Retronauts - 732: Meet the Flintstones

Episode Date: November 30, 2025

WIIIILMAAAA! Don’t take Flintstones games for “granite”. Join Stuart Gipp, John Linneman, and Thomas Nickel as we talk the old-school Stone Age family. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts 

This weekend, Retronauts, Hey, Wilma, I'm going bowling with Bonnie! enjoyed it. You may get more as the episode rolls on. The episode, of course, is about Flintstones, and the podcast you're listening to is Retronauts. And you know what? I feel like in a little bit, this is treading on Bob's toes

because he's the guy usually does the cartoon episodes, but if they hadn't done Flintstones by now, they probably weren't going to, so I apologize there, if this leads to mortal combat between me or Bob. As is in Canada, I feel like I will win the fight, but I don't

mean in a sort of physical prowess sense. I mean in a general kind of a peaceful attitude sort of sense, you know? I think he'll back down and I appreciate that. Thank you in advance. Anyway, that's a load of bollocks I'm talking. Who's here with me today? Who's here? Let's go in completely random order. Whoever pipes up first, can go first. It's John from Digital Foundry here to talk about these games. I just played through a bunch of them and man, it's something all right. Quite inexperience. Is it not? And who else is with us today? So hi, this is Thomas from M Games and I can warn you. already. We might have to take a break for

some Winston cigarette this time. And we've got a fair few games to get through. I'm hoping it's going to be quite breezy because, you know, spoiler alert, some of these games are crap, but some of them aren't crap. Some of them are actually surprisingly good, and that's where the fun comes in. And we've been through, I

would say, more or less every console, Finstone's game. There's possible there's some more micro ones that we haven't covered, but that's okay, because they don't necessarily exist today. I think the best thing to do would be to ask for us, John, do you have any personal history with the Flintstones,

the Flintstones family? Yeah, I mean, obviously I was familiar and watched the show as a kid because it kind of was revived in the 80s, I suppose, to that and the Jetsons were on all over the place on TV. And as far as the

games go, and we'll get to this, the only ones that I really played at all back in the day was the Genesis one. And I'm saying Genesis, because that's what I would have played at the time. That's okay. accept it for this time, but in future I'd have to warn me before you said that word. Thomas, you've got any personal

history with the Flintstones? I love for Flintstones. Of course, absolutely. I mean, back when I grew up in the 80s, they were on TV all the time. It was always some flimstones on some channel, and yeah, it was a big thing. There wasn't

a revival or anything going on, it was just on TV. And also one of the few shows my father actually liked to watch on TV, few animated shows. So, yeah, lots of memories there. I find it fascinating, because the Flintstones, you know, 1962 through 1966,

the first primetime sitcom 100 and, I want to say 60-something episodes, and, you know, repeated many, many times for obvious reasons. But I realize that I'm saying this from the perspective of a sort of millennial, and I've got a lot of love for the Flintstones in terms of the charm of the character designs and the general charm of those 60s, Hannah-Barbera shows.

But it's really, really not funny, all, and I just wonder why people liked it, if it was just comforting, maybe, to see those little primitive Flintstones walking around with their feet through the bottom of their cars that they used this big, I guess, big kind of running skirt sort of things. It's kind of weird. Yeah, I think one of the reasons in Germany, at least, is the German dub is really funny because they put in a lot of wordplay and a lot of actually good, good quotable stuff. So they're sort of magic roundabout edit for the German dub. in the market. I like that. That's good.

That's what happens. I mean, the Finstone's big thing, of very many games, obviously, going from pretty much all the 90s, and stretching even into the sort of late, the late sort of 2000, 2010, should we call it? What is it,

the naughties? Is that the 2000s? Is that what we call it? Is that the naughties? Is that what we call it? Yeah, we'll call it the naughties. Okay, we'll call it the naughties. That's confusing, because I call the listeners of this podcast, the naughty, so they're not going to get it. They're very naughty. They're very, They don't understand some sort of concepts.

I'm trying to... Never mind. The Flintstones. Games. Video games in which you play as or observe the Flintstones. I would say, though, the thing about this is that... So Bob has often talked about Cave Man-related games during this period, right? And he also raised that the Flintstones film in 1994, I guess it was, the live-action one,

also kind of killed off both the Flintstones and Cave-Man-related media in general. Yeah. And it's kind of a shame because I feel like for a while these sort of caveman games were largely excellent and I would say arguably borne out of the popularity of the Flintstones in the first place. I'd say so

yeah, I mean... I mean, all these things Chuck Rock and Peristoric Man and what have you. I think you can everywhere see these Flintstone traces. Yeah, well, of course. I mean, Chuck Rock is we all know how good Chuck Rock is. Chuck 2. Chuck 2 is very, very...

Chuck 2 is like actually good. is. It's legit good. Yeah, but I also do have a soft spot for prehistoric man once you get past the sort of slight sloppiness of the controls. I do think it's quite an interesting game, loads of secrets and cool stuff. I was thinking of sometime doing a cave mania episode, so maybe I'll cover it then, but maybe if Bob's done it already, I won't bother.

But I don't think, I think it takes a British man to do justice to Chuck Rock, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, justice for Chuck Rock. I mean, I look like Chuck Rock, so I'm perfect for it. But let's move away from Chuck Rock for now. We'll come back later. Of course we'll.

All roads lead to Chuck Rock. At some point it has to happen. The Flintstones, 1991, for the Sega Mask System, but also released, as politely noted here, on the MSX, Amiga, Commonwealth 64, Amstrat CPC, Zillic Spectrum, Atari, STT, and that was at 87 on the MSX and 88 for the others. I want to say it says tech software, but they spell tech weirdly. T-E-Q-U-E, very clever stuff.

Very fancy. This game is horrible. I hate it. Where do you think they were based through this company that made this? What do you think? I'm going to guess somewhere like Somerset or Swansea. well I was just going to say England in general yeah they're definitely from England only the English would make a game

based on the Flintstones and go right what do we do let's make Fred paint a wall okay but to be fair now this is quite close to the show isn't it is it I mean if it isn't I wonder why I ever bothered watching that you know yeah Fred wants to go do some stuff he can't he has to do some household chores and he comes up with schemes to avoid it It's a typical plot out of a thousand episodes, you know?

So I think the thing to consider, though, is at this point, you know, it's in the 80s still. The industry is somewhat divided, right? Japanese, American, European, British devs, all are kind of working in isolation. There's no internet. There's really no rule of thumb of how a game should be made, right? In Japan, they did kind of early on figure out that even if you're using a license, you should just try to make a cool game around it and not like, specifically try to mimic everything about the property, right? But with this, though, and we saw this in a lot of computer games, and this was a computer

game first and foremost, they put a lot of effort into trying to create something that I would say is more complex. They're trying to simulate the ideas of like, like in this case, it's simulating a day in the life of Fred Flintstone. And I kind of respect the idea. They're like, okay, what is, what is Fred going to do on this day? He's going to paint the wall, he's going to finish painting the wall, and then he's going to go hop in his car, and he's going to go to the bowling alley, and he's going to bowl, right? Yeah, and he's going to swing the bowling ball up above his head and go on tippy toes, and it goes, and he goes a strike.

So in that sense, I do think they kind of got the idea right, but the problem is, like, so many other games of this vintage, it just doesn't work. Let me let me, let me, let me, let me, let's, this wall level, because it's, it's, I'm going to read, actually, actually, Could someone read my note about the wall level, verbatim? I want to hear someone say it. It's fine. I will gladly do it. Okay, please. So, it says,

fucking Fred must fucking paint the fucking piece of fucking shit fucking wall. Thank you. Stewardship. Thank you. Yes. Those are my real feelings about this wall painting nonsense. So basically, Wilma comes up, and I'm not going to do the Wilma voice and says, paint this wall for Ed and Fred says, okay, Wilma, that I'm going bowling with Barney,

which I did sort of set, I found myself going into the Fred voice then. Now what that means is you're presented with a wall and you're presented with a step ladder and let's say you pick up the paintbrush which is a living creature by the way dip it in the paint to fill up your paint and then go over to the wall and press a button and you will paint the wall somewhat

it might have to do it two or three times or hold the button for a while to completely fill you know it's very sketchy in that regard yeah now the whole time pebbles is in her crib but she'll escape and start walking around and if she does she might start drawing on the wall which is a problem it ruins your wall painting so what you end up doing is you

get into this loop of paint the wall pick pebbles up put her back in catch your paint brush again because it's a living creature because you know they're still living that whole thing you know then refill the paint keep going repeat to fade move the step ladder

to climb up to the next level keep going now the problem I have with this is I painted the fucking wall and the game was not accepting it it was like no you have not painted the wall and I'm like what do you want I can't see a single bit of that's not painted and there's probably like

some little pixel I couldn't see and I was getting genuinely quite mad about it and I was also you know at a point I started using rewind and I started cheating because I wanted to just get to the next level and even doing that I couldn't figure out where this piece of wall I apparently hadn't painted was so I give

this game I give the game two stars because of the effort involved as John has mentioned in creating a sort of authentic Flintstone's experience but unfortunately that experience is it turns boring and frustrating So, in a sense, it does resemble some of the episodes of the show as well. But, you know, I think with a bit of effort, you could make this wall painting actually fun, I think, because the loop is okay.

You have to juggle the paintbrush and pebbles and the color and the paint itself. It might be okay, but of course, not the way it is done here. I do want to point out that there, as you mentioned at the beginning, there are different versions of the game, right? Yeah. And I would argue that the last one, the master system one, actually weirdly looks the best. I mean, you would expect that given the hardware, but I'm just surprised because it was done by tear techs, which is a brand I typically associate with rubbish. Yeah, well, they did strider two, didn't they? So fuck them.

They did so many bad. The bad strata two. Tiretex is the worst. And this is, it's a bad, it's a bad game regardless. But the thing about it, though, is despite the colors and palettes. If you actually look closely at the master system version, I found that the sprites were off model in a way that was hilarious. Yeah, they are that way in all the other versions, too,

but more so in this one. It's really weird looking. The interstitial screen that says Fred must paint the wall to me is kind of iconic, because I've never seen anything after that. He just looks, he looks weirdly happy to be doing it. I mean, the thing that overrides it for me is, regardless of the loop being okay, which it is, you know, in theory, why did you buy a video game and now you're painting a wall?

Like, why is that what they opened with? Why is that their big flex? Like, paint this wall thread. Why isn't it the driving level that starts it? Why isn't it like the exploration level? Why didn't the wall painting come a bit later? Why'd you have to go with the wall painting? Why is that your big cell?

I don't get it. Yeah, especially because, like, also the weirdest thing is, like, the game ends with a level where you have to rescue pebbles, right? Yeah. And it's, it's the game premise. yeah that's actually like the one gameplay section like in terms of like this is actually like a platform game it's not great but it is actually like a platformer at that point but yeah that's what the game is spent bowling that's when you're in like the sort of the factory in the quarry right and you're going up and that wasn't that wasn't horrible like everything else is

but then after that it's like that's it that's the game and basically the playtime is just 90% bowling and that's it yeah it's mostly bowling and is the bowling simulator is there bowling even good is the bowling acceptable? No. Nah. Okay. But, yeah, one shout out quickly about that game.

I was close to buying this game a few months ago when I was with John and other friends at a famous place in a town called Grundao, and I saw it there. Oh, the Grindauer-Spielack. Legendary. Tell you about it sometimes, do it, man. You'll go sometime. What the hell, let's hang out.

It'll be good. So, should I tell about the Spiel Act now? No, no. See, I had that Stonewall just then. I said, hey, let's hang out, and I've got nothing. you see that and a hated figure no it wasn't he wasn't pausing for you he's pausing because of the shop

the shop is something else something else I tell you but yeah I was about to buy it had my money out I quickly asked John can you look up about that Flintstones game what is it so because I thought it would be by like the NES like the Mega Drive games no you better don't get it

and luckily I didn't and now I kind of wish I had I like that I love the idea of like should I buy this film, I'm about to buy it. No, Tom, no, no. Stop.

Physically, we're stopping you from buying it. Yeah. That's how it happened. So, is there anything else? Sorry, John, didn't mean to talk over you there. No, not at all. I think that's all we have to say about this game. It's ultimately, it's an interesting concept,

but like a lot of these early British computer games, I don't think is actually well, well executed at all. It's not very fun. And of them all, though, at least the master system version by Tiertex is the best looking one. Is it even better looking than the Amiga version?

Yeah, the Amiga version looks a little bit worse. Wow. But I guess the one thing we didn't mention, by the way, you talked about painting the wall. We talked about the bowling and everything, but we didn't talk about that stupid car. Yeah, yeah. The trip to the bowling alley,

it's like you hop in in his car, and every time you even come close to, like, a stone in the road, the wheel falls off. So you get to stop. get the wheel, put it back on the car, and then you go again, and you instantly hit another rock, and then the wheel falls off again.

It's like, that's the whole level. Yeah. It's excruciating. That is the most spectrum-ass shit I've ever heard. Oh, God. I mean, yes, absolutely. That's what it feels like. It's, it's, wow.

I love when I play a console, I love it when I play a master system or a console game, and you get a sense, like, you immediately know if it's adapted from a micro game, because they have that feel, don't they? You immediately know. Yeah. I love that.

Also, I have to mention one more thing about the driving section because this is very off model for Flintstones because, as we all know, Fred's car doesn't have four wheels. It has two big cylinders drive zones. So that doesn't make any sense at all. Yeah, they really fucked up. The wheel hadn't even been advantage yet, you know. We can't have that.

No. And thankfully, though, once we move away from the Masters time, I mean, we move away from a microium. Oh, no. I have a surprise for you. Oh, shit. You all miss this on the list. And I'm going to tell you, there is a Flintstones game for DOS called the Flintstones, Dino Lost in Bedrock.

And it comes to us from our friends at high-tech expressions known for quality. Yeah, exactly. High-tech expressions known for publishing Rosner Labs Mega Man ports for DOS. And let's be clear, this is a game of similar caliber. It is a side-scrolling platformer for DOS. it looks like EGA graphics if I had to guess and it's terrible I we don't have to spend this time on this

if you guys not played it but it's a game it's one of those games where the character barely moves I'm looking at it right now it's horrible it's very slow you can barely tell what's a platform and what's not a platform and it just instantly starts out as like obtuse

and frustrating it's it's such a meaningless pointless awful game and I feel bad for anyone that got stuck playing it. And yeah, this was a bad era for DOS games where there was great stuff in DOS, but also a lot of companies were just taking popular properties or games that were on other platforms and then making their own version of it.

And it was always just something like this. And the high-tech expressions, honestly, worst of the worst. I'm looking at some footage of it because I didn't know this existed, as you say. And the video on YouTube, the one that pops up, is of someone not being able to get past the first room because it's so hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. That's great. That's classic. That kind of game. So does that mean we can move away from the mast system and from DOS?

We can. And onto something that's actually all right. Let's do it. 1991 for the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Famcom The Flintstones The Rescue of Dino and Hoppe published by Taito

and developed by Seoul Corporation who apparently did Snow Bros on the NES which is, you know, I hate Snow Bros, but it's a good version of it probably. Yeah, so one thing I want to point out at this point is of all of these games you have to rescue Dino and Hoppy, you have to rescue Pevel and Bam Bam,

you don't have to rescue Wilma and Betty in these games. They're fine. They're alright, they can handle themselves. It's surprising, I think, because think about the time when it was released. So, yeah, yeah, rescue the wife, rescue the girlfriend, whatever, rescue the princess. I mean, I think the Mega Drive one, which we'll get to, it is like, oh, Fred, I've lost my favorite, like, hairbrush, would he journey into the center of an active volcano and get it back from me? Yeah, sure, Wilma, why not?

But, no, this is a very traditional sort of platform game. Yes, Barton Tado. I mean, you've got, yeah, and you've got your sort of overworld map, and you've got your, Your basic weapon is a club with quite short range, but the collision detection is actually quite good, I thought. They get a lot of coverage overhead, for example, when you use it. And you also can get special weapons, like, you can get a bow and arrow, you can get hatchets that behave like the Castlevania axes, which you kind of need for the first boss, actually. You can get a few of special skills.

Yeah, I mean, I thought this was pretty good. I mean, I think you could do a lot worse than play this on the nurse. I mean, there's no masterpiece, but it's better than bad. It's perfectly okay. Yeah. It's a game I would have gotten at the video center at the weekend, played it a bit. Yep, this is nice. I'm having fun here.

I mean, I wouldn't have bought it for a new price back then even, but still, I wouldn't have regretted when you're playing it. I like the fact that, like, you've got Fred. He controls very traditionally in a sense. I'm not like Mario. There's not like some momentum. It's just he's quite a basic character to control, but he can hoist himself up on ledgers and things. And that's one of the only things that I had any trouble with, which sometimes it seems like

the ledge is higher than you can reach, but it's not. And you can't reach it. And you'll sort of snap to it. There's a very huge area. You can still snap to the ledges. Yeah. Once you get used to it, though, that's okay. It's just initially it's a little bit like,

where do I go? Surely I can't reach that, but you can. And best of all, dotted around the overworld are some basketball courts where you can play some one-on-one. And it's genuinely good. I quite enjoyed it, I have to say. Yeah, I mean, for me,

think this is absolutely a very solid platform game and it's this is the kind of thing that I feel like tito was known for at the time and was kind of overlooked then but a lot of these games not this one the second one more so uh the price is quite steep yeah because a lot of these late ne s tito games were actually genuinely pretty fun well executed platform games and people didn't buy them that much at the time yeah yeah and this this one I think was being 1991 was probably early enough that it did fairly well. And I remember there being coverage for this. I remember seeing back in Nintendo Power.

I did play this back a little bit as a rental, but not, not much. The Genesis one is the one I actually played more of. But yeah, I always remember thinking this was solid and playing it again for this, I tend to agree. The mechanics are good. The club feels good. Fred is reasonably responsive. I do think the ledge climbing thing is a bit slow, like the moment from when you grab

the ledge. when you can hoist yourself up. It does feel like it pauses just a little too long. Yeah. But it overall works pretty well. And more importantly, this game gave rise to an even better game known as Seven Grandad, which was... Oh, dear. Oh, yes.

I'm going to a meme territory now. The Taiwanese bootleg. This game was bootlegged and became an internet meme at some point that continues to this day. Right. And, yeah, it's something. If you're not familiar with the meme, I do recommend looking it up. I don't want to poison this episode with too much Seven Grandad talk, but I do think it is relevant to this. Okay, we'll Google Seven Grandad at some point.

So also, a thought I want to share about this. Now, think about it for a minute, right? This game comes out in 1991, made by title for the NAS and Famicom. So in 1991, the S&AS is out already. So you have this bunch of, I would say, pretty good Japanese designers working on this game, working on the old bit system, and work on a license that is in Japan probably so irrelevant. So I wonder, what did these guys do wrong to be assigned to this game? Yeah, but I thought that the Flintstones were huge in Japan.

They love the Flintstones. They're crazy about the Flintstones. Are they? Do they? I don't know. I'm making this up. I would assume, I mean, who wouldn't be? They're so wonderful, aren't they? Like, because they're like us, aren't me? But they're from the past.

So, you know, there's some differences there. For example, the microphone that I'm using right now in the Flintstones, it would be like a tortoise or something, you know? And it would look at the camera and it would say, it's a living and everyone would laugh. There was enough Flintstone stuff in Japan that I'm thinking it was reasonably popular. There's this bank commercial, I believe, that was actually. done it's for it's yeah it's an ATM system for this bank and it's done with the flintstones but in more of an anime style oh wow i've shared it with you i recommend looking at it but it's it's quite entertaining and it looks significantly better than the actual show that's incredible yeah i mean but

okay to to quickly quickly a quick step here because i do teach a bit of animation history at university as well i mean uh we harp on the show for the way it looked but uh back then it was made this was quite a modern and quite an important look and allowed for a production of animated content in a really quick succession back then. Wouldn't have been possible if with traditional animation methods. So we shouldn't be too down on

this look of the show. Can I please, no, I like I mean the funstones, the look of it is the least of its problems. Oh, sure, sure. I love the look of it. I think limited animation pioneering is great, and I think Hanabarish character design is second to none. I just want to make a comment.

about this Japanese flintstones ad that I'm looking at right now, okay? And I don't mean to cast any aspersions. But this is the only 14 seconds of Japanese flintstones have ever seen, and it includes a hot hot onsen purving sequence. Like, really?

Really? I've never seen this much of Wilma's cleavage in my life, okay? I don't need this in my life. Well, still, it's Japan. It's the 80s. I just, I'm not trying to make any cultural, like, you know, judgments. or stereotypes, but come on. You're not doing yourselves any favours.

Right. So, are we good with the Nesgamer? Is there more to say about it? I mean, the B-ball I want to mention, because the basketball mini-game is shockingly good fun. It's 1V-1, and it's basically just like, this weird thug guy challenges you, and you can get the ball,

you can go for, like, a long shot, or just, like, run up and sink it. But it's very simple, but it's very smooth, and I had a lot of fun playing it. It was sort of like, You know, not as good MBA jam, but it had the same level of immediacy to it. I quite liked it a lot, I have to say, as a mini-game. One or two more remarks about the game.

One thing I like is, it has a nice overworld map when you finish the first level. It's a good-looking map, yeah. But first of all, when I played the game, I thought, oh, this is the first level. Oh, no, it's the whole game, right? Okay. So it's not that big. No. I think if you play it for maybe it's maybe 30, 40 minutes to finish.

the whole thing. We have to save that for later. Yep. There's also George Jetson in there as a guest character for a quick moment. Yeah. I hate George Jetson.

The Jetsons are rubbish. The Flintstones, all day, but not the Jetsons. I don't like the Jetsons. There's something to smug about the Jetsons. Also, I think the ending, the final battle in the game,

is very Mega Man 2 inspired. Oh, I've got to check this out. So it's like an alien that appears and disappears and you've got to throw bubble leads at it. Okay. Not that, but it's various phases. one of them is this huge Mac-like thing

and the boss keeps coming back. It's unexpected to say the least. Yeah, I'm going to have to play through and check it out. But on the handheld cousin to the NES, just like my segue there, the handheld cousin. Rubbish. It's like the always game journal thing I've ever said. The Flintstones, King Rock Treasure Island for the Game Boy.

I like the way that King Rock Treasure Island is almost nonsensical. Like, it's such a great title. This is from Taito again. Didn't come out in Japan, apparently. And now there's a note that comes up that says, thanks to S. Nishiyama, whose name keeps coming up on these. So are they spearheading the Flintstones project at Taito? So I did a bit of checking back and forth

about the creators of these games and Nishiyama was the only guy who popped up again and again and again so he seems to be the go-to Flintstones guy in this whole title endeavor. You want Flintstone? You're going to Nishieama but this is of course another platformer but I was quite taken with this

I thought this was really very good indeed to be honest considering what it is now it's very simple graphically but it just works like there's a lot of the graphics are so clear that um i wouldn't say it's that simple stew no i think it's pretty good for the game boy there's a lot of detail on the sprites and the tile the backgrounds are maybe a little sparse but i think that's why stu said it was simple because it doesn't have these typical game boy backgrounds yes i was thinking more because it has usually sort of white

solid backgrounds or very clear backgrounds rather than the lines of blur-inducing detail in the backgrounds i think it works very well yeah i was what it is essentially as a platform where now you throw hatchets as your main weapon. They're not really in much of an arc. They're just kind of in front of you. But if they hit an enemy once, the enemy gets stunned, and then you can use it as a platform.

If you hit it twice, it's destroyed. Now, if you go and scroll the screen back on, the enemies will come back, because there are instances where you need to use the enemies to stand on to get to the next area. And it's sort of, I know this is a silly comparison, but it's a bit proto-conoa in the fact that you can respawn the enemies

to solve puzzles and things. I was going to compare it to, what is it, quackshot? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that's what it reminded me of where it's like, oh, you fire a weapon and it does not instantly kill the enemy, it freezes them. But it's like, as you go through, you'll collect,

like, I don't know what you're collecting, like, tokens, you're collecting great gazoo tokens that lets you use the great gazoo. What a wonderful character, right? Yeah, because they were like, how can we inject some juice into this Flintstone show? It's been running a while. How about an alien that only Fred can see?

Brilliant. Put it in. Your great gazoo. ridiculous I love it and he calls him dumb dumb that annoys me that it's not in this game he should say what do you want dumb dumb but he doesn't

anyway that's a bit like the rush coil like you select a gazoo what do you want jump and then he'll like throw you up in the air really high that's kind of cool but yeah this is this is simple but I dug it I had a really good time with it it even has like a car level

which is quite fun like a side scrolling auto scroller bit Alex kid like I think yeah it's very Alex kid like it has very similar play control you're quite right about that. Yeah. But I think Stuart, you've got something mixed up right here, because you can call Gazoo in the NES games

for the jump and stuff like that. Oh, that's what I missed. You're right. I'm getting mixed up. I do apologize. There are Gazoo tokens in this, though. Yeah, you just collect him. What you do in this game is you can get riding dinosaurs, and these are pretty cool. Which, by the way, suggests that the Game Boy wasn't

too far behind Super NES. You know, you had Yoshi and Super Mario World, but if you're playing Flintstones, you also got the Yoshi equivalent. I guess Dino, it's a bit also like Adventure Island on Game Boy and I have to say these things are strong

when you get one of these you're really fine for that level because they jump very high you get now a straight shot ahead so the first boss if you have a dinosaur no problem at all you're just breeze by it's trivial yeah yeah

so the thing about I have to comment on the visual side again because I think this is such an expert done game for the Game Boy hardware. First of all, the sprites. So obviously there's always this argument back and forth between Game Boy and Sprite size. Some games go for small sprites, but a large playfield, and you end up with a lack of detail. And it doesn't look great, but you get good playability. Other games then would basically create these gigantic sprites. And the sprites were often so big that it made playing through the game matured, difficult. You couldn't

really see it was coming next, right? I feel like Flintstones found kind of a middle ground that I guess it's closer to large sprites, but it's just small enough and the game is slow enough that it doesn't really affect playability. And I think if you look at Fred's sprite, it's honestly shockingly good. Like the way they communicate the look of Fred Flintstone with so few pixels, it's staggering, right? Earlier today, before I tweeted that sprite because I was just so impressed with it. I was like, how good this is. I mean, they even got the Hannaby Barbera curved hand by the side, like, angled upwards. It's so well done.

I think they've even got the feet right as well, because people don't get the Flintstone's feet right, and that's important to me as a big Flintstone foot enthusiast. You know what? I'm going all out on this, yeah. Let the world know that Stuart Chip is a huge fan of Fred Flintstone's feet. There we go. So, okay, beyond just the sprites themselves, like you said, it's a very legible game, but I think the actual individual tile work deserves a lot of credit.

It's just like every little object is beautifully designed. The pixel art is super well done. The actual background tiles, the contrast between the somewhat empty background, though it still has some detail. Yeah. And the foreground layer has, which has a surprising amount of detail, is excellent. And one of my favorite things is that this game does have curves, or at least, sorry, it has slopes. Slopes, yeah. Slopes.

So when I was a kid, I always was obsessed with this thing. Like, I felt like Game Boy games largely didn't have slopes versus like NES or Super NES. And in the end, it turns out that it's more about saving space in the cartridge or dealing with an over, you know, a compact playfield. It's hard to do slopes. But this one does it. And I think that's cool. There are our areas where the ground is sloped. And as a result, it feels slightly more complex than your average Game Boy platformer.

And I go back and look Like play something like Super Mario Land 2 Or Warrior Land even It's 100% based on 90 degree angles There are no slopes in those games Even though Mario has been about that Since I guess Super Mario Brothers 3 is when the slopes Became a huge part of the gameplay

Yeah when you slide it down And I mean I think that It's just one of the many ways That the Flintstones King Rock Treasure Island is superior to Super Mario you know um on the game boy but um yeah so you heard it her first there are gradients and that's important that's very important and we all have we all have our fandoms i'm very fond of rotating objects in video games and when i see them it falls me with joy absolutely i fully get that you know those

platforms in yosha's island where there's three of them on a circle and you stand on one of them and the weight makes them go around oh man that's that's what i'm talking about good stuff i like stuff. I got to admit that's pretty good. But yeah, overall, I mean, I just think that this is just a very well-executed game. And whether you like the Flintstones or not, it's absolutely worth checking out. Yeah, for sure. And there's a lot of great platform games like this on the Game Boy. And it's just another example of why the Game Boy was considered such a great machine. And arguably, I would say, vastly superior to every other handheld game console of that era. I mean, it wasn't color. But like most of these games, and this is,

There's no exception. They run at a full 60 frames per second. So they're very smooth and fluid. It basically feels like an NES game on a portable system. I mean, as a vowed game gear enthusiast, I cannot pretend that the Game Boy is not the superior system by some distance in terms of the library. The quality games is just so good.

Yeah. And even the sort of lesser mid games are better as well. Exactly. Not to say that the Game Gear doesn't have value, it does. Oh, it does. I love the Game Gear. I'm trying to think if there is a Flintstone's game or the Game Game Game and nothing is coming.

Nope, there isn't. The Master System one did not go there, right? See, I don't know why I'm even asking, because if there was, it would be on this list. Right? Yeah, true. but this was 1993 and there was another

film series game released in 1993 for the Mega Drive or Genesis as you would as you were saying John also by Taito in every region and it's another platform game to surprising no one and it's in the same sort of lineage

as the NES game like you have the same kind of you have the club, you can charge the club up for a bigger swing by holding the button but other than that it's just It's quite a traditional platformer. You've got history with this one, haven't you, John? Yeah, I think this is phenomenal. I think it is significantly better than the NES games for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I think the control itself is just super snappy and responsive in a way that it's not on NES. Like, the NES games control well, but this one, I mean, if you've played them both, hopefully you can kind of see what I mean. It's just like everything from turning left to right, jumping, grabbing ledges, it just feels so responsive and quick. And also, I think Fred Sprite is really, really well done. Like, not only does it look, obviously, like Fred Flintstone, but just like the individual frames of animation, it just has that snappiness to it. It's like, you know that feeling when you pick up a platform game? And within like two seconds, you're like, oh, this just feels good.

That's the kind of feeling I get from the Flintstone game. I love the character. And like, when you do charge up the club, he gets this little determined, like, expression. Like, it's really, really well done. There's so many animation frames in this, and they're all so well done. Or even, like, again, with the slopes, in the very first level, you run down the slope, and on the NES game, he would just kind of pick up speed, and you would kind of jump from there, and it was fine. But in this, they actually have a distinct animation for running down a slope where he's, like, out of control his arms going all over the place.

So on top of that, you have all these beautiful, colorful backgrounds. It runs in the higher resolution mode on Genesis. It's got lots of parallax scrolling. And there's a lot of variety per stage. Yeah. And set pieces. Yeah, there's set piece moments. Like the whole first level, it's just constantly changing what you're doing.

And I just, you've got the snakes coming out of the walls that you then bomb. Oh, this is nice. Yeah. Then after that, you do this, the slope, you run down on the slope. You're very front of those. And when you land, you're beset by a shark who's destroying the island that you're on. and if you fall through onto the shock, you can ride it,

but then you'd have to quickly react to jump off and get back onto the landing game. But that is the thing, the shark I've also seen in NES games. Yeah, but it turns up in the second one, doesn't it? Yeah, or is it in the first one as well? It turns up multiple times, as we'll see. Something I want to note from this game,

which is also in the NES game, and I'm very fond of, is when you press down to crouch, Fred just shrinks his head inside, his, inside his, what do you call? his outfit. His onesie. It's a shirt, somehow, a long shirt.

It's Caveman onesie. I like that. It's Caveman onesie. Yeah. And I thought that was a cute little touch that's also, I believe, in the Nese game and possibly the Game Boyer as well. Yeah, I mean, this is a typical Flintstone animation, right? That's what they do.

Yeah. I think there might be more frames of animation in the Mega Drive game than there are in an episode of the Fliss sounds, actually. Very possible. So, yeah, you know, one of the things I like about this game, it really feels like a pure mega drive game. I mean, yeah, it's based on the NES game, but it's not trying to emulate what others do

on the SNAs at the time. So I think it's doing with the Mega Drive really does best. To me, I liken this to like Flintstone's version of something like Quackshot. Yeah. Only, you know, obviously this is Taito made, but it has that kind of spirit where it feels

like it's like, it captures the look and feel of the show, but it still feels very Mega Drive. There's something very... Very game. There's something about this game. There's like a Geneseecoir about this game, because when I was a kid, I really wanted it

because it was in one of the Sonic annuals that I had as a review and the screenshots just looked like the cartoon it looks amazing my friend got it but never wanted to play it because we wanted to play Streets of Rage 2 so I was always coveting this game

and then years later of course I played it on emulator but when I got a modi mega drive and I started buying cards and this was only like two or three years ago one of the first games I'd be learned for was the Flintstones because it's not that expensive

you can get it pretty cheap it's not a very valuable Well, it's not a valuable game. It's not considered valuable. And I'd recommend getting on this because you can get it for next to nothing. And it's really, really fun. The only thing I want to criticize it for at all is I think that throwing on the swimming stage to level two was maybe not the best pacing. Yeah, I can think that's a weird one, because I actually think the swimming stage is quite good.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think it's bad by any means, but I feel like it's pace breaker. Yeah, it probably shouldn't be level two. I think it feels like. like a level four kind of stage, if you know what I mean. But I think that, you know, the game does have a lot of variety, like after the swimming stage, and it's a good one, you start by, you're in Fred's car and you're like ramping over desert sand dunes, basically.

And it's kind of a fun, fast-paced kind of level, right? Yeah. And then you're on a train car and then eventually you're like in the volcano area, which becomes more standard platforming again. And it just, it always feels like there's something new around each corner. rather than just repeating the same level. And so, which again, to me, it always felt like a Mega Drive staple,

where you just have, like, lots of stuff happening. Yeah, it's interesting the way it's done, because the level, the sub-levels, so to speak, aren't split, like, with a, there's no plate to black light. You'll just be walking a bit, and then it'll be like, now you're in the next area, like Area 2, now you're in Area 3. And I quite liked that as well.

It gave it some continuity. Now, this game's plot slightly bothers me, it did when I was a kid and it still bothers me because like if my wife who doesn't exist were to say to me Stu, I've lost my comb it's in the middle of an active volcano which is full of hostile dinosaurs I would say

buy another one I'll buy another one Here's the problem, Stu This is caveman times Do you know how valuable combs were back then? No I don't know were they very valuable were most people's hair Was most people's hair quite sort of must in the caveman day?

was it not very good hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know. And whoever had the cone was considered God king of the caveman tribe. Exactly. Yeah. So one more thing I have to note, though,

is when you do finish the game, and this is something we'll see again, Fred, you know, in text, says his yabababadoo line, right? Yeah. And it has the little trademark symbol at the end. Amazing. Which I, that's freaking hilarious to me.

They can't even just write that without the little TM on there. I think I've seen one of the other games where it's in the text that says you need to find Dino and even Dino as a TM

over it and it's just like really I wish I can remember there's a really egregious example of that but I can't know what game it is so if I do remember it I'll bring it on another podcast

sometime what it calls to mine for me really is branding and it makes me think of the Biker Meister from Mars game on Pell Regents where it's full of Snickers

and everything they say or do is about Snickers and there's stickers everywhere you look And they've crudely edited Snickers bars and instead of victory screens that weren't Snickers based in the original. It's very, very funny. Now, I don't want to say that we're giving that game short shrift,

because while it is very good, it's not exactly like a lot of new stuff. It's just a very solid platformer. Yeah, that's all the classic stuff really, really well. Yeah, but so what's not talking about it that much doesn't mean it's not good. It means it's just, it's too good to talk about too much. but I think that the next game which I haven't played personally is probably not as good

so that makes up for it you know it's definitely not as good because it's got the Jetsons in it and it's Flintstones and Jetsons time warp from 1994 for the Phillips CDI now can someone who's actually played or seen this please tell us about it

so anybody played it at least I watched it because I don't have a CDI myself John you have one right? I do have a CDI but I have avoided this game until now so unfortunately I feel like we've come unprepared for this, but because

it is a CDI game, I believe that watching it on YouTube presents about 90% of the experience. Just sort of pretend you're pointing an I-hour remote at your CDI, virtual CDI, and smashing the rubbery buttons, and you get about the

same experience. We've played all the games by one, and I think that's good enough, to be honest. I'm looking at it now, and it seems to be a load of boring, old rubbish anyway, so, you know, it's okay. It's a bit of point and click, a bit of mini-game from what I seen. I will say this, though, in all seriousness, based on what I'm seeing here of this, I do think

that they were at least using the CDI in a way that makes sense, where it is, it looks like a simplified graphic adventure, point in click. Yeah. I'm impressed by the, like, the look of George Jetson. The look of it is very good. And it's actually, again, more animated than a Hannah-Barbara cartoon would have been, I think. So, yeah. And the idea of, so because the whole premise here is that, you know, Fred Flintstone goes to the Jetson's universe and George Jetson goes back to the Flintstone Stone Age, right?

Yeah. And they're sort of dealing with each other's time zones. So in that sense, I would like to declare this as a prototype for Broken Age from Double Fine. Oh, nice. Yeah. So it's just, you know, broken age many years ahead of its time, except for it, I don't think it has much to say about. I mean, the only Jetsons content I'm prepared to consume, other than the re-skinned anime Snez game, which is really quite good, is the Jetsons in WWRobo WrestleMania. That's the only thing I care about.

I want to see the Jetsons hanging out with Big Show, you know? Okay, but now I have to mention one thing, because there is one scene in the game. When I did the research, I made a screenshot of that one scene and sent it around, which shows George Jetson, wearing Wilma's... small white dress and so, Stuart, what did you comment on that? This is so, so hot. Did you... I said, God, this is so hot. Right, that was what you said. So, yeah,

I could imagine some people found out things about themselves at this point. Yeah, and to that I say, Jabba-daboodoo TM. Good for them? George is rocking that dress. He's wearing it. I mean, he's even got the figure for it. Look at those hips for God's sake.

Oh, God, Stu, no. Come on. Well, look at it. Look, I'm not. Don't tell me he's not got junk in the trunk. I'm sorry, John. I don't want to look at it. Look at George Jetson in Wilmer's dress, John. Nine. Okay, fair enough.

So in the background, you can see there's hanging for Flintstone's outfit and George Jetson's other clothes, which are all apparently one set with the shoes and everything. But what's that next to it? Is that a pair of pants or something? Is that his underwear? I was wondering about that right now, yeah. Okay. That means he's wearing this with no underwear.

oh god let's not this gets even better and what's that thing on the bottom left of the screen does not go there let's not go any further than this um i think i'll go further than this in my own time let's just let's just wrap it up by saying this seems like probably the best type of game they could have made on the cdi given the hardware constraints i'm glad they didn't try to make a platform game it would have probably been like the doss game yeah so doing a i think it would have been more interesting if they leaned more into the graphic adventure side of things as opposed to the mini-game stuff, which has a bit of an edutainment flavor to it, if you will. Yeah. Because the actual visual presentation, I think it would have been perfect. It's just a normal Lucas art style point and click. Yeah. And it would have been rather respectable in that case. But it seems like it has enough stuff that's more mini-game base and it's not quite as good.

But I admit this is one topic I don't know that much about. And I would be curious to actually try this on my CDI at some point because I You have access to two of them here. Yeah. If you want to see that scene in a context and try to evolve something from it now. We better move on. Moving on.

The Flintstones... Let's go to Dinosaur Peak. Yeah, the surprise of Dinosaur Pee. What's the surprise is George Jetson. What's he wearing? Wellness clothes. Moving on. I was going to say, the surprise of dinosaur peak

is the price of this game. Yeah, wow, yeah. And this is Taito again, and it's a direct follow-up to the first Nez Flintstone's game. Arescuved Ian and Hopi. The difference with this one is now you can switch between Fred and Barney

to do certain things like Barney can hoist himself on like these kind of ropes and poles and I found the controls for that really awkward at first I was trying to figure out exactly how to do it um I think that this game isn't very good personally oh I mean it's okay it's okay but I found it a lot more fiddly and annoying than the first one interesting and I don't think it looks as good either I think it's got a slightly more garish look to it yep some of the backgrounds are in the game just you have this huge pink thing in the background whatever it might be it's there

like I'm not a hater it's just like I feel like if you had just been Fred or Barney then you could have designed levels that are more compelling the colors are there's a couple colors use in levels that are a bit weird but overall I think it looks comparable to the last game I would say it feels a bit nicer

to play it feels a bit more speedy bit more I totally disagree with that that's what I was going to say no no I think it plays I do think it plays better it feels like it's more inspired by the megadrive game it's not as snappy as that but like things like uh they still have the ledge hanging for instance and that executes much faster in this yeah really maybe it's maybe it's um because i was just hung up on the whole barney controlling to clam onto these poles that doesn't really work that well issue yeah i was um i was i was a little bit hung up on that

so maybe that's what it fed into i mean it looks it certainly looks fine it's got some very it has got some unusual color choices but they that unusual doesn't mean necessarily bad it means like interesting sometimes. It's got hockey in it. Yeah, yeah, the hockey looks good. The hockey looks really good, in fact. And it looks like it runs without clipping too much or without, you know, flicker, too much flicker as well.

To me, I think it's a solid 8-bit effort. It's a little bit weird that came out so late. And that's also why it's become so rare and expensive. I believe it only has an American release as well. And even then it's... It also a European release. It did have a European release? Yep.

Okay, so West. turn only. And that kind of reminds me of some of those late generation master system games produced by Sega. Yeah, like Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is some of the late Disney stuff as well, where it's just like they have their Japanese teams still

making these 8-bit games that are only intended for release in the West. And they largely get overlooked at the time, but in reality they're pretty solid. And I do think this is a very decent sequel to the NES game. It's not as good as the Mega Drive game, but I do think it's worth getting the ROM because don't pay the price for this. Yep.

Not worth getting the card. But if you do get a ROM, please delete it within 24 hours. Otherwise, you'd be breaking the law. Exactly. I will say this. Now, I did try this, but based on what I'm seeing here, I would say it's possible that I've been too hasty in my dismissal of it. It does look all right.

Like, it does look pretty good. But I was also wrong about the Sprite Flickr. There's absolutely loads of it. Yeah, yeah, there's plenty. a spray flicker. And this is one of what, the most, the rarest and most

valuable nez games of all? It is. It's extremely expensive. And it's, because it says here rumors that it was a rental only release, but I thought it was actually true. I don't think that's true.

Right, okay. Pretty sure that's not true. I wonder where that's come from. I don't know where that, I assume it's just the rarity of it caused people to think that way, but like, I don't think that's actually the case.

So, One more thing, though, if you want to buy this game, if you really have to have it, the European one is quite a bit cheaper, which isn't saying much. Yeah, like 500 bucks for a cart instead of thousands. Yeah. A complete European version is for sale for 2,500 right now. Oh, boy. But, yeah, if you want the NTSC version, you're looking at about 2 grand for just the cartridge. Wow.

So it is, you know, it's a quarter of the price if you go for the Power version. Yeah. It's a sweet deal. Now, it wasn't alone in the Again, the Snows did get, um, this game, which has the following name, which has the following name, which I will now say out loud, the Flintstones, the treasure of Sierra Madrock. Get it? John, this is yours.

Yes. Okay, I have a lot to say about this. This is a game that I was always fascinated with, but I had not actually played because I wanted it. And when there's a game that I want, and I don't, I usually don't play the ROM. I just wait until I actually get the cartridge. And I did recently in Munich. Mark TriForce Dudelson from My Life in Gaming was visiting me here in Germany. We went down to Munich.

saw the super fami-com version at a shop for a good price, picked it up, we took it back later that week and played through the whole game in one evening. Nice, wow. And it was a blast. They're doing some super cool stuff in this that I'm sad was never really repeated again.

So let's get into it. All right, first of all, this is a platformer, and the actual, like, a lot of the level design aesthetic, a lot of the controls, animation stuff, it's mostly kind of derived from the world, done on the megadrive version, I would say. The new stuff is that you can do a sort of flutter jump.

You can also climb them trees in the background and things like that. Correct. Exactly. So it does play a little differently, but it's clearly derived from it. And there's actually a lot of set piece stuff you'll recognize from the Megadrive game directly replicated here. The difference is, though, is that each area is broken up into many, many, many stages. It has a world map, you know, Mario World style to explore.

But this one is controlled by dice rolls. Yeah. Which sounds annoying at first, but in reality, it makes for a really interesting time because the goal of each map is to face off. Basically, you're there to like become like, you're looking for the treasure, this Sierra Madrock, right? And you have to face off against a boss of each area in one of their racing style mini games, which is a mode seven thing. But they're just wondering around the map. And to actually engage in that fight, you have to find them. And that means you're rolling your dice on a spot.

And then you can, it usually allows you to move like one or two, maybe three spaces. I can't remember what the numbers were. I took so long to even get a two. It was just one after one after one when I played. And beginning always, yeah. I think that's the point, though. You don't have to play every level, but you play a lot of them. Well, it adds replay value when you don't play all levels, isn't it?

So you're rolling the dice. You're going forward. But what makes it interesting is that the maps have branching. So they end up breaking off in different. directions. And this becomes especially cool in two-player mode because I feel like this take-turn two-player stuff like in Super Mario World or any of those games like that. You're just kind of doing the same levels, you know, taking turns on it. But here, once you get to these branch points, one player can go in one direction of the map, the other can go in a different direction

of the map. And you're kind of exploring this whole world map in tandem. And I found that really engaging, especially because there's also things like Wilma and Betty in the first level. are wandering around looking for Fred and or Barney and they move you to a different space if they catch you, you know, the boss of the levels walking around. There's mini games that you can find, there's shops, all this stuff is spread out across the map, and you're just kind of off exploring it through dice. So it becomes a bit of a board game thing. And then each level within there is like the Megadrive game, basically.

Yeah, they're surprisingly fleshed out for how many of them there are. But they're all, they're all fairly short. So they're shorter, of course, as a result. Short and pleasant, I think. It's a perfect length. Like, each one is, like, under a minute. So it feels like there's a real quick little bite-sized bit of platforming. I really like the variety of it.

Like, even in the first world, you have, like, some traditional levels to sort of ease you in. But then you've got, like, a sunset rider's stamp stampede of, like, creatures. Then you've got a level where you start and you're only got 20 seconds, and you have to bail out. Like, it's a speed run, sort of. Yeah. and I thought that was really cool, especially because the music when your time is running out is really just dope as shit.

It's this really frantic mix of the Flintstones theme, and I really, really like it, and I hope that the others can find it and play it. But I like this game, and I will say this, I think playing it single player is not the best way to do it because it's good, but... It's fine, it's just a little bit laborious.

Playing it with the second player, as John has said, with one player going one way around the map and one player going another way around the map to hopefully sort of meet the... The boss. I think that's the way to go. Get a friend and wrote them in and, you know, have a drink and have a good time. I do not, I do not condone drinking, by the way.

Oh, well, I do. But, uh... I do, really. And hard drugs. Only joking. And hard drugs. Or am I. And Winston cigarettes.

Very important. Oh, yeah. Wins and cigarettes. Yeah. Another thing I didn't mention, actually, is at the end of each level, based on the amount of time you have left, there's like this tick-tack-toe game. Yeah. Where, uh, that number then drops down and sort of fills in the,

this board, and depending on how many numbers you light up, you get extra lives from that. Yeah, like, Bingo card is cool. They basically like gamify every aspect of it. Yes. And I thought, again, it's just, it's really, really interesting. And then like I said,

the boss fights, they're like all different forms of like mode seven style action. Like, I think the first one is, I think the first one is a foot race. Yeah. Where you're basically running around a mode seven course, trying to beat the boss. and it's actually kind of challenging.

It's like an ice skating one, I think, when you get to the ice level. There's one where you're actually racing in the Flintstones Mobile, like the car, so it's like a cart race kind of thing. And then eventually, you know, you make your way to the final level, which is like underground. And that's the one part where it feels a little bit anticlimactic because the whole last section of the game is basically just like a singular linear line all the way up to the end. and there's no real final boss that's just like the final level and you eventually reach the treasure and it's over. So like, I mean, it doesn't necessarily drag down the game, mind you,

and the levels are good. It just kind of feels weird because the rest of the game was all based on this. I guess the real final boss was your desire for the treasure itself. Exactly. I actually forgot there's power-ups as well. Optional power-ups you can get, I think, like a double jump or... Yeah. Yeah, and it uses those, I forget what they are.

Is it the seeds, maybe, or stars? I don't remember. Stars, yeah, you're stars. Yeah, there's a star. You get the stars, and you can actually, every time you double jump, it uses a star. So double jump is finite, which is super weird, but like it actually is cool. And you start to be able to use this later in the game. So there's actually, again, a reason to explore these levels because you can actually gain additional power-ups that make the game easier to play.

And just all of the stuff together, I think, makes for such a cool formula that I'm actually surprised we didn't see anybody else attempt something like this. Yeah. Yeah, thinking about it, there really isn't anything much like this that springs to mind. I mean, I guess it reminds me a little bit of the Black's Dice Palace and Gunstar heroes, but I think that may be before. I might have been at the same time as this, isn't it? Or is it before? Gunstar was first, I think. Yeah, yeah.

If they're going to imitate anything, Gunstar is the one to imitate. Yeah, I think there's a good game, and I think it's a shame that there isn't some. some kind of like carbon engine digital eclipse, Flintstones collection, to be honest. I'm starting to want one. We'll see if that happens. Actually, yeah, they're good enough. I think the weird thing, I would love to see that,

but with all the Flintstones games, even the bad ones. But I feel like you have the tighter Flintstones games we've been talking about, and then you have all the others, and they're mostly terrible. Well, if they just do the title games, I'd be happy with them. So, yeah, yeah, the title collection. I'd be into that. So I still would like to voice a bit of criticism on Sarah Madrock.

so the first thing when I played the game in the first level already you have this waterfall with the locks coming down and the timing to make these jumps is so tricky in the beginning I blew through two continues to just get this first waterfall down after that I knew what I was doing

but at the first impression that's something and then they give you in the first level again enemies the first enemy you meet I think already takes three hits with your club I would say, Thomas, your criticisms are valid, but it's like, it's like once you get your head around that, you get past that initial challenge, the rest is completely fine without issue. It's just, you know, first impressions. It does make a strange first impression, you're right.

I had that with the waterfall as well until I figured out that's supposed to double back in order to get high enough to make it. You have to double back. It seems like you don't, but you absolutely do. What I always do is you go all the way right, go into that little cave, and I think there's an extra life in there. and then you just double back up and then it's just no problem but yeah until you get that is just a bit much for a first level it is i agree and the other thing i found is uh when you reach these uh these uh these uh park fields you know we do the minigames yeah you have this endless talk about from this guy with this incredibly slow letters one after another and

if you don't have the money you do that again and again sometimes i don't remember i thought you could skip that or go i don't remember it being slow time you can skip some of them but i don't think you can skip these guys. You can speed them up, but it's still not that fast. Like, it is still quite slow. 20 clams. And then what you do is you just say no anyway because you're just going to make you play like a stupid memory game or something. So just forget it. Just don't do it.

When you get to there, just say no, that's my advice for this game. Yeah, I mean, that is not a big criticism now, but just things that I really noticed when I played it. You're only in it pick the games that you really like. That's the way I see it. So when it comes to just picking up and playing,

I do still think the Mega Drive games probably the better game just in terms of having a good old time. But if you have a friend with you, I actually think this is a really awesome 16-bit game to play and one of the best multiplayer platform games on the system. Flitstones meet the Flitstones. They're the modern Stone Age family. From the town of Bedrock,

they're a patriot of history. Let's ride with the family down the street. Speaking of the best game is all the system And all speaking of not having friends And they're not having friends The Flintstones revival occurred in 1994 The suits realised it's time for the Flintstones To come back with it

We've had enough of this world without Flintstones It's chaos, it's carnage, there's blood in the streets It's Flintstone's time So they cast John Goodman as Barney, Rick Moranus's No sorry, John Goodman is Fred Rick Moranis as Barney and Halliberry is I don't know

with any of the character but look it is Halliberry and they made the tremendous brilliant Flintstones live action movie with Spielberg

you know yeah that kind of killed the Flintstones again as Fred would say yeah but dabber don't indeed but of course

here's the things to when you release a movie and it's got characters in it there is one company that will always come to the rescue and have games ready for you. One company that you can always rely on, it's Ocean. Hell yeah. Even Waterworld.

Yeah, Ocean's going to be there, man, no matter what. They always got your back. And boy, did they have our backs with the Flintstones, because they released a Flintstones movie game on the Game Boy, Super NES, and almost the Mega Drive. There is just a Mega Drive version, but it's not official. It's not complete. Let's start with the Game Boy game, I think.

I actually want to start by talking a little bit about the Game Boy game because, frankly, this game is way too good to have these sprites. And what I mean by, it's actually a very competent platformer that's also one of the most technically impressive I've ever seen on the Game Boy. The way they handle the parallax scrolling, the slopes, and everything is so good that I'm shocked we didn't see other Game Boy games attempt this, especially at a full 60 FPS because it's overlapping multi-layer layer line scrolling, parallaxing with the foreground, like you'd see in a Mega Drive game on the Game Boy.

I mean, it's absurd. Like, I genuinely could not believe what I was seeing when I loaded this up because it's so good. And the gameplay itself is solid. The levels are reasonably fun. Like, it's a very solid game and it's better than the usual Ocean Fair. It's just got one problem. think Thomas said it best here about the Fred Flintstone spright. Yeah, I mean, what I said is he looks like a chicken nugget with a hat stuck on top.

Yes. It's one of the worst main character sprites I can recall. Yeah, it's really hard. I genuinely hate it so much that it almost spoils an otherwise very reasonable game to the point where I'm like, I was, I played for about 10 minutes and then I immediately go to Google, like, looking at somebody done a ROM hack where they swap in like the tighter sprites. for these awful ocean ones. Yeah. I didn't see anything yet. Yeah, it's not good.

If you're listening to this, please, please, please, you know, if you get the skills, we need a Sprite swap version of this because that Fred Flintstone Sprite, it is, oh. The stuff of nightmares. I mean, I think that the Fred, I think personally that the Fred is the only egregious sprite. I like the rest of the sprites. Yeah, the rest are fine. They're sort of not fitting, but it was seeing those sprites that made me go, hang on a minute. it, this is made by Alfred Chicken people.

You can tell at a glance, because the dinosaur designs that you see are so odd and so Alfred Chicken-y. I got very excited about that. The thing is, though... It's nice to have an Elfrid chicken. You say that about Fred, there's other main characters in that.

Have you seen Barney? Yeah, he's pretty bad. Oh, wow, yeah. The sprites just kind of keep getting worse. Wow, okay. Well, it must just be the enemies on the non-flinstone characters or the non-flinstone associated characters that are like not good. The wives are slightly better, but they're still pretty bad. Like, none of the sprites look good.

And anybody that attempted to do digitized looking characters in the Game Boy usually failed miserably. Like, the Game Boy wasn't designed for this. Yeah. They should not have done it, and it didn't work. Don't get me started about the Game Gear's digitized Sprite games as well. Because I will. There's a plague, I tell you. Well, I was, I try not to be too harsh in my reviews, usually.

Even if I really don't like something, I try and focus on the positives. But covering the Mortal Kombat ports for the game gear, one, two, and three, and primal rage, I'm counting that. They actually look okay, though, on a real game gear screen. They don't move okay, but they look okay. It's that thing of like, this game, at no point, was designed to genuinely and earnestly bring joy. It only exists because it needs to exist because of the product. And that's bad. And that's something that this game avoids, I think,

because it is a genuinely quite enjoyable little, very simplistic but well-designed platformer. Yes. I agree. How much did you guys actually play, by the way? Did you play through it? I've beaten it before because I ended up. But not last time I didn't.

I haven't remember how it ends, to be honest. I played a couple of levels on the analog pocket. At the end, you chase down the big bad from the film with an awesome scrolling section that has, like, so many layers of parallax scrolling. It's all line scrolling, but it's like you have clouds, a second layer of clouds, two layers of mountains, another layer of stones, and then one of those like multi-line scrolling playfields like you often saw in Megadrive. So there's probably more parallax in that one scene than like the rest of the Game Boy library combined. that's really impressive. So hats off to the program where it's like seriously for that.

It's awesome looking. I love that stuff when they get this development team. They get a crummy license and they say, okay, let's make something

really cool out of this. Yeah, and that's what they did, I would argue. It's very okay. I agree. I like, when I first played it,

I was quite taken aback by how much I enjoyed it, considering how bad its reputation was, you know? Absolutely. That game, of course, as you mentioned,

was also brought to the Super Nintendo by Ocean. Yep, one year later. One year later, very late. Now, I'm going to say straight up, I don't hate this. I think this is, I think for an ocean tie-in platform, this is actually somewhere on the upper level. Sure. It ain't Adam's family, but it's not horrible.

It's fine-ish. In my opinion. It has problems. It has real problems, I think. you'll have to get more into this Thomas as well but my feeling right away is I actually did think okay this looks kind of cool there is some stuff here

but the main problem is that the base controls the core mechanics don't really work that's not good it's the combination it's the core mechanics it's the enemy placement and it's level design these these three don't go together because for example one big thing is Fred doesn't have an attack when he's jumping

but a lot of lot of enemies are placed in the way that you have to attack them out of your jump because otherwise you get hit by them. And of course, this brings us to another problem. You don't see how many hits you can take. There's no hit points in the game. I think I can take three hits by half to keep in my mind. Have it been hit once or twice?

Can I risk attacking this guy? What to do now? This is, how can this happen? I don't get it. And along the same lines, not only can you not swing the club while jumping, but the actual collision of the club is so weird and narrow, like you can never really be sure when you're going to hit an enemy, and it has this very kind of delayed animation swing, right? You bring it out, and it's like he's going to swing the club over his head first, that it

makes every attack take way longer than it should. So it just feels very unresponsive. Yeah, they just went for a nice crunch when you do your attack, because what it does, what it does, nice is the attacks have a proper oomph to it. True. But it just takes too long for them to hit. I'm very fond of the John Goebbman and Fred Sprite in this game. There's something very funny about it.

It's actually perfectly fine. I don't hate that. And in fact, I would say that the graphics in general, which is often true for ocean games, are quite good. And the music's dope as well. Music's great. There's some amazing parallax scrolling. There's a lot of detail in the backgrounds. Everything runs smooth.

It's just, it's a solid-looking game. but that's usually what you would get with Ocean anyway even in the worst case it's just man there's core mechanics in the level in the enemy placement like you said Thomas it just drags the whole thing down and makes it frustrating and not fun to play

and as you mentioned this was this was planned for the Genesis but it didn't come out however it's stated that it was on the Sega channel briefly oh okay I didn't know that the Garfield lost levels that's how it got out I've played a ROM of this before there's a prototype out now

Yeah, which has two levels on their music, unfortunately. So the thing is, though, is it's not just Fred. There is other stuff in this game. Yeah. Like the car level where, what's the kid's name? Pembles, Bambon. One of them. I actually can't tell based in the Sprite.

Pembles is the goal one. Okay. Oh, yeah, there's both of them in. So basically you have the Fred Flintstone car at the bottom of the screen, and the kids are, are in the world doing these flips. Do you remember the Peter Puppie sections from... Where you have to marshmallow the puppies across the way? It's basically that, but like a whole level.

I hate that shit. Yikes. It's that. So they decided to throw that in there, which is weird. And then you do it 15 times, John. 15 puppy love runs, for the love of Christ. It's freaking horrible, dude. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

You reminded me of it. I got a bit upset. But still, most of the game is just running around as Fred in rather similar types of levels. And in fact, even towards the latter half of the game, it like loops back around, I think, to some of the level he's already been to. Not the exact layouts necessarily, but the same themes like Twitch. So I don't know. The whole game just feels very, very sloppy. Like, competently programmed, but very, very sloppy.

It's a game that you, like, even I, I mean, do I? Though I don't hate it, even I didn't really persevere with it beyond level one. And that's like, I have to say that it's very rare that there's a decent platformer on the SNS or Mega Drive that I haven't played through and beaten. I want to see you try to beat it because there's this part towards the end where there's like a maze of like, there's like these mazes where you're standing on a platform with like buzz saws and different routes and you're just kind of moving along through this stupid maze thing and trying to survive. I mean, it's bad. Then I will do that. I will try to piece it on stream sometime. I will give them this.

I'll go ahead, Thomas. I found a bit annoying as well. So you can also throw a bowling ball, which is a nice idea, because it might help you with some of the more stupid placed enemies. But again, when you do that, you have to collect one of the balls first. They can't be anything in the way of that enemy.

And what's most annoying is you could pick them up again, but only if it's lying perfectly still, will hardly ever happen. Yeah. So again, a bit of tweaking, and this might have been a good element in the game, but it's not the way they implemented it here. Well, it's a game that, for me, like many ocean games,

as you mentioned as well, John Thomas, it looks so much nicer than it actually is. Like, you're drawn in by the really impressive visuals. I mean, even a game like Dennis de Menace draws you went with impressive visuals. Yeah, it sucks, but it looks all right. It does. You look at it, you think, oh, this will be all right,

and then you play it, and they didn't finish it, so they programmed in a jump that's impossible, clear. So, but speaking of that, I do want to at least compliment them for making a game that is at least consisting of linear platform stages, because one of the problems Ocean had, and I always loved Bob calls these airplane hanger games, and that was a very type of... I hate that. I actually hate that.

Oh, I think it's funny because it's accurate. There's so many of those... Yeah, that's the way it hurts. Right? Like, it's just, here's this giant level full of random. platforms spread all over the heck in place. You don't know where you're at. You're just trying to, like, do some arbitrary thing to reach the end of the level.

And I think that's not generally a good design. Ocean is very guilty of that design. Dennis the Menace has won such a game. This game is not like that. It is actually, like, genuine designed levels that you play through for the most part. Yeah. And in that sense, it's not that bad. It really is just the mechanics are not good enough.

I think the airplane, we've talked about this before, but I think the airplay, I think the airplane hangar thing can be done well, for example, Pitfall, the Mine Adventure, which has all over the place all over the screen. I don't think Pitfall's airplane hanger at all. Like, it's exactly like straightforward design. I can see why people would think it is, but it's not. It is, it follows a very linear design, and it's not just like a large open screen. The ones that I would say do it well is something like, say, Turk and two. Turk and two, excellent game.

It has airplane hanger style design, but it is actually. interesting to explore I think that people just call it that when they don't like it. I don't think... I challenge this airplane hangar idea. I think you're wrong with airplane hangers. They store useful airplanes.

I think you're right. It's used with a negative connotation usually, but I think it can also be a positive term or a term of endearment to just describe those open levels. Would Bubsey be an airplane hanger game? I don't. I wouldn't say... I wouldn't say it is.

Like, it has elements of that because the state is very wide, if you will, but it's still a linear sort of experience. I feel like I've kind of gone at Bob a bit too much in this episode, and I've done it jokingly both times, but I worry that Bob's going to fight me. I don't want that. I love Bob.

Well, he loves to poke fun at British games culture, and that's okay, but you are the British one here, so... I am, yeah, I am. It's up to you to decide if that's okay. Yeah, right to poke back? Do you think it's going to be the world's first retroanauts? like title fight coming up.

I hope so. Yeah. I'm winning that title. Speaking of titles, we've got a fair few more titles to cover that as a good segment there. I think we should kind of speed run these ones because they're not that interesting mostly. I think we can't just take all of these now into one free open discussion sort of because for me, we go downhill quickly. Well, I mean, the next game wasn't until 2000, excuse me.

There was a five-year gap and then Ubisoft went, hey, you know what the world really needs? A game which is called the Flintstone's Bedrock Bolting. and then you go, oh, a bowling simulator, that might be good, and you buy it, and it's, in fact, not a bowling game whatsoever. It is a... The way I describe it, and this makes it sound much better than it actually is, it's a bit like if Super Monkey Ball was hyperlinear. Like, you're basically going down these floating platforms,

collecting rather than bananas, skittles, or whatever you're called pins in bowling. That's made me sound well British, calling them skittles. Taste the Rainbow. but um i i would not i found this impossible to hate because it's just so weird i i would describe this as is a game that you so when i when i saw this i was like oh bidrock bowling i i will not like this because i'm not a bowling game fan and then i like wait it's not bowling so you kind of get excited and then you play it and realize oh i was right to not be excited because

fundamentally you mentioned super monkey ball but it's more like what if crash bandicoot but you can't jump and you just ride you're like riding on a sled that's a better example yeah it's like one of the um it's like the hog wild levels on crash bandicoot maybe yeah but like really slow like really easy and really you just like basically skating back and forth left and right collecting stuff you can actually go really fast and skit up the walls and the sides and stuff but there's absolutely no incentive to because there's no time no exactly there's no reason to you just lazily make your way down you just get everything along the way way, and there are bowling pins and stuff, I suppose.

So there's a little bit of a bowling connection. But don't forget the Seagulls, you have to hit the Seagulls as well. Yeah. I do not hate this. I consider it to be completely mid. It's too mad to not like. It's very mid. There are worse games coming, okay?

Okay, please keep one thing in mind, right? So it's a kid's game, right? Yeah. So if you are a kid, you can't get many games. you get one game maybe every couple of months or so I think it wasn't full price but it was still enough money back then so okay you got a kid you get a game now what do you want maybe crash maybe Spiro

now let's go get the Flintstones game but what kid is saying that is the fundamental flaw in this fantasy it's when the dad goes to the store it's like oh the Flintstones I used to watch that even worse remember Barney you know the remember when Fred would go bowling with Barney exactly and he'd get on his

tippy toes and how funny the shit I ever saw but yeah you know the thing is I did a review of that game back in the day I love it I gave it a rather low one of the first reviews I made ever in my life

gave it a rather low rating because yeah it's just not really good it plays weirdly the tech is bad for the time it came out and everything and then we got an angry call from Ubisoft complaining about why can I rate a kid's game so low?

Yeah, I mean, kids aren't stupid, right? No, they're not. Well, most of them are, but some of them aren't. They all are, they all are stupid. I will say this, though. It's better than Simpson's bowling. I, yeah, yeah. You mean Simpson's bowling?

It's also better than that cryo-developed asterix game. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I know. It's better than that. Everything's better than that, though, except for men in black on the PS one. Just want to thread it in there. I, you know what, I think it is better than, and this is maybe a hot take.

All right. It's better than The Simpsons Wrestling. I agree. The Simpsons Wrestling is depressing. That was really bad, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of which, now we added a time, the Flintstones,

where the brand is just becoming somewhat worthless, I think. Yeah. Because we had Taito, we had Ocean, we had Ubisoft, and now we go to conspiracy, to Toker, to H2O. The Flintstones would currently in a sense maybe we'd be having a second

sort of resurgence because a cartoon network would have been launching the boomerang channel which always only used to air old cartoons. So it would have some prominence that way. This is the cartoon cartoon era with Dexter's Lab and stuff like that. So people's eyes are on this brand. So maybe that's why it's

kind of back. It's just a total speculation. No, I think it was back because Conspiracy Entertainment's MO at the time was, we're just going to pick up all these old cartoon licenses and anything related to cartoons and make new games on them. Were they the ones who did Titans?

They did Buster's Bad Dream, Wacky Stackers. They did late Animaniacs games. They did Tom and Jerry games. They did the Lights Camera Action game. Yeah, they did. They did. What this game is, is the Flintstones Burger Time in Bedrock, which is exactly what it sounds like.

It's the arcade game Burger Time made by, I'm going to say, I forget who made Burger Time, but you know Burger Time. It's the classic arcade game. Over on the screen, climbing ladders and walking on the ingredients of burger to make the burger layers drop down, crush whatever's beneath it until you eventually finish making the burger, right? And what they've done here is they've just transplanted that into Flintstone's land. So you're Fred Flintstone walking around and stepping on people's beef patties with this gross caveman feet, which I am a bit obsessed with and I've mentioned again.

Yeah, I thought you'd like them. I do. But the problem is, I hate to say this. When I played this today for the first time of my life, I thought it was great, and I bought a copy from C-E-X. I think this is really fun. I had a really good time playing this game. I don't think there's anything particularly special about it.

I think the soundtrack had a big part of that, right? The soundtrack is so good. It's Alistair Brimble, and I looked back, that guy's been doing music since the Amigo, and it's all been wonderful. He's darn good, yeah. And what I found interesting about this is, while Burger Time is quite hard,

it's a difficult game, it's an arcade game. this is the same level sort of similar level of aggression from the enemies but you've got a bit of a gimmie because there are these power-ups that appear that let you swing your club to stand enemies so you can walk past them which trivializes

burger time but you don't get that many of them so there is an element of strategy there to an extent and the way that the level designs change as it goes on to become more taxing and more you have to use more thought to clear them I think it's genuinely good

I would just it's not as good as this but I actually kind of classify this in a similar category to Donkey Kong 94, where it's like, here's this old idea, a classic arcade game concept, and we're doing it with multi-screen scrolling kind of thing on a portable system, and it's like slightly modernized in a sense. I think obviously it's nowhere near the quality of $1.94, but I think it does genuinely fit into that bracket of like,

here's the game we have. How can we build out from this without compromising the basic feel? And I would say, honestly, of all the games we've tried for this, this is probably one of my favorites. I wouldn't say it was my favorite. That would be the Mega Drive game still. But I really liked this. I was really surprised because coming from conspiracy, you don't expect much.

And, you know, the point is there isn't much here, but maybe Burger Time is just so fundamentally enjoyable that it just works somehow. It's such a solid game, and I love the Fred Sprite, and I love the way it moves to the music, and I love the music itself. And, oh, it was just fun, and it was kind of easy. and that was nice, you know. I dug it. I bought a copy, and it'll be here in a few days,

and I'm excited to play it again. Just to ask, what did you pay for the copy? Oh, it was £2.00. Nice. Cartonely on CEX, but, you know, $250 delivery, say $4.50 total. Still next to nothing for a genuinely solid game. Even in Britain?

Yeah. Oh. All right. How about that? Well, beyond that, though, Stu, there was another game. A PlayStation 2 game. It was on the movie. Yeah.

The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, which is in direct-a-video. It's European-only, and it's a movie tie-in. And I was initially looking like, wait, is there a Phoenix Games logo on this? Because it sure feels like a Phoenix game. It also feels like it could have been the sequel to BC Racers. It's like BC Racers, too, but worse. I'm glad you mentioned BC Racers, because that was fun to mind for me as well. I looked up the movie, and it wasn't director video.

I apologize, I was mistaken. It was a box office failure, though. Yes. It may as well have been directed a video. Mark Addy from the full Monty is Fred Flintstone in this movie and not John Goodman, so that's incorrect. He did a good enough job, but the movie just wasn't good. But they did introduce the Great Gazoo for the Live Action Flintstone's universe, so, you know, give them some credit. Remember when they tried to do a Hannah Barbaro cinematic universe a few years ago with Scoob and it just died on its ass because nobody cared about it?

We would want that. Yeah, it was quite a lot. want that. I wanted to be good, you know. Yeah, the Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas developed by Toker, Tocker,

absolute horrid piece of shit, very controllable. Awful. I couldn't even finish one race. It's 60 frames per second, so I'm giving them a small amount of credit for that. But it controls that shit. It's not fun. It's ugly. It's dark. It's dank. It's everything that Flintstones' game shouldn't be.

Yeah, it's extremely ugly. It's very simplistic visually. it, man, it's basically a Mario Kart style game. So it's a car racer. You get the item pickups along the track. Yeah. Just kind of plugging along there. Like you said, it is 60 FPS.

But, and I think there was a GameCube version in the works, but that was Cannes. So it's just PS2 as far as I know. But here's the thing. The PS2 is one of the best consoles ever for racing games. There are so many racing games in the PS2 that are really good. So if you're the PS2 and you have that many good racing games, Something like this genuinely doesn't stand a chance and should not be touched. It's absolutely terrible in the context of this library.

Viva Rock Vegas. Oh, no, as a racing fan, this has really disappointed me. Oh, well, at least Super Bomb Mad Racing would better. And then you're trying to Super Bowl Mad Racing. It's like if this had been on like, say, the Nuon, right? The New On has Merlin Racing. And Merlin Racing is like may as well be Diddy Kong Racing too because it's actually not the worst thing, but it's also like the only

real racing game on the new on, because it's the new on. If this had been on the new on, it would be like the second best racing game on the new on. But because this is on PS2, it's pretty, it's low. I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm glad you mentioned the new one, because I've always thought that this

podcast used a bit more nuance. I actually have a functional new on upstairs. And I have a copy of B.C. Sorry, of Merlin racing in the slot. yep he made me play it's my that's my uh that's my that's my pickup line it's uh i've got actually got a functional new one upstairs if you'd like to come and see it um

thomas you've actually played on my new one yep yep yep you made me play it oh god okay um so yeah let's not talk about this shitty vivorogvigas game anymore unless you've got some we should have an important question for you guys so what is worse Viva Rock Vegas or the Flintstone's not a master system Honestly this Fevera Rock Vegas is worse I think I would agree yeah Because it's not even conceptually interesting

It's just crap It's just a boring stupid game It ain't fun But while we get in all this stuff out of the way The Flintstone's big trouble in Bedrock 2001 GBA Because there was a Every thing

Every cartoon had a GBA game At least one This is another conspiracy joint isn't it Yeah now I mean because it's me and I am the guy who loves all platform games, basically, I'm the all games a good guy I think this is okay

but it is really clearly just, it's really clearly just cheap shit, do you know what I mean? It's like it's like they didn't care about it it's like done, but the level design is, uh, sort of acceptable the problem is what the game keeps doing is it keeps making you springs and then

putting enemies above you that you cannot possibly see or react to. And it also does it, it just, you hit an enemy you just get shoved all to the level. Yeah. And also the Fred Sprite is appalling in this game. Dude, the movement is so bad. I was going to say it's like the Game Boy Flintstone's game gets so much closer than this in terms of representing Fred.

It looks so off model. His sprite is also about one third, the height of the screen. So there's like barely any room above you. And it commits this awful sin for platformer movement where, one, his actual footsteps, animation is too slow for the speed of the game. So the screen scrolls faster than Fred moves so it looks like he's gliding over the ground, which is dumb. And two, they have this very sensitive camera that's, they always put you either on the far left or far right of the screen and it snaps back and forth instantly depending on the direction you're facing. And I think

that feels absolutely terrible. Like the whole, the feel of the game is dreadful. It doesn't, it's not enjoyable to control. I mean, I am very, I am being very, very generous. I say this, all I really mean is if someone gave you the cartridge, or if you were locked in a room and you only had this to play, you wouldn't smash your head against the wall in an attempt to take your own life. You would probably just play it.

That's really the nicest thing anyone's ever said about this game, actually. I have got one small comment I'd like to mention, which is, when you climb ladders, you can see Fred's dump truck ass, it's great. It's like huge arts. It's amazing. You can just look at the curve, go back and forth. That's the only thing they put effort into.

Someone cared about this man's. bottom. Have any of you guys actually played through this? I tried to play it. I didn't even finish the first level. I was just like, no, I'm not playing this. I genuinely hated that. And again, like, I like to have more experience with games before talking about them, but I genuinely felt like this was just not, it's not a good game. It's basically shovelware. Yeah, it's not going to turn into Yoshi's Island off to level one or two. It's not, you know, it's, you, once you play the first level and you collect some of those tokens and you jump on the enemies, you jump on the springs. And there's no other mechanics

in play whatsoever. It's just basic platform springs and moving platforms. You know there and then, I've seen everything this game has to offer. There are custom speedy eggbert levels that have more interesting gimmicks than this. You know, it's you know what? It's like total, it's

the definition of shovelware, or it would be if we want, if we didn't have one more game on the list to talk about. I'll go so far as to say I'd rather play a Dizzy game than this. What's you guys' problem with Dizzy? he's so good it's such a good series

he's a good egg you leave him alone Dizzy's not good I'm sorry Don't you bully Dizzy Don't you're wrong about Dizzy He's a lovely egg He's my friend

He's a little hat You know He's just trying to help his friends And you guys are just shitting on him all day long Sick of it You and Anardi as well Just being horrible Okay I'd also rather play Dizzy

Than another conspiracy game Which was Billy the Wizard Rocket Brick Racing Yeah Which is You know That's also a racing game

But you know what There's another racing game To talk about it I think this might be the last game on our list It is the final game The Flintstone is Bedrock Racing From Coyote console

Which came out in 2007 For the PlayStation 2 And unlike the last one This is actually based on The Flintstone's cartoon property you're not the live action stuff. And I don't think this is very good, but I also thought it was...

It was less bad than the prior PS2 racing game. I think it is inoffensive, essentially. It is not good, but it doesn't hurt to play it or anything. It's just quite friendly and calming. I would say the tracks are much wider, which feels less confining. The colors are actually vibrant. and appealing rather than offensive and dark and brown and ugly like the last game.

It's just kind of slow and boring. It isn't actually fun to play, but it doesn't scream, oh, I hate this either. When I played this today for the first time, the easiness of it and the fact that it does the, when you press R1 to boost like him burnout, you get the sound effect that you know, the running sound effect that Philistin has that plays that. And I thought, you know, just that little touch, just that little touch of authenticity made me sit there and think,

kind of like, you know what? Everything's going to be okay. Because I'm sitting there doing this race that I'm in absolutely no danger of losing or hitting the sides because the track is so wide. And I almost felt Zen. It was like desert bus, you know? I'm sitting there just like,

I'm having a fun time. I mean, I'm not, there's no power ups. I'm not doing anything. There are collectibles on the track that are just there, and there's no way you could possibly miss them. And then between levels, you use the bones you collect to upgrade your car. It doesn't get any more difficult. The tracks, there's no like jumps or shortcuts or anything.

It's what you see is what you get. And there's something quite zen about that, which I found quite calming. I don't think I would play it again. But I liked it. And the fact that when you turn on a reverse camera, I took a screenshot, and Fron and Barney just looked like the happiest people on the planet. And it made me think, you know what, I wish I was like Fred and Bonnie. And also, even though it's a 3D Polygon game, though, the track layouts have like the simplicity of like a Mode 7 title almost.

It's very mostly very flat. There's some slight hills. So I guess it's more like Atari carts on the Jaguar than Mario Kart. But actually, you know what? It kind of reminds me of Atari carts, which is also a Mario Kart style racer. but it's just like this, it's very boring. Like, it's so easy that you just kind of, you sit there in first place and just go around the track until you're done.

And that's about it. And that's what you do here. You pick up pieces of meat and, yeah, you drive your car. Okay, so Thomas, you have anything to say about Bedrock racing? Well, not really much. I mean, it's said it all. It's a bit flat, it's a bit boring, but it's okayish somehow. it defies itself to become somehow

kind of nice and cheery and pleasant it's like if a kid made a game and you're like oh that's nice you made a good point right now with a sound effect actually because this is one thing I noticed about across all these games because hardly any of these games really try and match the soundscape of the TV show

I can't believe I said that right now but you don't have the sound effects you have rarely themes from the music apart from the title theme, of course. So these are nice touches, if they're in there. I mean, the fact you're not hearing constant voice clips by people who clearly aren't the right voice clips. Oh, dear, there's no voice tips. That would be terrible. There's something about it.

The fact that it is so cheap and it's so clearly low budget has almost worked in its favor because it means that they don't have the money to pull the game with pointless crap. and compared to Viva Rock Vegas which clearly had more money behind it than this did this game has way more playable characters and locked characters. You have to run locked as well like bonus characters like Pebbles and Bam Bam

although I know who let the baby drive a car that's insane but I guess they did they don't care back on the Stoneys days there's no child labour laws or anything I guess for me though the big question is where was the Flintstones at in 2007 like they got this IP they did this thing but like what was the general awareness

of the Flintstones in the public. Do you guys, I honestly cannot remember. I don't know. To me, the Flintstones was like a thing that I just didn't think about anymore at this point. Well, in the UK, the Flintstones would have been airing about midday alongside Danger Mouse every day. Oh, interesting. On BBC 2, they did that for a while, and I think it was around this time. I know because I wasn't employed, so I was watching it.

That might explain it then. Yeah. It was somehow present. it was, at this point, a pure kid's show in the general opinion. And I remember at that time, roughly, I mean, these were the times where the DVD was still really big. They even brought DVD boxes of all the different season out.

I remember seeing them in the stores. Oh, my God, I bought three of them because they were on sale. Stewart did the same thing. I did the same. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I can't afford not to buy them. And I got it home and I watched three episodes of the first season. I was like, I've made a huge mistake.

You ever, never do. In preparation for this episode On the weekend I watched also a couple of episodes on DVD And yeah It's nice background noise Yeah but you're never gonna want to watch it Like fully you nobody wants to

You never wants to like watch the fun Sounds let's go through it on Netflix you know But no no funny thing by the way You watch it in English of course In English it has a laugh track doesn't it Yes it does yeah It doesn't have one in German see No laugh track

I've always thought the retro or should have a laugh track actually is that because Germans are dour people that their sense of humor and they decide not to laugh? Yes. No, we need, this is amusing. We don't need to be told when we have to laugh. We laugh when it's funny. Oh, okay.

Wait, is it okay to do a chord sort of German accent now? Is that acceptable? Can we do that? I don't mind. I don't know. Okay. Oh, boy. Well, I've got so many possibilities of funny things I could say.

I'll save it for now. I'll save it for now. We have other opportunities, I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, it was somehow present, and even nowadays, I mean, as I mentioned, I have some animation classes I give with some history, some theory, and I usually have one lesson about limited TV animation, stuff like the Flintstones, the Jetsons, or Clutch Cargos, or the kids see where TV animation started. Yeah. Did you ever see Clutch Cargo? Yes.

It's amazing stuff. And usually a couple of them still know the Flintstones. Usually we have often exchange students from Spain or from South America, and they are often more familiar with it than the German one at this point. But it's not completely forgotten. It's still a bit of a presence. Yeah. Can I take this opportunity to remind the world that the last Flintstones movie was in 2015,

and it was the Flintstones and WWE Stone Age Smackdown? Really? I kind of want to see that. I have not seen that. Yeah, I want to see it big time. Oh, boy. One thing that is worth watching, because this doesn't get talked about a lot, so I'm going to use this opportunity to mention it, is quite rare.

In 2001, there was a hour-long made-for-TV movie, animated movie, called The Flintstones On the Rocks. I think, I don't remember who directed it, but I think that Craig McCracken was involved in it, in some respect. It's just over an hour long, and it's about, like, it's a more, it's more like what the original Flintstone's pitch was, which is that it's, you know, funny for adults and for kids, because it's quite an adult film

it's not violent it's not like sweary it's not like sexual but it's it's quite an adult concept it's about the Flintstone's marriage being just like on the last tether and it was really interesting and worth and I think worth watching it's seeking up but the only way you're going to see it is if you pirate it so you know go ahead and do that it's completely fine

Anyway, And so were many of these Flintstone games, too. Yeah, they were fine. We've talked about a lot of Flintstone's games today. We've got through them in an expedient manner, and I'm happy about that, because they've been... I don't think that any of them have been shortchanged. We've given them the attention that they deserved,

even when that was very, very little. So, you guys, any favorites among you guys? What's your favorites then? Burger Time in Bedrock. Burger Time, Tom. Of course, use this... And the Mega Drive one is... Mega Drive, followed by the Super NES game.

I must say, if I want to... or play one of these again, I would go for the first one on N.S, actually. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, I think Big Rock Treasure Island as well, actually. It's just nice to have a good 8-bit platformer. I think that it's nice that we have this surplus of genuinely good Flintstones games to play.

I'm a little surprise and bum that there was no random PC engine version of this. Taita, did a lot of PC engine stuff, and it just feels like something that would have been right at home there along PC Gengen and all that. Yeah, that's true. That's a shame.

they could reskin one of the other caveman games or something. There was a lot. Yeah, Kongo's Cape Earth. The Legendary X3, starring Fred Flintstone. Sorry, Barney, Rove. Even better. Yeah, yeah. You know how Barney had two voices, remember that?

He had, like, his kind of, oh, hey, Fred, how's it going? And then it changed to, like, oh, gee, Fred. Oh, no, I crap my singlet. You know, um, what was the deal with that? Who knows? Nobody knows. I'm sure it's very well documented. it. But it doesn't matter right now. Shall I deliver, I'm going to deliver the entire

final bit in the Barney Rebel voice. Is that okay? Please. Of course. Go ahead. So, John, where can listeners find you on the internet? I can find me at... What the hell is the internet? Dark 1X on X.

Also, I do work for Digital Foundry, so you know, and you do YouTube.com slash digital foundry. I've got too much Flintstones on the brain. So I'm starting to stumble over my words, just like Fred Flintstone might. And also... Yeah, you're not just like my pal, Fred.

I don't even know if that's what his voice is like. It's probably not. That's pretty good, though. I like it. It's wonderful. Thank you. Oh, right. Yeah, shit.

Thomas, hello. Oh, go back in character. Hang on. Me, me, me, me, me, me. Oh, hey, Fred, you got any weed? I'm sorry. Thomas, how can we find you on the internet? All right.

You can find me on Twitter as Bimbe Fortuna or on Mannyk, DE, where you can find my, well, German writing, but it's there. And if you want to find me, Stuart Jip, Stupacabra, where I do not do the Barney-Rubble voice, or at least my attempt at approximation of it having not heard it for a long time, you can find me at Stupacabra on Twitter and Stuart Chip on Blue Sky, though I don't really post on Blue Sky that much. As Elon Musk Edge's Twitter ever closest to oblivion,

you can bet your bottom. be on Blue Skymore. O' to be a Flintstone and never have heard of Twitter or Elon Musk. O to be a Flintstone. They didn't even have social media. It was called StoneShill Media and it was just chiseling things onto a wall. And then painting it. Yeah.

And then painting it, yeah. Oh, God. If you enjoy retronauts, you'd like to hear more of this brilliant podcast. You can donate. You can go on Patreon and give us either $3 a month or $5 a month, $5 being a better idea, because you get lots and lots of cool stuff. There are higher tiers than that you can read on the website, but $5 a month gets you two extra full episodes per month,

full bonus episodes, and you'll also get the weekly episodes a week early, and that will make you extremely cool and in the know, finger on the pulse and everyone will be jealous of you. You can also listen and listen to Anne Reid, I invite Brilliant This Week in Retro Column, which is only available via the Patreon. Thanks very much for listening,

and until next time, I guess there's only one thing we can say, which is yabba-na-a-da-oo! Flitstones meet the Flintstones bear a bottom-stone experimentally. Right the sound of bedrock

there a page right out of history. Someday, baby Greg will win the fight that, that cat will stay up for the night. And enjoy with the blintstones have it, gabba-dabat dut time. We'll have a gait all time.

We'll have a gait all time. We'll have a gait all time.