Retronauts - 626: Asterix, Part I

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

These Retronauts are crazy! Stuart Gipp, Audi Sorlie, John Linneman, and Thomas Nickel begin their Gaul-ing journey through the Astérix franchise. PAF! 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, all our hosts are male, so I think you'll find we have men here. indomitable host and we are talking about the toast of Europe. Yes, that's right. We're talking about Asterix. Is that how it's pronounced? Asterix. Asterix, yeah. Asterix. Okay. And whether or not you're familiar with Asterix, I think you'll find we've got an excellent crowd here to talk about it. So let's introduce all of them. Let's start with someone who has never, ever, been on retronauts before, but has in fact listen to Retronauts, and that's, hello, hello, who are you? Who are you? Explain. Who me?

Yes. Well, it's about damn time on here. I'm Audie Surly. You might know me from Digital Foundry, where I co-produced TheaF Retro with my dear friend John Lidemannix, and also producer at Limited Run games, not Limit Run pants. I heard you mention John Lennaminix there, so hello, John, how are you today? Oh, as the Token American on this podcast, I am doing quite. quite well. And I'm eager to talk about the superior European mascot asterix, not Hugo.

Oh, God. Hugo, there's an episode in waiting. And who else is with it? Who else is with us today? So, hello, I'm Thomas Nicol. As you might have already guessed from the description of the podcast, and I want to mention a bit of background. So, to get this straight, Galje is Omnis Divisa in Partes Trace, Quarum Unam, Incron and Belge, Aliam Aquitani, terseum which episode Linguar celtter Nostra gali appellantur.

No, you can't say that. That's, come on. Whoa. I think he just swore in like 50 languages. This is a G-rated podcast. Yeah, yeah. You can't say things like that, honestly.

And as I said, I'm sure, Jip, and I'm not allowed to have any games because I fell into the cauldron of games when I was a little, but it doesn't really work. Just forget that whole thing. So you're just like eternally, you know, playing. Well, I thought, Yeah, I mean, I thought I would end up like obelix, but unfortunately, I'm just basically the shape of obelix, but very weak.

So it's really quite upsetting. I tried to get some, oh, I'm sorry, I've sort of stepped on your joke there. Do you also find you difficult to find blue and white striped pads? You know, I am more of the stature of Asterix himself, a little bit shorter with a big mustache. So I find clothes very easily at the boys' section at the H-R. That's good. I go to Marks and Spence, and I say, excuse me, do you have any blue and white, like, striped?

And I go, they just sold the last pet of that guy, and I look over, and it's bashful Burt from Yosh's Island on his way out of the door. You always have to check at Marcus at Spensios. They will find more there. Yeah. I think that's going to be a recurring gag throughout this podcast, or should I say podcast, Dios or whatever.

See, that's the thing with Asterix is, like, all the characters have, like, joke names in the UK version, at least. You've got, like, get a fix, like, get a fix of the potion, right? It's in every version. out there. Everyone has a... Yeah, that gets localized through every language. But you've got, like, vital statistics. I get that, right?

Yeah. I get a fix, and but I don't get Julius Caesar. What's the joke? I don't... Yeah, isn't it? It's very strange. It's like a historic character. It might be the salad, maybe, who knows?

Yeah, maybe, maybe. Anyway, more importantly, at this point, because we've already been hilariously bantering for a few minutes now. What we need to establish initially is what the goddamn hell asterix like what is this thing well so for us in europe it's pretty familiar i think at least of our generation uh yes it was a it was a comic book or comic novel that started in the uh yeah it started i think around the fifties right there was um 59 i think so at the tail end of the 50s uh it started coming out uh very influential due to the post

post-war situation in Europe. You know, many countries have been ravaged, and politicians as such had become sort of scary, and politics in itself was uncertain they were confusing because all these countries were now rebuilding. And as such, I think the best way to deal with that is through humor and satire. so asterix is kind of a world view viewed through some weird Belgian jokes I guess but the tale is of course of a little village in Gaul that has not surrendered over to the Romans during the Roman Empire and can resist their forces via the magic potion which is

brewed by Panoromics in their village yeah and through all those different albums there's different adventures that they go on based on satire and kind of myths of different cultures in Europe and as well as Americas and Asia throughout time. So it's a comic book that kind of embraces all kinds of different influences and aspects of the world. Satirizes a lot of them, lots of characters, but it has a very good heart in the middle of it of this kind of unified people. with the good, simple, pure hearts. And I think that's kind of what in the rebuilding Europe at the time made it so influential.

I think it's also pretty nice that you have this mixture. You have the jokes for the kids about Romans getting beaten up. You have the jokes for the grown-ups about the political stuff and the cliches of different nations. And also I think what most of us are missing, of course, a lot of in-jokes about current French political scenes back in these days. Yeah, you know, the French themselves are very eager to, you know, poke fun at other nations, as well as themselves. Yeah.

So you kind of get this very raw satire, this social satire that you wouldn't find, you know, in comic books from the U.S. especially for the 60s and 70s up, I mean, even somewhat today. American comics are very symbolic and very kind of I shouldn't say nationalistic because that's very wrong word but they have like a symbol of kind of this American bravery a lot through it

It's kind of quite jingoistic I suppose you could say whereas Astrix was a little bit more self-deprecating and a little bit more kind of abivalent than where it stood it really didn't have

a nationality as such other than the characters themselves being fairly pure. Yeah. It's also maybe one thing to note is the conflict are usually not too high and too much escalated. And even the Romans as

the danger usually are not that bad in many cases. Especially Julius Caesar is never portrayed as this master-striarling villain, if you know what I mean. Yeah, he's never maniac You could say that there's probably some differences in the cartoons, which I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about because the characteristics there kind of go towards more stereotypical. But in the actual comics, you're absolutely right in the sense that even the opposition to the Gauls is fairly, I shouldn't say neutral, but somewhat balanced out.

They're never too menacing. Well, I mean, my abiding, one of my abiding memories of the books is, uh, they're kind of chill. Like, Asterix and Obelix mostly are just kind of walking around looking at stuff and sort of reacting to it, talking to people. And it's, when they do beat people up, it's, it's always in this kind of burst of kind of comic energy rather than like just any, like, it's always the same. It's always like, you know, path out they come from their shoes, you know. Yeah, I think it's similar. into those pirates and they beat the shit up. Yeah, which is always

amazing. I think for Americans to understand Asterix and Obelix is sort of like, in avatar sense, they're similar to C3PO and R2 in the sense that they're sort of, they're in the middle of a lot of these

obstacles and conflicts, but often as involuntary spectators that just kind of have to resort to their bravery in order to help out. So you can look at stuff like Star Wars and even like Kurosawa movies like that and kind of see what the appeal is. Yeah, and I think that's the thing is this is a series relatively unfamiliar, I think, to most Americans,

or at least those of a similar age to myself that grew up in the U.S. We were inundated with a very different type of cartoons and, I guess, graphic novels and such. And when you talk about the influences and what asterisk is about, it makes sense because the political situation, the post-war period, America didn't experience it the same way, so it doesn't resonate in that way either, nor do the types of jokes, the humor of Asterix, really translate that well over. And in fact, America, you know, America itself is probably, has more in common with, you know, the Roman Empire as it is in Asterisks, more imperialist, if you will.

Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's a good point. Yeah, but... The Americans are just saying, why don't they just let them? Why don't they just kill them? You know, you know,

when you talk about symbolics, though, you look post-war and you look at like Superman, and you have, you have a lot of the same kind of threads through, but the symbolism is different, and the kind of, the intent of it is a little bit different, but it's presented quite differently, I think.

Yeah. Can I, I don't want to jump ahead, but I want to mention it, because you mentioned it, I want to mention that, like, really controversial Asterix book, Asterix in the Falling Sky. Yes. When, like, kind of Superman kind of turns up.

Yes. Like, Disney, Osama Tzuca, sort of alien turns up. And then this disgusting, like, manga insect thing turns up. And the comic seems to be about how the only good thing is Disney. And manga is disgusting. And American comics are stupid. unless they've massively misunderstood it.

And it's one of the more overtly angry ones that they've done if it's very different to any of the other books and I just wanted to mention it because it's also been a big break when this came out because this was so badly received that I think there was an eight-year hiatus afterwards and then a new team took over. Yeah, I mean, so Asterix has gone through a lot of different

I mean, so it was run by Gossini and Adderso, whom created it. They oversaw a lot, but it It certainly had a lull period, which is around that time. And another important aspect to Asterix, which is also kind of like a European thing, is that it was fairly counterculture in how it approached things. And you can look at, if you look at something like, you mentioned this dean, if you watch the cartoon, which is called the 12 tasks of Asterix,

they pull fun, a fantastic film. Yeah. They put fun at, they even go as far as showing Donald Duck on, green as kind of like a middle finger to Disney because at the time Disney throughout the 70s and 80s was kind of well especially into the 80s when you get the Renaissance going had a stranglehold on the animation industry and theaters and Osterix was one of the few kind of big animation properties that competed with Disney at the time and in my opinion did it very well I think some of the Asterisks films are

much better than what Disney was putting out both from an animation aspect and story. It's mostly films, right? There isn't, like, yet, and it hasn't been like an ongoing animation kind of series. They've just been making movies, is that right?

They did Edithics, which is a dog. Right, right, right. That got like a children's cartoon, which is very much for children. That was recently. It's based on the in the 3D movies. I only know him is Dogmatics, but there's just, you know,

What a ridiculously great name. Sorry. I can't believe I get that is. This is another confusing aspect I think for Americans is that the characters have different names per region. And I

usually just go by like European slash French. I think there was an attempt of localizing the asterisk to the American market a couple of times. Yeah. We change the names further. Yeah.

And this is something that I discovered. John mentioned, you know, from his perspective when he was growing up, Osterix was just kind of like a curiosity, but nothing else. And this, when I started working in the Americas in the early 2000s, I kind of took Asterix with me, I've been a lifelong fan, which can be pre-visible from my articles about it. And I was kind of stunned of how little knowledge Americans had of the property, even though it wasn't part of their pop culture, was just always like, I heard about it in French class. That was the one thing

I heard the most. I remember seeing this in French class but I didn't know it was a thing. And it's like for a property that has over 50 albums and how many movies now I think nine movies today, 10 or nine

movies today, all of which are high profile, a high budget animations. The 20 video games. The Asterixenoblix versus Caesar movie I understand was one of the most expensive French Productions of all time, the 1990 movie. Yeah.

And it's incredible. The one with Gerard Depardier is obloxedly. Yeah. Yeah. I really like that one too. I think I'm not a big fan of the sequels to the live action, but the first one I like quite a lot. Yeah. The new 3D movies, if you haven't seen that, makes Domey de Dieu, Magic Le Pojon, and the last one is coming out soon. But those are fantastic. Wasn't there a new live action one released just in 2020? on Netflix, which I've heard It's not very good.

Yeah. I've heard it's fairly... I'll skip that. Yeah, I've heard it's fairly problematic. I've not seen mentions of the gods, but I've heard it's great, so I would like to watch it. Yeah, that's a fantastic film. And that's the thing about Asterix. Like, I mentioned when I was in the U.S., the fact that, like, it was only relegated to this knowledge of, like, well, the French like it, I think. And there's some video games based on it.

And I was like, you know, there's over 20 video games, and they're actually, in fact, across the board, very good. And I guess that's a segue into the actual talk about that. Yeah, I was going to say, I would like to keep talking about the history, but we really ought to talk about the video games, unfortunately. Yeah, there's so much to say. Yeah, I will mention real quick before we do that the localization or the translation by Antheabelle and Derek Hockroach into English,

sort of that's called the UK translations, which I grew up with, they're really, they're really incredible, the way that they've worked so hard to preserve all the puns and the wordplay and such by replacing them with, you know, localized versions of the jokes. I remember there was a lot of sadness when Antheobel passed away in 2018. It was one of those kind of poor one out for a homey kind of moments, you know? That was another aspect of asterisk, dude. That was so incredible was like the localization effort per country, because like, I grew up in Norway. no way. Our localization was

also quite good and I know that the German one was also really good. If you can indulge me for a second I can share one bit of knowledge about that because there's actually two German localizations. There was the first one made by a completely different company and translator and this was a terrible very very bad. It was a very far right reinterpretation of the whole

series and when the creators found out about that they got so angry, they immediately revoked the rights to everything, and then a new one was made in the spirit of the original. So this old one, they turned the Gauls into Germans, and they made it a parable to the American forces stationed in Germany back then, though terrible stuff. Jesus, that's horrible. I mean, I think you can't get something like Asterox more wrong if you tried. Yeah, I mean, making Estricks explicitly kind of ideological in any way,

seems like a misfire, because I mean, that's why I didn't love that, you know, asterix in the falling sky, because it posits something very specific, like... Yeah, yeah. What's the, Udozo? Udozo, I don't want to do it anymore. Udozo doesn't like American comics and doesn't like manga and want you to know about it. And, of course, the thing is also Uderzo is the artist. Gossini is a writer, and Gossini is a brilliant writer, I think.

Yeah. Gossini wrote some comics that I had as a child. some is no good comics. And they are absolutely hilarious, like cleverly plotted, eight-page little pieces of joy. One of the best satire writers of all time.

And when you talk about ideology, another thing about Asterix, we're never going to get to the games play. Oh, no, no, we never. Sorry, listeners. But one thing that was very special about it, especially today when it comes to representation and kind of open-mindedness

was that Asteris, as satirical as it is, because there are depictions that are a little bit problematic and such but it's equal across the board but the one thing that they did do was that they showed different types of people that generally in comic books or in entertainment

did not get representation and it was never mean-spirited other than when it came to for example like you mentioned that falling sky and things like this if the writers took it in a problematic way in a direction

it could happen but like in General, Gossini and Nadarsu, were open-minded. And at the time, 50s, 60s, 70s, it was somewhat unheard of, even in Europe to have this kind of colorful representation across the board. So there's many reasons why Osterix, more so than just being in French class or be having some video games, is an incredibly important aspect of European culture. And something that I wish worldwide was a little bit more recognized. recognized. I haven't even talked to you about when I worked in Japan, how they viewed it, because it was even less known there. It was literally only known via the Konami game. And I thought, I talked to someone when I was a beep, Maruyama's son. And we were talking about just my influences from Europe. And I mentioned that I was a huge fan of Asterix. And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah. Konami made some good characters in games back then. I was like,

It's not, I mean, there is a Konami game, but he's not made by Konami. They thought it was, I thought it was an original. That's absolutely fascinating. Same with Turtles. There was a lot of people when, yeah, when I worked in Japan several years ago, whenever I did like retrogaming meetups and stuff for people, there were always someone that thought that the turtles were originally a Konami property. And then became a cartoon.

And, you know, it's because of how these things are. introduced in Japan and how entertainment from afar is handled. So it's not like super shocking or anything. But when it comes to Ostricks, it was just such a unknown property. And I would imagine

that the localization efforts on such a thing into Japanese would be fairly hard to keep authentic. I mean, in the UK it was first put out, I believe, well, maybe not first, but it was serialized in one of D.C. Thompson's comics as big

Fred and Little Ed which is just inaccurate on every level but that's what you get if you want UK comics you're going to get people called Big Fred and Little Ed it's very sad It's very sad But Asterix was also in video games, a couple.

A couple. Maybe allow me to make one more remark quickly because I just occurred to me. So the way we are sitting together right now, acoustically. Are we doing a re-enactment of the Great Crossing in Britain, the Normans and the Goths? Could you argue for that? I guess we could argue

that in some way this is very apt. If we could begin with the first Asterix game, which was Asterix was quite imaginatively named for the Atari 2600 and or VCS

released in 1983. And it's just another version of, it was originally TAS, wasn't it? Yeah, it was originally TAS. I think it was originally released as TAS first, right? It's a Steve Wojda game, I think. Right. And, yeah, it's a strange little one. It's one of the few, I mean, as a conversion, it's nothing much either.

It literally, I think the Tass game was like a Rural Wind. And then for Asterix, they just changed things to call. And Asterix's head like silhouette. Yeah, it's like literally moving an icon around screen. That's a summer thing. Yeah, it's, it's really a nothing game. It's, I don't think Tass in itself is that great. But it is certainly interesting because I remember, so I think you mentioned at the beginning of the episode here,

I did a big hardcore gaming 101 article about every Asterix game ever made back in the day. I think it still is available. It is. It is. It's still there. it's still great. However, I must urge you not to read it until you're finished listening to the podcast. Yes, yes. See, this is

an audiobook version of it. And it was a Atari 2600 game kind of specifically for the European market with that conversion. And there wasn't too many of them. Because I remember the VCS not being much of a thing here.

I was born, you know, mid-80s. So by the time, I started playing games in like 87, 88. So by time, I think the VCS was kind of out. I mean, I think the difference was that computer games were more popular in Europe at that time, right? Even, yeah, I mean, Commodore 64 in 1983, and really, the VCS by that time was even, compared

to the Commodore 64, it was just kind of nothing deal. Yeah. And it's very much an American product. This episode just sounds like we're absolutely hating on American culture. That's not the case. That's fine. I'm absolutely fine with that. I like the

Digital Turtles and WWF but like yeah I remember it was kind of strange and I when I was in

Germany recently I did see a copy at the store called Kuschenbyser they had a copy of Ostricks which is one of the few times I've seen like

a boxed VCS game for a PAL game there Yeah that's close for rather uncommon If it wasn't super expensive It might be snap up

So it's I mean that game I think at the time I wrote the article It would have been in 2011 At the time The game wasn't worth much But I checked it fairly recently Because I have a couple of games

I'm missing in my Osterisk's collection And the PAL version of this is actually one of them And it's kind of skyrocketed And price instead The market's gone insane Yeah It's these weird kind of gaps there Like you know

Most of the Asterisk games aren't that expensive until this episode comes out. There's like a handful that get prices that I would consider too high for what they actually are, but... Yeah, some of the core games definitely up there.

Weirdly enough, the 360 version of Estricks that the Olympic games can gove quite expensive, which is weird. Yes, that's also some of them. We'll probably get to those sometime this year. But, yeah, so the Atari game is very much a product of Atari It feels like an Atari game

And I was never much of a fan So I mean Atari Like 2600 games for me Almost more than any other system A bad VCS game is just like Fucking garbage Excuse my language

The distance between good and bad On that system is so ridiculously high Yeah I know it's astronomical When you get something like Frostbite It's just amazing You get something like Kaboom, amazing. But then you get something like, I guess, asterix, and it's kind of stinking.

Or Taz, yeah. Or TAS, but this was full of that. Have you seen the TASCreen into Taz? Oh, or the Boxar even. It's pretty funny. Yeah, the Boxar, yeah. And this is, of course, Taz based on the original shorts, rather than Tasmania, which came technically later.

I mean, I don't think this game is necessarily, like, horrific or anything. It's very much a game of that time period. Yeah, yeah. It's a no button game. You just manipulate the character around the screen. screen. Yeah. And Taz, you're, like, dodging dynamite and collecting hamburgers and in burgers.

Yeah, that's what I do in my life, too. It just basically changed all the icons to, like, a cauldron, apples, stuff like that, right? Yeah, it's the most basic interpretation of a game, right? It feels like something that would be in, like, a 1976 movie above video games. It's like, check out this new video game. And it's literally just lines and an icon moving up and down. It is the minimum you can do. for something to be a video game.

Like, it is bordering on, like, Tiger Electronics handheld kind of game. So, this is parallel lines that occasionally have gaps you can nip through. Is that right? Am I imagining this? Or do you go? No, you just move up and down while dodging stuff. Right, right, right.

It's literally just that. Okay, that's even worse than I imagined. But it was followed up in the same year, wasn't it? Like, or I say followed up, there was another Astrox-S racing game in the same year. Obelix. Yeah, 40VCS. Yeah.

Obelix. And was this any better? No, so this is... I think it's certainly more interesting, is it? It's more interesting, but it plays worse. It's more thematically relevant, is it? Yeah, so you... Yeah, go ahead.

Okay, well, so the main thing about this is that this seems to be of that era when Atari was trying to make games that perhaps played more like... That were more advanced, right? The original Asterix is just this very simple, like, 70s arcade game kind of design, where this is more like trying to... it takes something that is more conceptually complex and apply these characters to it. So you pretty much control, you control asterix running around in the playfield and you have like obliques at the top, right?

And he's like dropping. What is he dropping? It's like squares of pixels. Yeah, so the square is supposed to be a menier. Okay. The stones that they carved. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Because that's a trademark. And I mean, in terms of branding, in terms of the identity of the game, it certainly leagues above the original. Whereas the other one feels like the most basic interpretation of a video game, this feels more like an actual concept, like you mentioned, but I just don't think it works too well. It's not very fun. But I do appreciate that you kind of get the sprites.

I guess they are sprites, right? I actually want to compliment that because the Atari VCS has access to very few pixels, right? And yet they somehow managed to make characters that are identifiable as what they're supposed to be. That is impressive. It also shows how strong the design of Asteris and Oblix actually is because just those few little pixels with the right color, you know, is enough to let you sort of figure out what you're looking at. Like, they even have, like, Obelix's pants sort of drawn correctly with the blue and white colors, you know. Oh, that's nice. I think it's actually, like, super impressive, given the platform it's on.

Yeah. I mean, it's late, right? It's 83, right, right before to collapse. Weirdly enough, it came out in 83 in the U.S., but 84 in Europe, which feels like it's backwards. I mean, I mean, the collapse to some extent, I mean, in the UK, that more or less didn't happen. We had he kept on microcomputers. We can go, it's one of my biggest pet peeves of game history on YouTube and such. Believe me, I'm right there with you about that.

There were no games made between, like, 1983, and I say, yes, there were. There were hundreds of games, maybe thousands. Yeah. And some of them are great. It's a really market-specific crash. It's very specific to the U.S. market, which in itself kind of recovered and too fast for me to really feel like it's much of a story. It sounds very romantic. It's just Atari, basically, messing up the business.

To this day, and I'm not saying this to dig at Americans again, but to this day, game history is essentially dictated by the American perspective. That's fine. It's the biggest audience. It's the biggest perspective. But when I'd see, as you say on YouTube, I see history videos about video games that are just wrong. And they get picked up and taken as Goswold. It's like, what's your source to?

Well, I was there. watching it happen I get that quite a lot especially with Sonic but that's a whole other issue same for me right because I'm someone that grew up in Europe

my career has been in America I've worked for destructoid and you know lim to run games now been on digital foundry and like one thing I've always try to do is to inject a lot of European game history

John can tell you from experience that things will get weird when we make a video together because, you know, there's so much else I want to talk about than just that surface level American perspective stuff. And, yeah, the crash is definitely one of those things where I always tune out when it comes down up in a documentary. It's just like, okay, well, you know, I was here playing my Commodore 64,

so you guys have fun with your crash. So moving forward, should we talk about these microgames? Oh, yeah. We definitely should bring them up because they are fascinating. I think that's where you really start getting the uniqueness. of astricks into video games and it's kind of shocking to me how well

some of these games captured that soul. The games themselves aren't necessarily the best but what they did with the property circa like 86, 85 is kind of unheard of because it's still a time where games are

by and large not very complex and we're still in the arcade era of maces and things like this. This first one in 86. Asterix Ele potion magic. And that came out on what system? That was like the Amstrad, right? And...

It was on... No, so originally it was actually on the Thompson M.O5, I think, which is a... Jesus. This must be the first time that's ever been mentioned in this... Yeah, so Thompson M.O.5 was a French-based educational computer, I think. Which had video games as well. It's something that probably John's wife used

at some point in her... education. I've heard that before. Right. So the Thompson M.O.5, its specs, I guess, can be it can be similar to the set of spectrum, but it has more color. I think it has worse sound, though. How can you have worse sound on MS.

Spex as the Expection? That's unbelievable to me. It must be horrible. I don't remember off the top of my head now. It's been many years since I actually played this version of the game. Right. I don't think it even has music. It has some sound effects. So the main difference with the Thompson versus some of those other machines, like the Zetex Spectrum, is that it doesn't have the color clash issues.

Yes. Right? So you can actually do, like, create proper colored graphics without all that weird artifacting everywhere. And it looks really beautiful for the time, I think. Yeah, right. Considering the platform it's on, it's nuts. Yeah.

I mean, I remember when I was playing this back in the day, like, for a, when doing research, I was kind of shocked by how good it looked for something that came out. I think it was developed in 85, came out early 86 for a fairly small market. But this one is interesting because

it is, it's a screen-by-screen adventure puzzle game, I guess we could call it. It's basically dizzy. Let's be honest. Hell yeah, baby. It's not dizzy. Let's not bring that rotten egg into this discussion. It's dizzy. Excuse me.

Did you just, please do not speak against Dizzy in my person? Stu's from the UK, Artie. Come on now. Don't insult Dizzy. You know what? I'll put that egg back at the basket. Thank you. I want nothing to do with it. Your disdain is disgusting. Disgusting. No, you know, I crack that thing open and just step on it. I'm looking at this Astros game right now, and to be honest, it looks worse than Dizzy.

No, it does not. It has a lot of it. main character. What are you saying? I can't believe this. You look at this and you just want to throw the machine the trash. You don't even want to play games on it. Oh my God, what is happening? This came out. This came out before

Dizzy. I feel unwell. Let's be clear here. This came out before Dizzy. So it makes it automatically, you know, the forefather I'm better. I'm absolutely shaken here. But yeah, I mean, it seems like you basically. The game is interesting. Yeah, it does look, it does look interesting. You know, the annoying thing is I'm looking

at this and I'm getting a proustian rush because those visuals are very familiar to me. I almost feel like I might have played this at some point, but that's not really possible, is it? Well, it did come out on the Amstrad later on. It looks fairly different, though. Right, right. The Amstrat's graphic processing is...

I'm really impressed with the way that they've rendered, like, the grass and the trees and, like, it's really well done. It's really well done. And the game itself, fairly open-ended, I guess you could say it's a Metroid venue. Yeah. It's not really... Yeah, it's not really, but...

It's not really, but it has early elements of what would eventually become Metrovania. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's true of so many microcomputer games, of course. The thing about this, though, is that these microcomputer games were created or produced by Cocktail Vision, which is a French company that had a lot of history with... They kind of got their start doing adaptations of sort of French BDs, it seems like. like, but I learned about them through a game called the bizarre adventures of Woodruff

and the Schnibble, which was my first exposure to French-style graphic adventures, and boy, is that a weird game. We all know that one. Oh, my gosh. Snibble, yep. You know, if I still can't stop going on about it, it's just a constant in our lives. It, you know, it is. Yeah.

But this, this game, I mean, so the basics of it for, even though we mentioned, like, stuff like Metro, you know, and stuff, but, yeah, it is screen-to-screen, getting items that you will need to unlock other areas and get over obstacles. There's different types of, there's not enemies per se as much as their obstacles, which will need a potion

or, you know, you need to find a harp at some point. They're all very sort of recognisable. Like, you've got like, your very moons, you've got the boar, the obelix will be up to get the hide from, and you've got like dogmatics, I'm sorry, whatever, idifix,

cataphanics turns up, the bard turns up, it's very impressive. So the thing I remember about this too was they actually had an exclusive comic in it, and I tried for years to find a box copy of this, which is about as easy as as finding the Holy Grill.

And I've never found it, but they did re-release that comic. Oh, good. What was it? The class act? So eventually, it kind of went back and redistributed it. But for the longest time,

because the game itself is based of La Poison Magique. Yeah. Which is, it's also what the first animation is based of, which is one where they get like the beards. They make a fake potion for the Romans after they kidnap them. And it makes their periods grow endlessly.

Not the best of the animations, but a funny premise, no less. I'm just, I'm still looking at it. There's so much I want to praise here. Like, when you become, I mean, this is like a game where you can freely switch to out between estricks and obelix to solve puzzles or whatever, but

Obelix, they've absolutely nailed the way Abelix walks with his hands behind his back and it just looks so authentic to the comic. And then when you do get into a fight, you've got that big biff, bang, like boom, like a cloud, with all legs and arms coming out of it. It's all just, it's all just so brilliantly done, you know?

It's right up there with Dizzy. It's that good. Well, the thing about this... You can actually like this game, though. Oh, yeah. never going to end. This is never going to end. I'm just trying to get the last word and there's a dizzy level, but I can't. It's not happening. This game received some ports though. It did actually come to the Amstrad CPC and that version. Yeah. It's lower resolution, but I think the actual color choices are better. I'm very fond of the way the CPC

games look in general. I like the CPC look, but I think... It's chunkier, for sure. It's chunkier and I kind of like the... I've always been, you know, I'll bring this up any time I speak, but like another world, this kind of idea of your mind filling out the blanks. And when I look at stuff like the Spectrum and Thompson M.O5, Asterix, that aspect is really

appealing to me. Yeah, yeah, yes. Your imagination has a lot of heavy lifting to do there. Right. And when you look at, like Stu has been saying, like, you look at the screenshots for NAMO5 version. It's almost like every screen. I could very much print that

up, frame it, and it looks like something that was done artistically. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm looking at, I'm looking at the CPC version now, and while there are elements of it that are impressive, it looks much slower and more with, like, agonizing to do anything, almost. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, if I had to pick a version, I would definitely pick the M.O5 version. I don't know if they've emulated that or not. Yeah, there is an M.O5 emulator out there, so you can enjoy every game on that system. Just remember that if you do download any M.5 games, you need to delete them within 24 hours,

otherwise you're breaking the law. That's true. And they're very particular about this. Yeah. So do make sure to track down a copy of Osterix on M.O5 if you want to play it more than an hour. It should be too hard to find. Asterox is there

It's like a ball It's a gogne the bagar Asterox is there Sone, Contro the God, Contro the other of God, Cesar Asterox is there

It's there It's going to It's a vallis, it's a vail It's a vaguer Asteroic is there And on also on micro, and on micros, there was Asterix and the magic cauldron on Commodore 64, and that was two years later in, no, sorry, one year later in 87.

That is one I remember myself playing, yeah. Yeah, how was your experience with that one? Oh, it's been long ago. What I remember is it just looks very beautiful, I think. Again, they nailed the characters. I just looked at the screenplayed right now. Again, with Obelix walking hands behind the back. You can really recognize them.

And one of the first games where I also learned English with, this is where I learned that animal is called a boar in English. Oh, interesting. Here we go. It's an interesting game again. It uses aspects that like the M.O5 game also uses. It's an open-ended adventure game. Graphically, yeah, likenesses are really good.

What's interesting to me about this game is, first of all, the action scenes. So the action scenes are directed and put here. So you actually fight romance and bores and whatnot. And it actually does a secondary window where you zoom in on the action. And you get like the blockier sprites. It's a little bit like the superhero games Like the Batman game Where you go through different comic panels and such

It kind of brings up another panel Like a comic book It zooms in the action And you kind of have this like one-on-one fighter mode Yeah Circa 1986 Europe It's not the best playing game or anything But I do think that like

You know you go into the village for example And the different villages are there And they actually kind of have their own pace And you can't talk to them or anything, but they have their own kind of like sequences and things that they do. So it feels very alive for a game of this era.

I love on Comedy 64, this is one of those games where it generates a screen by screen, so it will draw the elements. Annoying in the sense, if you want to just get through the game, but I just love seeing the scenes being generated that way.

Yeah, it does seem like it would get exhausting. Leaderboard golf is another one. Yeah. The last ninja. last ninja did the same it's just today I find it kind of like artistic whereas

I mean it's awesome yeah I totally agree yeah but it was a smart thing it's it's another one where it's like it's not as open ended

I think as it first comes off as because you have like an open world you can just kind of step out and do whatever you want whereas you still kind of need the linearity you have to find I think you have to find

the seven pieces of the cauldron if I remember correctly I think that's the final objective And if you get beaten by the Romans, you actually get captured and you have to get yourself out of jail, which is another aspect from the comic books, which happens. Yeah. So it's interesting to see kind of like these different inspirations they take from the source material. And, you know, again, it's like 1986. Even when you look at something like the NES, generally property games at this time can only really have likeness, but not so much else.

it becomes very generic very quickly a platformer or something like this whereas here you have like this adventure game that tries to bring all these aspects of the comic book into the game as gameplay mechanics It looks like it does a pretty good job I would say I'm impressed by what I'm seeing here

Yeah it's not It's not bad But it's also It is a bit cumbersome And the open-ended nature of it Back then You know it was all about communication You generally had friends

It's a Zelda thing where it's like you're supposed to talk on the school ground about where like oh I went there I found this And this is an aspect

that just is completely lost on games today and then we get that terrible saying that it hasn't aged well It's not that it hasn't aged well It's just you know It's of a different era

Of a different mentality that this is something that you're supposed to share I don't believe in that as a premise in general just, like, badly aged. I mean, I think we're on the level with a lot of things, but the exception of Dizzy.

I'm happy to put that aside, but I think otherwise we do agree on a lot of aspects of retrogaming here, and that's nice. The one thing we should point out about this game, have you heard of music for this game? No, is it sort of, is it your Commoddy 4 kind of Sid-chip, like... So this one is crazy.

So it's actually done by Neil Brennan, who did fantastic scores, including Usagi Yimbo on Converse 54. Oh, yeah, we've, And he generally fantastic composer, but this one is like, I think I explained it back then. It's like, it sounds like a sea shanty with like death metal percussion. It actually kind of does. I'm listening to it now.

Yeah, it sounds like a man that's just on like what's like the French instrument called in English, the one where you push it together. A bicycle with a baguette attached to a. That's not an instrument. That's just a lifestyle. A ring of onions, a ring of garlic around someone who's wearing a black and white stripy top. Accordian, it's an accordion. It's an accordion. Yeah, it sounds like a man on an accordion in the wind with, like, death metal percussion next to him. So it's a crazy soundtrack.

Go listen to it. It's just unlike anything else. I think our beloved editor will probably splice some of that music into this episode, so everyone can enjoy it. Right. Well, enjoy. That's all I can say. Getting off the microcomputters. Wait, but we forgot one, right?

Did we? The Magic Carpet game? So there are a couple of others, actually. And also, the Magic Calderon might be, there might be some American people that might have played it under a different name. It was called Ardok in America's and was changed to like a barbarian game. Right, right. So it has nothing to do with Osterisk, at that point. They changed all the sprites.

Scum. Ardok, the barbarian. Yeah. Nothing to do with Cygnosis barbarian. You know, it's not. I do remember that Ardoc has like a very, very. cool like a box art cover it's like a man

wearing like a fur coat or something with a sword but it looks like it was like filmed or like shot in somebody's backyard like during the fall. In Spain in 1971. Yeah it really does. It just looks like

Italian like sword and sorcery film from like the 70s. It's got a badass. It's fantastic. I want to posture of it. But yeah, there were definitely other microcomputer games. Generally there were

adventure games. There was one in Germany that was fan-made which was published in a magazine by a marketing technique, I think. Yeah, that's one thing that exists. Mark and Technique. Wow. They made a Commodore 64

magazine. I think it was 64 magazine, 64. Yeah, yeah. And they put out an adventure game on that, I remember. It's fairly straightforward. There was the Gerr Ha'Hazade

which is the March of Carpet, that's like a... That's like more of a visual novel, right? And that's, that was also done like Cocktail Vision. And it's mostly focused on... It has a lot of full-screen artwork, but it also has this like overhead game that you can play as well. I seem to recall it had like a map feature.

It's been a very long time as I played this. That one actually came out on Atari, ST, Amiga, and DOS, among others. Did it? So it actually has some more... It's where you start to get into visuals more resembling 16-Based. it, right? Like, it's more identifiable.

Yeah, I think that was kind of, because there are a few others that I don't think I covered in my article back then. Because I remember in Germany, I found a couple other kind of story-based games. Yeah, like, there was like an Amiga CD-32, like CD. Oh, well, that's later on. That's learning English with Asterix. Yes. That was a CD-TV release, which, yeah, I have those. Of course.

Which is a PCC-C-D-TV release, I learn English with Asterix. and learn English with Asterix and his son. But yeah, the microcomputer games outside of the Thompson M.O5 and the Comedy 64 games are mostly just adventure games. And at that, they're very straightforward, just kind of reading experiences

with some like map features where you can kind of pick where you go next, but very little interactivity. But following, if we can get to the consoles, or at least this a console.

Well, I was thinking there was also Cocktail Vision did a bunch of these. Didn't they also do one that was more, like they did an Amiga game that was more like action-based. Yeah, you're forgetting the name on that one. Yeah, you talked about Le Coupe de Meijer. Yeah, yeah, that one.

Asterix and the big fight, which is based on the cartoon at the time. It's one of the few tie-ins that they ever did to an actual cartoon release. There's a game called Operation Get a Fix. Oh, that's the game. That's the same one. Yeah, Operation Get a Fix, which is, the movie was called Asterix in the Big Fight.

And, yeah, that's based on the cartoon that came out. It's based on the album, The Soofs there, but the movie takes a lot of deviations from that. The thing is back then, many of the movies just combined two albums into one movie back in the day. Two or three. The thing about that, though, is, like, this really showcases the Pixar capabilities of Cocktail Vision. Yeah. Like, it looks phenomenal, I think, for any. an 89 game, I think it came out.

Like, just, there's so much detail in the scenes. It's, like, beautiful color usage. Great animation. Like, it is more adventure-ish overall, but it's still just this, like, gorgeous-looking thing. Yeah, so, I mean, this Amiga game, I actually got this when I came out, and I was fairly disappointed in it, uh, because I had, from the impressions I had from the magazines and kind of the screenshots was that we were looking at something like a monkey island

situation, kind of like a point-and-click adventure game with some action aspects. Has that ever actually happened with Asterix? I know, it should have, you know. Yeah, Teltel presents Asterix. What the hell? I mean, so many IPs would just be served so good with a good part lick adventure, I think, but it's just not big enough. It's probably on the top of that list, though.

I mean, especially of the era. I mean, Asterisks, it lives by the jokes and by the humor and the wordplay, and you could use that so well in the good point. world. Looking at Operation Get Effects, I mean, you're so slow moving in this game. To get anywhere, it's just taking forever. I love the graphics again, though, in it, though. Like, again, there's like some scenes where it's just like, if you cut out the UI section

and just, like, frame it, it's, like, beautiful pixel art. Beautiful. And it has some cut scenes from the film, which, interesting again, it's one of the very few Astridx games that directly ties into one of the cartoons, which, in a U.S. marketplace would be kind of unheard of. But for us in Europe, I don't remember

that many European properties, like film properties, getting tie-ins right away. So I guess for those listening, we should probably spill out what this game is versus the others.

And it seems it's more of the type of game where you're exploring the environment looking for items and you can move up and down, left and right, but it's still flip screen-based. So you'll like, say, walk to the right, there's enemies,

and things just like in your way, obstacles and you're just kind of moving and jumping and getting past them to the next screen while finding the objects that you need to obtain. And I think the big problem with it is that it's just very slow pace. It's extremely slow. Like really slow. And you will have several screens where you literally have nothing happening.

There's no character. There's no item. And I think it became very confusing to people. Just kind of like, well, what's up with like, because there can be three, four of these screens. means in a row where it's just like, well, there has to be something here and, like, there is nothing there. The thing I will give it, though, is that they try to do some cool stuff with the different

abilities you have access to. Like, Asterix can, like, point in the air when standing in front of a guard, causing the guard to look up in the sky. You're basically kind of confuse them, and then eventually they can get scared and run away with their hands up. So it's like a non-violent approach to get past them that's kind of in tune with the comics, right? I think that's cool. Well, it's in tune with the movie.

and there are events in the game where things fly down because what happens in the movie and in the album is that Panoramics gets hit by a rock because Oberlix drops it on him and he goes crazy

he goes absolutely nuts if you watch that cartoon if you ever seen the Simpses episode where Homer eats the pepper it's basically that but a feature length and even more crazy so go watch it

but he just ends up making all these crazy potions, which just end up being catastrophic for everyone around them. Especially for that one Roman guy. Yeah. Yeah. One of the Roman starts flying, he turns into a balloon. It's a crazy scene, man.

And that's the one thing that's really funny about the Asterix cartoons, is that they're way more experimental than what Disney would ever allow. All I can say is, I think if you watch today, Astrix and Cleopatra, this thing is a just a huge trip the whole movie yeah there's 12 tasks

another one oh yeah I mean permit 838 that's still a thing in Germany it's a thing in Europe yeah

which we won't go it into but that's an aspect that like it's still kind of it turned into a cultural thing

that scene from that cartoon yeah that's how impactful that movie was on a continent which just shows you like

Asterix was not a curiosity, it was a very impactful property. I mean, thinking about that, I just can say for myself, there is quote from asterix that have become part of my everyday speaking patterns in a way. So certain quotes and certain things that they said. It's just a thing, which again shows how big it is, and how well written it is, of course. Yeah.

They even got a theme park out of it. Even that? I had never been there. I want to go so bad. Yeah, same. That's all the places I've in the world. never been to podcast tricks and I don't know why

I want to go there and I want to go to the movement one last week I was at Nintendo World in Los Angeles and like man just that experience like I lost my breath stepping in there's not much to do there

but just stepping in and I think I would have somewhat similar feelings about podcast tricks even though it is not as elaborate as what superintendent world is No, not at all Maybe I feel like we should arrange a trip there sometime, it's not that far

Oh yeah, I would love to Yeah, yeah If that happens, count me in Just check the map It's pretty much It's halfway between all of us If already comes to Germany There we go

I'm coming there next week As of this recording Excellent Road trip Okay, so are we, is there more to say about. Okay, so are we, is there more to say about these micro-gates? games, or are we moving on to consoles? You know, I think, summing it up,

the microcomputers definitely introduced a lot of interesting gameplay mechanics that were unique for the property and for the consoles. A lot of adventure elements. And what we've got next is such an to me a very unlikely thing to have happened,

which is asterix for the master system, the master's game on 1991. Now, when this dropped, it was highly, highly acclaimed in the UK as one of the best games in Germany as well. Very popular in Germany.

Yeah, same throughout Europe. And this is a game that's made, made by Sega Japan. Yep. Yeah, it's made by Simps, right? So how the hell did that happen? That seems so unlikely. So the master system had an especially good marketplace

in Europe and South America. And I think to maintain that strength, especially in the central European market like Germany, France. Sweden was a big market, which Asterix was big. And as you mentioned, the U.K. as well, like Asterix was huge. So I think Sega, unlike Nintendo and other manufacturers, they were very smart at this time by focusing on, okay, we have the specific markets, which we are strong in, how can we

caters even stronger to them and they found this property in asterix that was And this is also how we got the Ottifans is that? This is also how we got the Altefans unfortunately. Sorry, John, I had to get the

I had to get that reference in. We should clarify that Otifans has no impact on Europe and has absolutely no value as a property. Are you saying that Otifans is shite? Is that what you're saying? It just sucks. I'm saying that

Otifans is quite shite. Hmm. I won't dame this with an answer. You're just rolling in. You don't care who you're upset. You go after Dizzy. Go off to the Otefans. Oh, I'm done, people.

I'm done being nice. Dizzy and Ultifans. What kind of show? Find something John loves and denigrate that. John's currently sitting there arms folded. Don't you dare attack Wonder Dog? I, you know what? John has given me my career, so I'll be nice to him.

Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's generally hard to upset him. That's the problem. This is why I pretend to like Prog when I'm talking to Parrish. You know. But the only thing John still owes me is that we are still to do an asterisk, D. Fretcher, where we dress up as asterix and obliques. That sounds really fun.

Respectively. I just got to find those pants first. You got to find those pants. Yeah. Where are those pants? Tell us, where are those pants? But yeah, so the master system, I think, if you look at South America, Because I live in Brazil for a while

And I was kind of stunned I lived in Brazil from 2005 to 2007 And at that time still You could find master I'm really angry about this today Because you could find Master System games On shelf still And I didn't buy any of them

Because I just looked at them Was like why would Why would anyone buy this at this point? Oh no And I remember seeing like Street Fighter And Legend Evolution These games Kind of for pennies

I should have bought them But they did the same there Where actually the Asterix game That came out in Europe Was converted To a Brazilian comic book It's not Monica But if I can just butt it

Wasn't that the second game That might be the second game I think the first one stayed Asterix in Brazil The second one was adapted You're right You're absolutely right Tech Toy did put out Asterix As is

The second game was converted To not Monica It was another one with a dog. I don't remember it. I don't remember saying it. But yeah, TechToy did put out the first Asterix game as Asterix Master System. But this is like the brilliance of Sega at the time, just kind of finding these local properties and putting their strength behind it. Yeah, and putting really good people on it.

The market would respond. That is the big thing. I checked the credits again, and we have some serious names behind that. I mean, there's a Torosa Endo, and you might recall. if these podcasts are put out in order, this man was very influential in the Castle of Illusion games on Master System. I mean, when you look at Asterisk's Master System,

you look at the HUD, it's like that's the same one as possibly. Yeah, yeah. Now, I mean, if I can... I like this game. I don't think I love it as much as some people seem to, but that's... Like I do. Yeah.

I do like it, and I do think if I spent more time with it, I might like it more. but I think Castle of Luzon spoiled me a little bit because it's just that much smoother. Just that much smoother. Yeah. I mean, lessons learned, right? Yeah. Because this, I think this came out

slightly before Castle Evolution. And... It was the same year. Well, no, Castle Evolution... No, wait. Master System version of Castle Evolution came a year before this. The same programmer that did Asterix also did

Castlevolution and Land Evolution on Master System and Game Gear. Yeah, that's too much. was the endo, the one I mentioned. He did this between those two. Yeah. I mean, that's not me, that's not me criticizing this. This is an excellent 8-bit game, obviously. Like, it's full of variety. It plays really

well. Is this the one where... It's a bit simple. Is this the one where when you play as asterix, when you press attack, he does the wind-up punch every time. Like, he's spin off his first. Okay, because that's what annoys me. That's what I'm thinking of. Okay, this one's fine. Yeah, okay. So, uh, another name... Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Another name

I want to drop is the composer by Takayuki Nakamura did the music, who also worked on ESWAT, on Virtual Fighter, on Toble II, and on, prepare everybody for having this name pronounced correctly for the first time on Retonaut, Eger, it's God bless the ring.

Oh, you did it. Can we also talk about Einhander, just to get that correct? Thank you very much. Einhand. Okay, so I... Einhander, it sounds like a euphemism. I would like to chime in quickly here,

because I played through this game with Thomas for the first time this year. We played all the way through it in one sitting. Cool. And I walked away pretty impressed because, one, it looks fantastic. The sprite work, the size of the sprites. Like, it's shockingly good. And I think, like, the color usage looks almost 16-bit.

Like, you're not, there aren't sprites of characters on, like, the NES that look this good in terms of the color usage. It's just perfect. It looks great. I'll just have some of the backgrounds, I think. Yeah, the backgrounds, you know, those are decidedly 8-bit master system, But there's a ton of detail in them. They're very, very nice looking. I think it varies.

There are some that are rather boring. You have just a house, the inside, and it's just the walls. But there's other ones when you have this nighttime stage with the bluish sky and everything that looks just brilliant, I think. But they have some, you know, it is a fairly simple game, but just some cool mechanics. Like you can throw these items on like the lava or the water that become a raft. And you can kind of move your way across there. There's cool springboards and spots.

You know, you're kind of throwing potions, basically. Yeah. So your means of, like, dealing with challenges is a little different than a traditional platformer, but I think it's pretty fun. It works well. It also, it depends on kind of which character you use how you go for a stage. That's right. So there is a traditional platform in the sense of, like, kind of like a Mario

Brothers. That kind of, it's not exactly like Mario Brothers, but like, Like, you know, the left to right kind of standard platformer. But they do throw in a lot of variables and a lot of diversity that you weren't seeing so much. Including some nice verticality. Yeah. The thing I remember was that some stages could be like really hard with one character and you'd just be getting annoyed. And then you switch to the other.

And it's completely different and often easier. So I found that we were kind of going back and forth between the characters per stage, depending on what was going on, which is nice. You have to choose before the stage starts, so you have to guess for the first time, of course, but it's doable. There's some tricky jumps later in the game, I remember, that's for sure. It's definitely tougher than Cost of Lusion was, in my opinion. Yeah, it's slightly tougher. Lots of moving platforms all over the place.

I think this is the first game where you can even play as Eid Effects, right? Yeah, he's in there. Yeah, that's awesome. Which was a big deal, I remember. Like, it sounds silly, but I remember the magazines kind of pointed out that, like, the fan favorite can now be controlled. So the thing audio... It's just a small.

that I want to mention, because earlier you discussed your impression of asterix as it was perceived by Japan, right? And I think this is a showcase of how impressive this development team is, and that both with Mickey Mouse, with asterix and other properties, how well they're able to adapt them to their own game. And it feels like they know the franchise. And I guess they probably learned it for the project, but it really feels respectful.

What's really interesting about aspects is that you look, at when it comes from either the French or the UK developers they looked at it and they wanted to kind of get the vastness of Asterix into a video game so there's always like adventure based kind of fetch quests

because that's how the comics are kind of in a sense they are often fetch quests they have to go somewhere to help someone some such somewhere else or get something for a potion or these kinds of things and that kind of the takeaway in Japan they looked at just the different

aspects of how it could be turned into gameplay mechanics in an action sense. They looked at the fighting. They looked at the kind of adventuring as traversing a platforming stage. It's very interesting to see that mentality. What characters can we put in as an enemy

maybe? Who works? Right. I mean, for most part, that's really easy because it's just different Romans, right? Yeah, but you also have, for example, that... Remember that guy from Assis Legionary with a huge coat? Yeah. And the Hontan, he's in that game, for example. is a guy who appears in one comic

for two or three panels maybe and that's it. And he is in there. I'm guessing what, you know, I remember I talked to the creators of the Ninja Turtles games like Konami many years ago. Of course it did.

And the way that was handled was that they got a lot of referential materials but they didn't, you know, they didn't read the comic necessarily anything like that. I'm guessing for Sims, it was similar that they probably got a lot of images and kind of materials to look

at so you do get these kind of like off the wall choices like that and not because so much that they read through every album and found like well that character is cool but just because like that was one of the people that was in the materials they got and was like well he looks cool and it kind of

comes you know he's put into the game somewhat out of character sometimes not necessarily in Osteris but in other properties like the Ninja Turtles so I think that's how that was handled but it certainly is an extremely improved

impressive effort from a Japanese company. Just how they also, the look of the characters, John mentioned just the sprite work and the color usage, but the actual like appropriation of the characters into this graphic style is kind of

it's somewhat like cheeby like. Yeah. Not quite, but you know, they are definitely changed to fit this art direction that they went with. And it's such a perfect, representation. Just to fit the

mach system's capabilities for the sprites. Yeah, yeah. That's something getting a proper sized obelix on the must system, I think that's quite a challenge. Yeah, I mean, two playable characters with such different sprite sizes and contour is just like,

it's not as simple as it sounds, but they totally nailed it. So I was always super impressed. This was one of my favorite games growing up and I've always held the very there that like this is one of the best games that Sega put out during this era. Now, unfortunately, I believe this is one of those games that can't be played on NTSC system.

So this was one of those that you can't even import. Can you though? We did play it. We did play it on my Japanese megadrive, but I have a region mod in that. And I don't, I feel, I don't remember switching to 50 hertz though. Yeah. I'll have to double check. There's one of them.

Certainly the NES games. Yeah, that is true. Unless you used to the ROM that was meant for the American market. But, like, there is one of the master system games that I know have issues in NTSC. Maybe the second one. I'll have to try it. Some master system games, they all tend to work on NTSC systems, but if they're too fast, certain things break. We'll find out.

Although maybe, Thomas, I was thinking about the, you know, the actual enemy of this game. the main villain is are those wooden spikes with the floating platform. Oh, yeah. And I'm wondering if maybe we were playing an NTSC mode and it was actually harder than it was supposed to be because that part. That could be. That part was bad. We've learned us over time. Remember when we played Maya Millard, the Donald Duck game?

Exactly. That was a 50 Hertz game that we tried to force into 60. And it seemed to work. It was fine. but then you get to that one part where you need to make this precise jump and the timing was so fast that it was almost impossible. I was like, this game was horribly balanced, but then we realized if you played in 50 hertz, it's just fine.

We talked about it on the last, on the Donald Duck episode, but there is actually a hack that makes it work at 60 hertz. So, like, there's a more powerful hack. There was a Brazilian version of it that runs at the PAL 60. But to get back to Asterix quickly, I think I would be very very, surprised if they actually developed that game in 50 hertz

with a 50 hertz goal because I mean, it is not an important game for Sega Japan and it did not probably take too long to make it put in a lot of love and effort but I don't think they worked towards a 50 hertz optimization here. It's just interesting that this game was only released

really in Palo territories right? Like that was the intended market. Yeah. Yeah. But you're right. When developing it, they probably didn't have 50 Hertz PAL televisions. I would be surprised

if they did. So, I don't know. Those things always, I always wondered about how stuff like that were made. John, we will track down Endo in Japan and ask him directly.

Oh, yeah. Here's the plan. So maybe about my experience with that game, it was the first game I ever played in the master system. Oh, wow. And I think this game also spoiled me for many of the other games that came before, because honestly, it feels like an almost 16-bit game in places. So the step down for Megadrive was not that big.

And then I played games later like Action Fighter, for example, the more simple earlier ones. God, I love Action Fighters so much. Yeah, it's a great game. But if you play that after you played Asterix, the math system, it feels quite archaic and quite simple. It does, yeah. So this was actually the first Asterix game I ever played, because I got into the series late and only because of Audi, basically. You know, moving to Europe, I became aware of Asterix game. Asterix pretty quickly and my wife loves it

but I wasn't really into the games and then this was one of the first games that I believe Audi recommended I should get for the master system. It's also one of the few games in your collection, right? Yeah, I don't have many Master System games but this is one of them. Yep. It's definitely

if you have even if like Asterix aside if you just want to get into Master System Yeah. Like this is one of those It's a must play. Yeah. It is it is like Thomas says though. It definitely spoils you for the rest of the console because this

could for me fly as a very early Genesis game. It's simplistic it looks in many ways it looks like an 8-bit game but it plays and feels very much like

that transition time from 8 to 16-bit gaming. I'm just surprised this didn't get a Game Gear release as well. Yeah, that is actually quite surprising. The other ones, the other ones, I least the other ones did, right? The David ones. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes. But this one didn't. Also, one, maybe one thing I find remarkable is also. The game is lavish in a way. They just put in these small set pieces for just one level. You get an entirely new tile set that is only used to want in the entire game. I mean, there is this one scene with a giant octopus, which is a bit unexpected. You are underwater that octopus sucks you in through its thing, the mouth, whatever.

and then you have one level inside and that's it. And I mean, that's... There's also the chariot race. The chariot race. Yeah, that's what the next one I want to mention. And I mean, you don't have much memory in this cartridge. I mean, how big is that game? Maybe two ended?

I don't know. So that's quite impressive to me that I just put in all that stuff that needn't have been there in the end. And it, you know, it feels like this could have been in like almost like a swan song for the system. But we have more. Yep. And, you know, a sequel to this. this directly. Quite a lot more.

Yeah, and we'll get into that because of the next game, if we're ready to move on to that one. I think so. Actually, real quick, I was looking at dumps of master system ROMs and you can actually sort by ROM size.

Okay, what have to be? Asterix, all the Asterix games are among the large, they sort in terms of, they use the biggest ROM size aside from five games, Virtue Fighter animation.

Right. uh jang pung three four pack all action and a couple others those use cartridges that are larger but other than that the asterix games use the largest available cartridge on master system jang jangpunk three is a street fighter korean street fighter knockoff oh right okay yeah so do you have a room size for us so it would be for mbid oh it looks to be five 12 kilobytes so whatever that is in in megabit yeah it's for ambit yep like fantasy store I always found it funny when games would be promoted that way. Like, this is an 8-Magabit cartridge.

You'd be like, what? What does that even mean? I don't even know what that means. Yeah, it's a 4-Magabit cartridge. So there's other games would have used 8-mabit cartridges. Those are the largest. Yeah. Okay.

Good to know. Thank you. Actually, also, speaking on that, there's large cartridges, the 8-mabit ones, were only released in Brazil, Korea, and Australia. Oh. So there was no 8-mabit games. released outside of those regions for the master system yeah sounds about right how about that

So following the master system, we're jumping here to something very different. We will, of course, return to home consoles. But the next game in 1992 was Asterix, the arcade coin-up, the machine produced by Konami in the tradition of their belt scrollers, such as I want to say X-Men, I want to say The Simpsons, you know? Turtles. Yeah, turtles. How did I miss the turtles? Jesus Christ.

Yeah, so X-Men and Simpsons run on a very early framework. This game runs directly on the same framework that would power turtles in time. Right, right. Yeah. So can we agree on two things here? One, it's probably the best Konami brawler, and second, it's the best after-x game? No. They don't agree to either of those.

So I would say that it's absolutely among my favorite of the Konami brawlers, because as much as I love the Turtles games, I do find that the Konami belt scrollers have a weightlessness to them. I don't like the hit detection off. I know what you mean, yeah. Would it be a cheating if I said my favorite is Baccio Hex? That's kind of a shooter, right?

No, I love Buccio here, but it's more like a shooter. Actually, I love Baccio here. Mentioning that. We should do an episode on Buccio here. Yes, 100%. Yeah. Let me interject here real quick on that, though. you mentioned the arcade board.

So this is the arcade board running it, just to get an idea of how this compares. This is the same board that was also used in the game, XX, X, the shooter. He was used in Wild West Cowboys of Mu Mesa, running gun, lethal enforcers, Bucky O'Hare, and a few others, G.I. Joe.

So all of these... It's the GX board, right? No, the GX came after. That's the one that powered, like, Salamander 2 and everything. So this is the one... Is G. I go the one that's kind of into the screen, like scaling kind of...

Precisely. It's exactly that one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's... So as you can see, that's a... This was like their early 90s,

but pretty powerful board, I would say, a huge improvement over what they had before. I've never actually played this on a literal, on a legit machine, and I'd like to, because I imagine it's a better experience. I had one in my town.

Oh, well. Oh, man. I love this game. And what I love so much about it was that I just mentioned, like, with the Turtles games to hit the text. and like the flowediness of it all

I never quite liked it I just love the property so much I could overlook it but in the asterx game they actually sort of fixed this and it's a much more impactful belt scroller the hit detection

the hit boxes are really on point it's among the best Konami ever did and in terms of just the representation of the source material like even in comparison to something like turtles

which is near perfect this is a spectacular looking game for sure. This might be the perfect game. And that's, you know, you could argue that as best actual game just because, like, seldom do you get a game

that nails the source material this well because the source material is so good for a bell scroller. Like, there are scenes in the comic book in the cartoons where they literally are just walking towards hordes of enemies that will look the same.

It's the exact same concept. and in a video game form, then it feels almost like you're taking part in one of the comics. And the presentation overall, where they use the comic book panels to present the story, they use samples from the original voice actors,

from the, I think it's the UK dub, if I don't remember incorrectly, that they used. And they even had O'Derso oversee some of the designs. Again, I mentioned I had interviewed

the turtles team back in the day and I did get to talk to them about this a little bit as well and it was shocking to me how little they knew because this is a property again Konami was on the

hunt for anything to have a recognizable name because Capcom was doing the same literally every company had started doing this by the late 80s Ninja Turtles have been such a success that Konami's whole company mantra had changed to basically were the Ninja Turtles company.

That was the catalyst though, right? Like Ninja Turtles hit huge, so they're like, okay, this is our future now. No, no, they openly said to me that, like, the Ninja Turtles changed how Konami looked at their forecasting and their lineups. Yeah, and like, so it all changed to, like, the buckio here's and other properties. It's an aster. Well, this Cowboys and Mo Mesa. Let me tell you. It's a good game.

It's a goddamn good game. It is a good game. It's a really good game. It's like a Sunset Writers sequel. Sunsiders, too, basically. Yeah. Yeah. And, well, Mystic Warriors is probably more of the direct sequel to this writers, but it's

in that lineage. And again, you know, Mo Mesa, we joke about it, but that was like, you know, a comic book that came from one of the illustrators for Ninja Turtles. Yeah. It was like really far out there, but it was still. like some sort of property with some sort of naming, it was getting a cartoon which had like a season

and they made a game of it, which is really good. But yeah, with the asterix thing here, they got materials to look at. The Faud was cool. They kind of, again, I think it's just that kind of Japanese design mentality of getting

these key features, these key scenes, these key frames of these properties and getting them into the game. Because you have several sprites, here. There are, like, picture perfect from how they look in the comic books. Especially when they get kissed by phone ball on, things like that.

Yeah, the Romans. With a golden armor. Everything is on point. Yeah. Even the the chariot race is back as a button masher. You're on the pirate ship. I think you go to the pyramid. Like, you have all, every stage is based on

an album, a different album. So you kind of go through this timeline-ish of Asterix, and it's just a spectacle. It's one of the craziest bell scrollers that they've done. There's so much going on on screen. Even when you start the game, you're in the village. You have all these secondary characters rooting you on just like in the cartoons and the comics.

And it never lets up. From the regular enemies to the boss fights, there's constantly something going on, but it's all appropriate for the source material. Could I, and so my experience with this game, like, you're making me want to go back to it because I remember not loving it. Like, I remember getting kind of bored with it, but then again, I think that kind of happens with all these belt scrolls eventually.

So what I probably should do is I played it on MAME. I've never found a machine in my life at this game, but maybe if I tune the difficulty down a bit, I'll enjoy it more. I mean, playing it on two-player, it was great, but it just seemed to be so difficult. Yeah, so long. Maybe I can help you there,

because I played the original machine only a few weeks ago. I was in Lyon with Bandanemko, and there is this one game shop. John told me to go there, and they have this tiny arcade in the back, and there is one technical machine, there is one other thing,

and there is one, of course, it's his friend, one asterix with the original machine, with a CIT in it, and this was just wonderful. It was just a blast. It was wonderful, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I have such fun memories

of playing The Simpsons game that overrates this for me, but that's only because I've never played it on an actual stand-up arcade. And I reckon if I did, I would probably fall in love with it. The important thing to keep in mind when looking in a game like this, so people listening, you're probably not seeing the game right now, right? This is a game that I would say was at the tail end of the brawler mania

that kind of started with Final Fight and Double Dragon, kind of kicking things off, right? Like these games were no longer a huge draw by and large, mainly due to Street Fighter, I would say. And as a result, you know, most of the ones that people remember, like The Turtle, Simpsons, a lot stuff, and from other companies as well, they're not as visually striking as this.

This is like top-tier sprite work on par with the kind of stuff you would see on maybe Saturn and PlayStation era, right? Like, this is really high-end, high-end Pixar. It genuinely shocks me that they didn't even try to port this. They didn't even do like a Hyperstone heist on it. They just did nothing with it. They're wild to me, absolutely wild.

It is crazy because when I talked to them about it, I came in with the kind of feeling that this probably wasn't that successful, probably limited to certain markets. And, I mean, I remembered it from my whole town. We had a cabinet. But so, like, my feeling was it, like, well, this is one of the best games Konami ever made for arcade and all this. And they actually mentioned that, like, no, it made quite a lot of money in the European market. It did get cabinets released in Japan and South America. Yeah.

So, like, they made money of it. But I think the reason why they never did a home port was that Astrix was very early out there with kind of like that Tetris kind of deal where they separated the licensing very strongly between what kind of platforms you were releasing on. So handhelds, home consoles, arcade, home computers. These were all treated with separate licenses. One thing that's worth noting, though, is that Konami did in fact

release a handheld version of Asterix. They did an LCD version. Yes, they did. Okay, fair play, fair play. Which, they did a lot of those, didn't they? And this is not, this is a different one. It's sort of a wide layout versus that, because a lot of the Konami games, LCD games, are those really long and tall, skinny shell, like turtles.

Yeah, yeah. Or this is a different format, but they still, they did it, which I thought was a challenge. Nothing, nothing will ever be as good as the one they made for Doug that says Doug faster on one of the buttons. Doug faster. Yeah. That's right. I fucking hate Doug. I hate Doug too

I hope Doug dies There I said it It already did Yeah It's no longer around Yeah that's an abomination The Doug LCD game Basically looks like one of those

controllers Like my first controller Made for like two year olds You know It's just got all like the weird Colored shapes on it You press buttons Like the Fisher Price kind of thing

Yeah that's what it looks like I just want to know What it means to Doug faster How does one Doug faster There's separate buttons one is... No, don't ruin it. No, it's funny here that way.

There's a faster button, there's a faster button, and a Doug button. Yeah, so what does it mean to Doug? So what does it mean to Doug? So what does it Doug button do? He just dug his own grave? I don't know. I...

You know what's funny about the LCD games? There's a bit of videos about this from YouTubers and whatnot, but like, I find them so fascinating that most of my time spent in Maine the last like three years has been playing LCD games because they finally started emulating

them. Oh, whoa. It's just such a while, remember John, when we did Moral Combat, the D.F. Retro episode. Yeah. Like, one of my first things I told he was like, we are going to include the LCD game. And you were like, yeah, obviously. I love getting LCD games in there. Yeah.

And it was like, it's terrible. But it just kind of creates this overall picture of popularity. It was just like, it was popular enough that people were this desperate to get their hands on interactive entertainment based on this property. I mean, I would, to get sort of off this and back on track, no offense man, there. See, LCD games is a subject I am interested in covering at some point. I think there is an episode in it. Oh, man. So I'm going to have to repuse in for that.

I think we've all had our share of those. I mean, I still have my old LCD games. I have Sonic the Hedgehog. I have the Rocketeer. I do have the Rocketeer. I do have the Rocketeer. Also, I have Jordan versus Bird. Amazing.

And then I have one that's just called like pinball. But what's even better is that I got a whole bunch of these French LCD games from the early 80s that my wife had as a kid that look a lot like a Nintendo game and watch systems. And those are wild. It's so interesting. I have the Ninja Turtles ones. I have a lucky one. And I have, when I live in Japan, I bought this Ninja Turtles calculator, which has an exclusive LCD game on it. Okay.

Now that is the deepest cut I've ever heard. Wow. This is happening. Retronauts, OCD games, keep an air out for that, folks. Now, Asterix, though, we must be, there must be more to say about the arcade game. Like, what's... Well, the music. Yeah, I mean, the music as well.

Also, the sound effects of music is just perfect. It's done by Izumi-san, who did the turtles and those kind of soundtracks. so again it has this really punchy beefy sound but it's very like in the turtles it's very rock-oriented and based around the main theme a lot whereas this has a lot more variation in the music and it's unlike most of the Konami bell scroller soundtracks it integrates a lot more

instrumentations a lot more ethnic sounds I mean the thing is they had less to work with I think because Asterix does not have this one, I would say cohesive soundscape at this point. It doesn't... No, I mean, I associate it with a certain sound, but that's something we'll get to eventually.

Right. I mean, so you had like U-hoo, which is like his catchphrase in a couple of... Like, you could hear it as a couple of movies and whatnot, but so they used that. And there was a theme song by this time in French, which was Asterix ELA.

Asterixela. I love that song. Yeah, which was sung by I forget his name by his famous children singer in France and then that was actually covered by

a British band for Astrichet Breton So what was that call? Lookout is out So they could have

used that I guess kind of like pizza power But you are right Yeah I mean They could have

gone something like that Sorry But there is no kind of unified theme or soundtrack as such that being said though

a lot of those films were composed by Vladimir Cosma Oh he's also a great guy Incredible yeah incredible film composer on on the part of like

John Williams and his soundtracks for the asterisk films stunning but they don't have a centralized theme which again for this game doesn't really help it.

But what they did come up with is very fitting and is very different from the other soundtracks. And they did release that CD. It's on Konami soundtrack Volume 1. I do want to say that. Speaking of Konami music in general,

a lot of game fans, obviously, are big fans of their music, but I feel like the wider public is mostly aware of their big console games. And I really suggest going back to like the early 90s, mid-90s, and just looking to all their arcade games that never got a home

release and checking out some of the music that they crafted for those games, because there was some amazing soundtracks in there. Metamorphic Force. Gaiopolis is awesome. Yeah. You know, Mystic Warriors sounds good. There's so many. You got asterix. And, you know, as well as Izumi,

I mean, Michiru Yamane worked on this. Yep, she did. Yeah. I think Nakano Yunia even was on there. So, like, you have, like, a dream team of composers working on this game. Another one, Roller Games. That's the soundtrack to listen to.

Tami's arcade version of Roller Games is insane sounding. I didn't even know there was an arcade version of Roller Games. It's not as good as the N-E-S game. It's not as good of a game, but the soundtrack's great and the technology behind it is incredible. You know, the other day I saw on a stream that my friends do, we watched like a, I don't if it was Roller Games. It was like, it was like WWF, like mixed with skating. Is that what Roller Games was?

Yeah, it was so unusual. It was based on Roller Derby. Right, yeah. Whatever that is. What that is? You don't know the Roller Derby? No. The biggest sport of the 1992 to 1994?

No, I genuinely don't know what it is. Does that bring us to a pause, I think? Yeah, a place to stop because I never anticipated that this would be, honestly, a two-parter. It could be a three-parter. there's so much to say about all these games I mean if that's the case then that's the case I mean we've got to be exhaustive in our you know asterisk we've got to get those vital statistics

etc etc these Romans are crazy by I don't know how they say it by tutatus or something I don't know what it means by two tatis by two tatis what does that even mean what is a two tartis that's a Gallic god oh okay that makes sense the main god basically

so by two tartis is like the asteris way of saying fucking hell basically In a way. Yeah, in a way. That's what they say when, you know, either death or the sky is falling. Yeah, yeah. Now, we'll carry on with this in another future episode, I'm sure. We've got the Nintendo games to go.

We've got all the other Mega Drive and PC games and eventually PlayStation games to go. So there's a lot to cover here, and I hope you've enjoyed this, and the detail this has been in. I've been very, very presently surprised myself, to be honest. I thought I knew it would be good, but I didn't know it would be this good, you know? It's always nice when that happens. Now, let's go through in order. Audi, where can people find you on the internet and enjoy your presence and work? So if you go on Twitter, I'm PC98 underscore Audi.

You can follow me there. I will be on several videos on Digital Foundry, so go subscribe to them, ring that notification bell, and send them a comment, let them know we want more videos of the Afretro. And also go check out Limiter Run Games, where I produce their internal developments, and I work very closely with a certain Mr. Parrish. Have you put any interesting books out on the 29th of June, by any chance?

A little book, you know? Ah, yeah, there's a book coming out which is called, I think every game is good, or something like that. All games are good, little book. I'm just doing the family. I do live by that mantra myself. I do collect what people claim to be bad games, but

you know, I always feel like everyone else collects the best games. Why can't I collect the worst? Mm-hmm. Hell yes. And John, where can our fine folks find you another fine folk on the internet? As usual, you can find me at Dark Onex on Twitter. I'm doing videos for Digital Foundry over at YouTube.com slash Digital Foundry. Check out DF Retro, of course. That's my baby. You could say, and Audie works with me on that and others, and it's awesome. And then also we do write articles on Eurogamer as well. Can I just ask real quick Like My cut this might not

I'm just kind of curious Whenever you tweet anything about any game Have you ever done that And not been met with at least one person Telling you you're wrong And no never Ever Because that's what

What I see And this is not In no way of criticism It's just observation These people are not that clever No They'll come at you And they'll think they've got you

But they've just said something that you've already addressed it's wild like I can't believe how stupid they can be it's shocking and it is a daily thing yeah I mean I don't envy that you're very good at um dispelling these people I respect that

what I found is for and this is this applies to everyone basically once your Twitter account crosses a certain threshold the garbage just comes in but it's just the awfulness there's great stuff too though but you open the door for that type of stuff

as well. Yeah. I mean, especially since you're talking about things like frame rates and like console war-esque

kind of stuff. Thomas. Lovely, lovely, Thomas, where can we find you on the internet? So if you would want to find me

for whatever reason on the internet, you could check on Twitter at Bimbofortuna or you could check at maniac.de where you can find

the website of the magazine I'm writing for where they usually publish my articles in German, of course, and also after they run their circle on the newsstands,

but this is all the way you could find me, yeah. Amazing, and you can find me on the internet at Stupacabra. On Twitter, you can read my tweets depend on in quality, very in quality, depending on what my mood is like. Yeah, I noticed you were a great mood at the direct yesterday.

Oh, thank you, yes. I was really disappointed by that Nintendo Direct, to be honest, and now I've slept on it, I've thought, you know what? It's a, like, Nintendo, Situu Mario, it's probably going to be amazing. I should probably just stop doing this. Last time I did that, I was really upset that they did Kirby

and the forgotten land because I loved 2D Kirby. It was like the last bastion of 2D for me. And they made this 3D one and I was like, this is rotten. I hate this. They've ruined Kirby. And then, of course, it comes out and it's fantastic. Oh, yeah. Yep, that's what happens. I just resolve there and then, I resolve,

maybe I should stop saying things. That seems to be the problem here when I communicate my thoughts. I should probably stop doing that. But no, yes, I've just had a book. By the time this goes out, the book will be out. and hopefully sold out. It's called all games are good. It's available through limited-run games,

and it's about my, I guess my unusual life in gaming and how I've come to be the way that I am, but it's done through the lens of, like, talking about lots and lots of individual games for lots of individual systems. It's a lot of fun. I think you'll like it.

I think you'll get a lot of laughs out of it, and, you know, maybe you'll even learn something, too. I'm going to stop looking at my book now. So would you say it isn't an educational novel in a way? No way, yes. It is an education, yes. But is it a warning? It's a love story.

Is it a warning or what is it? It's a celebration. It's a veneration of time forgotten. But that time could come again. We just have to kill people, but we're not prepared to do it. Anyway. So I'll say that I got to read an early version of this, and I absolutely loved it. Oh, well, thank you.

This is a heartfelt recommendation to do pick up that book. That's really kind. Thank you. It's a wonderful book. Thank you for reading it. Now, Retronauts, listeners, if you enjoy Retronauts and you'd like to support Retronauts, which we'd be very grateful for, if you go to patreon.com.com for slash Retronauts for just $5 a month, which you have to admit is really not that much money.

You'll get not only an age weekly episode a week early, but you'll also be getting two per month, completely bonus episodes, for an extra charge. Well, $5, but, you know, that's it. So how much revenue can you handle this? Because you're getting a bunch of it. That's all I'm saying. You'll also be getting Diamond Fight's tremendous columns this week in retro, which are also recorded by them, so you can get it as a podcast as well. Even more additional content. You can come on the Discord and you can call me whatever you like, and I'm not allowed to challenge you in any way. So please do that. And thank you for listening and I guess now all that there is to do is string up the bard and have a feast a huge feast of wild boar in the dark as is the ending of every asterix book I've ever read I believe yeah except for one where he's not strung up oh really but as you know these veterans not are crazy anyway so nice very good thanks very much for listening and cheerio bye Thank you.