Retronauts - 777: Capcom's Platformer Legacy {’90s}

Episode Date: June 29, 2026

Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Patrick Kulikowski drop another quarter into the machine to continue talking about the platform action games that Capcom developed, this time in the 1990s. Only some of them are Mega Mans!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—including the first part of this miniseries! Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This Week in Retronauts, finally a platform for our opinions. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. This is actually episode 777. Even though I said last time, that was going to be 777, there were, of course, technical shenanigans that forced me to shuffle the schedule around. So that became 775. Very sad, very tragic. If you had don't know what I'm talking about. It's because you are not a patron at the Retronaut's $5 exclusive content level,

and so you missed episode 775 wherein we discussed the first half, probably, of Capcom's arcade and console platform action game legacy. That is less esoteric and complex and

Baroque than it sounds. We talked about games where you're a little guy who runs and jumps. And because that was recorded like a week ago, I was able to summon back the same people to have the second part of this discussion and bring this conversation to a satisfying conclusion in a timely fashion. That's right, breaking new ground for retronauts. Very exciting. Who do I have here on the phone with me calling in longtime listener, first time caller from the UK. Hello, it's sweet.

Was that a sort of a dig in the ribs about my inability to produce a series that isn't in excess of three episodes long? No. Actually, I was kind of thinking of myself and how like five years ago we recorded the first half of a Pokemon red and blue series that we never actually finished. Because everyone became, everyone who was on that episode became very difficult. to bring back together. So it never, never actually happened.

Yeah, I mean, in all fairness, I can honestly say that that's happened with me as well in mind. So maybe one day we'll circle around and get that final Lord World episode done. Yeah, and, you know, then there's like the ongoing Metroidvania book club series and the Final Fantasy Tactics book series that I am very much in arrears about. So anyway, finally. Finally, joining our jackass shenanigans, we have calling in. Patrick Kulikowski, former Capcom USA employee, no longer, but still very much a devout

Capcom fan and a Breath of Fire fan boy. But I'm talking about platformers today. Patrick's opinions do not represent Capcom of America or Capcom of Japan. No, because I'm not even employed there anymore. Please do not try to get him fired from Capcom because that would make you look very stupid. Because that already happened. Was it because of the first time you were on retronauts? Did we get you sacked? No, no.

Okay. That's good. That would feel very guilty. Yeah, no. Without going to into the weeds, it was a, it was a culling. Yeah. Typical game industry. They love those.

Yeah. A third of the games industry has lost their job in the past two. years. This industry sucks ass. But you know what doesn't suck ass? Great Capcom platform action games from the past and you know if they still made them from the present but they don't.

So we'll just talk about the ones in the past. Actually, we left off last time with a game that is maybe not that great. We are up to 1989. We talked about Strider, the arcade game, which is so cool.

But now we have to talk about Strider the NES game. which, boy, it's pretty okay, and I want to like it more than I do, but it needs to be better than it is for me to like it more than I do. It's just, you know, I need something to work with here. Capcom, what were you doing? What were you doing, Capcom? Someone wanted to talk about Strider NES. I've actually talked about it a lot. I am not very good at Strider on the NES, and I didn't get super far into it, but I still kind of appreciate it. It gives off a bit of a bit of a Bionic Commando, NES vibe, because you have like the map screen and multiple, like, destinations to approach and similar quality and oddball translation.

I think my favorite line is, please wait, A. Kane is up there and the commander has the key. And I was kind of taken aback with the intro where your striders instructions are to find his teammate and kill him because he had been captured and can no longer be trusted. So I thought that was kind of interesting. But yeah, I think the game was just too hard for me and I never really gave it more than like the first level, really. Yeah, so there's a website or a YouTube channel called Displaced Gamers that has gone into what went wrong with Strider for NES. And it's mostly that it's kind of weirdly programmed. And there's like one line of code that that's, if you change it, the game just plays much better.

It's got these really floaty jumps, and you're supposed to do these. You're supposed to be able to do this, what's called a triangle jump where you jump from the walls, like wall to wall, kind of like Super Metroid. But it's even like the timing is even fussier than in Super Metroid, which is saying something. That one's a tricky one to do. But yeah, like that's a foundational maneuver in Strider for NES as opposed to in Super Metroid where it's like, hey, here's a cool thing you can also do. And yeah, something about the way its program just makes everything miserable.

There's a, you know, I captured a lot of footage for the game for my NESWorks video on it. And there's this section in the Africa stage where there's all these moving platforms that you have to like ascend. They move horizontally. and they are even glitchier than the little floating head platforms that shoot at you in Mega Man, which is really saying something. But there's something weird about the way Strider jumps and he like jumps to a certain height and then just kind of like glides across. It's like he hits his head on the air. It's really, really challenging.

And if they fixed that, the game would actually be really good. It does kind of the Metroidvania thing, not quite, but similar. sort of an action RPG-ish thing, where you have this space station that you teleport down to different areas of the world to. And, you know, initially you can only go to certain spaces, but you get keys and powers that unlock other areas. And you have to kind of go back and forth and figure out, like, oh, I've already been to Kazakh SSR, but now I need to go back to Cossack SSR to open up this new area and find a new thing that will then let me go to a new place. and it's got a pretty good little flow to it.

And as Strider, here you explores, he becomes stronger, gains more experience and health and skills and things like that. So, like, I want to like it. It's so my thing. And I did play it all the way through back in the day, but it just, it's not really up to Capcom standard

from that era. It's from the same time as Mega Man 2. And Mega Man 2 is so well made. It's just like such a precision piece of engineering so beautifully programmed and so tight and responsive. And strider is not. It feels very glitchy. There's like loading screens, which is very unusual for an NES cartridge. It just feels like they kind of whiffed it on this one.

Some of the vertical scrolling was kind of awkward, too, from what I recall, yeah. If there's one thing they kind of nailed about, you know, the striderness of it all, it's the standard. attack, that like swishy, like blade attack, you can like mash it rapidly. Yeah, the cipher. Thank you. That at least felt satisfying to just like continue repeatedly pressing and activating. But then you have like this really awkward standing jump that I guess he like aims the cipher upwards, which, you know, despite having not played much of it, I have, and I still haven't really found

a use of it that early in the game. but... Well, the thing you do with raising your cipher, you can't do anything with that at the beginning, but I think you go to Japan and you gain the ability to charge your cipher. So you stand there and hold it up and you have to hold it for a second or two, and then it charges up and you can fire a plasma beam. So it's like this vestigial element that you don't need until you do need it. Interesting. Anyway, a strange little game has some moments, but... Yeah, it's a tie-in with the manga that Katokawa published that never came to the U.S.,

but this game never went to Japan. So there's like the manga in Japan and the game based on the manga in America, and never shall the Twain meet. It's a big old mess. They did not pull off the multimedia sensation that they were aiming for. It's unfortunate. But at the same time, it's like hard to say that they could replicate the arcade magic of the original on an NES.

It kind of makes me wonder if, like, Super Famicom S&S would have been a better place to attempt this. Have you played Ronsaber? I've heard of it. I remember seeing it in magazines and stuff, I never tried it myself. Yeah, Ronsaber is like, we have Strider at home for Super NES.

And it's not too bad. It's pretty good. Cool. You know, it's a solid substitute. No, this was Capcom's era of not attempting to perfectly replicate arcade experiences on NES because they knew it couldn't work, which is why I think they based it on the manga and gave it more of an adventure feel. And that's fine.

Like, I don't think anyone saw that arcade game and was like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen in a video game. I bet I can have a perfect facsimile of this on NES because they could not. And I think everyone kind of knew it by that point. But I still, you know, like it's a step down from Bionic Commando and Mega Man 2 or a couple of steps down, really. Just in terms of programming quality and overall design and kind of like the way things fit together. It's almost there, but not quite. It feels like they just shipped something that wasn't really complete and said, we just got to make some money off of this. Let's get it out the door, which is a damn shame because it could have been something special.

And really the 2014 Strider comes pretty close to, I think, being the NES game experience, but properly realized. Right. A commendable soundtrack on the NES, though, by Harumi Fujita. I think the music is probably one of the more standout elements of it. Speaking of multimedia sensations, actually the next few games have a bit of that going on. First, there's the Willow arcade game, which admittedly, I've never seen in person. So I've never really played it. But from what I've seen of it, it's a fun little kind of a, you know, building on Black Tiger, but a bit more linear than that.

And you alternate between playing as Willow, who can cast spells, and Med Mardigan, who's a sword guy. And there's like action scenes. It's another Tokoro Fujiwara game, like you can tell by the graphics. and it has some bits that are kind of redolent of Strider Arcade, like a sled ride through the snow, just not as cool as Strider. I'm not sure what the timing is arcade-wise, but there were a few Capcom platformers around this time,

Willow, not to get ahead, but Lunar Nemo, the arcade version of that, and also Midnight Wanderers, which was part of Wonder 3. They all seem very similar to me in how they play. I'm not sure if they're. is any actual kind of crossover, but it feels like they found a format for sort of an arcade platform and went, let's just use this for a bit. It could be. How would you describe that format, Stuart? The problem is the only way I can think to describe it is to compare it to other games by other people, which in that is still quite obscure. It reminds me of the game's Spin Master, which I think is a NeoGeo job.

But basically, they seem to be these kind of, well, actually Strider isn't a bad comparison. but they're not quite a set piece led as that. They seem a little bit like the equivalent of a side-scrolling, beat them up, except there's some jumping. It doesn't seem to be really super-based around actual platforming, more around, just kind of like shooting, bashing enemies out of the way, and making steady progress. Because, like, Little Nemo, you get the train stage,

which we know from the NES game, which we'll talk about, but in this it's a much more straightforward kind of a bit of business, and that's how Willow looks to me. And my understanding is the home version of Willow was nothing like this. it was more like a Zelda thing, right? Yeah, that's the one I'm familiar with the NES version. Yeah, tell me more about the arcade version of Little Nemo because I actually did not even know that existed.

I totally overlooked that in putting together notes for this. Well, it kind of appeals because to me it's just kind of a reasonably straightforward side-scrolling platform where it's sort of the stage archetypes are similar to the NES game, except it loses the puzzle slash adventure element in favor of more straightforward I guess kind of, he's got like a little staff thing that he hits people with. And I'm really struggling to think of a good comparison here. It's a very kind of, I mean, calling it generic is maybe unfair, because that sounds like I'm saying it's bad.

It's fine. It's the kind of thing I would like. It's entirely playable, quite nice looking. I think like the NES game, it's based on that sort of Japanese slash western movie from like 1990 or something. but yeah it's just it's so obvious it's such a I don't know here it is you just gesture to it and go here's your platform game it's got little Nemo in it you don't transform or anything to my memory you just walk around and you hit things and then you die and you put another quarter in I'm making it sound a lot

worse than it actually is though just just looking at graphics like screenshots kind of kind of has a magician lord sort of thing going on yes that's except before magician lord yeah it's like that except it won't make you like the angriest person on the planet when you play it. So probably not designed by Tokoro Fujiwaro. I have absolutely no idea, unfortunately. It's a very elusive game. It's not like they've ever re-released it or anything.

And people don't really talk about it. It's fine. It's enjoyable. I mean, Spin Master is the closest I can think of. It really does feel like that or like Top Hunter, another NeoGeo game. Just those NeoGeo platforms, magician lord, that you mentioned, where you're just kind of going left to right,

climbing up a few things. It's nothing amazing, but you won't regret putting like your quarter in it and having a go, I don't think. So the weird thing about the Little Nemo games is that they're licensed games, their media tie-ins. Now, the Little Nemo property was originally from like the 1910s, maybe even the turn of the century by it was a cartoon. Like these glorious full page, full-color comics that appeared once a week created by Windsor McKay. Just magnificent, beautiful. So, you know, that's public domain. But Capcom had to go and base it on a movie from like 1989.

So these games cannot be reissued because even though the overall property is in the public domain, the actual substance that the games are based on and the designs are tied to that 1989 film. So it's kind of like how you can you can have. Sherlock Holmes stories, but you can't include any of his characterization elements that post date is coming into the public domain. You can have like Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse in the public domain, but you can't do anything that's like color Mickey Mouse and has elements that were introduced, you know, any time after, what is it, like 1939 now. I can't remember exactly where the cutoff for public domain is, maybe 1929, whatever it is. It just, yeah, it's one of those weird little hiccups with copyright law?

It's kind of a good thing that Little Nemo went into public domain as long ago as it did, because otherwise now you'd get Little Nemo the Murder Master or something, like a movie. Right. Oh, I'm sure once they run out of Disney characters to butcher, they'll do that. Yeah, Little Nemo ran 1905 to 1927, so it's totally in the public domain. Yeah, and I think there's a couple of games based on it that are coming out soon for some reason, or both at the same time. Yes, that's correct.

There's a new Metroidvania called I forget Nightmare Fiends or something, Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends, and there's one other I forget, so I apologize to the other if they're listening to this. I believe that one of the people designing one of those is a Retronauts listener, so good luck with your Nemo game. Please give us the adventure that Capcom is not legally allowed to replay. So there was an NES tie-in, which is a much better-known game.

Like I have never. seen the Nemo arcade game. But Little Nemo the Dreammaster was, you know, that kind of like peak Capcom dark blue box era, you know, released right around the same time as Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Willow, et cetera. So it has, you know, quite a bit of cachet, duct tales. People were like, oh, I see that blue box and I expect good times. And I never actually really got on with this game because I saw that blue box, I was like, wow, look at those graphics. This is going to be totally like Mega Man. And it's really not.

It is not a game that is like Mega Man. It is a very nice looking game, and it seems to control really well. But it's also, it takes a different approach to action. And I don't think my little child brain, which was actually a teenager brain, but it was still very small. I don't think it could comprehend that change up in terms of, you know, gameplay and and expectations. So I just kind of rented it and said, I don't know about this.

But I'm looking forward to getting to that in NES works, because I feel like it's the kind of game that I'd be like, oh, this is a great idea, very cool. I like this now. I could be wrong, though. What do we think about Nemo? Yeah, I dig this one. My caveat is,

I think this game is really, really fun and pretty much vintage kind of Capcom NES for like four levels. Then it becomes all of a sudden really, really difficult. and really demanding of the player in a way that I don't think the game really trains you for until that point. And which also kind of feels a little bit on Capcom of that era. I don't really think of them as kind of like a sudden difficulty spike kind of a company. They've always been pretty good at either being impossible from the beginning or having a reasonable difficulty curve.

Yeah, the sudden difficulty spike is more of a Sega thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I couldn't deny that one. I've been playing a lot of Sega games lately, and they do that. They're like, here's a level, have fun, now die. Yeah, that is true. I can't really deny that.

But no, I do like this. I think it's a little bit even, in terms of visuals, I think it's even a bit of a step-up from like Duck Tales and from Mega Man too. And I think it handles better than probably like the Mega Man three does in terms of slowdown and stuff. So it's really polished and it should be great. But then I think that the level design just goes astray about halfway through the game. And it's possible that I just suck and should get God. But no, I do think this is one is a bit rough.

But cool game. And I really like the train stage. And I think that's a really interesting platforming set piece in the game. And also quite challenging. Makes me feel bad. You say it starts getting really harder on level four and I've never made it through level two. That's kind of where I stopped. But I like the idea.

of like assuming monster forms or even like riding them right from the get-go. There's this little character, I forget his name, that explains basically the way you play the game. Like it even like stops and like, this is your tutorial here. Just feed the monsters candy and you can ride them. What that character doesn't say though is sometimes you just end up wearing their skin, which is kind of weird. But yeah, just like you feed them one or two candy pieces and that.

that allows you to like jump on them. If it's like an ape or a gorilla, then you can ride them. But if it's like a frog type creature, then you just become frog suit Nemo and start swimming underwater, which gives me Mario 3 vibes. But I like that idea. And I can't think of too many early examples from that era where like you're assuming the form of enemies to be like them and, you know, get ahead in the level. So I'm sure there were examples of that, but it felt kind of novel for the time.

Yeah, you can kind of point to Wonder Boy 3, the Dragon's Trap. You're not becoming an enemy exactly, but you become, you know, different Beastman forms and have to kind of figure things out that way. And the idea of like riding enemies, you know, would really kind of take off in a, or not enemies necessarily, but riding creatures as like a companion would really take off with Super Mario World. then you got Adventure Island the following year. Adventure Island, too. I mean, it would kind of become a thing that would become a lot more prevalent in games. But I do feel like Little Nemo was kind of getting ahead of the game in that sense, you know, jumping on the trend, as it were, this being a platform action game.

And, you know, the component of throwing candy at enemies to, like, coax them to your side is cute. And I do think it's interesting that, you know, the thing that I struggled with, I guess, as about this game when I played it was that it's not really a game where you have innate attack powers. It's a platform action game where you're really pretty much helpless until you, you know, take on the form of an animal companion or start riding an animal around. So there is a lot of like a puzzle component to it, I think Stewart said earlier. And I agree. like figuring out like, how can I get past this?

I can't turn into an animal right now, you know, or the animals that are available here aren't necessarily the ones that are going to help me get past this section, so I need to figure it out. This may be a little bit of a stretch, but it reminds me a tiny bit of Blastermaster when you get out of the Sophia and you're just really vulnerable. But it's done obviously in a different sort of way here. There's a bit more of a resource management type thing going on with your candy. is in where, because I haven't played it for a while, so I apologize to anyone listening if this is wildly off base. But as I recall, it's sort of like, okay, you've got to find where these animals are.

You've got to figure out how to get to them safely and then where they can then get you to. And as the game kind of goes on, the levels get a bit less left to right and a bit more top right, then bottom right, then like top left, then bottom left. Then you can make your way over to the right to the exit. And it's cool. I dig it. I'd like to play it again sometime soon and see if it still dig it or if it's still impossible. I think there are some creatures that are just clearly, you can't do anything with these guys besides jump on them, take them out. Which confuse me at first. It's like, I'm feeding them candy and it's doing nothing. So that's Little Nemo, a game that I should and will play sometime soon for NES works.

So there we go. Also, from the year 1990, we have, it's not really a platformer, but it kind of is in some ways. Street Fighter 2010, the final fight. Somehow, they got the names of two brawlers in there, and it is not either of those games. Street Fighter 2010 for NES is a very strange little game. This was the era where I feel like Capcom had this intuition that Street Fighter as like a brand and a concept had something to it. It had Moxie. and they just couldn't figure out what to do with it.

So, you know, you got things like Final Fight being developed as Street Fighter 89 before it actually shipped his final fight. And you had this game as Street Fighter 2010, which took place 21 years after Street Fighter 89, and it doesn't really have anything to do with Street Fighter. And then the following year, you got Street Fighter 2, and then everyone said, ah, okay, that's the thing. But up until that point, they were just kind of like, I don't know, whatever the hell. We'll just do something with Street Fighter.

And so we got this very strange game where you play as in America, Ken, as in like, yes, that kin, but old and a cyborg. Or in the Japanese version, just a guy named Kevin, who has nothing to do with any Street Fighter character whatsoever. God knows why they put the name on it. but you go from place to place, level to level, and you kind of warp in, and there is some platforming and like some agility contest stuff that you have to sort of wade through, but you're trying to take down target enemies, and you don't fight them exactly in like the fighting game sense. It's more like a shootout duel, and you have to like, you know, it's basically like a bunch of boss fights. So kind of doing the alien soldier thing before Treasure got there,

but not doing it very well or very coherently. And also, again, tying it to Street Fighter. And sometimes to get to the bosses, you have to do some platforming and, you know, jumping around these stages. And yeah, the fights don't take place in like flat arenas. A lot of them take place in areas with multiple levels and, you know, not complex architecture. But definitely like some obstacles you have to work around and have to figure out how to make your way to the villain and how to make use of the scenery to your advantage. So it had some interesting ideas. It's just a really weird choice of branding. Yeah.

It does have neat ideas. I liked being able to scale walls, even though it takes them getting used to. I myself could not get past the second or third level of the game because it was really difficult. but I have to shout out my friend Greg Moore, who also used to work at Capcom with me for being a staunch defender of Street Fighter 2010. And you can look up a blog he wrote for Capcom USA 12 years ago that really kind of goes into how to master the game. If you don't know how to play the game right, then you're just going to have a bad time. But there are some good tips of like where backflipping. makes you invincible during that whole animation.

So there is some strategy involved there where you can backflip, you can shoot downwards while back flipping. There's like diagonal shots you can do and even combos, like a kick, kick, punch punch combo. So there are those elements, but I think the crux of it is you're collecting these power-ups that are strown about, you know, the fighting arena that you're in. And getting those is super key to like just being. absolutely OP, but the moment you're hit, you lose that, and that's kind of the crux there. If you don't get hit, you're going to have a better time, but of course you're going to get

hit. It's an NES difficult game, so that's where a lot of the frustration and the difficulty comes into play. And I also have to credit Greg for casting just a little bit of shade at the Angry Video Game Nerd review of this game, which lambasted it. And that kind of seem to be, kind of seem to assume all the discourse around it is just like, oh, it's bad because it's been panned by the angry video game nerd. And he kind of used that blog post to kind of, uh, give more context and kind of, and kind of chide that like, uh, like counterpoint. This game is actually really good if you know how to play it. But with that being said, it was just way too difficult for my taste. Um, I love that since then, Capcom has, um,

immortalized the game in Street Fighter 6. There's like an area, the starting plaza and world tour mode of the game where it shows a bunch of logos or, you know, Street Fighter titles like etched in pavement and Street Fighter 2010 is among them. And there's even, if you look up the Shadalu, CRI, it's a character database for the Street Fighter series, like an official one. Kevin Stryker is like officially in that database. base and and like their argument is it's like a parallel universe to to the Street Fighter Final Fight universe.

Okay, well, now that we're getting that character whose name I forget, like the weird girl who has portals and stuff, who appears to be from another dimension in Street Fighter 6, does that mean they're going to be pulling in Kevin Striker at some point? Man, I would love to see that personally. Yeah, that would be really good. A fun little throwback. Yeah. I liked this game.

I didn't really get it, but I did. I played it, and I remember thinking, this doesn't suck at all. I mean, it's hard to get to grips to, as you say, Patrick, but this is not bad. Like, you can, my close personal friend, the angry video game would, I'm going to hold my hands up here, probably may be wrong on this one, but also I'm one of, I'm someone who rails against the idea of an internet video, becoming the de facto public opinion of a video game, which happens far too often. Yeah. And Street Fighter 2010, yeah, it deserves. the re-released. I mean, it was on 3DS and Wii U, I think. That was one of the games they decided

to put on the virtual console. I'm pretty sure I had it on my 3DS, and yeah, it was neat. It sort of reminded me of this rare game for the NES called Time... I think it's called Time Lord. There's nothing to do with Doctor Who, and it's unbelievable, it's a horrible piece of garbage, but

this is like a good version of that. If you don't really know what you're going to get on each stage, the stages are sometimes quite short and breezy, and then sometimes they're surprisingly lengthy. and something about that variety is quite appealing. And honestly, Alien Soldier isn't the worst point of comparison. That's why I made it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me rephrase that. Alien Soldier is the best point of comparison. And, I mean, it plays absolutely nothing like it anyway, but the structurally, it's not dissimilar. So, yeah, I mean, don't listen to my close and beloved friend, James Rolf. Just give it a good for yourself, you know. It's fine to listen to him. just remember that it's a bit. He's playing a part and making jokes.

He's not even really angry. He's sometimes in good mood. Yeah. Yeah. When I met him in person, he was pretty chill. He was just like, yeah. James is a chill guy. I'm not critiquing him at all with this.

But I will say one thing he nails in that Street Fighter 2010 video is he expressed his frustration in the final stage of Street Fighter 2010. And it kind of correlated with how I felt with a lot of those NES hard. games where I don't think there's a true game over in Street Fighter 2010. I think it'll revert you back to the beginning of the stage you're at. So I don't think you can game over. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I could have sworn that that's the case. And he was just going into how the frustration of reaching that final boss, struggling with it, being sent back to the beginning, and you feel like you have the stage down to a science to reach the final boss. But there comes a

a point where you're doing it so many times that you're getting wary and you keep screwing up throughout the level. So all the things you were nailing before, it's because you're losing that willpower and everything's messing up. And that, like, that, I really felt something with that because that's happened so many times to me. And in recent tougher games, like the Souls games and stuff, like that totally is a thing where you just, everything that you were nailing to get to this moment only to die again. And now you're just doing all kinds of little, like, mini platforming screw-ups and, uh, and feeling like you're in a real rut.

I actually had that experience just a few hours ago, recording footage for blazing lasers on turbographic 16. Like the, the first three stages are so easy. I was like, man, this, this game, I can't believe how easy this is. This is not like a compile game at all. But the final stage, let me tell you. Um, like there was one point where I died and respawned back at the checkpoint. And before the screen had even, uh, scrolled like halfway up, uh, I died again.

Like something flew off the screen, flew in from off the screen and I was in the wrong place. I, I, like, I've done this loop like five or six times already. And this thing has never hit me before. I've never seen this thing before. Where did this come from? So, yeah. That, I was just like, you know, it just wears on you after a while. So I get it.

I get it. It's a very deflating feeling, yeah. But I will say that Street Fighter 2010 looks really good. Like the background elements, the tile maps and stuff for the backgrounds, really cool and detailed and interesting. The character sprites are pretty elaborate and detailed and have some pretty good animation, some of them. It's a really nice-looking game. I seem to remember it having really good music. music. It's actually, there's a lot going for it. It is really complex. It gives you a lot

to do with two buttons. But yeah, I feel like this one was kind of misunderstood. And I misunderstood at the time. I was like, Street Fighter, isn't that a game about punching people? And I never rented it. And then Street Fighter 2 came out. I was like, is this the same thing? What's going on? And then I played Street Fighter 2 and loved it and looked at the back of the box of Street Fighter 2010 at the rental shop and said, you know what? That's not it. This is not the street fighter that I want. So I never touched it until actually 2010 when I decided I should play it and write about it for OneUp.com. And I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it's interesting and quite varied and just a game that like every level throws something different at you. And you don't really know what to expect except that you're going to fight some futuristic guy in a futuristic setting.

And that's kind of neat. All right. Moving on, it's time for codename Viber. Technically, not a Capcom developed game. This was developed by Arc SystemWorks, the company that brought us the NES version of Rolling Thunder. And boy, does it show. It's basically Rolling Thunder.

I looked at it and I was like, this is Rolling Thunder and Shinobi combined, but mostly Rolling Thunder. I would say nine parts Rolling Thunder to one part, Shinobi. I will say that code name Viper is better than the NES version of Shinobi, possibly by an infinite amount. Agreed. Arguably better than Rolling Thunder.

It's definitely less demoralizing than Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder is one of those games where, like, every screen of progress you make feels amazing. And then something happens and you're sent back to the checkpoint. You know, just keep continuing all you want. but, like, you are going to die. And the enemies have really, really interesting, dynamic, sometimes surprising programming. And they have lots of different behaviors. So, like, you can tell that when they sat down and designed Rolling Thunder, they watched

playtesters and said, okay, the player has learned some tricks and they're going to do this thing. So what we need to do is thwart that by putting a surprise. right where, you know, they land from a jump or when they duck to shoot, like we're going to dick them over every single action they make. Like everything you do, every, every attack you launch against enemies, every evasion you attempt against enemies, there is a counter for that. And it will kill you and you will have to go back to the checkpoint and maybe restart the stage. And after a while, like, you really start to admire it. Like, they really went to tremendous. lengths to make sure that I just get screwed over no matter what I do. And I could not have

predicted that they could have predicted that I would do that. And I couldn't have guessed how they would counter it. And it's actually really admirable and amazing. But it's also very deflating, especially because it does the Ghost and Goblins thing, where it's like, oh, you beat the game. Well, you didn't beat the game. Now you got to do the exact same thing all over again. And this time, you get to fight nuclear Cobra Commander and the KKK hood. Anyway, that's Rolling Thunder not codename Viper. Code name Viper is much kinder. It's tough, but it's beatable.

It's another one that I really like visually as well. And it runs very silky smooth. Silky smooth. And also has one of my favorite things ever, which is that there are doors that you go in in the background to get power-ups and things in rest of. hostages and sometimes in one stage you'll spin the door around and there's a human skeleton on the back which then collapses into a pile of bones and disappears and they didn't need

to do that and I respect them for going to the extra mile and it adds a nice sort of flavor to the whole thing I think this is yeah I like this game a lot it's a lot less aggressive than rolling thunder but it's still challenging and it's it's fun I always dismissed it as just a rolling thunder clone and I never really gave it much of a chance beyond the first level, but I also just couldn't get over the fact that the main character spray has the unfortunate coloring of his pants is kind of like a fleshy tan, and it really looks like he's just parading around without pants. He's in the jungle, they're khakis.

That's why they call him code name Viper. Thank you. No, no, there's no secret about that viper. So yeah, no, it's a, it definitely distinguishes itself from Rolling Thunder once you get going. And, you know, like I said, it's not as cruel a game. Like in Rolling Thunder, if you duck into those doors in the background, one of those neon Klansmen is just going to hang around outside the door.

Like, you can't get out again. You have to time ducking into a door to avoid, like, to make sure there are no enemies around or within close range of you. Because as soon as you do, they're just like, they do that like hunched over looking in all directions, but they stand right outside the door. You come out, you get hit, you lose half your life. You know, you can only take two physical blows from an enemy or one shot, and you're dead. Code name Viper, you can actually duck into doors and use them not just to collect ammo, but the unmarked doors, you can just go in there and hide, and enemies will, like, look for you,

but they'll wander more. So it gives you more of a tactical opportunity. It kind of feels like they said, what if we made Rolling Thunder fair? And I think they did a good job of it. But you've got the same thing. You've got like a handgun, you know, a pistol with pretty much unlimited ammo. It slows down once you run out of ammo count for it. But you can also get submachine guns and you can jump multiple levels. And the levels become a lot more free form in codename Viper. The last level is technically a drug lord's manner.

But like it's an absolutely. crazy house. Like, it's so huge, and it's full of all these interconnecting corridors and pipes and stuff. So you go into one and you're like, it's like a pneumatic tube that shoots you way across the house. There's, like, it's basically the size of a Coliseum, and this is where this drug lord lives. So it's very much, you know, the early 90s war on drugs thing. You're, you're fighting in, I think, an unnamed Latin American country. Maybe it's Nicaragua, but I think they kind of just left it unstated, but you're clearly like fighting cartels and, you know, going American paramilitary foreign incursions, probably violating the sovereignty of another nation.

But, you know, you're an American, so it's okay, you're allowed. And if you look past the politics, it's a really good game. I feel like I, yeah, again, I didn't give it a fair enough shake despite having it for such a long time. I did find it interesting that there's some cross-pollination between Capcom and Arc System Works on this one, because the composers were Capcom despite the game being developed by Arc SystemWorks. So I was always curious about what that, what was going on there in terms of the development. Yeah, I mean, it could have been like a collaboration or it could have been like Arc SystemWorks made the game, you know, like the program did design the levels or whatever. And then Capcom was like, we've got some grade jam. for you, here you go.

Right. I always think of Arc System Works as like a company about visuals more so than music, although I guess Guilty Gear is like entirely themed around music, so what do I know? True, true. I know nothing. Anyway, I like Codename Viper. I will always remember I owned this game. I saw this at the same time as Snake's Revenge at Toys R Us.

They both came out the same time in the same shipment. I was like, man, metal gear. I love metal gear, but I don't know. This looks off. I don't think I'm going to get it. So I got this instead of Snake's Revenge, and it was the right choice. And then that summer, we had some friends of the family who had to stay with us. Their kids had to stay with us.

They were kind of my age. And their son, who was like a year older than me, got really obsessed with the game. And I would go into my bedroom. and every day he would be sitting there playing this game trying to beat it. Like, I had blasted through it in, you know, a few days because I was some sort of weird mutants who just destroyed NES games. And I wish I still had those skills now, but I don't. But he struggled and I would watch him and just think, God, I wish I were playing my NES right now instead of watching him bumble his way through Kodan Kviper. But, you know, God bless him.

He did eventually beat it. And it was like the happiest day of his life. So way to go, Matthew. Good job, Matthew. All right. So going back into the world of licenses, media licenses, the follow-up, the exciting follow-up to Ducktails. It's not Duck Tales, too. It's Chippendale Rescue Rangers.

A game that kind of takes a step backward graphically, but all in a good cause, because it is a cooperative, simultaneous platformer, which you just did not see all that often. And God bless them for attempting to do this. That's really cool of them. Yeah, I do appreciate that. I feel like it sort of came at the expense of the stage of design and complexity, but that was kind of necessary because if you've got two guys sort of jumping around, two chipmunks or whatever they are, jumping around,

I assume the chipmunks because they're called chip, I don't know, leaping around all over these kind of like, you know, the kind of levels that you get in a video game where you're a small guy. So like normal things, but they're big now. Big wallet Mario. But the gimmick here, obviously, being you don't really have any sort of direct attacks. You've got to pick up crates and throw them at enemies,

which is reminding me of, well, Mario too, I guess, in a way, except you don't have to stand on top of the things to pick them up and throw them. You can't throw enemies either. You just have to use these crates, and I think, nothing else. And, you know, I dig the game. it's fun to play with the friends you can just pick them up and throw them off cliffs and stuff which is always hilarious but

I do kind of feel like that that's kind of it which was you know probably was it was and is enough but it's not a game that for me it sticks out the kind of you know it's no duct tales it's it's it's just a good game a cool game to revisit but not to like play through the whole of because I feel like after two stages

you've seen everything in the game more or less it's just different arrangements of the same kind of two elements but it's fun it's a kind of fun arcadey, not very difficult, fun game. Yeah, I feel the same way there. Never really finished it because it didn't really, you know, capture my attention for more than like two or three levels.

But I did like the, the co-op aspect of it. And yeah, it wasn't bad or anything. It just, yeah, it didn't stick out as much as the other Disney Capcom titles to me. And they made two of these, right? Yes, there was a Rescue Rangers too, yeah. Yeah. I believe it is now very, very expensive. Yes, probably. Yeah, one of the rare NES games by far.

Yeah, this one was a super easy game. A friend and I rented it and just breezed through it. And we're kind of like, whoa, that's it. But, you know, keep in mind, it's made for kids. It is a children's television show license. So, you know, it's appropriate for the age. If you're like six or seven and, you know, you and your sibling got this for a birthday or Christmas or something, it would have been perfect. It's like, here is your introduction to the cool, exciting world of NES platformers. We're going easy on you,

but you can do Ninja Guide in next. Yeah, it's super polished and it's incredibly easy to play and accessible. Like, once you figure out the things you can do, there won't ever be any more things. It's just these jump and throw stuff and everything else revolves around that. And it doesn't have to stay as welcome

to use the cliche. It's just the enjoyable games. a blowthrough and you can do the whole thing like 20 minutes. It's even easier by yourself because you're not, you've got to me trying to ruin it for you, throw you off things and take your boxes before you can get them and stun you with the boxes and because that's a fun grief. It's a griefer game, you know? And proof that Tokuro Fujiwara could work on a title where it doesn't punish the player

unfairly. So kudos to that. And it, look, no, go ahead, sorry. I was just going to say, luckily the, Both Chippendale titles are in the Disney Afternoon Collection that released, oh my God, it's been nine years already. I feel old. It just came out on the switch too, new versions.

It did. It did. Yeah, thanks to Atari and digital clips on that one for sure. Yeah. So luckily, you don't have to buy an expensive sequel cartridge, although the first one is still relatively cheap these days. Yeah, you know, the first one came out in 1990. that was pretty much the pinnacle of NES.

Like any game that came out in 90 is probably going to be pretty affordable because it was probably produced in enormous quantities because that was when the NES market was at its biggest. And then, you know, 91, you start to get to slide into 16 bits with Genesis really taking off and Super NES around the corner. So, yeah, it's crazy what a drop-off there was in like two years. The 1990 games, easy to find cheapest chips, as they would say in other places that Stuart might know about. And then 1992, like all those games from Taito and Capcom are so expensive because they were probably produced in, you know, minimum order quantities kind of situation. Yeah. Yeah. I distinctly remember, I do recall the development of Disney Afternoon collection a little bit, but there was some consternation.

on the Disney side with, there's like a cutscene of the fat cat with like a cigar. And I do recall there being some discussions about that and some concerns. But thankfully, no ROM hacking had to be done to remove that or anything like that. But, you know, as someone low in the totem pole,

I found that to be quite an interesting conversation. I never get that because it's not like he's glorifying it. You don't want to be like a big fat cat with a smoker. Yeah. You know, I mean, and he's got terrible fashion taste as well, these big sort of velour purple. And he just sits by the desk all day getting balls thrown in his face. Like, what's up with that?

And I'm pretty sure little kids have seen cigars in the real world, too. I mean, it reads like a villain, you know? So that's fine. It's good to, it's good to see villains do terrible things. Not the good guy, yeah. See, you know, I'm so I've got to mention this because it happened the other day. that movie Michael, the really, really bad movie about Michael Jackson. And there's a scene in the movie where there's like a montage of him becoming successful.

And one of the shots they used to show him becoming successful is like the, you know, the fat cats in the studio in the label are cheat, like, what's the word? They're like toasting two whiskeys and they light up these massive cigars and put them in their mouths. And I'm like, that's like the most archetypal, most obvious thing you could possibly do. Like, no, actually, you can't act. They're standing in front of a load of like gold records. It's like, come on. And, you know, nobody wants to be like that. Nobody wants to be like fat cats.

It's just, it's warning children away from the dangers for cigars. A, cancer, and B, you turn into a dick. Fair. Absolutely fair. Yeah, corporations are really weird and sensitive about certain imagery. I don't get it, but I'm not a corporation. So that's Chippendale, Rescue Rangers. Now I want to talk about, we're going to go back to the Ghost and Goblin series, but in a fun, cool way that doesn't hate you quite so much.

And that is Capcom's very first ever portable game, a little adventure called Gargoyles Quest. And it is so good and so interesting that I can't believe we've never really talked about it in depth on retronauts that I can recall. Maybe someone else has, but I think we've just touched on. it. I've just touched on it in passing. And it rules. It's an awesome game. Like, I could, I could make this a full Gargoyles Quest episode if you, if you let me. I won't do that because I love everyone. But it's, it's just really good. Do you correctly love this game also? Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I love Gargoyle's Quest. Never finished it. It's a big gaming sin of mine. Yeah, I feel like you, um, you say I never finished this one a lot. Yeah.

Why am I on this? This is not the Game Finagers podcast. It's just Retronauts. Luckily, yeah. It's hard to hold my attention sometimes, I guess. I was, when I first played this, I was taken aback by the music making references to the classic Ghost and Goblin Stage 1 theme, which I thought was really cool. And then I looked up the composers and it was like a tag team of Yoko Shimamura and Harumi Fujita, which is like, wow, what an awesome combo for a Game Boy game.

The Game Boy Soundship was no joke. It was, you know, Hip Tanaka designed the thing. Like, it was his baby. So it sounds really good, even though it's like coming from a tiny little speaker, but you can plug in headphones and you got stereo. Or if you play, hey, Yanku, Alien with another person, you can get multi-matrix music. Reset the clock.

Reset the clock. See, now, I was, yeah, I'm more of a Demon's Crest guy, but I do appreciate, you know, Firebrand's first for a on portable systems. I liked that it kind of had these top-down RPG-esque segments tied in with the actual side-scrolling, like platforming bits where you latch onto walls and hover in the air, which was super awesome mechanic. Yeah, I want to say that the top-down bits are kind of calling back to the Ghost and Goblins spin-off for Famicom, and I cannot remember the name of it. Gargoyles Quest 2? No.

I didn't know that there was. I don't think I knew that there was on. This was a massive hole in my knowledge. Yeah, it's a tie-in, I want to say, with Higamaru or something like that. Oh, yes, no way. I do know that. Yeah, yeah, I heard of that. Okay, it's called, here's the reason I couldn't find it. Higemaru Makaijima. Nanatsu no Shima daibokin. So that was like a top-down, puzzle-ish, action-y adventure kind of thing. That was a spinoff of Higemaru and also had Ghost and Goblins elements in it.

I think there's like the unicorn guy and, yeah, red armor is on the cover of it, the box. art. So it's a strange little game, but anyway, all of this is to say that I kind of feel like Ghost and Goblin, or sorry, Gargoyle's Quest is an attempt to kind of lean into Higey Maru Makajima and bring it more into the Ghost and Goblins world. So there's a lot of platforming, but you also do have the top-down world travel sequences, which are not really an RPG, but there are, there are battles and stuff, encounters and towns you go into and talk to people. So it has this kind of action-r-r-G vibe. And it's a little bit of a shocking game because you play as the Red Armour, firebrand. So it's like all of a sudden you're being put in the most frustrating, powerful,

devastating character in the Ghost and Goblin series. And he starts out as just this weak little baby. He just sucks so bad. He can barely fly. He can breathe fire, but like a single shot that goes halfway across the Game Boy screen, which is a tiny screen to begin with. He's just miserable. But as you play, you level up Firebrand and he gains the ability to fly, to hover. He gains different types of breath attacks. So, you know, some of them are like very powerful. There's one that's very, very useful that is like a, it's like you spit a glob instead of fire and the glob sticks to things. So you fire it at walls that are lined with spikes and it covers the spikes. So then you have like a wall grip. They were kind of doing the strider thing, except instead of just bouncing off

walls, you can grab onto walls. So you can use that to sort of wrap up walls and make your way around and travel through these kind of complicated levels considering the size of the game and the vintage of the game and the platform of the game. And you also have to use that skill a lot in some of the boss battles where you have to kind of navigate around large open spaces. I mean, the final battle with Satan or B.Ls above or whoever is very complicated. And it's just sitting in the center of the screen. but it's this sort of multi-screen scrolling space with very limited platforms and you have to maneuver around while dodging his fire and attack counterattack.

It's a challenging but cool game. I always find it's like, first of all, I always get confused because I always think the Gargles Quest is the NES game and two is the Game Boy game because it's usually the other way around. But no, the Gameboy game was first and then the sequel was on the NES and was great as well. And there was a Game Boy version in Japan as well. Oh, really? Oh, wow. There's so many Macamuro games that I don't know about. This is really upsetting for me.

But I'll check all these out. But yeah, no, I always think this one is like, with the aesthetic of goals and ghosts, which is really cool. They take this game, which is kind of about, goals and ghosts being about really making your decision and committing to it. And Gargoyle's Quest, always to me, feels a lot more like you've got scope. If something doesn't go right, you can hold. hover, you can sometimes, you know, even fly. You can cling to waltz. You've got a lot of options. And it

makes for a game that really, it's not, it's a very challenging, but in a different kind of way that I think is a lot more kind of fair. I mean, fair is the wrong work. I don't think goals and ghosts is unfair, but you know what I mean? Less challenging, I guess. Less demotable. Yeah, less intimidating. Less cruel, yeah. Although it does front load difficulty.

Like, the introductory stage, which you have to play through to get to the rest of the game, is really hard, because Firebrand is so limited, and there's, like, no room for mistakes in that stage. You can take, like, two hits and you die. And it kind of comes out of the gate swinging. Like, there's tough enemies, and you really have to kind of learn basically the entire sandbox, despite it being very limited.

So if you can make it past that opening introductory stage, beat the boss, the entire game after that is much easier, honestly. I like that the, it's more of a Makai Mura, than the classic Ghost and Goblins games in the sense that you are in the demon village. You are roaming about and talking to NPCs and that sort of thing. I always found that kind of interesting about it. Yeah, there's a little bit of a world being developed here. And, you know, Firebrand, the Red Armour, is considered like the hero of the demon realm,

because he flies around and he kicks, you know, the asses of knights in the real world. but now he's being called to defend the demon realm from an invader who's even worse. So, you know, you're like, that's a pretty good premise. It's, you know, you've got the scariest guy in ghosting goblins and all of a sudden, like, hey, you're our only hope against this overpowering threat that, you know, can destroy even you. So good hook. And then it just takes the premise in a totally different direction. Stuart, you said that you have options when you mess up.

I think that's true to a degree, but I think that Ghosting or that Gargoyle's quest is about being very deliberate. I think, you know, ghosting goblins is about fast reactions, making split-second decisions, and as you say, committing to it. But, you know, it's always just throwing randomized stuff at you and enemies are changing up the behavior and generally just being, like, like fast, dangerous, and challenging. Whereas this game can't really do that. And I think this game turned out the way it did. Because if you play it and you, you know, play it on original hardware, it really, it's really straining.

It chugs. It's a very sluggish game. And I think they knew, like, at least at the beginning, you know, we don't, we don't necessarily have what it takes to make a fast-paced action game on Game Boy. And also, that crappy little screen really. doesn't support a fast action game. So let's do something that is more methodical and requires, you know, more cautious actions and sort of stepping back to take the time to look at the situation.

And, you know, even sometimes you need to sort of scout ahead because the screen is so small, there's so little range of vision that you need to like flap out a little bit and then turn around so you can kind of see like what's out there. But it doesn't really give you blind jumps. So it's not unfair in that sense. It's just, you know, it forces you to really be cautious and pay attention to what you're doing. And I keep talking over you and I apologize.

No, no, no, it's okay. I feel like it's something that kind of got carried forward into maybe, I don't know if it was at the same time, but the way that they design like the Rockman World games on Game Boy as well, the Mega Man Game Boy games, because they realized clearly we can't just do really the exact same. kind of stage design. We can't really get that kind of flow. So how can we condense this? And I feel like Gargoyle's Quest is very sort of like that. It lets you really sort of look at the

screen and think, okay, what have I got to deal with here? Is I've got to drop off the side of a platform that's covered in spikes and then flap under more spikes to land on the side of another platform which may or may not be moving. And yes, it's very difficult. But there's no real pressure besides your own skill. If that makes sense, that's why I don't consider it like ghouls and ghosts. It's more, it's much more, it's very, it is still difficult, but it's much more, oh, I screwed up, not that's bullshit. So I've got a lot of time for these games. I really like this style of platforming. I think it's still very unique. And they did carry some of this forward to the Mega Man X series with the wall climbing and stuff. It's not exactly the same, but I feel like it's

the bones of it of that. Yeah, I agree. I feel like they were testing some things out for sure. But it's just a really well-done game. And, you know, at the time that it came out on Game Boy, I remember a friend of mine who had a Game Boy in this game back when it first came out, let me borrow it. And I was really impressed because compared to like everything else on Game Boy at the time, it has a really solid visual look, but also it has the substance of a console game. It doesn't feel like, oh, here's a quick little time waster that you can play for five minutes and then you're done.

Like it was one of the first games to come out, at least in the U.S. on games. Gameboy where you're like, oh, this, you know, if they put this on NES, this would be, this would fit right in. This would feel, you know, substantial enough to be an NES game. It's got a password and everything. And that's probably why Gargoyles Quest 2 did go to NES because they were like, you know what, this is too good to hide away on a platform where people just want to play Tetris. Gargoyles Quest 2, that did get a Western release, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why did I think it didn't? I don't know. It was another rare cartridge, yeah. Yeah. Right, right. Hard to find and expensive now. Yep. Yeah.

Did get the virtual console treatment back in the day, at least. But not on Switch, unfortunately. Not yet. Yet, hopefully one of these days, because I know Gargoyles Quest is on there. But I was curious, Jeremy, what you thought of that American box art for Gargall's Quest, where Firebrand is green. Green? Oh, yeah, I was going to say, that's not Firebrand.

And I had to wonder. I wonder if it's because, oh, well, the Game Boy screen is green, therefore this Garterville is green. Oh, man. Would it be confusing to assign a color to a character that you can't see on Game Boy? Right. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't even look like Firebrandt.

No, he looks very dorky. He looks very happy. He looks like how Firebram would have looked in like the Captain N cartoon or something. Yeah. Yeah. I'm wrong color and I'm good happy. I thought he would exactly have sounded like that. I'm going to spit some fire at the demon

and the demon spatoon. Perfect. Thank you. I'm so glad that sound. We got it in there. Thank you. Yes. Excellent.

No one will understand this at all. That was our goal for the episode, was to get a spatoon sound effect in there. All right. Well, I guess that's all we have to say about Gargoyles Quest now that we've got the spatoon. So let's talk briefly about Mega Man 3 and 4. We don't need to litigate every single Mega Man game, but these are the ones that kind of really sort of changed up the status quo of Mega Man because Mega Man 3 introduced sliding, and Mega Man 4 introduced charging beyond atomic fire. So, like, suddenly the way that Mega Man got

around the world and interacted with the enemies, you know, the difference between Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 5 is pretty significant in terms of how you approach everything. And I don't necessarily know that it was always for the better, but I'm going to let the two of you take the floor, because I've talked about Mega Man a lot in these podcasts over the years. I think Mega Man 3 might be one of my favorite NES-era Mega Man's. Stuart, I know you've had things to say about the slide mechanic in a previous episode. Yeah, Mega Man 3 is number one hater. I still think it's a good game. I do still like it.

I'm just kind of it's, I think I'm number one hater. I think there's way too much like making you, like, like, Gemini Man's level where you just spend three hours just destroying all of those blocks in the... Gemini Man is a low point for Mega Man 3, I will admit, yeah.

But again, I like all of the Mega Man games on H&S. I think they're all great fun. I just, for three, just to be real brief about it, and then I will shut up forever. I think basically that it's slow, both performance and the way that it's structured. I always get fatigued with it by the end, And it doesn't feel breezy like the other Mega Man games.

But there's also something kind of epic about that, which I do appreciate. But, yeah. And three and four, three is like, I mean, four is just like, you reach a boss. The boss's health boss starts filling up. You go for, like, you go for a cup of tea. You go for a drive around the block. You come back. It's about halfway done.

But I still like, I like all these games. I'm just being a hater. But, yeah, Mega Man 3, a bit of a stretch too far for me. but at least it doesn't have the megabuster in it. Yeah, I really like three. I think the slide mechanic was, I think I liked it more for sliding under jumping robot masters. I thought that was a big improvement

instead of slowly shuffling under them and hoping you're within the window to avoid their whole jumping trajectory. But I think, right, this one was the one that introduced Rush and like other conventions like sliding. But the jet was a huge upgrade over the items in one and two, I felt. Marine was a bit gimmicky. I'll admit that. It only served very limited purposes and kind of just flopped around when you, like,

touched on land and became useless. But I thought those were kind of neat, amazing soundtrack by Yasuaki Fujita, more well known as Boon Boon and two tracks from two or three tracks from Hood. Rumi Fujita as well. But I also was like just love the robot master designs, except maybe Hard Man, but his hard punch is great. I loved using the power ups in this one. And, you know, for the Mega Man 2 fan boys and fan girls, you've got the dark robots where you get to revisit some of those Mega Man 2 robot masters. And I thought it was fun how you could, you know, you knew their weaknesses from 2, but now you have to think, well, which which one from 3 will work against

them and I thought that was kind of cool. And then, oh yeah, Proto Man, the debut of Proto Man as well, which was super cool. The beautiful boy. Yeah, beautiful boy. Or blues, you know, as he's known in Japan. Which is funny because he's red and Mega Man is blue. Yeah. It's all musical.

They got it mixed up. All musical. The Mega Man 4, like, I mean, again, like I said, I do like all of these games, but I've never been a fan of the Megabuster, the Charge Megabuster, because while in theory, I guess it's kind of cool. I feel like it throws the... I mean, you'll always be charging. Like, you should always be charging.

And I'm pretty sure in this game that overrides pretty much all the music. Yeah. Which is a damn shame because... It knocks out a channel of music, yeah. Yeah, because Mega Man 4's got some of the sweetest music ever. It also has some of my favorite robot masters. It has Ferrar Man, and it has Skull Man, I believe.

And those are two of the dopest ones ever. And it's got Toad Man, the dopiest one ever. Who you can just beat by just shooting at him, which is great. Yeah. But again, fantastic looking game, Mega Man 4. Toceman stage with the rain, pushing you around. I think that's really just cool looking. And I like the hidden but completely useless wire and balloon things that you can dig up.

That's just a nice little reward for exploring that you will never really need. And I think this was the first one that had two castles as well, which is also exhausting. Yeah, that was more exhausting to me for sure. I think four ranks lowest on my NES list, not saying it's bad. or anything. I think I just hate Ringman more than anything, but fantastic soundtrack. First Mega Man to have an auto-scroller stage, too, I believe.

One of the, it's either one of the Cossack or Wiley stages. I want to say Wiley, where it's an auto-scroller. Kind of akin to that one auto-scrolling Mario 3 airship level. Mega Man 2's got one, right? The dragon, kind of. I guess you could count that. Sort of. That's like a segment.

And the dragon is technically a part of the background, right? Wait, sorry, which is the order scrolling section in four? Is that dive man or is that not five when you're in the water screen? No, no. In five, it's, oh, God. Waveman. Waveman. Wave man, not dying.

Wave man. Wave man in five, yeah. In four, it's one of the latter's like Cossack or Wiley's day. Probably Wiley. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because Four has a lot of cool ideas, I think. I like to in Brightman the stage where the enemy.

is that would project the light that you could then destroy and it would darken the whole screen. It had those platforms that kind of go on the kind of sort of parable around and then fall off. It had a lot of interesting ideas, but I just, I mean, I liked it more than three because for me, I guess psychologically doing another run through versions of four of the stages have already done, except you have to fight two really big versions of the Mega Man 2 bosses in each stage. For me, I was just like, oh, good, God, because I did like the slide more than the megabuster. I think the slide is fun for giving you a very quick.

I'm over here now, kind of a move. For sure, yeah. But for me with Mega Man 3, I think the main thing it comes down to is just that it runs like not very well. I remember that having flickering, slow down, constantly interfering with jumps and stuff, and it just kind of ended up making me mad.

But also, I guess, again, I could just improve at the game. The funniest glitch in three for me, visual glitch, is the stage select itself has like a row of pixels that are just, you know, botched completely. I thought that was kind of funny. But then on the other hand, you have a Mega Man portrait in the robot, you know, in the stage select where his eyes follow a cursor. And I always thought that was really cute and really, really neat. They have that in full, but the eyes don't follow anymore, right? And it's like they run out of mind.

And that's why it's the lesser Mega. I'm completely with you on that, actually. that's enough. No, Mega Man 3 also, if memory service, it's the one where you can jump down a pit die and then jump back out the pit using the second controller cheat codes. Yeah, if you have the second controller, yeah.

Yeah, which is just superb. Just pew, pew, pew, and then just rub his back. I wasn't aware of that. In 3, you said? Yeah, 3 has a bunch of... Yeah, it was in Nintendo Power. Debug codes or something where you can, like, hold right and button 2 on the second controller,

and then when you jump, Mega Man will do like a moon jump or something. And if you jump down a pit, and you die and then you do that, he'll jump right back out of the pit again, which I love. How did I miss this? Wow, that would have made life a lot easier for me, especially in Shadow Man stage, I think. Okay, so Mega Man two or three, four. Do we have the Mega Man game? Good, bad, both, yes. Okay.

Let's talk about a game that's not Mega Man, but kind of is Mega Man. It's Megaman. And I believe this one is dear and near to Stewart's heart. That is Darkwing Duck. Um, I wouldn't say especially. I thought that was one of yours. No, I do like this game, though. I like it a lot.

I think it's a lot of fun. I like Darkwing Duck. I used to love the cartoon, and I still think it's kind of cool with Jim Cummings, and, you know, Nautchpad is back, and Lachpad rules. So I'm always excited about Nautropad's presence. But, yeah, no, I like this game. I have some issues with it, mainly being it's a game that's sort of like, for me, it's a lesser Mega Man game, because it feels like every enemy in the game is designed to either block or evade your attacks most of the time.

So you end up kind of just doing small hops up and down while firing to try and hit them at the exact moment that they're vulnerable, which goes against... Every enemy is sniper Joe. Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, I noticed that. That's how I feel about it. But I do think it's a lot of fun.

It also has this interesting kind of new mechanic. Honestly, because I say new mechanic, seriously, it's a Mega Man game. It has the exact same feel, and I'm almost certain it would be that the, the engine, it really does feel like a Mega Man game. Except you can cling to the bottom of platforms and to some kind of overhead hooks and things. The issue I have with it is that I don't think that that is infallible.

Like I remember falling through things that I'm convinced I should have grabbed onto and getting mad about it, big mad. Yeah, there were certain grappling points, even in the first level where the, yeah, the, the hitbox is very particular about you hitting like the center of it to cling on. Yeah. And that can be infuriating when you, when you're, over a bottomless pit, but also I do think it's a cool game

and I think if you would pick it up, you'd have fun with it. It's more limited in the sense that I think there's very few levels by comparison. I think there's only four initial ones and there may be three more and then it's just over. And you don't get like new weapons by beating up the bosses. So it's a little bit perfunctory in that respect, but

you've got Darkwing, you've got his gas gun. I've had a gas gun is like a concession to violence, but even that now seems quite bad. Like, it's in a weird way almost

worse. But because Dark Wing looks great, it was a fun cartoon, so the Rokes Gallery is fun to see

in this game. And they are mostly all represented with quite interesting boss fights. There's the one which is like a

warwolf, I don't know what his name was, but there's like a werewolf guy. And when he's in like a warwolf form,

you can't harm him. And when he shrinks down between transformations, he's just running around on the screen

panicking. And that's when you can shoot him and there's something quite fun about that. But now, I dug this one, and it's in the Disney Afternoon Collection, but I would not say it was a, it's better than the Turbographics Darkwing Duck game by about

10,000 degrees, so definitely don't play that one. And it's another one that got a Game Boy version as well, interestingly. Yeah. What's the deal with the Darkwing Duck for TurboGraphics? Was that not a Capcom game?

I don't think so The deal with it, if you'll forgive my profanity, is it's a huge piece of shit. It reminds me a little bit of the tailspin game on Mega Drive, which is similarly garbage, but the tailspin game is slightly better. I would advise you to check it out on YouTube or something, but then actually play it because you may get a disease.

Wow. Three out of ten on EGN, I see. That's not good. It's about as bad as the N. NAS game is good. Well, okay. Let's purge with something that I think people like, which is super ghouls and ghosts, which is not ghouls and ghosts. It's super and makes a lot of changes to the point that it's basically just a different game.

Yeah, it is. It is a sequel, isn't it? At least it seems like one to me. It's totally, God, I love this game. Same. I went back to this before this recording. I had another little blast away on it. And for one thing, it looks so good.

And this is an early Super Nintendo game, right? I'm sure it was super early. And it just looks and sounds the bees knees. I love it. They've changed it up so that Arthur can't throw weapons upwards anymore, but you can now do a double jump. And I'm trying to think of another double jump in another game before this. And this is the first one I can think of.

it's the same sort of thing where each jump you are committed to like you cannot like okay you can jump in one direction and double jump back in the other direction but you can't then move again in midair so you are locked in and what they use that for as well as giving you evasive options they make you do some real nasty platform because if you're still a ghouls and ghost game through and through this game is hard but also

I think more than any of the other games it's quite fair I always felt to blame when I was beaten by this game. And it gets nasty, but it's, it's the only one I can think about, I can routinely get to like stage three without taking a hit because it's completely doable and reasonable. Every single level, like the previous games, but even more so here, feels just completely different as well. Maybe towards the end, they start going like, here's another tower. But it's just, I love this.

It's magnificent. It's, it's one of the best platformers on the Super Nintendo for me. I love this game. Yeah, agreed. And I played it as a pretty young kid. And, you know, it's a pretty brutal game, but with enough practice, it becomes kind of second nature to me. I think I can make it up to stage five without, you know, much dying or anything like that. That's how much it's hammered in. It has really cool level design, too, with, like, the terrain, like, changing up as you're progressing. I think in the in the second half of the first level, you've got, like, hills and stuff collapsing,

giving way to these, like, flaming skeleton carts that come, like, rolling towards you that you have to dodge, which are really tricky. But again, the double jump, you know, the fact that you can execute it at any point of your jump becomes really helpful. And then you have those enormous like title waves that wipe out portions of the of land. So you have to like be careful of where you're where you're stepping, that kind of thing. And it carries forth the upgraded suits from from ghouls and ghosts, right? But I think, yeah, like getting the gold armor in this one and being able to charge up your weapons was super, super cool. And would create all kinds of crazy slowdown. But we're super satisfying to like launch a fire.

dragon from from your palms and watch it like eliminate everything on screen so i i think they did a good job of making all of the weapons useful in this even the uh the holy water uh which is just traditionally the you might as well reset if you get a weapon oh the torch i think yeah sorry the torch yes uh because the torch is still i would say not that super useful for a lot of situations but it does give you probably the most useful magic the one you mentioned which is just kind of a screen-abliterating kind of business. But yeah, the terrain deformation is just like, it goes into how the stage design is kind of set piece-led

because it goes through the first two stages. The first stage, of course, as you mentioned, first of all, they kind of introduce it to you with the graves that rise up and down, the hills that form. But then later, of course, you get the hills that form, as you mentioned, where the carts and then physics ensue, and you have to avoid these things that are now rolling towards you. It's just really clever and creative.

And then, of course, the ultimate expression of that, the tidal wave just wipes out the level that you're on, that leaves behind these evil clam things that you have to deal with. I hate those clam things. It's not like something that you've seen, you'd have seen before, you know, and even today, it's not something that you see that often. It's that level of transformation. The second stage as well, the sinking pirate ship that's gradually collapsing that then gives way

to you riding a raft over these hellish whirlpool vortexes. Then the border starts going up and down. Like, it's very cool, just really, very cool game. And then later on as well, which is a bit like Super Castlevania 4 in a way, but there is the stage that rotates, the Entire Mode 7, this stage is now going to turn at a 90-degree angle and you now go this way. It's just a really cool showcase of the system. Some slowdown, but in the game like this, you kind of want to be some slowdown.

I was going to say, I think people complain about the slowdown in this game, and I think it's a strategic... It's forced bullet time. That's how I view it here, because it slows down the action and allows you to get kind of your bearings on where you should be as so much crap is going on at once.

Yeah, I haven't played the SA1 ROM hack of Gratius 3 that takes away the slowdown. But I've heard that's like one of the hardest games you'll ever play. If you take away the slowdown in Gratius 3, all of a sudden, you have to have, you know, just godlike reflexes because everything's flying around so fast. There's so much stuff.

Right. So, yeah, yeah. Sometimes that early Super Nias slowdown was a godsend. It's not a bug. It's a feature. I want to recommend real quick the Game Boy Advance version of this because they have this kind of different arranged mode where depending on which army you've got at the end of a stage you'll go with on an upper path or a lower path.

And the upper and lower paths have stages that are like a brand new or be remakes. of ghouls and ghost or ghost and goblin stages except you have your double jump and everything. And you know, it's a little bit, it's a little bit gimmicky, but it's also just an awesome cartridge to have. And also you can save, which is, come on, that's the only way of I could really probably beat this game

legit, you know? You can't my save state, but you can save at the beginning of a stage or at a checkpoint, which is lovely. I somehow did beat this back in the days of Ustream. Remember Ustream. I had this dinky little webcam pointed at my CRT TV, and I was, I

declared that this would be the time I finally finish and beat supergoals and ghosts. And I did it. And it was brutal. And the, just like, you know, the previous ones where it kind of like forces the goddess bracelet on you and, and having to use that to actually meet the final boss was brutal because the goddess bracelet was weak. And it had a very limited range and trying to defeat the penultimate boss Asteroff who had two forms, just made it so much more brutal. Honestly, most of the difficulty for me was just that last stage of making it through, getting through all those red aromers to reach Asteroff and hoping you don't run out of time

as you try to like kill him with this dinky little goddess bracelet. And then the hilarious thing about it is the final boss Sardius is like a pushover in comparison to everything else. That's a victory lap, I think. if you might actually get that's your victor lap yeah exactly it's really cool boss though it's like the size of like two screens high it's huge it's awesome yeah yeah it's really huge um and for your second go around they they notch up the difficulty one up so for for me it's like okay i'm gonna start with the beginner difficulty and then that'll propel me to the normal for the second play through i've never never attempted normal and then the the one above that so that might be my next uh

challenge for it. So I wanted to ask about oh yeah, the armor thing. Because I remembered this being a game, the game where you get a lot of different armor options. But I can't remember what any of them do, partly because I suck so bad at this game and can never keep armor for long enough

to really get anything out of it. Yeah, there's like a, I might be wrong about this, but there's like a default gray armor that you start with, which just can protect you from it. There's a green armor that upgrade your weapons. So like, the only one, I can remember top of my own. Yeah, the standard, the daggers become like laser daggers.

Yeah, which are super cool. The crossbow becomes like a three-shot homing thing, which is really useful in some areas. I can't really remember the others, though. And then the gold armor lets you use magic. And I think there's even a shield you can get that goes above that. That's right. You upgrade your shield, and I think you can take a single projectile, only if you're, like, standing still, though. Yeah.

And also it still has the thing where if you're holding the upkeep. when you grab the key at the end of the level, it says, nice catch, which I'm very fond of. And I think it's still kept the Take a Key for Coming in, classic line as well.

Great, great bit of English. Yeah, I will always wax poetic about Super Goals and Ghosts and the music too just really sets the mood to Madayama Gucci, probably one of her best Capcom soundtracks by far. And they reprised it in Mega Man 7 with the secret easter egg that comes back to this game.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we're somehow not going to make it through the entire list of games this episode. I really thought, yeah, there's so much effusive joy happening here that it just slows us down. We keep getting tripped up by our own love for video games. I guess that means we're just going to have to do it. another one of these, but why don't we go out with a game that I really need to play at some point, but I bet I know for a fact, this is one, this has got to be one Stuart can regale us with.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. I feel like I've been talking to you much, though. Patrick, can I ask you to go first on this? Because I feel like I've dominated the discussion to a troubling degree. Is this magical quest starring Mickey Mouse? I believe it is, yes. It is magical quest starring Mickey Mouse.

I was too cool to play a Mickey Mouse game that this came out. I was too old. None of those baby games for me. So I missed out. And the general view of my life is that I missed out and made a mistake. I've progressed a great many levels in this one in co-op mode. And I think the co-op is what really makes this stand out the most. But alas, I haven't finished it.

and I, it's been so long. So I think Stuart, you're going to be doing that. Yeah. Unfortunately, I've got to be a pedantic because the first one doesn't have co-op. That's the second of thought. I'm sorry. No, no, no, no. No pleasure necessary.

They're all basically the same thing. There's a magical quest starring Mickey Mouse. Then there's the Great Circus Mystery starring Mickey and Minnie. And then there's Donald. Didn't get released in the West of the GBA version is Mickey and Donald magical quest, which is probably the best one, I would say. But this game, Magic. Quest starring Mickey Mouse. Now,

unbelievable graphics, like, good God, the level of detail is almost kind of pastel looking thing. Every single stage looks like it's using completely different, like, tiles. It's just, I mean, that's not that remarkable on the Super Nintendo, but it's, even for that, it's an astonishing looking game.

It has this central gimmick where Mickey Mouse starts out in his usual underpants, and then progresses to be given costumes and the costumes he gets if memory serves are of a sort of a magician guy with a kind of a turban where you charge up a magical shot, which is like Mega Man in a way.

You can also be a fireman like Mickey and Fireman outfit with a big fireman's hose to spray water, which is quite cool. And then there's a sort of an explorer Mickey who has a grappling hook like in Bionicamando, and you can fully use it to grapple onto underside things. And there's proper grappling physics as well. And they do some really cool secrets in the level where you get it, where you can go, it's not the opposite of Mario, where you go above the level. You can go underneath the floating level and like flying secret areas by grappling along the whole thing in a showcase of egregious skill, which I never could quite pull off because it's quite hard.

But overall, I have to say, I'm not crazy about this because it's really short and easy. And I feel like it's to the level of easy that it's not like cast of illusion is easy. But I love cast of illusion. and I'm not sure to what extent nostalgia is a factor in that. I really do think it's one of the best like 8-bit games and this obviously quite a bit later

but I can't help compare it. I find it a little bit limited in what exactly it throws at you. And again, as I say, the level of challenge is generally so low that it doesn't really stick in my mind. And also it does this trick right near the end where you have to pick a door

and if you pick the wrong one, you're just going to be replaying like a boss fight, which World of Illusion does that too, to be fair. They were really keen on that back in the day. But no, this is a fun game. And I like the sequels more because, as you mentioned, they have the co-op aspect, which makes everything better. But I also think they're generally better design games than this one.

But there are some cool ideas here. There's a boss fight where you... It's sort of like a... You're on a sort of a ferris wheel made of platforms that's going around in the middle. There's this kind of red-hot, sort of stone gargoyle head thing, and you have to spray it with the hose and cool. it off completely to kill it, but if you stop spraying it, it will gradually heat up again.

Which sounds more annoying than it actually is. There's just something kind of cool and creative about that. There's a nice economy in that hitting certain enemies with certain costumes will create ammo for one of the other costumes. So you've got a kind of like, I guess you can call it like the triangle system from Fire Emblem, except nothing like that whatsoever. So yeah, it's a fun game. Is there dating and romance like in Fire Emblem? Unfortunately, no, you cannot date Mickey Mouse unfortunately I get the impression that he would be trying as a lover. So no thanks. Is there permadeph in this Mickey Mouse?

No, I need to hear more of your thoughts on Mickey Mouse's romantic failings, like trying as a lover. Remember that cartoon where he forgets to buy Minnie an anniversary present? So he has his brain removed and put in the body of a monster. And there's like a monkey and it's voiced by Fraser Crane. Remember that one? I just feel like someone who... Was that from the 60s? It was called Runaway Brain.

I think it was a 90s thing. They paired it with a goofy movie, which was much better, incidentally. I just feel like, based on what I've seen, Mickey A, his type is exactly the same as him except, like, you know, has like a bowing on their head. And that, to me, suggest narcissism in a word way. I really could go on about this. I'm not sure you really want this. No, I'm curious. And I do need to tie it to tie it back to the game, though.

Okay, well, I'll bring it back around. Okay, there's a bit where you have a boss fight with a version of Pete, because Pete's like the ultimate boss, and as you'd expect, because he's Mickey's most hated enemy. But most of the bosses are like versions of Pete and, like, monstrous versions of him, or like if there's a version of him that's like an ice skater, and that's quite a cool mode 7 thing where it's like a half pipe of ice that he'll skate around and do flips and stuff.

And the way I look at it, I wonder if maybe these things his killing aren't actually Pete He's just seeing the face of his enemy, you know. And that suggests to me again to tie it back that he is a bit obsessed with himself and his own His own sort of motivations. And I don't think he would be very thoughtful. He's always going off on these magical quests and just leave him many and then begrudgingly bringing her along for the great circus mystery. Like, oh, that sounds are so good. We all know how circus mysteries go.

we've all played Phoenix Wright. Nobody likes that case. Yeah, no, don't care for Mickey. Wouldn't date him. The voice as well, annoying. And he's a mouse. He would be killed instantly

if there were to be any physical, you know, activity. All right. Okay, that, you took it too far. So video game, video game, hmm?

Yeah, it's okay. It's all right. This is my issue with it. It's not interesting enough that I haven't been making much to say about it. So I start talking about what it would be like if I made love to Mickey Mouse, which nobody wants. See, I wasn't necessarily thinking about you. I was thinking maybe, you know, for Minnie Mouse. But, you know, if this is what you think about in your free time, then, you know, there's, there are entire websites and art galleries out there for those thoughts.

Based on how Minnie Mouse acts, I get kind of that. You know that tradwife thing, the kind of mannosphere, kind of tradwife movement? I kind of get the vibes that Mickey would be into that. You know, I feel like he wants his mini-masters to be this kind of perfectly feminine, does all the cooking and cleaning while he goes out and does magical quests. I don't know. I don't like him. I just don't care for the man.

So, yeah, but he probably sees himself as like a super masculine alpha male, despite the fact that his voice sounds like he's sucking helium while being kicked in the testicles. Maybe that's why. Maybe he's insecure about the voice. voice and he's trying to pop and sick for it. I think that's often the case, yes. I think they Donald Duck instead. He's cool. Temper problems, but... Yeah, and also very difficult to understand what he says. Doesn't wear pants. That's also an issue. But, you know, maybe those are all qualities that people like in a relationship. No

pants. Don't talk to me. I have no idea what you're saying. The Patreon exit surveys are going to be rough. Oh, boy. That's why I never read them. I just assume that I'm perfect. What a power move. Get as mad as you want. It's not going to stop us from talking about Donald Duck's lover. Just wait until the Kingdom Hearts episode. Anyway, Patrick, do you have any thoughts on Mickey Mouse the video game as opposed to any other facet of Mickey Mouse? It's like I have the cartridge and didn't give it the time of day.

And the fact that the sequel has co-op automatically makes it better than the original. And we will talk about the sequel. In our next episode, whenever we film that or record that, we could film it, I guess. We should film it. But yeah, we talked about some more Capcom platformers. Good times. Good times. Very happy about that.

I love talking about some Capcom platformers so much that we're going to talk about them again someday. Maybe not next week. Maybe we need to give this a little bit of a breather. Maybe next we could mix it up and talk about barbarians. Ooh. That sounds like a vote of confidence to me. All right. Oh, yeah.

He's done. I do like it by Byron. So this has been part two of several thousand talking about Capcom platformers. Join us again next time for our infinite journey through this company and this genre. We'll never stop talking about the games. At this point, we might as well just litigate all the Mega Man games again. Why not? Why the hell not? You can't stop us unless you take away all of our Patreon support, in which case,

damn it, I blew it. I should check those exit interviews after all. No, no, don't. Please don't exit. Please don't go. We need you. We love you. No, we'll talk about some cool things that aren't Capcom or platform games next time. Let me double check the schedule to make sure that I'm not whying. Okay, the next is a bonus episode, Retronauts Radio. No, no, no, I'm sorry, there is a Mega Man Zero disc in there. Damn it. All right. Sorry, folks. This is just our lives now. This is where we're going. So please join us this Friday for, unless you're listening

to this on the public feed. If you're a patron, listen to this, join us this Friday for a retronauts radio episode hosted by me. Otherwise, we'll see you next week. But first, let us let us tell you where you can find us where we can reach you. That is pretty much everywhere except Spotify. Thank you for listening to us. You can definitely. find us at Retronauts.com. And I'm Blue Sky. Those are the main spaces that we occupy, besides, you know, the podcast world. But you can support us through Patreon.com slash Retronauts, where you can subscribe to

people who are less confused and bumbling than me talk about old video games. It's very exciting, very cool. If you are a Patreon subscriber at $5 a month or more, you can hear bonus episodes, such as the upcoming Retronauts Radio. You also get, let's see, there's cool stuff like mini podcasts and other bonuses,

Discord access, cool things. Patreon.com slash Retronuts. I'm going to stop talking now. Please, someone, jump in. Stuart, you. Hi, I'm Stuart Jep. You can find me on Blue Sky as Stuart Jep. I wrote a book called All Games.

You can buy it from limited run games. I did quite a bit of a book called Nesbook. You can get from Ninty Media. I started the zine called The O. which is just a bunch of games writing, and the second issue isn't really done, and it's 10 pages longer than the first issue, and it's much, much better.

So, you know, find that on my blue sky. And you name me in Retronauts quite a lot, and I am genuinely sorry for the Mickey Mouse lover discussion. I'm in my happy place when I'm talking about things like that. Do you need to rename all games? So you're not sorry. Oh, I mean, I'm sorry for me, you know, which is something I think Mickey Mouse

probably ends up saying a lot in couples therapy. But he says it like, Oh, I'm sorry for me. Should you rename All Games Are Good to All Games Are Good except Darkwing Duck for the Turbo Graphics 16. Gosh, I suppose I could do. Jeremy, can we do that? Can we pulp them? Yeah, yeah, we'll just destroy all of them.

That's fine. That's fair. Okay, cool. Sorry, we need a reprint. One small change to the cover. Thank you. You can find me at P.K. Rockin on Blue Sky. I'm also P.K. Rockin on threads. And please check out my Breath of Fire fan site, Dragnear.net. And my Breath of Fire social media accounts, Breath of Fire fans. I cannot stop talking about Breath of Fire. But I do like a good Capcom platformer as well. Have you finished all the Breath of Fire games?

I have. Except say. but that's literally physically impossible and nor do I need to. Are you pro or anti-Dragon Quarter? I am so pro Dragon Quarter and I will... Everyone should be. Hell yeah. I am the Dragon Quarter defense force and I will not stand for Breath of Fire 5 slander. Yes, it is the fifth game.

In this house we stand the Dragon Quarter. Oh, yes. Always everywhere. I get very negative Facebook comments on my Dragon Quarter posts and I don't care. So, you just don't write them. Never read Facebook. I mean, that's Facebook. What do you expect?

True, true. It's probably like brain poison boomers. A few boomers who really love Dragon, are Breath of Fire. Rogue light in my Breath of Fire, get this out of here. Is it really rogue light? I would say so. There's some, there are not so much new game plus, but like you do several run-throughs of the game. and things will change in them.

And there's sort of a perma death with the decounter. But that's what are we doing the Dragon Quarter Retronauts episode? Sounds like we're doing it now. Bonus, everyone. This isn't just a Capcom platformer episode. I'll talk about the power version. That was even more aggressive. Yeah, we will have to make that happen at some point since one through four

have been tackled already. That's true. I really need to sit down and play all the way through Dragon Quarter someday. But that's true of so many games now that I'm old and don't have time to play video games. Fair. Mortgages. I hate them. Anyway, you can find me sweating my mortgage and making video game related content to help survive on Blue Sky, on my YouTube channel.

Many places on the Internet, of course, Retronauts here, yes, quite often. but generally less tired and less distracted and incoherent than I am at this moment. I don't know what's going on, but I think maybe I just ran and jumped too many times and needed a breather. So we're going to end it now, by which I just mean the podcast, not anything else. That's not, like, I'm not that tired. So thanks for joining us. And someday we will come back and talk about, there's still a lot of Capcom platform games to talk about. So we'll talk about them, but we may do the barbarian thing first. We also haven't talked

about their vertical or no, horizontal shooters. So that might have to happen too. So much Capcom, so little time. We're out of it. Out of time, but not out of Capcom. So join us again in the future. But for now, this is it. This is the end of the podcast.