Retronauts - 698: The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

When is a prince not a prince? When he’s a frog or a snake! Diamond Feit, Christa Lee, and npckc laud one of Nintendo’s lesser-known games outside of Japan, The Frog For Whom The Bell Tolls. 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, there's a frog in my boot and snakes in my throat. Welcome back to Retronauts. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for joining us on this very special episode. I've decided to start calling all episodes, very special episodes, because each one is unique and special. But this one is extra special because we're talking about a video game that's never been released outside Japan officially. And it's only available in English through the hard work of fans of this video game. What kind of video game would have this where fans want to play it and they want other people to play it? But the company who owns the game says, No, you don't want to play it. And no, we're not talking about Mother 3. It's not a Mother 3 podcast. This week we're talking about the frog for whom the bell tolls. It's a Japanese video game made by Nintendo, made for their Game Boy platform, 1992. Oddly enough, no boys in the podcast this week.

I didn't play in that, but here we are. We've got three not boys talking about a Game Boy exclusive video game. I'm your host Diamond Fight. I have given up my shape-shifting lifestyle, but let's talk to my two guests, starting with our returning guest from the great state of Washington? Washington, yeah, you got it. Hi, I'm Krista Lee. I was on here a little while ago, or a few months ago, for a Darius-themed podcast, and I'm

back because I, I guess probably because I yell about this game a lot on the internet. Yeah, hi. Hello, Krista. and joining us on Retronauts for the very first time, also here in Japan, but not near me as far as I know. Hi, I'm Kaysi. I'm in Saitama, which is close-ish. It's accessible by train to where you are, I think, within a couple of hours. I think that's pretty close.

I'm Casey. I make games, and I really like, for, I don't, I didn't know that was the official English name. I always called it in my head, like, for the frog, the belt holes. Yes. I'm going to swap it around. the frog for whom the bell tolls. I got that now. Yeah, I usually just say Cayetunotan.

That's right, too. Well, we'll go through the titles for sure. And yes, Casey, I believe that is accurate. Like, if I wanted to eat lunch in Saitama, I could eat lunch in Saitama. But it would involve a late lunch. Yeah. It would involve a serious amount of yen and many hours of travel. But I will settle for lunch here in Osaka, Japan.

It's fine. It's pretty good. Pretty good food here. But yes, this video game, as we said, it has not. in English in any time by anyone, officially. So the actual Japanese title is Kairnuiu'anur. And the reason people use this sort of awkward English translation is because that Japanese title is extremely similar to the Japanese title for Ernest Hemingway's, very famous story, for whom the bell tolls, which in Japanese is, Dara'a Tamini Kane w'aner. And once upon a time,

Sakurai, Blessed Sakurai, talked about this game on Meverse, and he used the Frog for whom the Bell Tolls and describing the game. So for now, I'm calling it Canon, but if Nintendo ever released this game and they give it a different title, I will yield to them. It's their, it's their game. I trust them. But for now, I'm calling it the Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls, even though it's a mouthful. And I don't really think this game has anything to do with Hemingway's Hemingway story, and it's certainly isn't to do with Metallica's, you know, well-received album for whom the bell tolls.

Good music, though. Good music in this video game, and we'll get to who made that music in the game very shortly. But before we get there, I'd like to know how we all came to liking this video game, given that we all seem to speak English to one degree or another, and we don't seem to be Japanese.

So how did we get here? Crystal, let's start with you, because you described yourself as yelling about this game. So why? What makes this game? Why do you, why do you yellow about the frogs. Why? Well, I would, I guess I would describe myself as somebody who's like mostly interested in Nintendo's non-major IP work. Like, or they're like, you know, sin and punishment or Dolshin the giant, that

that category thing Nintendo does. And Kaerunotame is like one of the earliest, other than like the Famicom Dis system stuff, it's just about the earliest example of this. and it always looked really charming and cute and there's a sort of, I think, maybe apocryphal, but there's a Link's Awakening connection here. I think maybe it's a little overstated, but I'm guessing we're getting it into that.

But I love Links Awakening, so I was always kind of curious about it, and I played it through on my Game Boy player a couple, two or three years ago now, and just absolutely fell in love with it the way it reduces and dilutes combat down, The way, the exploration, the narrative, the sense of humor, music, it's all phenomenal. And so I do often yell on the internet about how great this game is and how much Nintendo really should make a remake of it with Grezo.

All right. How about you, Krista? Casey, sorry. I actually got around to it, I guess, fairly late. There was this weird promotion on 3DS where if you filled out a form, I think it was, for SoftBank. They gave you a free game from the download, what was it? Like, download where? Shoot, what was it called in 3D?

I don't remember exactly. A virtual console. Yeah, virtual console. And I was like, this is the one, this game I haven't played. I'm going to try it. Then I played it. And it was incredible. It blew me away.

And, like, for the same reasons, the story is just so heartwarming. And then afterwards, I found out, oh, it's connected to Links Awakening. And at this point, I never played Link's Awakening. I'm like, oh, if Links Awakening is like, this game, it's got to be good. Then I played it. And it was not as good. for the frog for whom the bell told it's like i love like lynx awakening too it's gorgeous and lovely but it doesn't it didn't hit me nearly as hard like the story it's very nice i guess like link goes on

an adventure that's very cool that's very lovely but there's there's no like prince richard helping me out and like it's just not even remotely the same level of awesome i think yes although as it turns out prince richard is indeed in lynx awakening he just isn't doing anything or saying much. He gets his own, like, his motif is beautiful. The beautiful music, we get to hear it again. Yeah. Yeah, as for me, I also, I think, discovered this through the Links

Awakening Connection. That was a game I played when it was new, and I loved it very much. I loved it for many years. And then I think, yeah, probably late 90s or the 2000s started to hear some internet chatter about, did you know there was another game made by some of the same people? And I was like, oh, that sounds cool, but it's only a Japanese. Well, I don't, speak enough Japanese to. play that game and then years later

I kind of do speaking of Japanese to play the game so I think I think when I noticed it was on the Nintendo Switch online as part of their Game Boy Software lineup in Japan. Wait, what? Yeah, yeah, it is. It's on Amazon. Wait, what? I missed that. Okay, I'll replay. Good to know. It's, you know, obviously it's only in Japan and it's only in Japanese but

if you are a member of the Nintendo Switch online platform you can download the app from the Japanese store and just play it in Japanese if you want to do that, which is what I did. And I was like, this game is really lovely. And then after that, I was like, you know what? I know someone who hosts a podcast about retro video games. Let's talk to them about this on the podcast. And that's someone is me. So you're hearing me talk about it with people I found who also love this game. So yeah, my interest in this game is sort of recent as far as actually playing the game, but it's been kicking around my head for many years of sort of this weird trivia contest.

thing. But now I've actually played it. It's a real game, which is how I recommend everyone in sort of engages with video games. Like, actually play the video game and then you'll enjoy it so much more. Or you'll hate it, but at least you'll have played it and you'll say, hey, I tried this game and I didn't like it. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about who made the video game because it's a pretty stacked lineup, I've got to say. A lot of people in this game made some amazing games beforehand and afterwards. So it's kind of a fun thing to picture this sort of sleeper title on their resume,

and they're all sort of sharing this one experience. So we'll start off with a producer by a man by the name by Makoto Kano. Kano is sometimes spelled with an H on the end, but sometimes not spelled with an H. But it's a long O, so it's Kano. He's an old-time Nintendo guy. He joined Nintendo in 1972

before anyone thought of video games as a concept. And he described his role back then as designing board games and small analog games. He was on a Nawada Asks many years ago. And for him, that includes working on the Game and Watch series. So you have to imagine this man, and probably spent a lot of time drinking with Gumpaiyokoi and chatting about, you know, transistors and things of that nature.

But Kano also has credits on Metroid and Metroid too. And after this game, he was one of the producers of Super Metroid. So that's three Alzheimer's right there. Anything with a Metroid from that era is for me as an all-timer personally. He has since retired. I couldn't find an exact year on that, But, you know, I don't, yeah, 50 years at Nintendo, pretty good run, I think. So he should definitely be relaxing or maybe tinkering with something in his garage at this point.

I don't know. But no longer active on Nintendo. But you'll still see his name credit from time to time because he worked there for a long time. So usually whenever a game of his gets, like, you know, reissued, he'll get like a special thanks or, you know, consultant credit, which is, you know, good for him. I actually didn't know that about that. The toy connection is actually really interesting. Yes. He is, I mean, everyone here has a lot of links to other Nintendo stuff, but he seems to be the most long-timer of the long-timers in that he dated his career in Nintendo dates back to the 70s, so with the electromechanical stuff. But the director of the game, first-time director, Toru Osawa. Now, Toro Osawa, even though his credit is like writer or something, as far as we know, he was like the number one guy behind Kidikris, like, as a game. And that game is a long, sort of complicated history. We did a whole retrospect that game at one point. I didn't look up the

episode number. You can find it. But that was a guy who sort of had the idea for Kid Icarus, started working Kid Icarus. The project got much larger than he expected. And then a lot of the Metroid team got onto Kid Icarus to finish the game, which is why you see a lot of Metroid sort of moments and even fake Metroid's and Kidacris, because they had a lot of crossover back then. But Toro Osawa also credited as the scriptwriter scenario writer for Famicom Detective Club, which is a series that has, of come back in a big way in recent years. They've made new detective club games for the first time in decades, which is kind of awesome,

in my opinion. After a frog game, Osawa is the director of Legend of Zelda O'Kerate of Time. So, pretty huge project right there. He also says he worked on the story and script in a Nawada asks many years ago. And for him, it was very special because, as he put it, since I was working Nintendo, the Legend of Zelda was a title I wanted to work on at least once. So you directed one of the biggest Zelda games around. Good job, Osawa, you know.

Kudos to you. I'm clapping. Very quietly, so does it come on Mike. The scenario, the script for this frog game, is written by Yoshio Sakamoto. And I think that's the name most Nintendo fans should probably recognize. Because aside from aforementioned credits on Kid Icarus and Metroid and Famicom Detective Club, He was one of the directors of Super Metroid, which came after this game. He is still like the Metroid guy.

Pretty much any Metroid game that comes out at this point has Sakamoto in the credits somewhere high up. Even Dred, which was made, I think, mostly in America. Sakamoto's on that project. He's writing things. He's crafting things. He's promoting them. Also, Sakamoto had credit on the recent MEO The Smiling Man detective game, which was a fun throwback title to the old detective game era. So Sakamoto probably more than anyone here is definitely still active working at a very high level on Nintendo games of all sorts.

And this is just one of many projects that he's touched over the years. But I think it's what he's probably had a fondness for, given how it's shown up again and again. And later Sakamoto works. And lastly, but not least, by any means, is the music. Music is by Kazmi Totaka. It's hard for me to say Totaka. I keep saying Totoka. No, no, it's Totaka.

Cosby Totaka. And he made his debut for Nintendo making music for X. No, not the Everything app. I'm Thugba X, the 3D Game Boy Action Game, which I believe was partially designed or directed by Dylan Cuthbert. That's right, yeah. Yeah, it was Dylan Cufford. Yeah, that was one of his.

That's kind of an amazing video game and that you're playing it on a Game Boy. It's like, wait, this is a 3D video game on a Game Boy. That's amazing. It's incredible. Totaka did the music for that game. I actually didn't know that. I didn't know that was his first. That's amazing. Yep, that's his first credit anyway. Sure.

After this game, he has music credits on Super Mario Land 2. Pretty good music. Zelda Links Awakening. There's another connection right there. We Sports. The Wii system music, Totaka may be responsible for something like the all-time jams as far as Wii system music goes. And amongst his legacy is something called Totaka's song. And this is a very short, little ditty, that he seems to sneak into every project he works on in storm form or another. Usually it's actually as a very basic, like, chip tune melody. Sometimes he gets a little freaky with it and, like, remasters it and makes it sound like nice. But often it's very much just a boop, bo boboop, boop, boop.

Like, it's very simplistic in its melody. And you can go on YouTube, and you'll find people who have, like, made a super cut of Sotaka's song. So you can hear it, like, in different games over generations. It's always there. When you hear it, it stands out, in my opinion. He did Mario Artist as well, which if you haven't listened to the Mario Artist soundtrack, it's phenomenal. I see more and more YouTubers using it. There's a song called So Kawaii.

That is really fantastic. Excellent. Also, and, you know, obviously when it comes to Nintendo Games, especially, voice credits are sort of nebulous over the years. But based on a lot of his sort of special thanks and voice work, he seems to be the primary voice of Yoshi. so in a lot of games if you hear someone like that's probably Kazmi Totaka

also known small feat the character of KK Slider in the Animal Crossing Games who is known as Totakeke in Japanese that should give you a big hit right there that's named after Totaka

and I believe he's I don't know if he's credited on Animal Crossing Games per se but he definitely knows about the Totateke connection and there are stories of him like breaking out a guitar and sitting down and very much looking like KK Slider at events sometimes. So Totaka seems to be really embracing his relationship with, you know, cartoon dinosaurs and dogs and musicians and just his little niche in

Nintendo's, you know, giant canon of music. Yeah, you get KKK song or like Totaka song in every single Animal Crossing, which is always really fun. You can get him to play it on his little dog guitar whistle thing. Beautiful. I think it's beautiful that dogs have learned music at this point. Also, just a fun note out there, if you speak Japanese, the Nintendo website for this game, like the one they made probably, I'm going to guess, 30 years ago. And obviously not when the Game Boy came out. They weren't doing any websites back then, but like many other Game Boy games and other 90s video games, Nintendo still maintains the original Japanese website,

promoting this game when it was on sale. So you can go there today and look at it. It is very low-fi. It's got, like, really huge buttons and, like, tiled backgrounds. It's very much a website from, like, I'm going to say, 96 or so. And I also think that's beautiful. I believe I do love. And the art is so cute.

Yes. So cute on the site. They're pretty good scans. Please look at it. Please look at it, everyone. I'm especially fond of the portraits of characters who transform in different shapes, and that they have portraits of like their human form and their animal forms

just right next to each other. Just like, here's this character and here's what they look like as a frog. You know, just for fun. I wonder when they put this out. Yeah, because they would have... I'll put it in the show notes for those of you out there.

Again, it is in Japanese, but you don't need to understand Japanese to appreciate the artwork. And if you want to go ahead and, you know, put it through a translator, I know all browsers translate Japanese's point. You know, you get the gist of it. Although, actually, it's so old.

I think a bunch of the texts might even just be in Japanese, like, as an image. I think the button graphics are actually graphic graphics. So it's okay. OCR is on your phone, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's true. Point your phone at your computer screen and translate it that way. That'll work.

There is a little story in text that would translate. Hmm. The Tokenabombed-noburned-nobu-kid-law-kid-law. And-sia-mob-lut-l-l-l-hoo-poh. Thank you. But speaking of characters, let's talk about the characters in this video game, because they're kind of the whole deal. This is a very story-heavy video game, which we'll get into in a moment.

But let's introduce the main players, if you will. Starting with our main character, Prince Sable, Sable, depending how you want to read that. It's got an accent mark in most versions that I've seen, and he is the prince of that kingdom. So the Sabley kingdom. He's the prince of Saboray, if you will. His first name is up to you. You can name him whatever you want. I think a lot of you too just name him frog.

They're like predicting his future. It probably doesn't check for curse words if you want to name him a curse word. Go ahead. But that's him. And Sablee is, I think, a French, sort of like a cookie or biscuit, depending on how you want to read that. That's going to be a theme here. A lot of the stuff in this game is just named after cookies or just. desserts or um food in general it's kind of their thing and as heroes go i would say he's um

he's earnest i think i feel like he's earnest like he wants to be a good person he wants to be a heroic person he screws up sometimes he's not always um receptive to other people's ideas and certainly gets himself in quite a pickle quite quickly in this game selling off to country he does not know, where he does not live. But he does so for good, you know, he wants, you know, his motivations are pure, if you will. He hears by people in trouble and he wants to help them, even if he doesn't plan ahead very well or consider his actions in the big picture. And his opposite is Prince Richard of the Custard Kingdom. And this is one of those classic anime friend rival friendemies, I think it's what the kids say these days. Like, they spend a lot of

their time fighting each other and Richard is always better than him. So I think at one point Richard says like, oh, that's, you know, that's my 56 straight victory. You know, I'm 56 and O against you, which, you know, got to be honest, for me as a person, I would, I would just find something else to do at that point than fight Richard. But Prince Sabley, he's not a quitter. He's many things, but he's not a quitter. So he always wants to best Richard in some way. You know, Richard goes off to be a hero. Well, then I'll be a hero too.

And that, again, gets him in trouble in this video game. But in the end, I think he does sort of complete a hero's journey, if you will, and ends up, you know, redeeming himself, I think. Although Richard is not quite, Richard is in no way a bad guy in the story, but he's certainly, I don't know, what other characters would you compare Richard to? He's a type. He's a type of guy that you've seen in a lot of stories who's strong and he knows he's strong. So he doesn't really want you to help him. Is that Sundare? Not Sundari, I don't think.

Yeah, he's a Sundari. Yeah. He is. Okay. Absolutely. I mean, is he kind of a Vegeta? Kind of, yeah. He's not as murderous as Vegeta.

I don't think he kills anyone. He's very virtuous, a very virtuous Vigida. Okay. You would not be corrupted to get the M on his head, but he would certainly, you know, he knows he's stronger than you, and he's very happy about that. And he's, he will, he will laughingly tell you to do something else or, you know, don't you can't know, you can't come with us to save the kingdom. You go somewhere else, you know, that's him.

That's Richard. Is Vichita it's in there? That's like a whole other episode, I think. Yeah, that's a whole, that's like a five-hour conversation. But who are we rescuing? Well, the main trigger for the events of this game are, are the events in the Mielfuel Kingdom. Forgive me, my French is many years old, but the Mielfuel Kingdom is, that's a dessert that you've probably had, it's lovely, and the Princess Turamisu

of the Mielfuel Kingdom. Richard and Sabaire are sparring one day, and they hear that the princess has been kidnapped, the kingdom has been invaded, you know, oh my goodness, what are we going to do? And these two men rush off to help them. So they are remotely invested in the safety of Princess Turmi Su. So they sail off the gap to rescue her, even though once they get there, they discover she's missing. And we all sort of assume that she's been kidnapped at some point, even though it turns out that's not the case. Spoiler. But yeah, Princess Turmi Su, much like a Princess Peach or Daisy, like she's kind of, you know, she's a name that's thrown about and she's supposed to be very special, but you don't actually see her until the game is basically

over. So not a lot of characterization there. But she, you know, she's named after a wonderful, a wonderful treat, I must say. Turmi Su is definitely one of my top ten faves at this point. And yet, not as a kid, I didn't like it. I was foolish. A fool. I can't remember the last time I had it. Was it the coffee flavor? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's the kind of thing I tasted it in an Italian restaurant. I'm like, oh, this is too bitter. I don't like this. And years later, I'm like, oh, you fool. You fool. You've got to have had this for so many years. Speaking of sweets, here's jam.

Jam is a thief and a pirate. He certainly looks the part. He's dressed. He's very much dressed the pirate. part, like any pirates in any Japanese video games or even, this is pre one piece. So, like, even pre one piece, like, your cartoon pirate, like, that's Jam. That's, that's what Jan looks like. Jam's a fun character because as soon as you meet him the first time, he steals all of your money, and you get it back eventually and you sort of become friends with Jam because you realize you're on the same side. But at least, initially, Jam views you as an invader and doesn't trust you and gets people to beat you up.

So he seems like a threat at some point, but later on, no, he's just misunderstood. We also have the sort of, well, not a hermit, because she's a lady. I don't, do ladies, are ladies hermits, by your estimation? Is hermit gender? I think hermit. I think. Is it? Is it?

Hermit Tess? I don't know. I mean, she's a sort of witch. I think the describer is mojo in the game. Yeah. But I also feel like she's one of those. those, like, live-alone types, and I don't know if that's gendered or not, but she's a witch who lives alone, she has a pet bird, and she mixes magic potions, and she becomes very

important to the plot because she gives you magic potions that enable you as the prince to embark on your adventure, because the potions she gives you, allows you to change your shape, which makes you wonder, hmm, I wonder if Madela is herself a shapeshifter, possibly, possibly, dear listener. She might be a shapeshifter. but I won't get into that. Now, you can enjoy that when you play the video game. But consider the lonely character who lives alone, who makes magic potions that are involved in rescuing the captured possible princess.

Maybe she is a force for good in the Mielfuel kingdom. Sorry. I'm not going to get that right, but I'm going to keep trying. Mille ful, I don't know. Does anyone speak French here? Not a lick. No, no idea. Mielfui.

We're trying. We're trying. It's okay. Honestly, it's a word I hear more here in Japan than I ever heard back in the States. Because meal fuel, besides being dessert, is also used in many contexts in Japanese for anything that's layered. Like, Domino's has a meal fuel pizza, which is like a bunch of like crust and cheese layered over top of each other. It's incredibly dense, but also like when I need too much cheese, I order that one because it's just too much cheese. Huh Sorry I

Well you know what Sorry not sorry This is a game About things I'm gonna be hungry By the time We're finished here So yeah

I'm gonna talk about things I like to eat in Japan It's just gonna happen Just roll with it It's okay Meanwhile Who is the evil person Behind all this

Well it's the Lord Delorine And I don't I don't quite know What the joke is there Is Delorina a joke Into itself I'm not sure

I don't I've actually looked this up Before And nobody seems to be Sure I don't think Like I don't know What the base is But I feel like

There must be Because everything else is a joke like the names, I mean. Yeah, I have no idea. I wonder if it could be like a pun on someone's name who worked on the game possibly and just they haven't really come out and said it because, you know. It's not very flattering. It feels like it was like a compound word.

Like, data is like one. But I have no idea what. Like it just feels like a word that's like a portmanteau. Mm. Certainly the army he leads. We can tell with a joke there. He is a leader of the Geronian army. And ghetto is,

what I would say Japanese kids describe like a frog sound like ghetto or sometimes Karu but usually ghetto geto getal

right so Geronian I believe in the English translation they call it the croakian army which is kind of

like yeah like croak I guess you could do like a ribbit a ribotaskic ribbittian ribician maybe that sounds like

Giovanni Ribisi no sounds like rabbit it's like the animal yeah we won't go there but yeah

that's the joke there he leads he leaves an army that sounds like frogs he's invaded the Meelofield Kingdom. He is, you know, he is the Gannon, if you will, of the story. He's, he's the bad person who's here and doesn't really have much personality because he doesn't come back in any of their games. But he's evil, so we will topple him as good

heroes, too. All the people who help our prince in this quest is a very fun character, especially when you get into the woods here. So the professor, Ariostein, Arieusstein, Arayostein Hakase. So his name very much is a pun in Japanese, especially with the inclusion of the Katakana Oul. So it's kind of like, his name is kind of like a way to say in Japanese, like, I want to do that or I'll get that done. I'll do it. I think the English fan transition might even call like Ivana Fix It or something. Like they're trying to play into that joke there.

But he's sort of your stereotypical like science, you know, scientist dude. He loves to make gadgets. he loves to eat wasabi, you meet him at a remote company called Nantendo. Never heard of that one before. Yeah, not sure where that's a reference to. It's a mystery. Oh, you know, my water bottle is Nintendo. I wonder if it's related.

But anyway, you meet him, and then he becomes, like, a regular feature where you go back to him and he gives you new inventions, and some of them are very useful. Some of them are, like, very specific useful, and I know he makes a big, he makes a big, he makes big entrance in the game's big finale, which is just a very cute moment. So, I do like any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, any, I, I, I, I do like that. Also, a curious character is Alfredo jimbe who you meet later in the game. He claims to be a visiting Japanese business man. But, you know, this is a text-based game. So Japanese, the way Japanese is, is very much, um, playful in these sort of games. So, when, you ever you take, you, you talk to Alfred Alfredo, all his words are written in a mix of katagana and higana, and traditionally, Katakana is used for like foreign loan words, you know, like business, or cheese or something like that, where the hiragana is used for domestic words, you know, especially for kids, for kids who can't read kanji, like they'll write everything out in hiragana. But Alfredo is kind of a weird guy, so his normal speech is written in katakana, and then when he

uses Japanese words in his sort of English translation, or when he uses an English word in his Japanese words, the English words were written out in Hittagana, like it's a foreign word to him. So as a Japanese speaker, when you play this game and you read his speech, it's very confusing. But it's also very funny, just like in presentation-wise. Like, I don't know that he's necessarily making any great jokes, but as a student of language and as a localizer and as a person just playing a text-based video game, I just find it very funny. to interact with him at all. I guess it's Alfredo, like, the food?

I'm not actually sure. No, that I think about it, like, the Italian food. It's different, because in the game, it's written as Arufredo, you know, which could be either one. Just Alfred. But then on the website, which I mentioned before, that inserts it to Alfredo. So I don't know if one is different than the other.

Also, they write out his last name in kanji on the website as Jinbei. Like in the very old-fashioned, Jinbei with too many kanji You know like Jube It's got like the extra kanji at the end So Again, just one more mysterious factor About that guy

Who might even be lying about It's an identity But we're not going to get into that here Are there any other characters You want to shout at this point You know, this game is a lot of people Who show up and maybe just disappear But by all means

If any other characters you want to shout out in this game Please by all means tell us now Krista, do you have any favorites that I haven't talked about yet? There are a couple that come to mind but they're sort of like later in the game and I don't want to like, I guess, spoil the jokes. There's a lot of really funny characters. I like the vulture, the vulture of the witch's vulture, who's kind of just like this gigantic, like, wingy bird and just looks really cool.

And just seems like the sort of bird and all the witch living in the mountains who hates people would have. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely like, you know, an 80s cartoon, like a cartoon villain living somewhere would have this massive pet. that looks really dangerous, but they doad over it. You know, I'm thinking, like, I mean, Gargamel had a cat, but, like, I could picture Gargamel with a bird like this, like a really big, mean-looking vulture who wants to eat the Smurfs for himself,

you know, like that kind of thing. Even though, as we said, the witch, quite helpful. Actually, I believe the bird's name is Polnareff. So, like, right away, there's, you know, one of probably many Secret Jojo references. So enjoy Jojo fans. I always do. So let's move on to talk about some of the sort of the gameplay story aspects, because that's kind of this game's whole deal.

It's a very narrative heavy game. Like, you can, you can watch people play this game on YouTube if you want, in Japanese or in English. But I would argue that you shouldn't do that because it's a very, it's a very fun game to experience. for yourself. And if you watch someone else play it and just go through the motions, I feel like you're kind of, eh, what's the point? You know, it's like the recent mouthwashing. You can watch the mainstream mouthwashing, but if you haven't played mouthwashing, don't do that. You should play mouthwashing, you know. Although this game is nowhere near as dark in mouthwashing, just for the record. So, kind of the whole deal of this game is

shapefifting. You as Prince Sabre, you are a human being, we think. You look, you look human. your default form. You carry a sword, you carry a shield, you carry lots of money. You're, you know, you're a prince. But as you embark on this adventure, you gain the ability to change your shape. And some of this is, some of this is partially out of your control, Romma style, when you get wet, but also through various items you pick up in the game, you can choose to change yourself into certain shapes, a certain time, and churn back into human if you need to, because all of your forms have different uses and different abilities, which is kind of the meat of the gameplay. Like, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of puzzles here.

Certainly the combat itself is not really like a hard challenge. Really, it's all about where do I go next and what form should I take? And also, who should I talk to based on what form I take? Because obviously, if you talk to someone as a human being or if you talk to them as a snake, you're going to get two very different answers from the people you talk to. So I've been talking a lot. So why don't I hand it off?

Maybe Casey, why don't you get into the sort of the animal aspect of our prince here? Yeah, so as a prince, you can either become a frog or a snake. And it's very like, okay, the frog, obviously you can jump and jump higher, you can swim. Whereas as a snake, because you're short, you can get into smaller places than you normally can. I don't know, like this is something that you did. didn't actually try before, but I found out recently when talking to somebody else. If you try to become, return to a humor, become a frog while you're a, what was, I think it's when you eat an apple or which one it was, one of them. But if you're a snake and you're

in a short place, they block you because they say it's rude to eat. But it's obviously because they don't want you to trap yourself, right? We're like, oh, no, you can't eat that here. They, I don't know, it's like stuff like that. It's also charming. Like, oh, no, it's rude to eat an apple here. And I'm like, no, no, it's not. But stuff. like that. But yeah, like a lot of the game is very arbitrary where they'll gate you off. Oh, you can't proceed because you're not a fraud. You can't proceed because you can't make yourself small. And then later on with like the Nintendo, um, Nintendo of goodies and gadgets. You can't proceed unless you're strong enough to push this block or something like that. And when you say it

out loud, it sounds so tedious. It's like a lot of like arbitrary gates. Like you can't proceed because you don't have this item, you have to track all the way back. But for some reason, when you play it, it's really fun. Yeah, this is definitely a game where you backtrack a lot and you explore the kingdom a lot and you're going different villages. But I would say, you know, you have an inventory and in most cases you can stock up on stuff that you need, you know, there's definitely a couple cases where it's like, oh, geez, I had to go all the way back here and, like, buy more axes to chop down a tree or something.

But generally speaking, you know, your money comes and goes. You kind of, like, you can prepare yourself. I'm pretty sure you can save almost any time, right? So it's like, you know. You can always go back, and it's very easy to heal, too. So you don't usually die. Yeah. I guess, right?

Yeah. Generally speaking, if you die, it's more like, oh, well, I got to try something else. Not like, oh, geez, I died. I need to replay the last 20 minutes. It's not that kind of. It usually means that you're just not at full health because you forgot to eat food before fighting a bigger monster or something. Or you haven't reached the point when you had enough hearts to beat a boss. But to your point, KC., I do like that.

They do come with, yeah, there are a lot of gates that seem arbitrary, but I do like that they often, like, they think of something, and it's not just like an invisible wall. You know, like, there are some games that I've played over the years where it's like, you come to some point or some area, and the game just like, stop, it's like, no, you can't go here. Yeah, not yet. Or your character just says, oh, I shouldn't be here.

And that has its uses. But in this game, it's always like, oh, no, I can't go here because this enemy is too strong, and I need a new sword, and then I can fight him. Or this enemy, I can't get past this button because that's a snake, and that snake will kill me if I try to fight it. But if I'm a snake and I talk to the snake, then the snake won't worry about me. And you get the cute snake dialogue when you talk as a snake, and I'm like, oh, we can talk to the snakes now.

It's stuff like that. It's so charming. Yes, yes. And that's a good point. As animal forms, you can always talk to other animals. So as a frog, you can talk to all the other frogs. As a snake, you can talk to all the other snakes. eventually, you know, speaking of puns,

eventually you get a Nintendo gadget called the Bairingaer, which is a frog-shaped helmet you wear. And once you have the frog-shaped helmet, you can talk to frogs as a human being, not as a frog. And the joke there being that, of course, is based in the word bilingual, but it's combining the kairiru of Japanese for frog, so it becomes biding-gairir-er-er-er.

like that's it's okay if you don't laugh these puns they're not necessarily the puns you laugh at out loud but that's the kind of dialogue and humor we're dealing with here throughout like that's it it's a frog helmet talking to frogs the biling guy there it is and i was by the way so shocked i was so shocked to realize this because i don't think i had played this i had not played this game when i had played tomorachi collection tomatchi life in those games one of the things you can get a cosmetic item is a frog helmet and I believe in later English versions they just call it a frog

helmet because it's a frog helmet but in Japanese no no no it is a Biden guyu straight from this game like that's a like a one to one reference they put into a game like over a decade later because there's so much love for this game but it's never been translated it's never been re-released

except for a virtual console and it deserves its own like tilt sorry it deserves his own tilt shift links awakening remake We have the model for Richard already. Why can't we have the rest of the game? That's where I'm sitting at. We have Switch 2 coming up. I'm not going to buy unless they get me my coyote remake.

Yes, at one point later on the podcast, we'll talk about all the references I can find from this game. Because there are a lot. There are a lot. Some of them are subtle. Some of them are not so subtle. And it's funny to me that this game has such a place in Nintendo's history that they keep going back to it,

but they still haven't released it in any other territory. so it's kind of like, you know, in a way, it's funny. It's almost like for years how so many Japanese games made Jojo references, but until like I want to say like 2012, 2013, like most English speakers had no idea what Jojo was, so they couldn't understand, like, why are all my characters doing all these fun poses and like, you know, talking about fashion or music bands? Like, why are they doing this? It's because everyone who made video games in the 90s loved Joja's Adventure and they're

They wanted you to love it too, but they kept referencing it, and you didn't know what it was. So it's just how it played out. Mm-hmm. The only difference here being is that Nintendo doesn't own Jojo, but Nintendo owns this game, and they could localize it at literally any time. Any time. Please. Sorry.

I don't mean to beg, but it's just... No, they need to. I'm okay with begging. Like, I'm okay with begging. I would love for everyone to play this game. please. Anyway, speaking of translations, the transformations, so the snake and the frog, they differ, each form, you've got human snake and frog, each form has its own advantages and disadvantages. I would say the primary difference between the three comes in combat, because Richard, as a guy with a sword and a shield, he's pretty good at fighting things, and as throughout the game, you'll get new swords and new shields and life-ups that let you fight stronger.

and bigger things. But as a frog, you're not good at fighting things. As a snake, you can't hold any weapons. So it's like, you can fight some enemies, but you can't fight most enemies. However, as a frog, you like to eat bugs. So any enemy in a game that's considered a bug, like a fly or a scorpion, or even like snails, I think, you as a frog can just one shot, eat them up, no problem. Like, it's not even combat.

It's like, nope, I've eaten them. I gain health from them. Yum, yum. So, again, a lot of this game is figuring out what form should I be in to go through here, what form should I be in to interact with these people, you know. And sometimes the choice is just like, do I want to hear a joke or not? Because if you talk to certain animals and certain forms, you get answers or you don't get answers or you eat them, you know. So that's just a fun thing that happens throughout the game.

Even late in the game, you experiment with this and figure out what should I do next, where should I go? and what form should I take. Also, what's important is that, especially, you know, as a human being, pretty good, as a frog, very good. As a snake, you are terrible at jumping. And that's important in this game, because while most of the game, you're walking around overworld, and it's sort of, it's very Zelda-like, really. When you go indoors, especially in the main palace, which we'll talk about in a second, it switches to a 2D perspective, which in many ways is like Link's Awakening when you go into like the, uh, The dungeons themselves are 3D environments, but then they'll have, like, 2D passageways that you go in, and that's where you meet, like, the gumbas and the thwamps and stuff. This game has that, but it has, like, big sections of it, much larger than just, like, little sections.

They're big sections. And in those sections, you have to jump. So that's another factor at work, because if you're a snake, you really can't jump at all, but as frogs and humans, you can. But then as a human being, you can push blocks. But as frog, you can't really push blocks. you can't push anything, but you can wriggle into small places. So all these factors come together, and then later on in the game, you get

more items like, um, they get a pickax, right? Or a pickax or a hammer. Yeah, to like... To talk to use. Yeah. Yeah. To break your way down to like into, into caves. Oh, yeah. So all these items come together into how you explore things and jumping. I wouldn't really describe it as a platformer, although some

of the dungeons do have like some modest platforming. But it's more about like choices than like, expertise. use it jumping, I would say. I feel like some of the platforming jumping for the last cast of it actually gets kind of frustrating because it's not as, like, it is

price, precise, yes, but it's I guess they did, like it's a Game Boy, and sometimes the jumps you have to make are pretty big and you can't really see everything the way you want to, and you jump into places you don't want to be. Yeah, I can get a little frustrating. You know, so the game makes a lot of use of like one-way gates.

Almost like a pinball game. Like you'll go through a board and you'll have to like either double back or think of another way to get around or maybe change shape to do something. I'm definitely thinking of a place where it's like at one point there was like a lava and you have to like push blocks and then you jump from the blocks over the lava. But if you don't push the blocks in just the right way and jump at the right point, you might think, oh no, I can't get past here.

So like that was definitely like probably the one point in the entire game where I was like, am I stuck or do I need to find something else? and the answer was, I'm not stuck. I just need to jump very carefully. So I think I end up using the Nintendo Switch like save states. It's like, no, I'm just going to get everything ready. I'm going to save the game with a save state. And I'm just going to keep trying to jump until I get it right.

So, you know, if you're playing a Game Boy, that might frustrate you. If you're playing on Switch, just use a safe state. It's fine. It's fine. Go ahead. No one's going to call the cops. So let's talk combat, because obviously a Zelda game, game is going to have a lot of fighting in it. And this game has plenty of fighting in it, but it's not

like any Zelda game that I can think of. Again, I've been talking too much. Krista, do you want to talk about the art of Fistakuffs in Kaya Nozumni? Sure. So, yeah, basically you have a, it's automatic, you walk up to an opponent, and then kind of a dust cloud appears, and it starts ticking down the health meter of you and your opponent. basically if you have more health than your opponent does at whatever rate of depletion that you're you know you're inflicting on that opponent you you will win so it's it's sort of automated in a way and that ultimately that kind of results in a game where you're kind of managing your health and making sure that you just have enough to get over the hump of that of that opponent um

you can run away or use an item if things are going poorly but yeah so it's kind of turn base but It's all kind of automated. It's very much a game for, like, playing on the go or on the train or something. If you're super overpowered, you can, like, knock enemies away really, really easily. Yeah, what I like about how this works is that, again, it's kind of like an easy shorthand to make it clear like, okay, you should be here or you should not be here. Like, yeah, yeah. If you walk up to an enemy and they completely no-sell your attack and they take away three hearts with one hit, then you're like, okay, I'm leaving. maybe I need something else before I come back here

or maybe I need to talk to them or something like you need to find another way. So in some aspects it's a little limiting in that the game very much has things where like you really shouldn't be here don't come here and you can't like say like in a Zelda game like

I don't think there's really like any sequence breaks that I think of in this game where I don't know if you move the right way and you have the right you know like the bomb you can like sneak past this enemy or something like that's not really that kind of game, but on the other hand, I appreciate its sort of straightforwardness where it's like, no, no, no, no, this is an enemy, you don't want to fight this enemy. Come back. Yeah. I do appreciate

that. Um, I guess that's really for combat. I'm trying to think if there's anything else of note. Um, if you, if you're the frog, as kind of previously mentioned, if you're the frog, you have basically no health and do basically no damage output. Uh, so it, it, it communicates very directly and immediately, like, no, no, no, you don't need to be doing this. I also just, I really like just the graphic, sort of the cartoon dust cloud graphic, I feel like it's perfect, it perfectly communicates how this game, like, wants you to approach the game in general, you know, like, you see this really early on when the prince, the princes are fighting, like, even though it's supposed to be fencing practice and they both have, like, swords that look like, uh, epi, like those little pointy swords, um, when they duel each other, it's just a tight dust cloud, which is like... There's, like, fighting, like, nuts. I'm no Olympics expert, but I'm pretty sure when people fight, they don't, like, wrestle with the fences.

So it's like, it's just like, okay, this is what this game is like. This is what combat's like. Just enjoy it, you know? And likewise, like, this game gives you ways to heal yourself and potions and things like that. But generally speaking, you're not going to need to do that in the midst of anything. or power your way through a tough part of the game. Like, it's just not that kind of game. It's more like, oh, there's a lot of enemies in here.

I should plan ahead and be at full health and then get through this part. And then, like, right after that, there'll be just, what, like, I think it's called like a life ball? Like, it's just a ball you touch and it gives you, like, free health. Like, the game is full of those because it doesn't matter. It just wants like, okay, you're here. Now it's time for the next part. Move on.

There's no, like, skill involved at all. in the game with, like, battling. No, like, it's a good thing. But, like, you know, if you see, like, this, this monster, it will take away, you will kill its two health, but it might take one health. Like, you know, every time it's all maths. Like, every time. But I don't know.

I think that's why it's also kind of fun. Like, they make the, they make it look like you're battling, that you have agency, but not really. You know, I was thinking of the recent, I believe they're called Fair Roon, those sort of chip, not chiptoon. Very pixel art, heavy. They're kind of like a very simplistic Zelda game. Yeah.

And that team, that game, too, it's like when you walk into an enemy, it's almost like a one-hit sort of, like, ease system where it's like you touch an enemy and either you're strong enough to kill the enemy or the enemy gets you. And like, that's how it works. You're not swinging swords. You just walk, like, you're just carefully walking to enemies and planning out, okay, if I fight this enemy and this enemy and this enemy, I'll get through the stage, no problem. only in this case, it's deliberately silly and, you know, goofy and cartoon logic. But, hey, any chance to shout at the fair room games because I think those games are under-appreciated.

Yeah, they are. Early Switch releases, too. Like, I remember getting one of those early on for Switch. Like, oh, this is so fun. It's just nice. I wouldn't be surprised. I have never talked to those people firsthand, but I wouldn't be surprised

if the Fair Room people at least had played the Frog, Frog Bell. Yeah, definitely. I've never forgotten the name of the game. Wrong bell. Talks. But speaking of gaiting. But speaking of gating, let's talk about the money. because the money has a very interesting role in this game because as it starts off, you're a prince

and princes are kind of, you know, rich kid's shit, right? So, like, the very first thing to do the game is when Richard tells you you can't join him on his quest to save the princess, you go over and you find him of the boat, and a guy's like, hey, what are you on my boat? And you just buy the boat from him. You buy the boat for, like, 8 million gold pieces. Like, it's a ridiculous amount of money,

and you give him, like, 90% of your ridiculous amount. amount of money, and that's just how you solve puzzles in the first part of the game. It's like, here's money for you, peasant. I want your boat. Which makes sense. Like, in some ways, Batman's, like, superpower is that Batman is rich. So it's like, as a prince, you can just buy stuff. Okay, sure. But the game wouldn't be fun if you can buy everything. So as the game goes along, it comes up with excuses for you to have money and then to not have money. Like, Jam steals your money, but then you get some back. Enemies drop some money. money when you kill them. So there is

like, I'm not going to call it grinding, but certainly you have to engage in combat sometimes to get money to buy certain items. But there are also like story points where it's like, oh no, we need money to like fix the bell, the town bell. And that's a big part of the

Alfred story, because the Alfred is in town with money to buy gold. Again, he's a visiting Japanese businessman. He's here to buy gold to bring back to Japan. And like, the exact amount of money he brought to buy gold is the exact amount of money you need

to fix the bell. What a coincidence. Yeah, but of course you can't do it. So, like, you have to go on a quest and I think get something for Alfred and then bring it to him and then you get the money to buy the belt. Like, that's how this, again, everything in this game is very clearly scripted and planned out in a way.

So, like, you want to ride the float. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like writing the flow chart this game. You're writing a flow chart. And listeners, I'm making hand gestures, just sell this. Like, it's very humorous if only could see me. But, like, that's what happens here.

The money is just one more thing. It's like, you know, you have money, you don't have money. You give a mom a million gold pieces and you automatically have more money because you're rich. It doesn't matter. But then when you actually get time to go shopping, oh, no, Jam stole my money. That's just that. That's how the game works. Yeah.

Also how the game works. There's sort of a hub. Like, it's essentially an open world game and that you have this big kingdom and you can walk around, and once you open an area up, you can go back there any time. But there's a hub in that you keep going back to this one palace, the Eclare Palace, Palace of Eclare, wherever you want to call it. And it's funny, I thought about this just this morning. In a way, it's not that different than what they do with the Temple of the Ocean King in Phantom Hourglass many, many years later, except it's not really about, you know, there's no timer counting down, it's not like

puzzle solving, but it's like, when you first go to this temple, you can only go in two directions and one of them opens a gate to the way forward and the other one is just like here's some enemies and like a sword you need to pick up but as you come back to this palace

later on you get more keys you know honestly I thought about this too before Resident Evil introduced the diamond key and the club key and the spade key and the heart key

they're all here like the palace full of keys that you need to unlock and you have to come back here with keys later on to get more get deeper into the palace or here's a block you can't push but you can come back later

or here's this narrow space you can't get through but as you're a snake you can get through here so like you keep coming back to the palace and exploring it and finding new ways to get in there so it's kind of a neat sort of revisit you know it's simplistic from an asset standpoint but also like as a player you become more familiar with this area so you want to come back here and explore it again and climb again oh did I miss something

it's very I appreciate that I like that Yeah Even though it's not the most complex Puzzle in the world But they do make it easier To proceed each time Usually like maybe the first time

It's a bit annoying to get through But now that you're a snake You can skip past the enemies Like it feels like they Like they've thought it through And they know that you're coming back To this place over and over again So they make the process more streamlined

Each time at least Yeah I think at some point Some of the enemies just don't come back Because it's not important to fight them every time. So it's like, okay. Yeah, you also don't get experience, but you don't level up. So there's no point trying to, like, grind, except for meager amounts of money.

Right. All your stats are based on, like, objects. It's like, you know, I think it's called, I think it's just called Stones or Ishi or container. I forget the term for it, but it's like, it's kind of like heart, like heart containers and Zelda, except it's for everything. Like, here's a heart container that gives you more life. Here's, like, a power that makes you strong.

and combat. And, of course, the equipment also, you get, like, stronger equipment also makes it easier to deal with combat. But, like, again, it's just very much like, do I have enough life? We'll get more life. Do I have enough strength? We'll get more strength. But you don't earn it. It's just, like, you find it, basically. And then in turn, plays with the inventory. Like, there's a lot of things you get on, get in throughout the game where it's like, you have to go shopping for them and you need them. But occasionally, they'll just be in a chest as a reminder, like, oh, here's this apple you need. You might need to change shape sooner later, Because here's an apple, you know, because the game wants you to know, hey, you need to change shape time.

It's shape changing time. Does anyone have any favorites of this caliber as far as, like, routine elements that you just come back again and again? Not something that you come back to, but like, this is something I actually literally found out last week when I was just like, oh, because we're going to talk about frogs. So I was like, oh, so what's going on the world of frog? And I didn't know this But, oh wait, like, mild spoilers I'll try to avoid like any huge ones But like there's a part in the final boss battle

You know where there's like the ring of orbs Go around the thing If you die there and then you get revived And you walk all the way back to the hot spring town They have a spring festival Which is you get to participate in And that's the only time you ever get to see the spring festival Not if you die

Yeah, not if you die earlier in the boss battle You have to die when the orbs are there If you die earlier, nothing happens, and past that, that's literally the last part of the boss battle, past that the game ends, so you can't go back. But if you die right there and you walk all the way back to Gero Onsen, you see a spring festival where the villagers dance and they have a little, like, event. And then nothing happens after that. They pretend they don't talk about it ever again.

You can go back to the boss battle. Like, I never knew this. That's amazing. That's so cute. I was in the real quiet. Almost certain I missed that. Almost certain I missed that. I didn't, because like, you don't die there because.

usually, like, there's no need to at all. Like, the game doesn't make it hard to finish the boss battle. But if you die on purpose, you can go back to see that lovely little thing. And stuff like that, that I really enjoy. Yeah, it has, like, a crafted quality to it. But really, that

I don't know, that's kind of the whole point of the game, like, there aren't, like, there is a, there's definitely a finale, and there is a boss to beat, but in general, this game is just not about that kind of, like, it's not that kind of gatekeeping, you know? It's not like, oh, you need to beat the, you need to beat the dungeon and need to beat the boss in the dungeon and you need to beat the boss in the dungeon with the magic tool you just got like no we're not doing that it's just like you know most the enemies are like are you strong to beat the enemy yes or no like the boss is very much like how would even describe the final ball it's it's just did you talk to everyone do you have enough do you have enough equipment are you i guess it's it's it's it's almost like a blocking game like you need to be in certain places at certain times but yeah like dodging sometimes but but

That's about it. It doesn't never, like, really punish you for not being prepared. All the, yes, gets him back, and he gets to go again. So you don't lose anything, really, for not doing well in a battle either. Yeah, it's got a kind of a set piecey quality to it. Yeah, set piece is a great way to describe this. This game is full of set pieces, be they small or large, like what Casey described. Like, you can find this one village dance sequence if you go there at a very specific time, but not earlier and not later.

only this one time. So who knows how many more of those are in the game and we just haven't found them, or maybe someone found them, but they didn't note it in English, so you know, it hasn't gotten a lot of attention yet, you know? Mm-hmm.

Well, I guess we should probably delve into the story a little bit. Obviously, we don't want to talk about too much of the story because we're looking to experience the story. But what should we say about the story to entice people to play this game? How do you sell the story without telling everything about the story? I would say, I mean, I think that without getting into the specifics of the story, I would say that it has kind of the character of like a mid-80s gag anime. It has kind of a Rumiiko Takahashi thing going on. Yes.

Um, you know, like the, the humor and the quirky personalities of the characters are really what's kind of driving a lot of, like, what's fun about the game in a way that I think the Zelda series sometimes flirts with, but I don't think they ever do it as, as deliberately or as like overwhelmingly as they do here. everything here is a joke everything here is a gag um but i mean you know the there's a princess and the two kids uh the two princes are kind of fighting over who's going to be the one to save her there's like a rivalry thing there um i don't really want to get into what happens over the span of it because it yeah i'm not sure how it's to like because the the stuff that happens once you get to the palace and everything kind of takes a turn but yeah no like i think like saying it's like a like an 80s gag anime really does sell it like it feels like you're playing a comic like you don't really it doesn't feel much like an RPG actually when you play it you're not really trying hard to battle or to win

but like and it's not tedious as such but like the battles are there to move along the story and you want to like exploring the towns and reading whatever it's happening on like the town board and talking to the characters who aren't actually who are kind of rude to you sometimes too they're not very happy to see you like I feel like that's the whole like the most enjoyable part of the game, talking to the character, seeing what they talk, say, trying to, like, if I'm a frog now, what happens? If I'm a snake, do people, what will people do? Whereas, like, the actual battle role playing game bits are, like, maybe kind of in the background. Like, all the gags are really, I don't know, they're so dumb. The puns are so dumb. But that makes it funny because it's so terrible. Yeah, it's funny how you touch on some of the key words there. Because officially, Like, officially, from a genre standpoint, this is officially an action RPG. Not much action.

No, not really. Indeed, I think it'd be very curious to find out, does this game qualify as a Metroidvania? I don't know. There is a lot of backtracking. There's backtracking, there's items, there's power-ups, but the combat is also not really combat. You can get better at it. Yeah. But I did find an old TV.

commercial on YouTube, which I thought was very funny because the TV commercial, the voiceover narrator calls it a gag venture, gag adventure, gag adventure, and Japanese, and the commercial self, I mean, a lot of Japanese commercials are silly, but this one

I think had a very, a very cute touch in that they had a lady dressed up like, basically dressed up with a frog complete with the Biden guy to helmet on her head, and they had other actors behind her dressed as frogs. Like, she looked like as a, she looked like a lady dressed with a frog helmet.

but they had other actors who looked like frog frogs. So she kind of dances a little bit and shucks about, oh, wearing this helmet, let's we talk to frogs. And then the frogs all like, you know, ghetto, geto, get it, like, rib it at her. And then she just goes to the camera. She's like, I don't know. Like, she doesn't get it. And that's the end of the commercial.

But it's like, so do you talk to the frogs or not? No, it doesn't matter. It's just, it's just, like, that's the kind of humor. It's almost like, geez, I actually don't know the Japanese term for it, but almost reminds me of the Chinese the Moley Tai, the humor in like the Stephen Chow movies where it's like instead of a punchline, it's almost like, here's what's going to happen.

Nope, it doesn't work. I'm actually, um, so you know there's that like, like, that's that like, that, like, that, go, go, good, good, good, greg, yeah. Oh, actually, um, so you know there's that like, like, that really weird live action puppet commercial for our lynx adventure i mean links awakening right if you like that commercial i think you'll like this game like it's the same kind of weirdness and like kind of you watch and you're like that is funny but actually super weird you're not sure

what you like about it that's why i like about this game although even then i would argue that lynx awakening has a darkness to it that i feel like isn't present in this game at all like i don't I don't really think there's anything here that would be remotely unsettling. Like, even, even though the fact that they're like, there are some moments of like animals eating animals, but it's almost like, it's just, it's so silly and everything, you know, it's almost like, it's like, it's like Tom and Jerry. Like, does Tom ever really eat Jerry? Not really. And if he does, Jerry just like just, you know, pushes open his tail like, like it's a, like it's a glass door and walks out the back. Like, it's, it's silly, you know?

Mm-hmm. Well, I, for one, wanted to mention the mammoth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I like the mammoth stuff because at one point you enter a village and you hear that the mammoth is a giant threat. You're like, oh, no, what about this mammoth? And if you try to fight the mammoth, it doesn't work because the mammoth is a mammoth. You can't be the mammoth. It's strong. So I believe it's a combination of, is it all gadget-based or you need to- I think it's gadget-based, yeah.

You need a specific thing. Yeah, you need to get a gadget at some point. and then the mammoth, like you control the mammoth and then part of the game is like getting the mammoth to go the places where you want the mammoth to go and then luring the mammoth in certain places to like advance the story and I believe you have to break something open

with the mammoth into your control. Stuff like that to me is super fun. The fact that it, you know, in a more traditional Zelda game the mammoth would just be like a bossy fight, you know? And instead it's just sort of like it's not a puzzle per se but it's like it's a problem you solve but not by killing the mammoth and then by sort of conquering the mammoth if you will it only opens up more gameplay

later on and more jokes because now you can walk around the kingdom with a mammoth and toe you know as you do yeah it's stuff like that and like oh just remember because like when you with the mammoth and like sometimes when you're talking like during big moments, I guess, or like exciting moments. The game will suddenly, like, normally it's just like the regular dialogue box on the bottom. But when it's like an exciting moment, then suddenly they have big text on the screen. And for some reason,

like, that was one of my favorite parts. Like, the font would just be bigger. Like, maybe like half of the screen is filled up with like, just like random text. And just little stuff like that. It's really charming. I can't remember where exactly it shows up. But like... Yeah, I understand the text reading, especially

I know if you play the fan translation, they make the text look just like the text in Link's Awakening that's sort of italicize. Obviously, the original is in Japanese. I don't know if the fonts match in Japanese, but certainly presentation-wise, if you play the fan translation,

it textually looks like the Link's Awakening text. But yes, even then there are times in the frog game where the text just gets really super big. In fact, one thing happens right away. I think Richard laughs at you with John. Yeah, ha, ha, ha, ha. Right. Or like, what?

I'm like, none you? Stuff like that. Exactly. Everyone loves a good nunny. Everyone. This is a cornerstone of so many jokes. Thank you. Well, if we hit an impasse as far as talking about the game but not telling too much about the story, I guess we can talk about this game's legacy, which won't spoil so much, it's so much as like, no, really, everyone who makes this game loves to talk about it and mention it in later games.

So the Link's Awakening connection is very interesting to me, because Links Awakening came out about a year later. And I think visually speaking, it's very similar, although I don't know about the rumor. that it's literally the same engine, because the games work so differently, you know? Yeah. Like, especially the inventory. Like, that's right. That's one, a cute little thing in this game that doesn't have any purpose, but it's just adorable. When you open the inventory screen, there is this moment where it sort of wipes in.

Oh, yeah. It's cartoonishly stretched. And then it corrects itself. And it happens every time. And I don't know if it's lag or it's intentional. I feel like it has to be intentional. It's like such a fun thing to look at. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's consistent. It's consistent. And it's consistently makes me giggle, you know, even though there are times where I'd rather to open the menu without it. It's like, no, no, it's, oh, it's stretched again. It's okay. But yeah, stuff like that, like, the inventory system in Link's Awakening is totally different. The fact that you've got, like, you know, you're swapping items all the time.

Like, that's just not really what happens here. This game is more about, like, you know, talking, examining stuff, and then maybe you use an item, and that's it. You're not like, you know, there's no sword fighting here, not really. There is, in some degree, there is, like, a mix of top down and 2D stuff and this text boxes, but that's, that's kind of it, you know? There's, like, I guess, like, there's a lot of fetch quests in Link's Awakening. Yeah.

That's not, that's, like, pretty common in many types of games, so, I don't know. I think I read someone say on, I think, Twitter that, um, the, code base doesn't look particularly similar and I could be misremembering but I'm pretty sure I saw a thread where somebody was like yeah it's it doesn't like on the back end it doesn't really look like the same

design. It feels like it'd be really hard to because links awakening really does have more like real time actual battle thing which frog does not in any way like maybe like some of the framework is similar in like a more conceptual sense

but I don't think the coding is actually that close. And it doesn't play, it doesn't feel the same when you play it. No. That's why it's almost too bad, Casey, that you mentioned that you played this, you played this game first, and it convinced you to play Miss Awakening, which is like, I love Lux Awakening. It's one of my favorite games. No, see, I do love it, but it's not, it's not what people told me it would be like. Right. Coming to this from that, I think, is a harder sell than the other way around where it's like, oh, if you look, Looks Awakening, you should try this game, it's so funny, and this game is just so funny and light, it's easy to accept, whereas if you come from this game, which is a funny

sort of gag thing, if you play This Awakening, Link's Awakening is kind of more serious and it's more of an action game, and I hope you enjoy it, but also it's very different. It's just, it's so different. It's harder to connect them together, I think. Yeah. Even the Link's Awakening is full of sort of explicit references to this game. For example, Prince Richard, you know, if you ever If you ever wondered why in Link's Awakening, you enter a house full of frogs, and there's a guy there who says, I'm Prince Richard. It's literally from this game. I'm sure in the original Game Boy, it's the sprite is the same. But if you play the Switch remake of Link's Awakening, they kept it. Like, Prince Richard is there. The frogs are there. I'm pretty sure the music plays in the background. Like, it's just, it's all the same. And that's the room you can listen to KK's song, a talk of a song too, right? So it's like, Everything comes together again. Yeah. Fun fact.

The Legend of Zelda echoesive wisdom. The pitch name or the code name or the sort of working title for that when they were early in development was Richard. Really? Yeah, which is part of why I'm a little bit skeptical that they're going to remake it. Oh. It feels like you would name a remake project, Richard. But, you know. Not that I don't love echoesoism.

I think it's a lovely game but if because Echoes of Wisdom exists we don't get a frog remake. I don't know if I had to weigh those two things. It kind of makes you wonder if they like pitched it as a Kaeru Notami remake or not, but I don't know. I mean, I just...

So curious now. It does have like, because Echoes of Wisdom does have the whole like you use weird items to try different things. Mm-hmm. And the Hylians are like funny little guys kind of in the way that the characters are in this one. Oh, geez.

If the end game of this podcast is me realizing that two of my, two Zelda games I really liked are now bitter disappointments because they weren't more frog heavy. Oh, geez. Well, there's the frog ring in that, too. That's true. I love it, too. Had a great time with it.

Oh, no. It could just be, I mean, it could just be like they named it that in tribute. It's true, but why Richard? Now, like, why Richard? Yeah, it's, it's. Why Richard? I'm, you know what? Yeah, I, now we have to go, next time I'm in Kyoto, I have to bring a sign.

This March money into headquarters just said, why, Richard? Justice for Richard. Oh, did y'all see that there was a couple years ago, there was a person who bought a bunch of stock in Nintendo so that they could ask at a investor call, they could be like, hey, why don't you make more F0 and stuff? And the headlines that everybody wrote when they reported on this was about like F0 or mother or whatever it was. Is that why we have F099? Probably.

But one of the games that they asked about was Kaya Duno Thomas. And I, I, the image of somebody in like 2023 asking the president of Nintendo, why aren't you making more. Whoever they are, I respect them. Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty cool. So at least somebody asked. Well, we know Sakhar as a fan because aside from the, the mentions above, this, I think there's been consistent little nods to this game over the years in Smash Brothers. Like, obviously, Smash Brothers, as a franchise, Smash Brothers is all about dropping little hints of, jokes here and there, but I'm pretty sure, I don't know if it starts with the original game or with melee, but I know over the years I've seen it dropped more than once either as a sticker or a trophy or there are always something there. And because these games get translated, but the frog game does not, it's always a fun to see like, what do they say about this game? How do they explain it? Do they explain it? Or they just say, oh, here's the game you've never played before. It's about a prince who turns to a frog.

Yeah, I think he's an assist trophy And one of them What's, then what, how is the game translated in that? Like, do they say the game that it's from in the Smash Brothers? I'm not sure. Uh, I don't know, actually. My hunch is that they don't translate it. My hunch is that they just say, this is based on a game

Which was never released called, They just put it, just printed out, you know? A mysterious foreign country called, uh, yeah, cluster. But yeah, actually, even before the internet sort of got big, that might have been my first hint as to this other game because I definitely played a lot of Smash Brothers melee on GameCube. So whatever trophy or sticker is in this game mentions this game in that game,

I certainly would have found it. So that probably would be like, oh, there's another game before Link's Awakening that has a Prince Richard in it. Okay, or Prince Sabote. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure which prince it is, but it's usually one of those two princes. also something I had no idea about because I had not played this game at the time

so in Wario Land 4 it's it's you know it's a wario land but there's also a bunch of NPCs in the game at one point you meet a mad guy in the English version they call him Mad Science Stein which is a pretty good fake name

but in the Japanese it is literally Adaiostain Hakase it's the same guy, same sprite I actually played that game when the Game Boy Advance came out I had it as a child and I did not know that that character was in, like, I didn't know that was a character from this until after I'd played Coyedunotomi. I was looking at him and like, oh, that's that guy, yeah.

Yeah, but it's a, it's a one-to-one connection. Like, it's not even, not even like, oh, kind of based on it. No, no, that's exactly it, you know, which I think, again, speaks to the amount of affection Nintendo employees clearly have for this game because they love dropping these hints over the years. They love it. And while Nintendo doesn't love Transoid in this game, and while Nintendo doesn't love Transoid in this game,

love re-releasing it. We know there was a re-release as early as 2000 as part of their Japanese-only Nintendo Power Promotion where that was for Game Boy games. What was that? That wasn't the downloading thing, was it? What was the Nintendo? It was the cartridges you go to Lawson and they had like a kiosk. You write it on it thingy.

Yeah, like a flash cartridge that had like room for two games, two or three games, something like that. There was a Super Nintendo and then there was a Game Boy version of it. Right. And there were certain games that only came out during the service. other games that were just reissued during that service, because in 2000, both the Game Boy and Super Famicom were, you know, almost a decade old at that point. Game Boy was literally decade old, so sure, why not? Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Fire Emblem Thrasia 776, is that the number?

That's a, that's an Nintendo Power game originally in like the year 2000, which is wild that there was a new Super Famicom game that year. As Casey mentioned, this was available on the 3DS virtual console. She got it as a as a freebie. It's not that expensive, right? I think it's like 500 yen or something. Those games were pretty cheap in general. I know I... I don't remember exactly. I definitely bought... I know they launched the 3DS virtual console with Links Awakening, so I definitely bought it on that method. So I don't think I bought this game at the time just because I wasn't confident in my Japanese at the time. But again, years later, when they released it, I think just last year, I believe, on the Switch Online.

So at this point, you don't even need to spend money on it. It's just free, you know, if you have the Switch Online. I think even if you don't have, like, if you don't have, like, a Japanese account, I think if you, like, download it on the Japanese account, but then play on your Nintendo Switch Online-activated other region account, you can still play it. I don't know the exact thing, but. Yeah, you can't do that.

Yeah, if you have a, as long as you have NSO on the console. Yeah, it's, it's kind of funny how the, that, but I'm actually grateful. And it's one reason I'm kind of a little irked about Switch 2, having so many, like, gate, having so many locks in the way. It's like, over the years, I've played plenty of games via Switch Online, both in English and Japanese. And coming up to Switch 2, unless I spend a lot of money and get the extra special

multi-language edition, I can only access the Japanese stuff, which is like, yeah, I have a Japanese account. I have a Japanese account, and I have Switch online. so it's not a matter of spending money on that. It's a matter of spending extra money on the account services so I can add more accounts to my Switch that I bought. Sorry, this podcast will come out after that Switch 2 launches, so maybe I'll be all smiles and giggles because they solve the problem.

But for now, recording this in a pre-Switch 2 world, I'm still very uncertain as to how this thing's going to work. Yeah. I guess that might be one of the hurdles also, sorry, for um frog because a lot of the uh references are kind of weird and obscure and maybe they think that if it's translated now people won't think it's funny but a lot of the references were already old when the game came out so i don't understand the issue yeah they definitely seem more open to this kind of like i mean this game sort of operates in a zone not too

dissimilar from like a lot of indie games now and a lot of um and not under tale exactly, but it's not challenge-based. It's very story-driven. It's comedy more than anything. It feels like something that could really coexist with a lot of stuff that's coming out now. It's kind of like how Live Alive found a niche for itself. So it seems like something, even if they had to redo some of the jokes or updates and things, it seems like something they could totally slot in. I'm just not sure if they, you know, it'd be a full 3D game and that'd be semi-expensive, but they should. They should.

Please. Please. Please. Well, I know one reference is just as timely today as ever because I believe at some point you meet a bunch of guys in the game called the Kazan All-Stars. Southern All-Stars are friends. Yeah. So, Kazan being the Japanese word for volcano.

Yeah. And Kazan All-Stars is a reference to the Southern All-Stars, which is a long-running Japanese band that is still active today. they still do lots of commercials and they say they have concerts they sell CDs like they're just as relevant today as they were 30 years ago so like are they relevant in America not really but but like southern all-stars are forever they've been around so long like incredibly honestly oh but like that also like that whole section you know how they're in the like mine area trying to look for like a bunch of gold it's like I'm pretty sure it's a parody of that um

there's like a Japanese show where they also did the some other thing where actually Shikisato Ito was the was part of this like oh we're going to go deep into the mountains and like mine to look for gold so that was a parody of that but that was again paraded in mother too earthbound

again so like it's all just these weird television references and well I mean earthbound did come out in English ages ago so maybe we have a chance eventually also the cause of thing reminds me at some point you go to a volcano and the volcano is specifically

called the Fooding Kazan, which lines up with that Japanese expression of Fooding Kazan, which is like the, what is it? It's a wind, forest, and fire and mountains, like those, those things. It's on, it's on Rue's glove and Street Fighter, depending on, any high-res street fighter will have it written on his glove. But in the old Street Fighter 2 games, it was written on a sign in Dew's stage in Street Fighter 2. That's what it says on the sign. So, footing Kazan. But yeah, that's the kind of jokes we're dealing with here. And, of course, I mentioned many times there is a fan translation out there if you want to download that and if you legally own the Game Boy game, which you can then back up on your computer and play with an emulator before you delete the file up to 24 hours, then you should do that. No, seriously, again, this is a game that is decades old and Nintendo is essentially giving away for free if you have a switch online.

So, in my opinion, it's never been more morally correct to just download a game. and hack it to play in English if you want to play it today. Because what are you harming at that point? Everyone who made this game is either retired or making other games for Nintendo at this point. So it's like, just have a good time with it. And people obviously love the game. Like, the people who made it obviously love the game.

So please, like, check it out and see what everyone has been referencing so long for, like, decades at this point. Yes. I mean, the game is 92, so it's been over 30 years. Gosh, 32. Yeah. 33 years old. And honestly, that brings me to a weird port because I don't know how to end this podcast,

because what else can we say about this game besides, please play this game? There are no sequels. We've talked about how to play it. We've talked about why we think it's good. Is there anything else we can tell the audience besides, no, really, go play this game? I don't know. I think that it's really important to pay attention to and acknowledge Nintendo's games that aren't tied to a big IP, aren't...

I'm thinking of things like Sheen on Nagashima. I'm thinking of... I think it's also Famicontante club, literally. Like, people on the staff were involved in this as well. And, like, yeah, it came back, but after decades, again, and it probably wouldn't have come back without people being like, oh, we actually are interested in this. Yeah.

But I think there's a creativity on display in these games that aren't just like another Mario, another Metroid, another Zelda. And I really, really admire that. I admire the sort of the approach they take to putting game design into a more palatable, like the fact that it's kind of an RPG, but it's kind of plays itself because it's kind of a manga, it's kind of, like, the way that they adjust gameplay expectations to prioritize, like, it's quirkiness or its eccentricity, I think it's really, it's interesting.

and I wish that Nintendo would have, and would in the future like embrace that more because I think, especially now when we have all these different indie games and stuff that's playing with form and playing with structure, I think that this kind of stuff is really, it's interesting

historically and it's refreshing adjacent to things like, you know, Zelda and such. Like I think it's exciting to see, even now. I was really thrilled by this game when I played it recently because it just it felt like a breath of fresh air coming from Nintendo. That's true.

It's not some, I guess, besides the fact that we want people to play this game, I guess we as fans also want Nintendo as a company to make more games with this spirit. I think it's a fair thing to say. It's not, it's not just about, oh, Nintendo, give us back old game, we want old game. It's like, Nintendo, you used to make games like this. Why not now? Why no more frog caliber games? And I don't, I realize that, you know, part of that is the reality of, you know, video games are very expensive to make.

And it's like, if they can make this game and sell a thousand copies or they can make new Duncan Kong game and sell a million copies, they want to make more Donkey Kong game. But it's like video games are, there's so much room in video games for everybody at this point. Certainly Nintendo has the resources to take risks and try things and release a new gag venture, if you will. It doesn't have to be, like, I don't necessarily need another adventure with Prince Sabaulay and Prince Richard and Princess Tirmisu, but if they made a new game that was, I don't know, like, riffing, let's say they made a game that was riffing on more of a traditional Mario game where it's like, oh, it's two other plumbers, but, you know, they go off to a different kingdom and then they find out that they're, you know, the pipes are full of, I don't know, beef. And then to engage, like, in a mock burger time game to clear the pipes. Like, I don't know. I'm literally. improvving and it's terrible improv. But the point is the point is

that you can... Nintendo can afford to make gag games. They can. They literally can afford it. Do they want to? I don't know. Do they have staff willing to?

I bet they do. Yeah. Yeah, it's the artist-driven approach that I think this game embodies that I would like to see more from them. Yeah, and like the shout-out, because like we have also mentioned like Comic-Con Detective Club,

it has come out fairly recently with MEO, which is incredible that it came out after such a long time. And that's actually been translated into English, which is honestly crazy with how much text there is. And they worked really, I think Nintendo actually like really did try with the marketing. I don't know how the sales went in the end. But I think it's an incredible game. And if like, people are like, we don't know what Comic Home Tom 2 Club is. We don't know if it's good. It's not a Zelda or Mario maybe. But like, it's a gorgeous game and Nintendo tries something, well, like, it was something different back when it came out. I think

it's still something very different now compared to other visual novels and other mystery things. So if you haven't played it, maybe also check that out while you're downloading Nintendo Switch online on your Japanese account on your American or other region Nintendo Switch. I guess that's a good transition there.

Are there other games like this that you feel like we can recommend to the listeners? Not necessarily about frogs, of course, but like some kind of like gag-based indie games that work on this sort of level. Well, I don't know about gag-based, but I would... Shout out for the Super Famicom. Uh, Ihatovo Monogatari. Oh. Yeah. I think that's a game that's also very much about this, like, sort of, it's an RPG,

kind of a name only. It's, it's taking this sort of, um, Final Fantasy for your top down in a map and you're kind of experiencing theater by moving a character through a series of events. Um, Ihatovo Monogatari is kind of a bittersweet, kind of a forlorn thing. So it doesn't have the comedy of Kaeru, but it has a similar spirit of, like, again, that kind of proto-indy, playing with form, playing with structure vibe to it. And that has a fan translation as well. Sorry, could you give me the name one more time? Yeah, I ha tovoh.

I ha to. I hat to. Oh, I got it. Yes. Yeah. Once I got I ha. Yeah. Sorry.

I'm still learning. I'm still learning. Oh, okay. The vo is, that's a very unusual. You don't really see V's a lot in Japanese games, no. Yeah, yeah. There's an author whose name escapes me. Miyazawa Kenji, I think, is probably...

Yes, that is it, yes. It's the Galaxy... I'll shoot, the Galaxy Railroad guy. Right, right. Yeah, Galaxy Express, yeah. Oh, yeah, right. Railroad on the galaxy... I don't remember the proper name, sorry.

Night on the Galactic Railroad, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that song is still very common in Japanese people to the stay. And TV. They play it all the time. Oh, look at that. Yes, I'll have to look more into that. Yeah, it's a really sweet game. But it has a similar, like, if you looked at it, just, if you passed it by, you'd say, oh, that's an RPG, but it's more of a sort of adventure, narrative-driven thing. Excellent. Thank you. How about you, Casey? Anything comes to mind? Speaking of games at Nintendo has been, like, where they tried something new, I really like, it's on Switch. It's on Switch. It's Buddy Mission. Bond, but this is also not translated into English for some reason, which I don't understand.

It's translated into, I think, Chinese and Korean, but no English. But it's a game actually where Nintendo cooperated with, so the developers are underneath Koi Tekmo, there's a brand team called Ruby Party, and they're most famous for their visual novel series called Neo Angelique. But so this game combines that kind of visual novel, like really, not old school, but like traditional visual novel with the character designs of the guy who, Murata Sensei, who did One Punch Man, the art for One Punch Man and wrote Aishield 21. Oh. It does like so many incredible things with the visual novel genre. Well, like, also the story is just really good.

It reads like you're playing a Shonen manga and it does it in like magazine. scenes chapters, and it looks so pretty, and Nintendo works, like, I feel like they really tried to do something new with it because they, like, approached Rudy Parton, but we want to do a visual novel kind of thing, but we're not, like, maybe we don't have the expertise ourselves, so we're going to ask you, Rui Party, who have done this forever, and we're going to ask Ruta Ta, who does incredible Shonen manga stuff because we want it to appeal to more people. So we're going to go, like, very Otome game female audience, but with, like, super shonen art and super shonen, like, goal.

golden story kind of stuff. And for some reason, it works really well. And I really want it to be translated so more people can play it because it's really good. And if you read Japanese, Korean, or Chinese at all, like, I feel like you should pick up this game. If you have any interest in visual novels ever, it's just so beautifully put together. The UI is great. And like a lot of the U.S. choices where like if you save, sorry, this is so specific, if you have auto on, like autoplay on so that it goes to the text automatically. If you save, when the auto is on and you load it again, the auto stays on because it knows that you still want it.

It's like stuff like that, that only people who've been making visual novels for decades know. They've played the games. They know that this is what people want. It's like, it's so beautiful. I could talk about this game forever as well, but please also play this. This is something that Nintendo tried and got other people to join in and make.

And then I think they're never going to touch it again. They're going to forget about it. We're never going to see any more of it. It's never going to be translated unless people talk about it more, I think. Yeah, release in 2021. That's a rough time of a video game. Yeah. It's a game that people often, like when they're like, I want to learn Japanese and people make lists of like games that you should try if you're learning Japanese.

You're early on and buddy mission bonds usually at the top. Please do. If you're learning Japanese also, great game to buy. Yeah. It's pretty legible as an early learner. That's fascinating. Also, I had no idea that co-eastern. way Tecmo had a dedicated

women's division. Yeah, I know, it's incredible. They've been doing it forever. Like, the neo-romance series has been, no, it's so old. Like, I'm not sure how old, but like, super old. The original Angelique on, or maybe it was a reissue,

there's a version of Anjolique for the Super Famicom that had an attachment that broadcast IR signals to a CD player so that you could listen to voice acting that the Super Famicom would like advance the track number. It's, it's, those games are amazing. There's so much love in them, seriously.

Like, it's worth looking into as well. I don't, I don't know if those games are translated actually. I don't think they are. There may be a fan translation, but I don't think any of them are translated. Nobody really ever talks about those. Koi Tekmo is actually really cool because I'm like, I think it's also because, like, their CEO is also a woman where, like, she's been, like, I think she's famous for some reason for, like, stocks.

Like, so even when Koi Techmo does badly, because their stocks are doing good, they're always in the green. But I put them that aside because I think it was like the reason Ruby Party came up if I remember correctly is because like back when Koi Techmo or was it

just Koi or just Techmo it was one or the other But like at the time they're like Games are all about fighting We want games that aren't fighting They're like let's make games for women know what's going to be dating games

And then they just went on and on and they're still going on Yeah the last Angelique was in 2021 too Oh oh okay that's been a while actually now that I think about it Breaking news, I just want to add that I opened up my Nintendo store account and Buddy Mission Bond has a Japanese demo.

Oh, yeah, then download the demo for free. Yeah, so, you know, if you speak any Japanese, download the demo and get a taste for it and see if you can make heads or tails of it and then decide if you want the full game or not. A lot of it's voiced. It's really nice. Rad. This is so rad. That Super Famicom, it was Anjolique voice fantasy.

and it had an ad on called Voicer Coon. Yes. Yeah. All right. We are dangerously close to starting a different podcast right now, so we're going to just. No, no, no, no. This is excellent. I thank you so much.

Obviously, I never would have found either of these games without this conversation today. I am so grateful. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for talking with us about this old game and the fact that it led to a conversation about other games that are even new. That's the beauty of video games, baby. Once you talk about video games, you discover they're all connected. It's like a spider's web. But for now, we'll wrap up this conversation about the frog for whom the bell tolls, whatever you want to call it.

As long as you say frog and bell, I think you're pretty good in describing the title in English. It's fine. Bell frog. Bell frog's much faster. There we go. Again, thank you for joining me, both of you. Please tell the internet where they can find you if you want them to find you. Let's start with Krista.

You can find me in a variety of places. I post on blue sky and various other platforms as O-P-P-P-O-P-O-O-H-P-O-R-P-U-P-P-U-P. I do video editing, capture, production, et cetera, for action button. If you go on YouTube, YouTube.com, I think slash action button is the URL. We put out a video recently, action button reviews L-A-N-N-War. I do video game console repair and modification. You can go to soundretro. and if you're looking to get like a Famicom or a Mega Drive or a Saturn or whatever

repaired or rejuvenated, I can help you with that. I think that's about it for me. I think that's everything. I think I hit them all. All right. Well, let me just say, so I have this opportunity to talk to you in person, let me just say I love Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Oh, thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah. I love that. I need to get that back up on Spotify. The rights went to a different place, and I'm, I'm not sure what happened, but. Mark that on your, for next. Next, bank camp Friday.

Go get, welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Oh, thank you. Casey, you seem to have a lot of stuff, too. What are you up to, Casey? So I'm pretty, for socials, I'm pretty much only on blue sky under NPC, Casey. You can find me there. And I update my website, which has an RSS feed with all the latest news. That's, I don't know.

I find it very hard to keep on with socials lately. That's where I usually am at. But next week, If you're in specifically Japan, in Tokyo, you never know. I'm going to be exhibiting at a visual novel only game event where everyone is, judging by the name, only going to be showing demos of video games that are visual novel adjacent or visual novel specific.

It's called DreamScape. It should be really fun if you are in Shinjuku at all. That's where I'll be. And then two weeks later, I'll be at Comedia, showing exhibiting my new comic. But normally I make video games, but this time I'm also making. a comic. That's what I'm doing, usually.

All right. Well, this episode won't go up until June, so I don't know that anyone's going to be going to be available to events. But at least they can go online and check out your website and learn more about the games that you're making and comics and such. So hopefully they will engage with them in that respect. Yeah, it'll all be online as well. It'll take me more time because I'm slow. Wonderful. Thank you. And as for us, this is Retronauts. you very much for listening to Retronauts. If you listen to this episode for free, thank you very much for listening to Retronauts. However, I have a request if you were to go to patreon.com slash Retronauts,

and for $3 a month, you can get all our episodes one week early with an enhancement rate. But here's the kicker. If you go to $5 a month, just $2 more than the other number I just said, wow, you get two, sometimes three exclusive episodes every month. You get weekly columns every week from me, I write the column, then I read you the column. You get monthly community podcasts. You also get Discord access. A lot of stuff for this $5 a month. We hope you'll enjoy it because this podcast only exists thanks to our Patreon's, our patrons on Patreon supporting our work.

And you could be one of those people supporting our work. As for me, I've in Diamond Fight. You can find me on the website, Fight Club, F-E-I-T. my last name, C-L-U-B, that is a noun or verb. Dot me. Also, Fight Club on most services

such as Blue Sky, Twitch, YouTube, all those things. And I guess we've reached the end of the podcast, I would say any last frog puns you've been sitting on. Now's the time.

Frogpuns. Darno. Daronimo? You jump out of a frog playing Geronimo? I don't know about that one. Snake you all later. Yeah, that's a good one, yeah.

Thank you.