. If you want to read a bunch of opinions by a guy, me, who grew up and played all the wrong games at all the wrong times, and had it last, you know, get it read. And also, you can find me on Twitter and the other one at Stupacabra, or just Stuart Gip on Blue Sky, although I don't post on there as much. I'm not used to it yet. I don't like new things.

That's why you're here on Retronauts. Yes, exactly. Kevin yourself You can find me mostly on blue sky these days under Ubersaurus I also have a book that's available through limited run games And on Amazon Atari Archive Volume 1 Read All About the early history of video games Through the lens of Atari and the 2,600, super cool

And yeah, I have an accompanying video series under the YouTube Atari Archive that you could find online as well. And finally, you can find me doing stuff at Limited Run Games, and I just realized that even ToJam and Earl has been released by Limited Run Games. This is not, like, this episode was not meant to be some sort of insular kind of thing, but, you know, what can you do? You can also find me on YouTube talking about video games, what else, as Jeremy Parrish. And finally, you can find me on Retronauts, also talking about video games.

And I'm on Blue Sky as Jay Parrish. I often talk about video games there, too. You'd think that I would maybe get some variety in my life, but no, no, that's for the feeble. I specialize, hyper-specialize, I'm min-maxing video games all the way down. So thanks, thanks, everyone, for listening. Thanks, Scott, for making this episode happen with your request. and for your wisdom in bolstering this episode and making it good. And we'll be back very soon with more episodes about other things that are probably not

Toe Jam and Earl, but it will still be very interesting, nevertheless. You know what I'm going to be.