Retronauts - 722: Riding the Retro Rails

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Nadia Oxford, Kevin Bunch, and Victor Hunter talk about trains. Trains in retro video games! Game trains! (But maybe not train games?) 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 

Mr. Monopoly here. Monopoly is back at McDonald's. Register in the McDonald's app so you're ready to... Get your bag! Two ways to peel for a chance to... Get your bag! Physical peels with select items and digital peels with others to... Get your bag! Play Monopoly at McDonald's.

Bar-pa-papa-papa. No purchase necessary. C-rolls at Play.mcd.com for full details, and A.m.O.e.com to play without purchase. Ends November 23rd, but bonus play ends November 2nd. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Copyright McDonald's. This week on Retronauts, got a ticket for a runaway train, like a madman laughing at the rain. Welcome to Retronauts. I'm your host for this episode, Nadia Oxford. For my guests this time, I've Choo Chosen, my friends, Victor Hunter, and Kevin Bunch. That worked out a lot better when I wrote it down. So I want you both to put down your suitcases and we'll say hello, starting with you, Kevin. Say hi. We know you, but say hi again. Hi. Frequent train traveler, Kevin Bunch. All right. Do you like first class coach or what's your favorite seat in a train?

You know, I take the subway a lot in the D.C. area, so anytime I can get an actual seat, that's my favorite seat. Oh, yeah, we're going to talk about subways just a bit, just kind of warm things up. But I have things to say for the D.C. subway. You would. And Victor, say hello. You have a SkyTrain where you are. You're not a subway person. Well, first of all. You are from Toronto, though. SkyTrain, yes.

is essentially a subway. There are just, there just happen to be parts where it goes into the sky. It's, um, it's not as fancy as they want you to think it is. However, it is very fancy and I can't wait to talk about it. I've never been on the sky try to actually do. I am jealous because I do want to ride the sky train. Uh, so if I go to Vancouver, that'll be one of my first stops. It's a real treat. Uh, so we all come from different parts of the continent. Uh, you mentioned you're from D.C., uh, Kevin. I am from Toronto, of course. And Victor, you are currently resigning in B.C., Vancouver. So I think the one thing we all have in common, that, is we are from North America.

And boy, does our cross-country rail system suck ass. And it's kind of depressing. Yeah. It's really funny. I remember because my families are back in Michigan, right? And they hate flying. They don't like the drive. And my mother is just like, you know, I'd love to take the train out to visit you,

except that we would have to take, like, an eight-hour detour to Chicago and then come down because there's no direct route. And I'm like, that's kind of insane. Yeah, I hate flying, especially, like, last time I tried to fly before the United States went crazy, and this is before the United States went crazy, like, I was delayed so much that I lost, like, pretty much half my vacation. And it was, I'm still waiting for Air Canada, giving me some compensation. that's never going to happen. I, the few times I managed to take, like, a long-distance rail ride, that was probably the longest I took was Toronto to New York City has a really nice train. Oh, yeah. And it's called the Maple Leaf.

And you go actually over Niagara Falls on this, like, it feels like a single track, and it's actually terrifying, but absolutely beautiful. Yeah. And, of course, it's a beautiful ride because you're in heavily forested areas, and it's a really comfortable train. It's about 12 hours. And this train is always packed. People take trains, but we just don't build trains. I think that Canada is talking about finally, finally, a high-speed rail from, like, Toronto or further down to, like, somewhere in Quebec, maybe Ottawa. I don't know, but it's a disgrace that the Windsor corridor, which is one of the busiest, like, traffic, high-traffic areas in the world does not have better transit in its own country.

But anyway, yeah, that's just me going on a rail rent. Hey, Nadia, what's this episode about? What is this episode about? You know what? See, this is this is train people. This is a train people episode, people. This is us getting into trains and getting anger about trains before I tell you. The nature of the episode today is all about trains and video games, retro video games, specifically.

Because as long as there have been video games, there have been trained video games and trains in video games and trained Sims. And we have a lot to talk about because there's some really interesting stuff to go over. I think we've already kind of like talking about. a bit about our favorite little, our favorite systems, I suppose. But Victor, what do you tell me a little bit about the sky trade now? I'd like to hear about it. Okay. So, first of all, this is maybe an editing note. If you can find the theme song written for Vancouver for Expo 86, feel free to drop it in here, because it is incredible. I got to look that up now. So, back in 1986, Vancouver hosted the World Expo.

right and that's where the iconic science world building comes from that was part of the expo grounds and as part of Vancouver gesturing towards its future as a world-class city as our current piece of shit mayor Ken Sim likes to call it um we all got our piece of shit mayors here part of that was the transit system which was known as the sky train and it's called that because quite a bit of it is elevated several stories up in the air, which means that as it's going through certain parts of downtown, you get really great views. It's beautiful, especially when you're heading out, you know, past from science world, sort of out to East Vancouver and the surrounding city, you get gorgeous views of the ocean

and the mountains and the city, and it's beautiful. I'm not going to pretend Vancouver isn't one of the most beautiful places to live in the world. That would be silly. It has plenty of problems with it, but being pretty isn't one of them. No. You guys actually get your cherry blossoms. In Toronto, it's like, well, we're going to have a shitty spring. We're going to have a nice spring.

Oh, yeah. We get the cherry blossoms. My street is Primo cherry blossom. Jelly. So, yes, I happen to love the sky train. There is currently another sky train line being developed. Oh, cool. It takes forever because we'll probably get into this, but North American transit systems just don't have quite the same juice as, say, Japan or China or anywhere that treats their public transit infrastructure seriously.

I actually, it just occurred to me, Kevin, talking about D.C. and that subway, which is like the most utilitarian subway system I've ever been on in my life, but it serves as function. First of all, it is deep. See, Toronto subways are pretty shallow. When I went down that staircase into, I can't remember which station it was on the DC line. It was just like, Jesus Christ, I'm going to a bomb shelter to die. But also, I guess it really serves as purpose in terms of video games Because wasn't that a major location in Fallout 3? I believe so. Because I have a friend who did a Fallout 3 tour and it involved the DC subway system. And Fallout 3 is here the shit out of me. And one of the reasons was because of the subway system is because I was down there, not in real life, but in the game.

And there was, I think there was a ghoul that just jumped out of me. And I'm like, nope, nope, no subway today, goodbye. I was going to say Bethesda's based out of what, Rockville, which is right next to D.C., so, yeah, I can see it. When you're on the LRT in Baltimore, you stop by Bethesda. In fact, made a joke like, oh, when you stop here, you clip through the floor. Nobody appreciate it. I get it. I get what you're going for.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Yeah, we have some very fascinating stops. I know on the D.C. red line, there's one that's so. deep that they just have two, no, they have four gigantic elevators to take you to the surface because they're too deep to have like escalators or anything. And the next station down has the longest escalator in the Western atmosphere, which is absolutely bonkers. It takes like two minutes to walk up.

That's crazy. That's just terrifying. I heard like the rumor is, oh, it's because of like it doubles as a bomb shelter. I don't know if that's sheer or not. I know that Nostow, its line kind of has that. But, yeah. I mean, wouldn't surprise me. They seem awfully reinforced. They are very concrete. Yeah. Set the world an ocean.

Together we can catch a rising star. We can touch tomorrow. Discovering the wonder in our minds and in our hearts. Together we can touch the sky Share our dreams and watch them fly celebrating Something's happened We'll do a very quick aside here What is it you like about trains

And I know maybe it's the fact that we don't have them in North America And we crave the train We just want the train What do you have to say, Victor? I have too much to say about this for one episode, so I'm going to try so hard to keep this brief. I'm really, just so you know, when this is all done, I tried really, really hard. I grew up in a small town. We had some buses, but I never used them.

I was usually riding my bike everywhere. So I didn't really have a conception of what, like, trains or subways are as a kid. The only time I got an idea of that is from video games or sometimes from anime or whatever, sometimes TV or or movies or something. You know, if, yeah, like watching Spider-Man maybe because I don't know. sometimes he goes into the New York transit system to fight a guy. I don't know. Whatever. Fight a guy.

As you do. Yeah. He's always fighting guys, this Spider-Man fellow. But I really didn't have an understanding of it. It seemed like a fantasy thing to me as a kid. Like that's, oh, that's something for like space age cities from the future. But playing it in games was really special. I'll maybe talk about the games.

that they were a little bit later. But there was something about being able to get on at point A and get off at point B, and I didn't have any input in it. It was like, I might get a little game philosophy here, but it's tied to, like, computers really, really bloomed with the invention of hypertext and hyperlinks, right? Like, all of a sudden, computers became navigatable by the average person because you could click something and it would take you somewhere else. The flow chart of a computer became easily understandable from at a glance from the average person. So there is this, there's something about transit in video games and especially train.

because it is on rails. It is deterministic. But there is something about the act of having these nodes that you get off at that are part of a larger web of infrastructure that I find really appealing. I don't know how much we're going to talk about how our brains are all shaped, but I think that's really cool. And I think video games and the amount of transit and railway in video games kind of radicalized me. I like that. I'm, I don't want to say I'm an anti-car guy because I think cars are still important. Look, we are too reliant on them and perhaps the last hundred years has doomed our planet because of our reliance on them.

But maybe. But I am pro-train in a very, very powerful way. And I think video games played a major role in me connecting this idea of, like, digitally being able to go from one place to another instantly and the analog version of that being able to get on at a station and arrive at another station and knowing how they're all interlinked. That's really cool. That's my brief, what I could write a thesis on about how I feel about it. I would read that thesis. That would be a great thesis because I kind of had the opposite experience where I grew up in Toronto. So the subway was part of my life. Like you grew up with your friends as teenagers.

None of us had a car. We all went anywhere with the subway. And when you're a kid and your parents have no money, it's like they take you on the subway. You go from one end to the other. It's like, oh, shit, this is better than Wonderland. This is great. And then you grow up and you have to ride it every day. But there's something so appealing about like, first of all, I'm a person who likes low effort.

I like to kind of sit there and just watch the world goes by as the world kind of is catered to me as I look out the window. I don't know if you've ever heard the song by Arcade Fire, Backseat. That song's all about me. And one thing, you want to talk about the connection between video games and trains and how they linked nicely in my brain. For me, it was like playing, I think probably Mega Man 4 when you have that opening with Mega Man on the train. And it looks so freaking cool. He's going through the subway tunnel and the lights are flickering on him. And, of course, I'd been in a million subway tunnels by that point.

And I knew what it looked like. They really nailed that. And then it transitions to outside, which the TTC in Toronto does as well. And it's just such a cool introduction, like, for the time. I think Mega Man 4 was, how is it, 92? It was quite late in the NSA's life. and it was really like flying on all cylinders by then. So to me, I always just always think of like Mega Man because Mega Man's world is very urban.

And with urban spaces, you get trains. And to Toronto's credit, I mean, for one thing, I'm dedicating this episode to the Eglinton LRT, which, Victor, did they like start the LRT when you lived in Toronto? Yeah. Yes. It's finally, supposedly finally opening this year. That's amazing. And it's just been, it's actually been so long that the trains that they ordered for it are starting to break down. And what do you do?

You just laugh. But it's like people say, oh, well, that just proves that light right. Tranted is stupid. And it's like, yeah, well, they're going to bury the 401. It's also going to be, it's going to be stupider. So I am, as you are, very pro-trained. I am not necessarily anti-car. I think if you live in North America, even if in Toronto, if you want to go outside of Toronto,

southern Ontario, you're okay with like the go and all MetroLink and all the other stuff. But otherwise, like you need a car. And someone like my dad who was a salesperson, like he needed a car. He couldn't. That wasn't an option for his, that wasn't like negotiable for his job. So yeah, I understand how you're coming from, Victor. And I think that's interesting. And Kevin, do you have a kind of a similar linking in your brain between trains and games?

Yeah, I guess so, because I originally grew up around, you know, the Detroit area where the closest thing to a train at present is, well, at the time I lived there was the monorail downtown. Monorail. Yeah, the people mover, which goes in like a big loop around downtown. And the intention was to, like, have it be the base of a whole network of trains that never materialized. Oh, yeah. After I left Detroit, they put in a street car long. Woodward, which is super cool. But, you know, I don't get to ride it because I don't live there anymore. But the sort of dearth of trains in North America is kind of Detroit's fault because

the car companies are the ones that ruined everything by buying up all of the like streetcar services and then closing them up until the courts told them they couldn't do that anymore. Oh, man, the future that could have been. Yeah, yeah. Henry Ford ruined everything. Yeah. When I watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit now, When I was a kid, I was like, oh, it was a silly movie about Bugs Bunny and, you know, Mickey Mouse playing together. And it's like, oh, this is actually a really great commentary on what happened to public transit in L.A. specifically, like, wow. Cleveland, Detroit. Actually, when they were putting in that street car in Detroit, I remember reading that they dug up some of the old streetcar tracks.

They were like, oh, hey, they just buried that under road. I know, you guys. But, yeah, certainly the only way around was to take, you know, the very, I mean, the. bus network existed, but it had a lot of holes in it because of its, like, opt-in nature and, you know, the severe racism in the Detroit area in terms of transit and everything. So, that was fun. So really, my first time really experiencing a train were through video games, like, the train ride on Final Fantasy 7 sticks out in my brain is a big one. Yeah, that's one I would definitely want to fly down. when we get to it, but I wanted to kind of make a, just a difference, a differentiation between

a train and a mind cart, because some people are going to be like, oh, well, the mind cart level in Donkey Kong country is a train. No, it's a mind cart. There's a difference. In, in Final Fantasy 7, speaking of that, I kind of thought that the area, when you go from like, basically the Mount Corral area, you have those tracks. I thought that was like a train track or, a roller coaster actually, but no, it's a mining track. And it's actually really rickety. Yes, we won't be discussing Super Mario RPG on this episode either. That's a mine cart stage.

That's actually, that's a pretty badass mind car stage. That's a great mine cart stage. It's true. But it's a mind cart stage. So we're not talking about it. Yeah, that's a different episode. That's our mine cart episode. Hey, friends, it's me, Jeremy Parrish.

And as you may know, as an avid student of video game history, the Nintendo entertainment system turns 40 years old this week. That's right, October 15th, 2025, marks 40 years since Nintendo test launched the system in New York City, crossed their fingers, and hoped for the best. Retronauts does not have an episode on this anniversary this year, because we've talked about the NES launch many times over the years, and why belabor the point? Still, if you're Jonzing for a fix of Nintendo Entertainment System history and a little bit of context, you can hear me on a recent episode of History This Week,

the official History Channel podcast, talking a bit about how the NES' launch helped rejuvenate the American console market, which was in pretty bad shape at the time. You can find History this week at History.com slash H.T.W. Look for the episode when Nintendo and Mario rescued video games. Featuring me, Jeremy Parrish. Anyway, that's all we've got for you this week. So back to your normally scheduled episode. After all, there ain't no stopping this train we're on. I also I also want to just give a quick shout out to, uh, I also want to just give a quick shout out to, uh, There's a YouTube video I consulted for this for part of this called A Deep Dive

Into Trains by Captain Astronaut, which it's basically about what we're talking about here. It's like, where are the trains in the video games? What do the trains do? And I very much appreciated the watch. So thank you for that. Something else I want to touch on real quick. And again, I promise, real quick. I promise.

But I think something that I like about trains re-video games is that video games are often, look, they are designed from the top down. You know, they are creating an approximation of, you know, real-ish cities. They're usually trying to, even if you go back to like old Pokemon games, they're still trying to make you feel like this is a town. that is approximating a place people could live. Even if there's more NPCs wandering on the streets than there are actual buildings in the town, we are we can we can suspend our disbelief enough. But they are they are designed by someone and one of the most powerful things in urban design and municipal planning is designing where your transit systems go, where the stations are. like it is it is one of the most deliberate things you can do to then create you know i i don't want to say completely organic communities because it's the fact that there is you know a station nearby that allows that community to prosper and develop but it is so much of i promise i think i'll only do this once but i'll i'll bring up ff14 um the the the limsa limsa atheri is a well-known place because if you think of the etherites as the train stations of Final Fantasy 14,

limsa limsa, one of the starting towns, just happens to have the station that is closest to, say, the market boards or the shops or the inn or a handful of places that you could want to go. So, yes, there are a bunch of other towns that have those things. But because this station is the closest to a lot of things people need, it becomes a more populated area. And now you have things like the sort of reputation that the Limsa Lemaenza Etherite has for attracting certain kinds of people. So, you know, it's... Shout out to tank program. Yeah. It just lies they're dead all day.

This kind of urban planning is so informed by. transit, and that is also part of how games need to be designed. You need to think about the same kinds of things that an urban planner thinks about when they're making these things. Yeah, I actually think there's a very interesting real-life example of that. Again, I'll keep it brief for everyone's benefit, but the infamous Shepherd line in Toronto, which was, oh, it's going from nowhere to nowhere. It's very busy now because they built up all those condos there. Sure, yeah. So it's serving his purpose for all the controversy.

It went through, dear God, that's a whole show on its own. But something I said earlier was that as long as there have been video games, there have been trains. And in fact, that goes back even further than I thought, because Kevin, you added this to the notes about there was a train simulator from 1970s Japan, like train driving test. Yes. And this is incredible. This is something I just learned about, like, a few. months ago, but back at the Japan World Expo in 1970, one of the things they showed off was a computer running a game called the Train Driving Test, and this is sort of like

an early Dencha Day Go sort of thing, where they have like these vector monitors, like 3D, like wire frame sort of display. And if you, I was reading an art. that someone had written in Japanese about this because they'd gotten to play it. They're like, yeah, if you successfully got through it, you would get, like, a little, like, little, you know, chotchki. Oh, I love it. For passing the train driving test.

Now you drive one for real. They made this for kids to, like, well, I don't think they made it for kids, but kids were playing it as a game. I mean, it was very cute. World Expos, man. They're fun. They bring good stuff. That's, um...

What happened to them? Do they still do them? Yeah, there's... Just not here. The one of 20-25s was in Osaka, I'm pretty sure. It just happened earlier this year. That's where that weird mascot comes from, that everyone was drawing fun, like, Eldritch Horror fan art of. Yeah, they can only have them in parts of the world that are not, you know, decaying players, I guess.

Oh, gracious. Bringing up that it was being played by kids is very... funny because I went to Japan two years ago for the first time. And while I was in Kyoto, I went to the Kyoto Railway Museum because they were doing an exhibit that was a crossover with Galaxy Express 3-9, which is my favorite anime of all time. Leji Matsumoto. It's a classic. It's incredible. It's just gender-bent Doctor Who, but sadder. That sounds very Japanese. Yeah. And I was having a great time. time and also realized that everyone else around me was about seven or eight years old. But it felt great. It was just cool to be in a place that appreciated the history of this infrastructure. Yeah.

I'm glad that there were children at that event because it means that children love the trains. Children love trains. I mean, I guess the children have always loved the trains. They still love trains. that gift shop was full of children who love the trains. They yearn for the trains. You know, I guess when you just have like trains everywhere all the time is like your main way to get around. You love them.

Yeah. I mean, Japan even had a station master that was a cat. That's true. Oh, yeah. I think I have a couple now because the one was doing such a great job. Oh, yeah. Cats always do great jobs. Yeah.

Yeah. Another early train game we talk about is Super Locomotive from Sega, 1982. This is a Sega game. It's basically about controlling a train as it goes through various dangers. My favorite danger, you know, you have your like, you know, quick track changes. You have planes and whatnot. But you have rival trains that are coming up behind you, and they have huge biceps. It's incredible. This game is wild to look at. Because. I was fascinated. Well, even on the box, it says, like, takes place on two screens. And they've sort of like how, like, Super Mario Kart sort of subdivided the TV screen into the top half and the bottom half. I think this does the same almost. Yeah. So you get the top half, which is the overhead map.

So you get a more holistic view of the tracks and where switches are coming up and icons for enemies and things. And you have the bottom half of the screen, which is a side view of your train. and you need to pay attention to that to take care of, like, the planes that are attacking you and the enemies that are coming up behind you, like you say, these trains with huge arms. It's like something from Cho Aniki. That's what I was thinking, Cho Aniki. And it's chaos. Like, it's also kind of a beautiful game. Like, there's a lot going on. There is. And it, like, you're paying attention to the track switching and where, like, power ups and things are going to be on the track up ahead. And then the bottom screen is, this, like, more intimate combat.

And it feels like the train version of the world ends with you of, like, like, like, like managing these two screens that are both doing important things. It's cool. No, you're right. Yeah. The, God, for the time, that split screen, like, that's quite complex. Yeah. It's cool.

It's a real flex for 82, you know? Flexing your biceps, like, like certain trains. Yeah. You know, it's just making me wish that. Sega remember that they made games before, like, Space Harrier, because, like, they have a lot of really weird, interesting, like, early games that they just never, like, reissue or anything. Just they don't acknowledge them or anything. Like, could you imagine that bicep train in the new Sonic Racing game? Why is he not in cross worlds?

I was going to say just a sponge bob. I was just going to say this feels like a perfect game to put in a yakuza. Yes. Oh, my God. Can you imagine Kiru against giant asshole with, with. train cosplay or hell, just have him if it gets a train. Curia you can take on a train. Yeah.

That's not unusual for him anymore. I'm very, like, when I look at these old games we're talking about, I'm actually extremely surprised or maybe not surprised at how complex some of them are for the time, because, again, if there's one thing everyone loves, it's a train. Another example would be, another one you brought up, Kevin, was, what was it called in Locomotion by Konami. And I was looking at this. This looks like pipes, but with a train that you can derail and kill people. assumedly. Yeah, yeah, it's like the trade is just moving along the tracks and you have to shuffle the tracks around in such a way that it makes it to the end of the line. Oh, like the Walls and Gromit bit where Gromit's putting the tracks down, aka my life, as he goes.

Yeah, exactly. It's a very strange little game. It got a home port to the Intellivision, but it came out after, like, Carol Shaw for Activision, like ripped off the Convision, like ripped off the console. concept. We're a weird little cowboy game called Happy Trails. Havetra's, yeah. If I remember right internally at Mattel, they were like, well, they beat us to it, but we already paid for this license and made the game, so I guess we should put it out, but they did kind of eat our lunch.

And then it came back as the hacking mini game in Bioshok. It sure did. That's true. But I always kind of knew this game as pipes. So the kind of game you would. play on, like, my brother's 486 while you're waiting for your dad to finish the baseball game so you can play Crohnter Trigger, for God's sakes. It's that one.

It's just one of those games. You're like, well, I played five of these games, I guess, like, I kind of get the point. But, yeah, Carol Shaw, of course Carol Shaw ate their lunch. He's Carol Shaw. I'm just like that this was her follow-up to River Raid. Like, here's this, like, epoch-defining shooter game. And now we're going to trade it up with a weird little train, like, puzzle sort of thing. on the Intellivision, no less.

I didn't have an television. She's going from planes to trains. She just needs something with automobiles. She's set. She's good. Also worth mentioning A-Train, the Sim, which first one came out in 1984. It's by Art Dink. Hell yeah.

There's a name I know. And series is still going strong. Last one came out in 2022 as A-Train All-Bore Tourism. I have not played the series. Do either of you play it at all? I have no A-Train experience. I'm so sorry. Yeah.

I have not played A-Train. I do know that it was one of the inspirational works for, like, SimCity. That makes sense. Some degree. So there's that. Victor, are you the one who wrote down Densha to go? Yeah. I sort of put three of the kind of most popular Japanese train sim games.

These honestly deserve an episode all their own, but just a Coles Notes version of it. Yeah, you said Coles Notes. I love you. Yeah. Is that a Canadian thing? Coles Notes is Canadian. Basically, the way I understand it is, of course, Canada has, like, you know, English class. You have a Cures 1984, read it you assholes. And the option in the day was to go to a bookstore called Coles.

And they had summaries of all the Coles notes. Like, all of all the books that were in the system. And eventually Cliffs ripped it off for Cliffs Notes. So, Coles Notes were the original Cliffs Notes, and now it's all Wikipedia, and now it's a chat to GPT, which is just, this is where we are. It's been a downward spiral for lazy high school students for decades, huh? Well, before there were Coles Notes when I was a kid, we'd rent the movie, which the teachers always knew the differences between the movies. So the test would always be like, oh, what happened? And it wasn't in the movie, so you'd be screwed.

But I always read the book, I'm a nerd. Right. So Cole's notes of Den Shadego. There's dozens of these things. It's kind of the most famous Japanese train sim. I don't love... There was a bit of a wacky Japan xenophobia around it, sort of I remember in the 2000s where, you know, it would get mentions in magazines every once in a while. But it was usually the butt of the joke of like, can you believe?

this is what they're playing in Japan and a bit of that like oh Japanese people are such hard workers they want to play jobs as video games kind of thing which gets my hackles up a little bit but

it's been going I think since 96 there's a bajillion of them unfortunately despite its popularity it really doesn't have many English versions the Dengu-S64 has an English fan

translation and bizarrely a few years ago Taito put an English cabinet in a Dave and Busters in Dallas and tweeted about it they said come play Denchadego in English

I think the tweet's still up but Hey nerds. I guess it was part of a location test or something that must have not done as well as they hoped but I don't know maybe trying to locate test and arcade game in the early 2020s might not have been a great idea for

some reason. I think people were going to the arcade a little bit less than usual for some reason. People just weren't feeling Daven Busters in the 2020s. Yeah, sure. That must have been it. I've seen a few of the recent Denchadego game. Like, arcade game. Like, I've seen a few of those cabs around. I

don't remember if any of them are in English, so I can't say for sure if this ever got like a proper release. But, like, They exist. I've seen them at conventions. Yeah. It's an arcade in Baltimore that has one. Yeah.

I've definitely played a Japanese cabinet before, but it's weird that this was kind of the only time they promoted an English one. And I don't know if anyone knows if that software is out there anywhere because that's kind of the only official English localization that Taito has done of a Densha de go, which is too bad. It's too bad. Though there's one that you can get on, like, switch if you set up a Japanese e-shop account, which is super easy. You can get one of the more recent dentia digos on there. And once you figure out the menus and the controls, you'll be able to play a Dencha dego just fine. It's sort of partner and rival was train simulator. Now, the thing with Dencha de go is that it was used.

usually made using CG graphics that were rendered in game, but train simulator is different in that it was FMV. So they would have captured, you know, just hours and hours and hours and hours of footage of these train lines. And it works pretty well because as you speed up and slow down, they either just ramp up the projection or slow it down. And it's a good approximation of, of the effect. And, and of course, these are, these are train sims in that you are the driver of the train, you're the conductor, and you are operating the levers and the mechanisms, often with a recreation of that particular train model's dashboard.

So you're getting pretty accurate controls. And these are primarily arcade games. So they are about timing your speed and your, you're. your rate of acceleration and deceleration to like perfectly land at the station in time and like you are being graded on centimeters of distance in your landing and milliseconds of when you should have arrived and and there's there's mechanics like there will be people standing on the side of of the the railway and they'll like give the you know, honk, honk the horn.

Do the toot, too. And you'll get bonus points if you do the toot-toot for people. So there's cute stuff like that in these games that I find really, really charming. There was, I recall in the early tens or the 2000s, a meme going around, where for some reason, people were taking footage of train simulator, speeding it up, adding a bunch of weird ass shit and setting it to dubstep. That sounds great. So when I think of train simulator, I just remember this is one video of a guy's zombie nation boom boom

and there's like all this like freaky shit going by and the train derailed and it says like too fast for you and it's just

freaking ridiculous well speaking of train simulator's music it was developed by a studio called ungaku Khan

and the CEO and sort of the main guy behind these games was Minora Mukaya who was the keyboardist for jazz funk fusion

band and beloved by the YouTube algorithm Cassiopeia. So if you've seen any of those beautiful Cassiopeia album covers on YouTube, that's our train simulator guy. And he has also, he's the one who composed all of the unique station jingles for all of the Tokyo train stations show. Yeah. Tokyo has like different jingles for their train stations. Different jingles at every style.

I mean, different stamps at every stop. Oh, it's incredible. It's so great because it's like it's a wave or if you don't know the system super well or like you can't see very well, like you can still tell what station you are. I'm looking at the, I'm like a short bastard. I'm looking up trying because I'm like, I can't see. I can't see. We're stationer are we at? And it says, but sometimes it's loud.

You have your earphones in. Yeah. It's just one of those things that Japan does that gives their state. so much character, and that's, I don't know, it's, oh, God, it's wonderful. It's incredible. What I would give for Vancouver to do, like, stamps and jingles at the SkyTrain stations, I'd love it. Now, remembering the station, some Australian city, is it Brisbane? I don't remember, but they got the voice actor who plays chili from Bluey to do, like, the voice for their subway system.

And I'm like, that's clever, you know. This is like your, this is your, your country's big thing right now. That's amazing. It's like they've been trying to get the TTC to sell merchandise. And it's like pulling teeth. And actually, let me show you something quickly here. Up there, you can't see it. Dear, dear listeners, but I have a little tiny cardboard go train that was given to my husband and I because we saw, for some reason, go train is a basically a system in southern Ontario that runs between me.

or cities of the GTA or greater Toronto area. Yeah, it's very confusing when a new GTA game comes out. And during COVID, they were running a bunch of safety ads. And it was like, oh, stay, you know, however many feet away from people, blah, blah, blah. And for the ads, they were using this really cute bear. And my husband is like, I really like that bear. And we just kind of like asked Gautrain, hey, do you guys have any of those bears? Like, we'd love to add one.

They gave us one. And, like, it came up a little Guff bag and had a little Gautrain in it. And I'm like, oh, cool. I'm going to fold that and put it on my shelf, and I did. I'm realizing that GTA 6 is going to be even more confusing for dwebes who call Toronto the 6. Oh, kill me now. I'm moving by. He's going to say, on Densjadego before we move on, like, this is one of those games that my son, who's, you know, like three, he loves asking me to play games for him.

And this is one that when he was younger, he was really in. to, because, like, he's been on the subway around here. He knows trains. So, like, he thought it was really fun to watch you drive the train, except that he got older and got mad that you couldn't actually see the train. You were just sitting in it. And that was, that was disappointing to him. That's a very three-year-old thing to be disappointed about, and I agree with him.

But, you know, that's very, like, descriptive of the audience for this game, though. It's like, you know, over here, there's a lot of car games. It's the games where you drive around. There's, like, there's. there's trucking games, trucking sure is. It sure is. Yeah. And somewhere where you have lots of trains. Like, of course, kids are going to want to

pretend to drive trains. Yeah. I mean, Nadia, you talk about being difficult to sell merch. Well, imagine if you made a transit system that people felt like celebrating and weren't regularly embarrassed. But people do actually have a lot. We bitched about

the TTC constantly. We have like a lot of nostalgia for it. Like, I love for example, the old red subway. Like, if you gave me a toy of those old red subways, I'd be like mine. Yeah, I do think generally, I like Toronto's transit quite a bit. And I was lucky enough to live there sort of during the crossover period of the old street cars into the new street cars. Yeah, yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong.

The new street cars are gorgeous. But there was a real charmed those old street cars. I love that. We saved those street cars, man. Like, Mike Harris wanted to boot those street cars. We were like, no, man, we're going to fight. the death for our streetcars. We love our damned off traffic. The other game series of these three that is I think maybe the least well known,

but it's actually the most easily available for English players, if you want to try these out with full localization, is Japanese rail sim. This one started on the 3DS of all places. It also uses FMV like Train Simulator, and these are a little bit smaller in scope. And they don't have physical releases in English for 3DS. So go mod your 3DS. It's so easy. Just do it. And you can get the Japanese rail sim games.

They're very charming. Yeah. There was also one released called Travels of Steam, which in Japan was originally a Thomas the Tank Engine game. Oh, my God. You can reskin that, I guess. Yeah, they couldn't maintain the license for it in the West. So they just took out Thomas and put a normal train in.

One that's not cross all the time. Yeah. But there's a lot of these games that are available even on Steam. So I recommend if you're interested in this branch of train games, try Japanese rail sim. That's a good rack, actually. Ringo Star must have been too expensive. And George Carlin must have been too expensive. dead.

Who among us? Whomst amongst amongst isn't dead. I mean, Thomas the time can't you're going alone. All of his birds will be coming along. Thomas we love you. Thomas we love you. Thank you.

So going into like some specific trains quickly, kind of to shout out some of the great ones out there. I mentioned the celestial train in Dragon Quest 9 played quite a big role. And I like glittery trains. I like shiny trains. fly to the sky, and I like the ones that have the fairies on them. Like, there's a ferry in Dragon Quest 9 named Stella. I just like a train that flies and doesn't really need tracks where we're going. We don't need roads.

You love Galaxy Express. Oh, you've got to watch some Galaxy Express, Nadia. I do. Even the movies, just to hear the Vancouver dub from the 90s. Oh, God, that must be so just... I've played the CDI game that just used a bunch of footage from Galaxy Express. Does that count? Yeah, absolutely.

Is there a CDI game? Yeah, escape from CyberCity. It's awful. Look it up. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. That is bad. Man, I don't know if I told you this, Kevin, but when I went to RETRO, Long Island Routreau in some year, I picked up a CDI controller for the first time.

I have never felt such garbage in my life. I was like, this feels like a, no, it feels worse than a Fisher Price toy. Fisher Price has quality. This is like, that was a disgrace. I can only imagine. Was it the remote or like an actual control? No, it was an actual, in big quotes, controller. It felt like it was going to, you know how something has like a plastic seam that's just barely holding together?

It felt like that. It was like just the most third grade plastic you could practically imagine from like the mines of mortar. Awful, awful. The remote's worse. So I actually mentioned the Starfleet Express because basically I just wanted to shout out quickly. The train that guides you along Rainbow Road in Maricart World, I know this not retro by a little. long shot, but as much as people are dumping on Myricart World, and

I think they're right, too, until I guess more content, that ride up to Rainbow Road, when you see the hype train, that's what I call it, like the Donkey Kong hype train, like riding with you. That's so freaking incredible. That's worth the price of admission for me, just for that alone. And

another train that should technically kill us, but actually likes us, and we're very lucky for that, is the Doom Train, Guardian Force from Final Fantasy 8. I can't remember, Victor. Do you like Final Fantasy 8? It is the Final Fantasy I've played the least, which is too bad because I know I will really like Final Fantasy 8 when I get around to it.

I'm sure you will. I'm absolutely sure you will. Kevin, do you like Final Fantasy 8? All right. I didn't play it personally. I sat in on my friend while he played it back in high school. That's the best way to experience it, I think. No. Except when you're grinding out magic.

That's not this fucking a lot. I mean, but everything else. That's true. There's all kinds of ways to play FF8. You can break that game over your knee in some very fun things. That's what scares me about it. Oh, I love it. I think it's wonderful.

But yeah, I like the Doom Train is the FF8 incarnation of the Glacia Labolas, which, of course, is a recurring demon from the lesser key of Solomon, I think, or the, the Arsgoetia or whatever. I think it's the Arsgoatia. Yeah. But, yeah, that talks about the... It's one of the princes of hell and it's a train now. Yep, it's a train now. And it's a cool designed train.

I love it. It is actually really cool. Shoot, I wish I could remember the demon, like specifically the traits that it's based on. But I do know that the dream train is like, as you say, it's demonic and it poisons everyone. Yeah. And it kind of comes at you on a rail made of fine. Yeah. Which is just so badass.

I love the way it lights up. And you have the two bears that go down, ding, ding, ding. And it's like it traps whoever's getting isokied right in the middle. And you can move. You could go under the barriers. Nah. No. You're dead.

No. Listen, it's putting down those barriers. That doom train ain't letting you go. Yeah. That's true. They'll just move the track. Bears are in your mind. That's pretty metal, having a flaming track for your demon train.

I feel like that should be like an album cover for somebody. The, uh, something I put under like kind of baddies, like, you know, trains that wish specific harm upon us. I did include the phantom train from Final Fantasy Six, which is the quintessential killer train. But to be fair, it's only doing its job. And Sayan sobbing and Sabin's relentless suplexing is slowing it down on its appointed task. Maybe it has a right to be pissed off. Yeah. Imagine the guy playing Densha de Go.

who's trying to get the phantom train to the underworld on time and these chuckle fucks show up why do my trains keep going upside down what's going on why are it all in their backs like every suplex is just slowing them down more so they have to speed up even faster to make their schedule like it's counterproductive Sabin I always thought it was kind of funny

well not really ha ha funny that the train says okay fine fine I'll let you off but I got to get this last load on, you know, and then I'll let you off there. So, he stops, and sure enough, he lets Sabin and Shadow, if you have him, and, uh, Cyan. And that's when Cyan sees his family boarding the train, his dead family. He has to confront them. And it's like, well, that's what you get for interrupting the train, don't you? Trains doing what it said.

Yeah. Didn't say anything else, did it? It's a great scene. It always takes me out of it, though, because then I think, okay, well, when were trains invented in this world, have people only started dying? after trains were created. What did they do before the like the platonic ideal of the train existed?

Who ferried them to the underworld? Yeah. It was slow. The phantom caravan, except, you know, you have to take care of all those skeletal horses and find them like food and shelter. This is just much more efficient, you know? The phantom long walk.

Yeah, there's a lot going on just sort of epistemologically with the phantom train that takes me out of the experience. I was actually kind of fascinated when I first found the phantom train because to me, Final Fantasy was still, even when I was playing Final Fantasy at that point, still felt like a fantasy game. And then the train is like, oh, we have a train. And apparently it's a ghost train because I think Sabin mentions that the Empire destroyed the trains or destroyed the railways. So that was just a little bit of interesting history. Interesting. Uh, fascist governments that want to eliminate rail infrastructure.

Interesting. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. So does that mean the Phantom train is like, is it like a Yo-Kai sort of situation? Oh, yeah. I accept that. It's like spirit of the train.

Yeah. But now it's like mad that it's been destroyed. Yeah. That could work actually. I like that. I like you for putting that in my head. Um, Phantom train, I think, straddles the line. I know you, you, you,

You sort of created some categories here for kinds of trains as they appear in video games. And I sort of had my own, as I was working on this over the past couple days, my own sort of distinctions of like, there's the trains as gameplay, which are the denchidae goes in your train simulators and things. Right. Where you are operating a train. The game is making the train go. Then there's sort of like, we haven't gotten to these yet.

but there's trains as transportation as as a vehicle as your sort of in-game travel mode of transportation then you have trains as a setting which I think is where we'll get to with a lot of the Mega Man stuff especially and then you have trains as like character and that's like your companion trains or your summon trains or your boss trains or whatever And I think I think that's how I've sort of made this make sense in my head, is that they're all... There are a lot of trains, isn't there? There's a lot of trains. Even just, I think, I feel like Mega Man Zero alone has a higher concentration of train levels than the FDA advises you take in one dose.

Like, there's so much train in those games. Yeah, there really is. It's like Neo-Arcadia, well, the ruins around Neo-Arcadia have still quite a bit of rail infrastructure, but most of it goes to bad places. Speaking of Mega Man Trains, though, why don't we talk about Chargemen, who is a train? Yeah. Yeah. His stage is a train. His stage is a train.

The guy is a train. It's trains all the way down. I'm sick of these motherfucking trains on these motherfucking trains. I heard you like trains. So I put a train in your train. You can train when you train. I actually rented Mega Man 5. And funny story.

again, not ha ha funny, but I got grounded for some reason while I had was supposed to have access to this rental so I kind of snuck downstairs when at like 3 in the morning to play the game and I had to keep the music down real low so when I play

Chargeman now I turn music up real high because I'm an adult and I can but yeah Charge Man usually if you're playing Mega Man 5 charge man is a good one to start with it's just so funny that he just kind of squats and twos at the same time I think my mom lost her shit when she saw that.

Because she's six years old mentally, like myself. Doesn't he also, like, turn red when he's doing that? He turns red. Yeah. He's really, like, struggling there. It's got a lot of effort. So I'm not, I don't know that I'm reading enough into this, or maybe I'm reading too much, but. Dr. Light did not program the metamusole chip very well. No, wait, charge man would have been Dr.

That's Dr. Wiley. Of course, it's Dr. Wiley. Who else would be? Dr. Wiley definitely did not give him a metamusal chip. That would have made him too happy. Dr. Wiley does not consider the comfort of his robot masters. They're just like, you want comfort, you go kill Mega Man. By the way, Mega Man 8 in the opening, you do see Charge Man.

He's standing on top of Ferromass Pyramid for some reason. Right. He's there. Just chilling. Also in Mega Man is, we talked about Mega Man X4 a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago, Victor. And, yeah, there is slash beast convoy of death where you go through the level. You kind of climb up to the front of the train and you trash it. Games try this frequently with truck convoys.

Not the same thing, people. We don't want truck convoyce in this discussion. No, absolutely not. No. Yeah, this is, I mean, yeah, the Mega Man X games up into zero. And then, you know, from zero, I feel like Indy create. loves putting a train stage into every game. I think the blood-stained curse of the moon, the pixel art, the retro-style one, has a great train level.

And then you beat up the engine of the train, and it's fantastic. It's always nice to beat up a train engine, isn't it? Yeah, they're so good at trains. They did that in Ritual of the Night, too, now that you mentioned it, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's right. I've played like reverse of the moon so much more than actual bloodstained. I've heard that a lot. But yeah, and I think a train stage, look, it's just a good excuse to have a fun kinetic background and make you feel like there's a lot going on screen.

I agree. There's sort of like the original, like, dramatic set piece stage that was relatively easy to do, but really gave you a exhilarating. feel um it's like uncharted games everyone talks about like the set piece moments in in those kinds of action adventure games are always you know train stages or whatever but i mean gosh going back to f f8 that's a game where you're train on on the roof of the train and that's where you get some really great fmv incorporated into the stages i mean eight's just so good at that in general But especially... And you get selfies train song.

And you get selfies, train song. Take us away. Like I said, over on Acts of the Blood God, the anthem of every quirky girl in the early 2000s, late 90s. Where's that dubstep remix? Hell yeah. Have they ever released like an official vocal track of Selfies train song? Do we know? No, but they should.

An actual audio version. He's cowards. Yeah. I wanted to very briefly bring up Resident Evil Zero. The best part of Resident Evil Zero is the prologue on the train. I think it's fantastic. I haven't played Zero. It's better than everyone.

And it's a really good part of Zero. I think when you're, first of all, it's very like Orient Express, like lavish, deluxe train. I love lavish train. As if that exists in Midwestern America. Like, where is this beautiful train that apparently runs to Raccoon City? Again, that's one where you get to be on the roof of the train and it's cycling through, I would hesitate to call it FMV because I think it's just rapidly alternating stills in the background of the motion of the train. But again, it's just, oh, the feeling of a train moving is so good. I think that top of train stages, as much as I love them, they'd be kind of ruined from him because of Archer.

When he goes up on the top of the train and he immediately just gets like a face full of grit and it's like shredding him. He's like, oh, God, it's so dusty up here. Which makes a lot of sense. One, I don't if I'd call this so much a bad train so much as a train, a neutral train that doesn't. doesn't care if you live or die. But in Mario Kart 64, sorry, Mario Kart 64, you have the steam locomotive, which has the tunnel. And that was mind-blowing, seeing that for the first time after, like, Mario Kart vanilla was just like these flat areas that didn't really offer much in the way of objects. But you could take a chance and you can go in that tunnel and you get destroyed by a train.

But it was such an, it was just literally like the game was finally 3D, not just fake 3D. Yeah. I did love chasing after that train. Like, yeah, was it going to crush me? Sure, but it looks so cool. And, you know, maybe if you were lucky, you would get through and you would get to enjoy the shortcut of going through the train track. Yeah. You know, I'm going to be able to be.

I'm going to be. So in terms of settings, one that we're going to talk about quickly or slowly, however you like, is the bombing mission and what follows in Final Fantasy 7. I think that the introduction to Midgar through that grungy industrial terrain is just such a great bit. One of my favorite things about that whole sequence is you've done the bombing mission, you get back on the train, it's just a regular subway, people are going home, you talk to people, salary men who are like, oh God, oh God, this is so cool, but I'm going to die. Oh, God.

And there's just this one guy who you talk to him is like, oh, hey, this is my house. Make yourself at home. And if you live in a city, someone lives on the subway. So it just kind of reminded me of that. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to say, like, it's been almost 20 years since I played this game. And the, like, mental image of Barrett just, like, leaning back, just hanging out on the subway train.

Like, this is very, like, well observed. This is just how people hang out on subways. when they, you know, don't care about anyone sitting next to them. And, I don't know, it's really stuck in my head. I thought, I think it does a very good job of, like, just showing his character and showing the... It does a really good job of showing everyone's character, like, Jesse and how she tries, like, you know, suck up to cloud. And as you say, Barrett, he just kind of flops on the seat and everyone runs from him because, like, why wouldn't they? And then...

He does have a gun for a hand. Yeah. Someone starts talking about avalanche. You just see him glance over at that person. It's just such a really well choreographed scene. It's great. And, yeah, it was, I mean, of course, I adore Final Fantasy Six, but you could really tell, like, okay, square enix, always going to be the cinematic company. Yeah.

Yeah, I think the fact that, you know, there's sort of the bombast of the very opening. And then, like you say, that ride home. And I think the fact that they are taking a ride home. to the slums is really cool. And the fact that there are also Shinra personnel on the train and some of them are also going home to the slums is really like, I don't know, it hits really hard. And you've just had this explosive dungeon and boss fight and then you just get the quiet of a train, which is just kind of like, I don't know, you two are big party animals. But also, like, I don't know, it reminds me of nights where, like, things got crazy. And then you get to just sit on the train and it'll take you home.

I love it. Meet me in the lobby. I've been up for 24, basically. Yeah. It's the middle of the night. And you've done all the stuff. You set out to do for a wild night. And you just get the quiet of the train ride home. It's, I don't know, it's cool.

I do like the quiet of the train ride home. I still appreciate that as an old person. It doesn't take much to get me exhausted and therefore every train ride home is a very nice, quiet one for me. But the atmosphere of that particular scene also uses, I think the name of the song is Holding Thoughts in My Heart or Anxious Heart, and everything just works so well together. And even playing it now on just the vanilla version, even though the character models are as primitive as they are, everything's so well choreographed that is still one of my favorite. bits to experience in an RPG over and over and over again. So good for you, Square.

Are either of you fans of a thousand-year-door, Paper Mario? I did enjoy it, but I haven't played it since it came out originally. Same. Do you remember the Excess Express? Because that was a whole level, basically a whole quest

based around a train level. That was like the Orient Express. Isn't that like the, yeah, that's the Agatha Christie mystery on a train? Yeah, except it has a dead toad, a toad ghost. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And, yeah, I just love, as I said earlier, I love elegant trains. And if you're going to have an elegant train, you may as well have a murder mystery on it. I don't think it was a murder mystery.

Someone on the train had an explosive of some kind that got stolen. They recovered it all was well. So you're saying, Toad did not got God. No. The Legend of Zelda, Spirit Tracks. Damn it. High rules of train yard now. Chew-choo, motherfuckers. Best handheld Zelda outside of Link Between Worlds and Link's Awakening. I love Spirit Tracks. Me too. It's a great game. Underappreciated game. Paula, if you love Spirit Tracks. Yeah. I had a Dragon Train. Best Overworld theme. Customizing the trains real fun.

Demon trains. The getting, finding the stamp locations at all of the different stations. That's right. Stamps. I love it. Yeah. That's pretty. Primo stuff right there I'm a sucker for stamps Were you the one who on Blood God Because we were talking about this game a couple of weeks ago Who said they were playing it on a train Or something like that or a car

And the ending the ending fight with Gannon Where you have to blow into the pen flute And they kept hitting bumps And it kept fucking up That was somebody else But I think that rules I think that was either cat or Eric Because I have

had my own problem was, well, I can't see and blow into this thing at the same time. So I guess I'm not beating this game. But I just love the idea that she's going over bumps. Gannon's like, what are you doing, you stupid kid? Victor, please tell me you're a fan of Metal Gear Solitude, Snake's Revenge. Uh, you mean just Snakes Revenge. Definitely not Metal Gear solid And there's not even Metal Gear In the official Like on the box, sorry, it just says Snake's Revenge

Does it not say Metal Gear? Because my husband's the one who's just this Apparently there's a train 2-1 is a train Level or something What I have played more of Than the NES game Snake's Revenge Is the Tiger Electronic Handheld Game

Snakes Revenge which I own Is there a train there? I don't think I think there's a train there. How did you end up with Snake's Revenge for the Tiger? I love Metal Gear. Okay. I'm actually, hey, right into your favorite Retronauts hosts, Victor's upset that he's never been on a Metal Gear episode.

Oh, oh. Perish, make it happen. Please. Yeah, no, I've barely touched Snake's Revenge. It's on the to-do list. But you do have the Tiger handheld. I do have the tiger handheld, and I do own the NES cartridge as well. How about you, Kevin?

How have you played Snake's Revenge? Snake's Revenge cast. I really haven't. I remember trying it a little bit when emulation started getting good enough that I could actually run at Snake's Revenge on a nesticle at the time. Oh, yeah. And I could not get anywhere in that game. It starts off, like, shockingly difficult. So, like, I had gone through the first Metal Gear game.

Remember, because I did find a cartridge of that. that. And I'm like, well, I want to try Snake's Revenge. You know, let's get the sequel a whirl. And yeah, could not get anywhere. Could not get to this train that is, uh, that is there, this mythical train. My husband once cosplayed as the, uh, Snake's Revenge Snake and nobody knew who he was. He just put on like really, everything was orange. He looked great. Because that's an extremely orange. He looked great. I respect that. Victor, I'm glad you're appreciated. Yeah, it was, I remember seeing those pictures and being very, very proud of him. I'll tell you're proud of him

Yeah He should be proud One that's He another one he brought up That is certainly worth mentioning Is the Old West train stage And TMNT Turtles in Time And the subway fragment

Final Fight Yes These are good These are good additions Kevin Trains are just cool set pieces For brawling Because brawls sometimes happen in trains Yeah

Beat Emups are great on trains It works fantastic Along the same lines I'd say no more heroes has some really good train levels because you're just fighting waves of guys anyway and trains, they also do this I'll say Pokemon black and white, the battle subway

where the fact that... Amitoningo. Yeah, trains are so perfectly segmented that you can just set, you know, accomplish whatever task you need to in this train car and then once you're done that, the next one will open up. It's like it was made for easy junk food

gameplay of just like do a task here move on yeah cat has mentioned many times that she misses battle subway yeah can i mention that it's really kind of messed up that emmit from black Pokemon black and white was put into rcest legends so separated from his identical twin brother oh that's just really that's brutal man separating identical twins is like i know an identical twin who lost her sister and she just kind of lost it so i thought you were going to say separated from his train. That was also a very trash. Yeah, that's rough too.

Separated from his brother and his train. Thankfully, his, his memories kind of muted, but he does say he kind of remembers someone that he's missing someone. So I was just like, ah, goddamn it, Pokemon Company. Stop doing this. I love you. That's dark. That is pretty dark. SimCity very briefly, because as we all know, and you put the sound cab, and the rails are the best option in the OG game.

And I added, yeah, but my citizens still bitched about. pollution on the S&S version. I could not get them to shut up. And I replaced all the rows of trains. You know, maybe they just wanted you to invest in electric everything, even though that was not an option in this original game. Was it an option in like 2000 and stuff? I didn't really play SimCity beyond the first one, to be honest with you. Oh, man. It might have been an option. I feel like it wasn't in 2000, but I might have been in 3000. I feel like SimCity just didn't get better than on the S&ES at one time. I just, I was actually wrote here on the notes that I love the sound of the train starting up in SimCity S&S. I still remember that sound.

A little toot. Little t la la la. And it makes a little choochoo. Are we, are we firmly in our shouting out our favorite trains segment? Yes. Well, I just want to say one more, one more, actually two more quickly. Ninja Guideon 2. World 2-1 is a train area with Parallax scrolling. The N-E-S was cooking, as I said, in 1990.

And Half-Life 2. That intro stage, not just the coming in on a train itself. And, of course, yeah, welcome, welcome to City 17. It is such a great train station experience. If you've ever been on a really bad trip, it really does feel like there are soldiers in the train station or you to pick up cans with the letter E somehow. But that's still one of my favorite set pieces. I mean, I've seen Penn Station on bad days, and it reminded me a lot of that.

Did you ever play the Atari game Keystone Capers? Yes. It's set in the mall. I love Keystone Capers. That game is great. There was a sequel that they were going to make, and it didn't get finished. That was set on, like, a train. And, like, a year or so ago, the developers, I think his brother came in.

and finished it and made it into a retail game called Casey's Gold because they, you know, they're not with Activision. They don't have the license to the old name. But, uh, but that whole thing is like, you're on a train that's transporting gold. And, uh, you're just like wandering around. There's like, I don't know, toys and other weird things going on in these train cars. That sounds really cool. It's a really fun game. I love Keystone Capers. So any follow up would be pretty cool with me. Yeah, very similar play. But, uh, if you want to go ahead and shout out favorites now is your time now is your your opportunity okay i got a few big ones yes one what i want to do that i really want to make sure i get to is people who know me know i'm a shenmu lover

and part of that is the in-game clock and of course when you have an in-game clock and transit you have to physically wait for your transit your mode of transit to get there now now shenmoo if you're going to the harbor you're taking a bus. Unfortunately, buses, not trains. We've established this before. It's simply just not the same. Four wheels good, two rails. No, four wheels bad, two rails good. Yes. Now, FF11, also notably, the airship schedule. If you want to say, hop on an airship to Juno, you better hope that you're there when an airship arrives because it's operating on a schedule that you wait for and then you board that airship and you have real time

travel time to then arrive at your destination Wow, that's that sounds like FF11? It's incredible. It's wonderful. However, airships also not trains. Again, we've established this. Trains are trains. Other

things are other things. What I think nails it completely and is that sweet spot between a Shenmu or an F.F. 11 is in lightning returns. Hmm. Because despite the fact that we are in a post-apocalyptic nowhere world, that is the last remaining bit of human civilization before basically the world gets remade, despite that,

we have still invested in rail travel, because lightning returns has a must. has a monorail and of course it also there is an in-game clock you have 13 days to accomplish your mission in lightning returns lightning returns is in fact a Shenmu and if you want to use the fast travel system there is a schedule that you have to wait for so because you are trying to maximize your time in lightning returns It, um, sometimes it's not worth it to wait for the train, um, much like in real life. If you arrive at a bus stop and you realize you just missed it, you go, oh, well, I guess I'll find another way to get there because I'll just be wasting time if I stand here for 20 minutes. But also, deciding that it is worth it to wait for the train, I think is maybe one of the most beautiful things you can do in a video game. Because, uh, part of the, you the appeal of riding a train in the first place is that you're not driving. You have no obligations. You're in transit. That is just a moment to yourself and whoever's around you. But like it's a

pause in your day. And I think a video game that encourages you to wait for transit is basically that's like the opposite of the way things. have been gamified. That's the opposite of like the the daily login bonus or the like get to the thing quick and and it's like the opposite of what a service game or or monetized games want you to do. There's no hustle there. This isn't about grinding something out. It is about consciously taking a moment to just be like, well, there's nothing I can do for four minutes. So I'm going to hang out here. And I think going back to like, the hypertext of it all and the the abstraction of video games. There's something so beautiful about giving your own time to wait for something that isn't actually far away. Like, you know, it's digital space, right? And if you're a Charlene dropouts listener, hey, check out my.

field studies episodes where I talk a lot about digital space and how we navigate it and what it means. It's excellent. But there's something so beautiful about saying, yeah, I know the place I'm going is technically in a directory on this digital file format that just needs to be loaded in and I will be there. But instead, I'm going to take a digital metaphor of real world transit and spend my time waiting to get there. There's something so absurd about

that that is like next level, again, look forward to my thesis about it someday, but I just completely understand what you're saying, Victor, I understand the sentiment, but it also sounds like a Simpsons joke. Yeah, totally. Virtual waiting for

bus. Yeah, it sounds like what do you mean they play a game where they drive a train? Like it does sound, it is absurd. There is a, there's There is a Samuel Beckett waiting for Godot-esque absurdity to it that I think is so gorgeous. Anyway, there is nothing wrong with slowing down in this life. And I honestly think that time waiting for a bus is not necessarily time wasted. Sometimes you just lost in your own thoughts.

These days, of course, you have smartphones. more like dumb phones as far as I'm concerned Yeah So but when I was a kid You were waiting for the bus You had your Walkman if you were lucky And uh

Alright we put up with there Let me tell you that Herf for her Um Quickly I want to put in a favorite train And that is Secret of Mata's zombie train Which Um

So Secret of Manna was a game Really kind of my first RPG Like coming back to it after a Dragon Quest And it is a game about, oh my God, we blew it up. Us maniacs, but you don't really realize that until near the end of the game

when you get to a sunken continent and you realize you're working through, like, from just like regular, you know, cave area, down to a city, down to a subway station, onto a train that's filled with zombies. And later on,

actually before that, you reach an area that has, like, records of things that we we said right before we died as a civilization because the man of beast killed us for being too greedy for, you know, using too much mana. So that's just a really neat bit of visual storytelling where it's a subway. It's full of zombies. So you know what happened. These people aren't alive anymore. I just thought that was like a really cool thing to have in an S&ES game back of the day. And the zombies are very cute. That's the thing about secret of mana. Everything's really cute. Everything's kind of dower at the same time. Very dire. What about you? I was going to say this was back before zombies had really gotten oversaturated, too, so it was under the game.

This is before zombie nation. So as for me, my pick was Star Fox 64's military train on McAbeth. That whole stage is just like you in the crappy little tank fighting this train and like destroying each of the cars. It's like sending weapons out of the train cars after you and boulders and other weird stuff. But honestly, shouldn't be on a military train car? I don't know. But it all like culminates in you just like hitting the right sequence of switches at the end and sending that thing careening into a weapons base. I remember now.

And the whole thing just explodes and the guy's driving it who's been taunting you this entire level is just like, I can't stop it. Yeah, that got that Star Fox 64 was an interesting game. game because it was really the first Nintendo game I could think of that had a lot of voices in it because of course CDs by now had a lot of voices in it cartridge games less so but God they're compressed but they're still there

and yeah through that whole through that whole level you have that monkey guy talking shit to you he's just like step on the games and I was a little disappointed because I am a Star Fox original lover and Macbeth the hollowed up planet

was really cool in the first game and had a really bitching soundtrack. And then we came to McBathair, it's like, oh, I get it. Okay, it's a monkey. That's fine. But I felt better when we blew shit up. Yeah, how did the planet didn't have a train on it? At the end, I think it's a wash.

It was about to blow up. They didn't have a train. That was the worst part of it. That was its real failing. Any final thoughts, Victor and Kevin, before we wrap up, because I know you have a hard out, Victor. Yeah. I want to just squeeze in a few more. ones that are sort of associated with like the fast travel of it um because i'm a freak i'm a

silent hill downpour fan i think it was a pretty darn good silent hill game and what i loved about it is that it was kind of the first time that you really do get it's not exactly open world but like the the point of it was like hey we're just going to open up silent hill to you and there are side quests to do and there are little things you can do in certain corners of it. And one of those things was unlocking the fast travel system, which uses the subway stations that I just thought was really smart. Yeah, it's a weird game, but I think those subway stations are also just kind of made with love. And they, they don't give too much connective tissue to Silent Hill because you want Silent Hill to be a little upsetting in its geography and

not make sense entirely. What's that word? Non-Euclidean? Non-Euclidean, yeah. And non-me-Clidean. But, yeah, it just, it gave Silent Hill a little bit more of that, like, oh, it is trying to be a city, but it can't right now because something else is going on that I like about it. That's interesting.

Like it's fragmented. Yeah, yeah. I think my first one was Pokemon D. Gen 2. So, Pokemon Gold, when you unlock the, it's basically a Shinkansen. It's a bullet train. They call it, I think they call it the magnet train or the Maglev train. Maglev following. But yeah, it takes you from, was it Saffron City to Goldenrod City, which are essentially the Tokyo and Osaka of the, the Pokemon world. And it is, it's just like your little introduction to the bullet train, which I think is great. My dream is,

ride a bullet train. It's fun. I want to. Oh, it's great. In the real world, I think the Tokyo to Osaka, the new bullet train, because in Pokemon, they say that the train reaches speeds of, I think, 550 kilometers an hour, which is, it sounds like one of those things that they put in Pokemon that is like, oh, Ponieta's hooves are a thousand times harder than diamonds or whatever.

I love that. I love that factoid. In about, like, 10 to 15 years, they are finishing the 500-kilometer-an-hour bullet train that goes from Tokyo to Osaka. So, it's Pokemon predicting the future. That's like how, I don't know the distance between those two, but that must be just a really nice ride. Yeah, it'll cut the travel time in half to about an hour from Tokyo to Osaka. That's crazy. Yeah.

Things we could have. Right? Imagine. Things we could have if people love life enough. Just a couple other ones. Real quick, Mega Man Battle Network, one, two, and three. Use a really cute subway system because you sort of start in like, your house is sort of in like a little suburban area. It feels like very American suburbs or kind of Japanese suburbs even.

But there's a subway station very close to your home. And what I love about it is that it's not like you just walk into the subway station and choose your destination. You have to go up to the ticket counter. You have to choose what your destination is. And then you have to walk over and go through the turnstile. And you have to go through the turn style that has the little yellow circle, not the one that has the red X because that's not the entrance. You got to go through the right one. And as a kid who had never engaged with transit like that, that was like my little.

little, oh, this is my tutorial on how I'll get on a subway someday. I loved it. And he didn't screw it up when he did it the first time, I bet. Yeah. And it just. You got trained by Mega Man. Totally. And it connects all these little parts of the cities in battle network in a really charming way.

And kind of the same with Sonic Adventure. That was another one too. That's right. Yeah. And I love. And you get the announcement over the PA. Yes. The train to Mystic Ruins

I love it. Yeah, that makes me nostalgic now. Mechanically, the last one I want to bring up is Animal Crossing. Oh, of course. On the GameCube, because that is how you physically travel to the other towns. If you bring your memory card, you hop on the train at the station in your town, and that puts you on your memory card, and then you can take that memory card. and then you can take that memory card to a friend's game cube, pop it in, and then you get to hop off that train as it arrives in your friend's town. And that's such a fun metaphor.

Like, I just think. That's a nice exchange. Yeah. It's cute. Yeah. It's beautiful. I like that. So elegant.

So, so perfect. And something that could only be done when you have that kind of hardware, too. Like, there's nothing you can really do now to. I remember them saying that, like, like, oh, the joycons are going to have a tiny bit of onboard memory. And I remember thinking, oh, that would be great if in Animal Crossing you could just pop your character, even not all of their information, but like pop something onto a joycon and take it to a friend and be able to use it.

But nope, never, nope, no dice. Nope, Nintendo's going to Nintendo. Yeah. All right. That's pretty much it for this conversation about pixelated and polygonal video game trains. Thank you so very much for joining us. I'm your host, Nadia I have one last thing I want to say. Victor has one last thing he wants to say. Go for it, Victor. God bless. I'm going to get on my soapbox for a second. And do. Do a little rally and cry, okay?

Okay. Transit means a lot to a lot of people. That includes trains, includes buses. I know politically, it can feel like it is impossible to make other people's lives better right now. It's a very, very difficult time for that sort of thing. I know, especially as Canadians, it feels like we can't do anything to affect what the system feels like right now. But I encourage people. Like we were saying with Final Fantasy 6 and how the

empire dismantled trains and transit, transit is important for people to get to places. When there is ample transit, people can get to jobs that they might not have access to otherwise. It gets them out of situations that might be bad. Transit is incredibly important. One thing you can do is that a lot of transit operates on a municipal level. You can get involved. You can't stop all the worst stuff going on at the highest level, but what you can do is find city counselors. You can find people at the provincial level or the state level who are advocating for better transit. And that includes rail travel. It's not dead. It doesn't need to be dead. No, it's important. Commuters need it. People need it to get all over the place and it is one of those things that is genuinely started at

the most basic level of government and political involvement from the people. So this is me saying find who is advocating for transit in your area and get involved in it and support it. Because even if you are not the kind of person who takes trains or takes buses, even if you drive a car, Better transit means safer roads, it means less cars on the roads, and it means more people get to places they need to go to have better lives. That's me. That's me on my soapbox, just telling people, this isn't just a video game thing. Trains are real. I know we've been talking about them.

Trains are real. They absolutely are real. They saw them in video games and they invented them in real life. And that's so cool. Isn't that awesome? humans neat. Yeah, I completely agree with you. The thing that is going to get us out of what we are in right now is community and community means transportation and transportation means trains. And one of my favorite things to do these days, I want to have the time is I go swimming. And how do I do that?

I take the subway. And I go in a public pool that belongs to the public. And this is what we need to kind of help repair the world. As you said, Victor, you can't go out there and maybe not everyone could be on the streets, but just being advocating for your community is like the number one way to affect things. And it's at the municipal level. So you can find your counselor, your whoever, and you can harass them. That is your right.

You pay your taxes? You can harass them. Be nice, though. Don't, don't harass. And like we were saying, communities form around stations. It's just a natural thing that happens. So, so be a part of those communities and help communities form around those nodes. Absolutely.

Yeah. I always advocate bothering your, your representatives and your MPPs and your state reps and your counselors of whatever level. Yeah. Let them know your thoughts because they don't hear him that often and it doesn't take that many to start convincing them that, oh, we should probably look into this or else people are not going to reelect me. There's a reason that elected officials are called public servants. So make them serve you and help them build services for you. Yes. So moat it be. And as for us here, you can just support us at Patreon. dot com for slash retrodots. $3 gets you episodes a week early and ad-free. $5 gets you all of that plus two exclusive full-length episodes per month plus Discord access. There is a Nintendo Ultra 64 tier that lets you pay $64 a month for the privilege of studying the topic once a month, but that

tier is currently sold out. You snooze, you lose. As for me, I am Nadia. When I'm not here, I'm an Axe of the Blog God, which is about RPG's old and new Eastern and Western. Please support us a patron to comforor slash blood god pod, especially if you want to read some of my bloggy-ass games writing. I'm doing that every month now. I'm just writing to save my soul. And I'm a main host now. That's right. Things are switching around.

Victor's going to be a main host. I'm going to be a main host. And we're all going to hold hands and have a great time. But until next time, thanks for writing the soul mass transit system. Get on my Get on Get on Get on

Get on Get on Get on On my Who Come on on with me On the soul

train Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Get on

Get on Get on Get on Get on Get on Get on Take a little ride with me

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.