Retronauts - 781: Astérix, Pt. 3

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Quaff from Getafix’s cauldron of magic potion one final time with Stuart Gipp, Audi Sorlie, John Linneman and Thomas Nickel. Unless you’re Obelix.Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

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Start your free trial today. This week in Retronaut is an unprecedented third episode about Asterix games. I honestly never thought we'd reach this point. Hello, welcome to Retronauts, where, as you may have established from the thing I just said, well, there was a theme song between me saying it and now, but to me, I just said it. So, you know, I don't want to confuse you. I don't want to, like, pull back the curtain too much here. You know, we're going sort of inside baseball on Retronauts. But basically, we're talking about Asterix. Again, for the third time.

I never thought we would speak about Asterix three times. I knew there were a lot of Asterix games, so I really didn't think we'd get into this level of detail on them, and I'm delighted that we have because I could first say I don't think anyone else has ever bothered in the history of all of time, including maybe the people who worked on them. But, oh, that's a mean, that's a mean-spirited joke. Let's just introduce everyone. I'm Stuart Job.

Now, who's with me, Tilly? Let's go in reverse order of evilness, maybe. No, is that fair to say? No. Let's establish amongst yourselves who is the most evil, and we'll begin there. I say always the most evil. He made me play Phoenix games. Oh, that is

quite evil. That's the next episode, by the way. The next four-parter is Phoenix Games. Oh, wow. If I'd have known that, I probably wouldn't. Never mind. Anyway, hello, yes. All right, Thomas, you go.

I thought you're, okay, then I go, right. So I'm Thomas Nicol. I am huge to talk about Asthma. And I put on my striped pants to do that. So you're the least evil by a process of elimination. That would be... I'm surprised, but from the looks of it, yes.

Just don't make Thomas be late for his ramen. That's all I'm going to say. Okay. And yes, I'm John Lenneman from Digital Foundry here to talk about these games. I can't wait to talk about the latest cryo banger. It's going to be something. I'm Audie Surly. I actually have gone to steep into these games about 11, 12 years ago on Hardcore Gaming,

one-on-one with my expensive research on these games. games, which is why we have three parts of this. I'm very happy to be here for the first time. Let's say that the most, no one else has bothered the history of a quarter time in the form of speaking words out loud. That is probably true. Okay. I do not believe there is like a roundtable discussion about asterisk happening. However, anywhere else in the world.

In your dead medium of writing, you are top of the pile. Well, thank you. Well, if Aude is writing offline, online, then I'm even deader because I still write in print magazines. So I am the real dinosaur. I'm afraid so. I didn't want you to find out this way, Thomas. I know.

I just thought my arm is starting to skeletize slowly. Oh, boy. Yeah, so where did we leave this last time? We just finished doing the 16-bit sort of era, hadn't we? Yep. All the 16-bit. We did the arcade game, all the fun stuff. Oh, yeah.

So now that we've done all the stuff that people, probably fondly remember the most, we're leaning into the sort of 32-bit and later era. I guess we should just jump straight in. Asterix on the PlayStation, two outings, well, three outings, technically. Where do we start with these? Well, I think we left the other episode also talking about

kind of where Asterix as a franchise had gone, which is kind of on the downwards trend in popularity and in quality. and leading into the 3rd-2-bit era, I think it's kind of important to establish that in the 16th era it kind of peaked and you got some very good games out of it with people very familiar with comic books

and things like this. But when you get to PlayStation, not only is there a new generation on video gaming here, kind of discovering video games for the first time or even late, because PlayStation brought in a demographic that kind of hadn't been caught yet. So these games are sort of interesting, I feel,

because this first one we're talking about, which is asterisk to Gallic Wars, or asterisk only on PlayStation, only released in Europe and kind of limited territories, and based on the comic book, but later on we'll see that there's a new take on Asterisks that's a little bit more, interesting.

But yeah, this one Oh yeah. It kind of harkens back to, I think it was in episode one that we talked about the CDI Asterix,

which was like this board game. Oh, you had to get it in there, right? Well, I mean, I have to talk about CDI every day. That's why my mom doesn't call me anymore.

Caesar's Challenge, right? Yeah. Yeah, the one I play out on the Macintosh. Classic. Yeah, which is, we went through it. It's not that bad.

here we kind of go back to that board game take again but now we're going more into the risk territory yeah by which we mean literally the game risk not like they're not taking a risk with the only kind of not take any risks it's very by the books when it comes to applying the rules of risk and looking like risk but that doesn't necessarily mean that this is in any way bad or a letdown. I actually think this is a very fun.

I mean, what I can say is, recently I was at John's play, we just said, okay, let's do a homework this time for the podcast and play the games, actually. I did that for prior games. Of course we did, yeah. Don't put me in that bucket. I'm not implying anything. I want to make it clear at this point that since we're talking about it, since it's out in the open, I have never played any of the games we've talked about

or ever, to be honest. What a shock. You were playing dizzy this whole time. Oh, please. So, but anyway, so we played that game. We had no idea what was coming. I just thought, okay, it's going to be some blocky, some 50-hertzy, a brawler-style game with bad hit connections. Which you kind of get. Yeah, very late.

But we just were, huh. No, that's something. That's unexpected. You know what's really frustrating, Thomas, when you say all this? Is that every time I've been to John's Place, we've seen a copy. copy of this game at the various retro shops, I'll pick it up and I'll look at John right in the eyes. I'll be like, John, my dear friend, this game is great.

Oh, it's Chuck Kruk all over again. And he would be like, yeah, you know what? It's a pal game. Whatever. Yeah, it turns me off. This is good. You need to pick it up. And finally, thanks to this show, you know, retroanauts, it saves lives.

Because finally, John Lidman has played Asterix de Gallic. Wars after years of insisting from my sight. Because this is a really, really fun, somewhat basic, but a really fun romp. Yeah, but I think the basic nature is just, it's part of the fun, I think, if it was more complex. It wouldn't have worked. Yeah, exactly. So let's kind of look at that too. Yeah, I kind of want to talk about how it works, because I came into this, not knowing anything about this.

I have since now, Thomas and I, we played it on PlayStation. then I went and grabbed the PC version installed on my Windows 98 PC. So you finally got through 60 hertz action. Yes. And as you guys say, it is essentially just risk, right? But you're moving the magic potion around to all your territories as you expand, right? Which ties perfectly in with the themes of the series. And you're basically trying to advance through there.

And it's just this game of strategy. And then, you know, when when you go up against your opponent, they enter your sort of tile. You have a little battle based on the number of, I guess, troops or how much magic potion you have. And that determines the winner and the loser, right? Yeah. Simple stuff. But then in between all of these strategy sections, they included these mini games, kind of.

Like, for instance, the very first thing you encounter, it's like a platforming game where you walk from left to right as I get, can you play as asterix and obelix? Because I remember just be, okay. playing his obelix and he kind of like strolls along slowly you're collecting coins platforming brawling and then you get to the end and then it continues and I actually like this conceptually because it does add a little bit more to the experience even if it's not that well executed but it's not bad either though I should like it's perfectly fine I think it's perfectly fine within kind of as a sub subsection to that overall game map and the board game thing.

But yeah, those gameplay bits are kind of tied to the larger camps because when you send the magic potion to the smaller camps, it just plays out kind of like a fast languorice or match. You just kind of see the Romans flying into the sky. And the visual and sound feedback on those battles is pretty fun. And I think that's something we'll get a little bit into is the sound design of the game, because it really adds to this production. quality. Weirdly enough, though, with all that, I kind of feel like this could make a good

modern mobile game. Oh, absolutely. It works super well on a phone with the touchscreen. I actually found playing it on PC, they switched to a mouse interface. Yeah. And the whole map even feels better that way. Yeah, I'm sure. I think the PC version runs at 640 by 480. Yeah, it's four times the resolution of the PlayStation game. Yeah. So the PC version is absolutely kind of the way to go. But the PlayStation version is good. Not bad at all. The game also has exclusive animated scenes,

which is one of the last times you'll find hand-drawn asterix cartoon scenes. It's beautiful too. Yeah, they look great. Until Asterisks and the Vikings, which is several years down the line. But yeah, it looks

great. The English dubbing, I will say, not very good in terms of the characters. The narration is fine. But if you are a of asterix, these voices are non-union and very clearly so to speak. I'm not saying

it just sounds like something where this kind of sounds familiar but not as good as you remember kind of thing. So it's a little bit hokey in that way. Another thing there to comment on so I mentioned the platforming minigame but there's also others.

Yeah, there's like Wack-a-Roman. But the one that got Thomas and I that we just couldn't seem to figure out as the throw-a-Roman one, you recall that where you have to spin them around as obelix, and then you let him go. And for some reason... We could not get it to work, not a chance.

Yeah, Astrox. Game Series tradition, there's one mini-game that you can't figure out the controls for. Yeah, we just could... I feel like we eventually got it by accident. But because of the way it works, you need to complete the mini-game to take over that territory from what I remember. So you can get stuck there a lot,

and if you fail, you basically lose that turn. For what it's worth, I mean, it could be worse, because I don't know how to play risk, so I just got overrun immediately. I didn't know what was going on. I never even got to any of the mini-games, so. I mean, you just conquer. You just build up your army and conquer.

It's all about the numbers, basically. It's easy to say that. It's easier to say that. It's a game of world domination. Watch Seinfeld. Do you learn all about risk? Okay. I thought you're British were good at that.

Wow. Thomas G. Deep, deep color. Damn. Oh, sorry. The listener numbers now in that one territory went down. And it couldn't go that much lower. But, yeah, so the mini-games, I think.

So there's also Bola Roman. Oh, yeah, Bola-Roman. There are some other ones later on because the game does progress. So it is a board game, but it has a somewhat interesting linear structure. Yeah, because you can't just jump ahead to the late territories, right? You have to work your way there. You have to work your way there.

Put levels and such. There's like the pirate ship level and various other like platforming levels that are more difficult, but you can't get to them right away, right? Right. So, yeah, it's a really fun experience. I bought this for PlayStation when it came out. I saw it in one magazine. It was very much kind of.

a budget release. Even if you look at the cover, if you Google it and look at a PlayStation cover, it's not appealing. Yeah, the PC box. It says asterix and that's it. You're just like, okay. The box doesn't do much to kind of sell you on it and being a fan obviously about it. That's the thing, though, is I wasn't aware of what this was when we went into it. So just seeing the cover art, it could have been anything. I was like, wait, is this related to like the prior asterix games that we covered on the last episode. But no, it's definitely not. I'm looking at the box heart now, and what it is

is that, just in case people were wondering, Asterix has become enormous and is standing in mainland. And he's throwing another, and similarly enormous Roman, while Obelix does his Obelix laugh in the corner. Yeah. You know, you know, and

John saw the cover and thought, I don't see what there is to get out of this, whereas you saw the cover and said, oh, Asterix is present. I will buy this. Yes. I mean, I'm a weak person and I still buy games based on this if asterix is on the cover or not.

But yeah, even so, it was hard to say. I mean, you didn't pick it up when I suggested. I think mostly because of the 50 Hertz kind of issue. Yeah, that turns me off. You don't buy PAL PlayStation games, which is understandable. But, yeah, it's kind of like. But, of course, in this case, it's only PAL, so no way around it unless you go for PC. PC, yeah.

So, and it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily need to run in 60. Obviously, that is preferable for any game, but it should be noted that, like, the 3D sections aren't, like, very smooth as they are. The animations are capped on a very low frame rate, and just the general mechanics of it aren't, like, based around reflex and fast gameplay. It's very much just based on, like, punching, the onset of Romans collecting the coins get out there's a few bosses

there's like the bowl and things like this so I think the best part of the game though and that's not to that's not to diminish anything else that we've talked about

because it is a really fun game if a simplistic risk board game but the music in this game is really really good and super underappreciated so one of the thing I would like to talk

about here, though, is the developer. Because I do think there's some interesting and surprising history here. Because it was developed by a studio called Warthog. Warthog games, right? And they had, it was mostly people that had previously worked at Electronic Arts, right? And if you actually look through some of their games,

you might recognize, you know, they did some licensed stuff. Like, they were the ones, I think, that did those Tiny Tune Adventures games on, like the later ones. Like, I think... Or Tuninstein. Pluckies, big adventures. adventure and like wacky stackers, stuff like that, right?

Yeah. But they also made games like Star Lancer, which was on PC and Dreamcast, which is a space flight sim that kind of relates to like the old privateer games in a way. It's like a spiritual successor to that. They did a Richard Burns rally back in the PS2 era. They also did, if you remember, Mace Griffin Bounty Hunter. Yes, of course. Right?

So they did this weird mix of, like, like the more serious mature games and then stuff like Tiny Tunes Adventures. They did a couple Animaniacs games. They did Asterix. They even did some Harry Potter stuff. Like all these like sort of like those types of IP. So it's very interesting. But then apparently these guys went on to do work under the name Gizmondo, producing stuff for the ill-fated Gizmondo device, if you recall that.

And then they closed. And that's, that is interesting that you bring that up, because if you look at the 3D sections and kind of the engine itself, you can kind of see some Gizmodo games that look similar. And so I'm sure some of this code or kind of modeling at least kind of continued into the Java-like looking games. Exactly. Wait a minute. They also did that Lunes, the Fight for Fame. Do you remember that? Yeah, oh, yeah, okay.

It was the one with the serious, like, Looney Tunes characters on the cover, all looking like, you know, they're ready to kick some butt. Yeah. Oh, my God, I forgot about that one. Most of us did, John. So, I mean, that's what's interesting to me. When you look at a game like this and you look at who actually developed it, and you're just kind of like, wow, okay.

Yeah, there's a lot of pedigree to this game. I mean, this is, you know, from the gameplay to the, overall structure, good mechanics, great music, as mentioned. There's really nothing wrong with this other than the fact that it is locked to the European territory on PlayStation.

Yeah, so it's 50 Hertz only. Yeah, but if you do pick up the PC version, I don't know how it runs on modern systems. I didn't try that, and I suspect not well. I seem to recall when I did the article back in the day, I had trouble running it back then.

and that would have been like 2009 and 2010. So I'm going to guess that it's going to not work today. But by all means, someone out there can try and maybe find a fix for that. To maybe add one's thought about that, I think this is the exact game you would get when Asthrix is at a low point as an IP overall. Because I think at this point, the brand wasn't that expensive anymore as compared to before. and they just could do whatever they felt like doing and not be beholden to,

we have to put in a lot of money and make this big, broader type game. Yeah. So I think this is quite matching for its time. It is, and it was also released as a budget release from the beginning, by the way. Of course, I mean, it's PlayStation 99. You couldn't usually charge full price more for.

I believe I paid smaller games. About 20 euro for it brand new when it came out. when it came out. And it was discounted very quickly. I remember this was a game that back in these days, much like a Phoenix game. I remember seeing this in supermarkets a lot by the cash register. There used to be PlayStation and PC games by like the candies. And of course, again, you have to say then, if you see a game in the supermarket,

that feels very devaluing for the game for everybody except for the audience. Like Phoenix games. Like Phoenix games. They were only sold at like Tesco and whatnot for like five pounds. Can it be any good if it's at Aldi or at Tesco for a couple of pounds or euro or Darmac back then? Well, I mean, in this case it was, right? In this case, this is a great game. Just thinking back then.

I mean, it's 1990-9. I have a dreamcast at home. I play all these awesome arcade stuff. And there is this game, the supermarket with Astridx on it, which is not a big thing. Yeah. I mean, it's a recipe for being overlooked. I mean, I was the one who bought the Asterix and the Phoenix game at the same time. But then I say to in response...

Makes me think of the Simpsons again. Somebody bought your book. You came into Tesco's from your Dreamcast session, you know, and now look which branding is still around. And it's all because of Asterix. Hey, man, there's no turbo trucks on Dreamcast. That's all I'm going to say. This is true.

This is true. But they did have Flaugan Brothers. Fluegan Brothers. Just couldn't pull them out of the fire. Oh God, Floydgan Brothers. Who wants the sequel to Floydan Brothers? Yeah, it's like episode one, right? Yeah, exactly.

Right. So we're already other episodes. It's coming out along with the CIN episodes too. Okay, it's coming. So looking then next, there were two other games on PlayStation that were Asterix based, right? Well, so there was one that is actually directly kind of based around the work here, which I think was developed for around the same time as this.

Which one? Mega Madness? Yeah, Mega Madness. I know it is Max Deerium. It is also called Mega Madness, I think, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I thought this one came out in like 2001 or something.

Yeah, which is why we tried to play it last. So here's the difficult thing about this game. So I think 2001 is kind of date, the official date. and on the trademark of stuff. Yeah. But I absolutely recall that, I think the PC version, at least, I found that earlier here in the stores, because I picked this up, again, super random.

I'd never heard of this or seen it before. Interesting. And it's, I mean... Okay, I mean, it's basically a mini-game collection, right? Well, yeah, it is a mini-game collection. It does have some kind of open... platform structure as well, but it mostly is based around the mini-games. So I actually think we should start again with the developer this time, because I was actually

looking into this as well, and I thought it's very interesting. It's from a studio called Unique Development Studios. Yeah, it's a Swedish company. Yeah, exactly. They're Swedish. And once I start looking into them, I recognize some of the games they had worked on, which actually led me down this other rabbit hole. So on their mobile games profile, at list screamer rally. And I was like, wait a minute, they didn't make screamer rally.

I love the screamer games. Those were actually made by milestone, uh, which published by Virgin and they did screamer, screamer too, but they're still around today doing all sorts of modern racing games, such as Hot Wheels Enleashed in the ride games. So why were they credited? Well, it turns out that unique development studios provided music specifically for screamer rally. But they were also doing their own games. They did various pinball games, like absolute pinball, slam tilt, and things like that.

They seemed to have started out actually on the Amiga and Atari ST with another pinball game, I guess, called like obsession. So, like, this studio was all about pinball. And then they made something called Mall Maniacs, which is basically like this weird, like advertising game that has you going around the store, like buying groceries and such. I remember this. And it's like, what on earth? So, like, their track record is really weird.

Like, the fact that they're slightly involved with Screamer Rally, they do a shit ton of pinball games, pardon the French. And then somewhere along the way, they're picked up to do an asterisk game. The same year that they also did, like, World's scariest police chases, apparently. Yeah, so, I mean, they were very much to studio for hire. I actually know some people that used to work there. Two people. Oh, they also have some rare games. I got to mention Futurama.

They did PS2 and Xbox, which is like, that's one of the most expensive games, I think, on Xbox. Is it? They also did what I call is like the bargain bait bin decoration, which is EJ Club World, because I swear, that's one of those games that you just find like 50, copies of just like dumped in a bin somewhere alongside like madden wait hold on future armor is expensive on xbox i believe so yeah i've got that on xbox i'm rich i don't know if the pow version is that's expensive is the pow version i can i can find out in real time thanks to price charlie i will find it so yeah the it's the u.s version that's expensive the pow version is is worthless yeah great actually wow the pf2 version's also expensive so

We're learning new stuff. That's weird. Unique development studios made a uniquely expensive game, and they also made Asterix Mega Madness. I'm just going to say it because there's not going to be a future hour episode. I thought that was a pretty good game. Just to have a hands up. It's a fairly okay game.

I enjoyed that. It's probably better than this. It is probably better than this. So unique development studios generally were for hire, and they would do a bunch of games. They were sort of like, well, I think they're still around, but like at the time at the very least they were kind of like that system of Phoenix games that you could just kind of hire them for cheap and get stuff out. And in this case, the game actually runs on the 3D engine that is in Gallic Wars.

So it looks very similar. It feels very similar. That's interesting. I didn't realize that. So Infograms must have owned the work fully that was done on that, which I'm not too surprised about. I mean, Infragrams had a very strong. hold on anything developed for Asterix.

I always had the best song in the world. Infograms? Oh, there was actually that infogram song. The song. You should have put that in here, right here. Play it. Yeah, play this mysterious infogram song. I don't know what that time. I will I'll put the link in for the editor

to play because it's fantastic. Okay. Okay. What are like singing about alone in the dark and all their franchises? Oh my God. It's hilarious. But anyway. But yeah, it this, uh, it's a multiplayer game.

I think if I remember correctly, it's like two players on PlayStation, but you can actually play up to four on Windows. But it's not great. I will say that much. There's not that you want that much to say about this. I do want to interject again, sorry, because there is one great aspect to this, and it's the language selection screen. When you pop this game in for the first time,

it asks you to choose between six different languages. And what they've essentially done is, there's there's like the boar a pig or whatever sitting in the middle of the screen it's the boar yeah of course so he's um they texture him according to the flag of the selected country and then they sort of have a custom animation for each country like when you select great britain they show him holding a cup of tea and delicately like putting his spoon in there and then taking a sip of the tea that's very good for germany he's like wearing like later hosen uh for For Italy, he sings opera very loudly, and then it cracks the screen like glass.

Stuff like that. So they put the most effort in the game into that, is that what you're saying? I am saying this, yes, it's fantastic. I've got to be honest to me, that does sound pretty great. We put the disc in, we saw it, and yep, this is cool. I think we spend more time with the language selection than with the rest of the game. Yeah, pretty much. It's fantastic.

It's really funny because, like, the game itself, you know, the previous game did retain, of the humor. When you sent the magic potions and the fights, the Romans fly off the screen and it has funny sound effects and what out. These mini games,

it's like Food Feast was one of them. There's Shield Run. This is a good Atari Links game. It's just like really rinky dink, simple mini games, and they're not funny. They're like really not funny.

No. So it's clearly, I feel like there's even some statement there of making the language selection screen the funniest the funniest part of it. because I don't think development on this had a lot of time.

It was fun. It fits what I always say. I mean, almost no matter how shitty the game is, a developer will find some way to have fun with it at some point somewhere. They try to insert little jokes here and there as well. Like in the ballista minigame, it shows your ammo on the side as you fire it. And it's just all sorts of random things that they throw. Like chickens, Romans, you know.

things like that. But for an asterix game, I think that is pretty basic for what you can do. It's very basic. And it's still not the most basic Astrox game on the PlayStation now, is it? Oh, God. Something is coming up here. Yeah, this is where we are. Are we ready to do that one?

I mean, let's just say, so Mega Madness again, I think the only last thing, and we're not quite there yet, but almost. But Mega Madness, Max Diller, It's also one of the games that were very region-locked in the sense that I think this was released in Sweden, Germany, UK, and France. But that was the only territories. Well, I mean, there were six languages on there, so Italy as well. Spain? That doesn't, yeah. I don't know how widespread it was in those territories, though.

That's true. We just know that they had this language support, but it's not clear if it was released. So theoretically, it could have come out. Yeah, it's an EFIGS thing. That's true. because you could find this with different names there's even more than like these two names is one but it has a full

Swedish name which I'm trying to remember I think it's Gallenskop and Quadrat I actually have it somewhere here but I'm not going to get up and translate out to you mega madness no it's like squared lunacy squared isn't like you know

square diameter oh there's there's the German name it's maximum gaudium maximum that's pretty funny actually it's So it has different names per territory as well. And then there's the UK name Astroix Bloody Mantle. I haven't found that yet. That's the last part of my collection I haven't found.

But this is one of those, if you're like me, you have to own like six copies of it because that's different names per territory. And of course, across PC and PlayStation. But yeah, before we lose ourselves into complete madness, we should mention very quickly that there was a Game Boy, color game released around the same time.

Oh, yeah. Which is the search for dogmatics. And a lot of people have not heard of this one because this was only released Germany and France. It does have an English name, but you can't really find any box copies or anything with that name on it. And it's a late Game Boy Color game too. Like by that point, GBA was super late. Well, actually, I guess was this 2000 or 2001? So it was developed in 2000.

I think it came out at the end of 2000. Okay, so somewhere in 2000. So maybe not that late for Game Boy Color, because Game Boy Color had a very short life, right? GBA was out the next year in 2001, but still, this is not a game you see often. Even here in Germany, I have not seen many copies of this.

Well, interestingly enough, one of my first trips to your place where we went to some retro shops, I found this sealed for a few bucks. That's right. I remember that. At one of the stores. Yeah.

And I was baffled. I was very excited. And I was like, all right. Because this was one that escaped me. Yeah. Hey, man. But I was very excited because when this came out, you know, I was sitting there on the message boards just like where's that asterisk game and no one could answer me back in 2000. And because this had an extremely limited regional.

release and even importing it, which I was some of the imported games throughout the 90s, but I could not find this game. No one was stalking it. So I never got it until that trip in 2018 or whatever it was. I found a sealed copy of this and picked it up. I never played it outside of researching it for that article. Did it live up to your expectations? So, I mean... Should I rephrase the question? Sorry, go on, sorry. I was going to say, was it good? It's probably the best question to ask. So it looks absolutely stunning.

For a Game Boy, it almost looks, you know, I think it's comparable in the way to Shanty in the sense that's a later Game Boy Color release. And it's really pushing the graphical capabilities of the console. Super smooth. beautiful large graphics. Great color usage. Yeah, it looks real great.

It's just that, and it animates beautifully as well. The problem is it's one of those games that like the animation came before anything else. And so the controls are not optimized for that amount of frames and visual feedback. Yeah. So it just feels like you never fully have. the control you would want from the game. It's a little bit hard to explain controls on a podcast in that sense without seeing it. It's not that as floaty, but it's just everything feels a bit delayed.

I think it can be compared to, in a sense, the flaws that I have with some of the other Asterix games, which is that as I played this one, and in my experience, basically you've got to be real near enemies to hit them. and it doesn't feel great. It really doesn't feel that good having to be that precise with your attacks. It's not like I found the game particularly hard because the levels seem to be extremely short and samey. But there's something that frustrated me about it

is it does some interesting things. There's a stage where you're going through a sort of a Roman camp and a battalion of Romans in that sort of turtled up shield wall form come plowing through the foreground like in Sunset Riders or something you know but they don't do anything with that

there could be interesting level design based around having to get to high ground before this battalion comes through but it's nothing it's just like never there's never a threat it's just they're just there and it sucked it's a shame it could have been really good I think can I chime in with some DF stuff

here because I have a couple of huge complaints about this game and drive me nuts that make it seem worse first of all the way the Sprite works right They tried to make him somewhat animated. But as you know, you can only use so many, so many different sprites to do an animation, right? Especially with memory limitations on the system. The problem here is that I feel like the sprites, they change too much per sprite.

So, like, his leg will go from, like, one position to the other. And the gap is so big and sort of misaligned that it makes the sprite look sloppy and kind of unfinished in motion. So that feels bad, specifically with the jump. But what makes this so much real bad. What makes this like a million times worse, and I think this is a, it's a hardware limitation, but this is a multi-scrolling game, right? So you mostly go left to right, but it can also go up and down. The problem is, is for both sprites and background scrolling, left-to-right motion is full 60 frames per second or the max refresh rate of the Game Boy, but vertical movement is all done at half rate. So if you jump, if the screen scrolls up, if anything happens vertically, that's only updated at 30 frames per second.

So when you combine the two, you end up with this really weird inconsistent mishmash of like half and full rate movement that makes everything just feel wrong. And you don't even have to understand what frame rate is to know that something looks weird about it in motion. And that's kind of the issue is that none of it's very smooth. And so as a result, just moving asterisk around the screen feels bad. Yeah. There's your digital foundry minute. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, though. It ties into everything else we mentioned.

And just the feedback on anything you do from how the game operates on the screen and how it feels in your hands is off. Because your initial impression putting this on will be very positive. It absolutely pops off the screen. It looks gorgeous and still and slightly emotion as well. It looks real good. but yeah the level design is pretty it's not terrible there's some there's some neat ideas here

uh the platforming goes across a lot different kind of like from the pirate ship to the Roman camp like Stu mentioned there's a lot of variety it's not terrible but it's also it's a bit uninspired I will say at this point and um yeah it just

it doesn't live up to the way it looks. If you look at still images of this online, on the back of the box, you'd think this would have been a, let's say, a hidden gem. You would just think, it looks

like it should be great. It looks like it should be kind of like a shanty type of ordeal, but it really isn't. Right. So is it priced like a hidden gem? No. No, I mean, it's priced fairly normal. I think it's that expensive.

like 30, 30 bucks. I would say there's a good chance this could show up in a Middle Jesus video, though, as a hidden gym. It's like Europe only. And then the price goes up. Hey, that happens with us too, though. Whenever I talk about something, everybody gets very angry about it.

Like, you just drove the prices up. Except for the Phoenix games. So maybe you can make a video where you say some of my most wanted games are like, like, Lord shit. And then maybe I can get them for cheat. Well, we tried that with the Phoenix games. didn't work. Has anyone, like, made a video specifically to tank prices on a retro game?

That sounds like a fairly interesting challenge. It would be difficult. Well, let's try. But the music is, I mean, I always go back to the music in games because I love video game music, but like the music in this is fairly good. There's no standout track. There is no Alberto Gonzalez. I was going to say, it's a big step down from the first Game.

Yeah, I mean, most things are from Ambrose music on Game Boy. But it's done by, what's his name? Manfred Listern, who he works for Shinnon. He did like, he's done all of them. Oh, God, yeah. His music, Monfred's music is absolutely sublime. Right. He does amazing work on that side.

So like fast and iridion. This one is perfectly, this one's perfectly serviceable. It sounds like a European Game Boy game, but it's not, it's not his best work. Yeah, the melody is just. don't like catch you. Exactly. Like, it's very much background music, which I think is kind of my...

So it's just perfectly crumulent in a way. But then he would like very quickly do stuff like the Arridium 3D, which would release with Game Boy Advance like the next year and stuff like that. And that's amazing sounding. Same person. So, again, this is a limitation probably from like either a time. Budget, time. I don't know.

A budget. Yeah, something like this. Because, I mean, so the game isn't done by Shinn and that. be important to say. Shannon was only put on audio and music side for the game.

The game is actually by Repelian. Yeah. Which is somewhat surprising. It's kind of unusual for them, right? Yeah.

And I think it explains a lot of just the proficiency with the graphics. I mean, just a graphical detail. Performance is that you mentioned

probably not as explained by rebellion, but it looks Looks great. I mean, that looks high quality. This is the same year that they released a video game adaptation of The Mummy.

Wow. Which, look at that. That ain't great. Big year for Rebellion. They did a Largo Winch game for PlayStation then, too. I remember Largo Winch. Yeah, Largo Winch.

Also, wasn't every bargain bin at a point? Yeah, yeah. Is Largo Winch the name of a guy that's wild? I think the most famous thing, though, from back then that they were known for still, was obviously Alien versus Predator for the Jaguar and all the other Alien versus Predator stuff what they would do, including Alien versus Predator for the PC, which was released like a year before this and is fantastic.

Yeah, I was going to say, this was after the PC. I think it's pretty clear that they were already a large enough company by that point to have multiple teams making multiple projects, right? Yeah, and that is extremely evident here. Yeah, I think we struggled kind of five things to say about this because it's just so by the book. It's just a generic, choppy-feeling platform game. If it's something that you see, I'd say pick it up

just because it's a later release. You know, the fact that you're seeing it anywhere means that, like, it's an uncommon find. I guess it's pretty worth seeing the visuals because they are impressive. Yeah, absolutely. They don't move that smoothly, but the actual visual quality is pretty impressive

for the Gameboy color, and they don't do... It's one of those rare ones where they don't do much in terms of, like, shading, but they try to do a lot of fairly large complex tile sets, right? And you just drove up the price another 10 euros. Yeah. Oh, well. I mean, it looks very much like comic book panels in terms of coloring and stuff.

So less so on the real screen, though. Yes. I played it on Analog Pocket, though. I played it on Pocket as well. For the first time before this, I played it on Pocket. Again, I was just stunned. It's like, man, this looks so good. and I start playing it's like, oh man.

Not good. I wish it played better. But you know what's, you know what this game is better than, though? Our next game on the list. Okay, let's do this. Let's go there. Hey, you know what else is better than our next game? Oh, man.

Getting like one of your hands cut off. Okay. I'm going to talk a little bit about what this game is based on. And then I'll let John. Let's lead up to that first, okay? And then I'll go into my experience with this. Because... Our experience.

Yes. You were there and get paid for that yourself. I suffered to it as well. Oh, yeah. We sure did. So, in... I think it was 1999. I mean, the Asterix franchise did get kind of like a boost because...

It was enormous. Really big in Germany, at least. Yeah. So what it kind of happened was that there was a slump in the... Compa quality. And so kind of getting interest back in Asterisk... meant you had to go somewhere else. And for the longest time, I think since the 70s,

there had been an idea of making live-action movies. There was a live-action movie that was lost media, believe or not, until fairly recently. Whoa. Okay. From television. And I think it's a German production from the 60s, which was aired on television at some point.

It's not very good, I will say that much. But until 1999, the idea of making a live action Asterix movie had been around. And finally, it happened. It was directed by Claude C.D. And starred Christian Clavier and Gerard de Pardieu as Obelix. Today, I think, a little bit more of a controversial figure than he was back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back then he was huge.

I mean, he's still huge, but he was popular huge. Literally and figuratively. And this movie was huge in Europe. Yeah, this cannot be understated. I mean, this was... I don't have a frame of reference for this. No, I don't. I mean, I know had a very limited show.

My wife knew about this, though. She was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, because it was a monumental occasion. For Germany and France, it was basically... A huge cast of great actors. Yeah. It was co-produced with German companies. I think Bavadian film was involved.

And it kind of, it takes some liberties with Asterix. So it's a live action film, kind of based around Asterix the goal, the first comic book and Asterix the Great Divide, Roman agent. It takes things from all these different albums. But it kind of updates some of the iconography, so their costumes are very different. I mean just more lifelike, what they could have looked like if it was more colorful back then. Later movies, there are sequels to this. They actually go back to the original costumes and they look like terrible cosplay. So I actually really like the way they updated the look for this movie.

It looks rustic. These were good decisions. Yeah. Very good decisions. Great effects. Great character actors. I think... I mean, they had Godfrey Joan as Caesar, which was just brilliantly cast, I think.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the casting for this film is almost pretty. Perfect. And I remember I went to see this at the premiere. And I was telling my friend, who's also a big Asterix fan, who John met recently, Tom. Oh, yeah. He and I, huge for Astricks fans. And I remember telling him afterwards, like, man, there was so many ugly faces in this film.

And I couldn't be happier because all these faces are so defined and, like, the big noses and, like, the lines and wrinkle. It's just like everyone is a character. Absolutely everyone on screen is a character. And the actors themselves, you can tell they're having so much fun with the source material here and the script. So this is just a movie that feels fun to watch. It feels like very much like the comic books in just how they also acted out, which is something that I think if you haven't read the albums,

it's almost impossible to kind of understand. but it feels like everyone involved love the production and love the fact that we had gotten to the point where this, you know, icon, European icon, could be brought to life in this film. I mean, maybe just to compare

for the American audience, it's a bit like when the first really good Marvel movies came out. What about more like Teenage Dream Ninja Turtles hit? The live action show. So I actually was going to make that exact goddamn comparison.

Damn. Yeah, this for me, was comparable to 1990 when I got to see Ninja Turtles on the big screen. It was my favorite characters brought their life on screen and done wonderfully.

I know that some of the more like hardcore fans, I guess, of Asterix. We do exist. There's dozens of us. Kind of feel like the deviations and some of the changes to characters and just to

the lore is kind of stupid. But for a live-action film that, you know, 90 minutes introducing this world, it really works. And the core elements is still there. So, yeah, I don't know. I think the only thing I could say about the movie itself, we'll get into the games now.

But the movie itself... It must have led to a fantastic game, if, you know... Well, I think the movie itself, the biggest gripe I have is the romantic elements, which I don't mind great romance in the film. That's one of the best elements of a drama, but the romance here is kind of weird and it's very European. And now looking at Gerard Depadio,

it gives them weird undertones to the film. Well, I want to say that while you guys were enjoying this over in Europe, I had no idea that this existed in 1999 because I was too busy getting excited for the fantastic. to menace. Well, I saw that too. Yeah, that was fine. I went to see that too. I mean, there was also faces in that film.

Oh, okay. Well, yeah. And that film got the better game. And the Matrix, I guess. Oh, yeah. So, man. So, okay. Obviously, with Europe's biggest film production of all time,

it was one, I think it's definitely one of the most expensive films ever produced in France. I don't know if it still holds a record for, most expensive European film, but it certainly held a record for France, maybe still. You'd think with this monumental occasion we just went through, that a video game based on this film

would be produced at a high quality and a high budget, wouldn't it? You would think that, right? Now, I just want to take a little side detour before we get into what this game is. The Matrix, when it got its two sequels, it received a game called Enter the Matrix, right? It was largely panned, right? It's not considered a great game.

Now, I want you to imagine a different future where the game based on The Matrix comes out that year. And what you do in that game is you play as Neo, right? And he runs across the bottom of the screen very quickly, and floppy disks rain down from the top of the screen and you punch the floppy disks, right? Like, I want you to imagine that. Now, you take that concept and you do that like 10 more times, and that's the whole game.

Does that sound like a pretty good game to you? Do you think that would review better than Enter the Matrix? I think it sounds about maybe a one-fifth less good than Enter the Matrix. Yeah, so, well, my friends, that's what this asterx and obelisks versus Caesar game turned out to be. And my God, take on Caesar, yes. Yep. It was something. So first of all, it was developed by Cryo, the French developer,

known for Classics. Oh, yeah, Creo. Crio. Known for Mega Race, Mega Race 2, Lost Eden, and many other games. I have a fondness for some of Crio's earlier games. I will not deny it. I recall that we started the game. I saw the logo and said, oh, dear.

And you were still, oh, it could be okay. Cryo is not that bad. It could have Stefan Pickett. doing the music. There's, you know, there's a lot of potential

in your life like, unfortunately, as I would soon discover, there's a reason I stopped hearing about Creo after that point

is after Lost Eden is because they went way downhill and this is a perfect example of the later years of Creo in which they just create garbage because you start this thing up, you're playing as asterix but it's like a 3D model designed

to look like the film version of Asterix. Oh, my God. It is, So take what I said about the Matrix, but the first stage, replace the floppy disks with fish. You got to punch 60 fish out of 80, something like this. And you run back and forth across the 3D background. The thing is, when you run, though, he has an animation that I would describe as a gentle stroll, a very careful, nice walk.

But he moves like Sonic to Hedgehog after picking up the speed shoes. So you basically hit tap left and he launches to the other side of the screen. But he does so with this walking animation. And that's it. So he's like in a constant walk, but like they zip the character model, completely unconnected, disconnected, disconnected from the floor, back and forth across screen violently. Things fall out of the air. You position him under it and you whack that fish. And it continues like this for the entire game.

But like there's maybe like 10, maybe even less levels. And it turns into stuff. Like there's one, it's like, drink 10 drops of unicorn milk, prevent 10 Romans from doing the same. And it all amounts it is running back and forth in these very simple spaces over and over again. And each section takes a ridiculous amount of time. And that's it. That is the entire game. There is nothing else to do.

There is literally nothing else to do. It's just, it's, how did this get made? Oh, it got made, my friend. And, oh, my God. You're, you're, we have. Okay, let's just compose ourselves because, like, you're talking about the graphics, because this looks like a game that Ed Gein design, because like everyone has been scanned and like their skin has just been like put over to skeleton and stretched a fit. They all look like mangled corpses. It is insane looking and so off-putting.

It's like having digitized graphics, but they're all dead. Well, it's like having digitized graphics that you then turn into PlayStation 1 era palletized textures and slathered it on the low polyion models. It's so uncomfortable to look at anything of this game. And like you mentioned that gameplay, punching fish is one thing. The back and forth pickup. That's the game. It's a back and forth pickup game. Yeah, it's an old man under the apple tree.

just like, oh, and like, it's terrible. But I made this comparison back when I was doing the article back in the day. Like, this is straight up, and I think they knew this. This is a remake of Beatem and Eatem from the Atari 2,600, because you run under those trees and these big old globs and drops of, like, this unicorn milk is dripping down. and you're just running back and forth with your mouth open. Oh, dude.

It is the half. Yeah, I went there. Creo, they're the ones he went there. And you think like, well, that's totally up my fetish alley. But it's just, no, this is, this is one of the worst games ever made. Can we warn the audience? If you don't know what beat him and eat him is, I recommend you do not look it up. You know, I'll just tell you, it's a game where you just catch cum from big red dicks.

Oh, all right. All right. All right. Never mind. This is the two episode. They can go there. Okay, they can go there.

If you listen to this with the kids, then I'm sorry. Come on, son. We've got to listen to my favorite thing for my childhood. So, Ash, oh, God. Classic red tree notes.

You're right. This is exactly that game. And it's exactly, it's that game, by the way, across all platforms. So there's a PlayStation in one version, only released in Europe.

There's a PC version, which runs in a higher frame rate and higher resolution. by the way. You should pick that up, John. Oh, and I forgot that there's just a Game Boy Color version. That was amazing. We like stared at each other like, wait, it's the same thing, but worse.

It's the exact same game. We had a bit of hope. It might be something resembling a quality game, but no chance. Well, do you think that on the Game by Color, I had a thought that at the very least it might be more tolerable if it's more like a game and watch, you know? I mean, but apparently no.

They could be right. This is basically, this is a game and watch game, right? That's fundamentally what we're talking about here. It's a game and watch style game, but with none of the charm. And with none of the precise controls. No, not that. It's, Jesus. It's insane.

Like, It's insulting. I'm a lover of bad video games. I believe Stu is as well as well. Like, I believe he might have written a book recently, which is quite good. You should go pick it up. Yeah, I wrote that recently wrote that book. All games are good except Asterix and Oblix take on scene.

Yeah. that's European We had to cut down the title Yeah I love A challenged game Every game is good It just has some issues sometimes

This game though Is the quintessential License tie-in Yeah You know It's like everything you've ever heard Most of license games Aren't really that bad

You know Most of them are just fine They're by the books They're kind of boring Some are great This, though, is a cation. It is a lifeless cation based around the hot property at the moment. It tricked your kids to picking up smut.

It is evil. It is awful. And it's in my collection. That's what you wanted to hear. Thank you. Is it the worst Asthmaelix game? By far. By far.

I mean, there is that Atari 2,600 game, which is just TAS. right, just a reskin of that, which I don't like that too fun. But compared to this, I mean, forget about it. I'd rather play a dizzy game. What's that with it? I just don't get this dizzy slights. I really don't. I just don't understand

that. I don't get dizzy. That's just an omelet. I wouldn't want to eat. I wouldn't want to eat either because it would cause the death of dizzy. Oh, yeah. No, gosh, I would honestly describe, so you're talking about other movie games, like something like Batman Forever from a claim. It's like

Game of the Year material next to this. I mean, you can play it. There is a bit of ambition behind it, but this is just they take the barrel, remove the bottom, and then they put the game somewhere far below. Yeah, this is a porta potty with endless gaping hole into the center of the earth.

Jesus. It's just it is, there's nothing good about it. There is like these scenes from the movie, but somehow they managed to take most of the scenes that weren't like the most interesting. So, it's just a terrible

decision all around. The only trivia I can give you for this that's slightly interesting. It's only interesting because I'm Norwegian. This is translated into Norwegian and released on PlayStation, and there's only a handful of games that actually had

a straight-up Norwegian translation. If there was any Scandinavian language, it would be Swedish. But this, for whatever reason, had a full Norwegian, localization and I would love to know who did it and talk to them about that process. Unfortunately, they're no longer with us. Sorry, that's dark.

I apologize. They jumped into that same hole this game went into. Yeah. So, I mean, don't, yeah, don't play this. There's no, like, it's not even funny. This is not something where you download the game. We make it sound funny, but it isn't. I haven't had any fun talk about this because I hate it.

Not even comparing the unicorn milk to, never mind. Yeah, well, I think Go, yeah, okay, go watch that on YouTube or something And tell me I'm wrong Jesus, I can't believe that I mean, that's not something I expected to become a point of comparison But I guess here we are, you know Asterx take on Caesar, baby

That title gets a whole new meaning when you get that concept And of course, you know, back in those days Would have been a very common thing to happen for people to, the Roman emperors would come out and, you know, the people below would have to catch, well, you know where I'm going with this. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

Yeah. So speaking of bashing them all, let's talk about bashing them all again, but in a much, much nicer context. That's the Game Boy Advance game, right? Yes, it is, which came out in 2002. So there's a bit of a gap here prior to this one dropping. Bash them all?

Is that, Is that the English name for it? Paff them all. It's Paffed Pat Tutates. The copy I have right here, at least. Yeah, was this even real... Yeah, I guess it was. It might have been released outside of France.

In Britain, probably, yeah. I only have a French box copy. I thought it was only released in France. This is an interesting one, though, because, like, it's sold almost like this budget collection title. at two games and one. Again, kind of a non-descriptive box in the back of the box. It seems like just something that's been rushed out of the market.

But this is a brand new beat-em-up. Yeah, and it's beautiful too. I was quite taken aback by this when I tried it out because I assumed, as you say, I assumed it would be relatively a cash in, especially given the position the Asterix had in the market at the gaming market these days. but no, it's quite, I think it's quite attractive and quite fun.

Yeah, beautiful pixel graphics. So this is an interesting one in the sense that they brought back a lot of the staff from bit managers who did the Game Boy and the asterix earlier, asterisk and OBLICs on Super Nintendo. And once again on music, you have Alberto Gonzalez back for the, last time working on Asterix thus far. I mean, as for this recording, at least, who knows if you ever comes back for another run. But, yeah, this is a beat-em-up.

The main game is a beat-em-up based on Asterix and Cleopatra. So it takes you through that kind of album. It's fairly similar to how, like, the Konami beat-em-up is laid out. It's not a port of that or anything. but it has a lot of similarities and yeah it's just super detailed looks very similar

to how they made the Super Nintendo game which makes sense because the other game on the cartridge is actually a port of Asterix and Oblix from the Super Nintendo So you do, got a lot of game for your money Yeah, you got two games I think my biggest problem with this

is just the hit detection and the feedback on the offense that you have. It's in that realm of floatiness that I do not like on beatem-ups. There isn't much impact to your moves or anything. It is quite, as you say, it's quite floaty.

Yeah, I mean, that was also a problem with that very recent one that was put out some years ago, right? Oh, slap them all. Slap them all, too will solve all the problems. Oh, absolutely. Bash them all, slap them all, whatever. They both have that same problem.

But I actually think this one looks and feels, a little bit better than that newer one, actually, because it does still feel suitably like old school, kind of 16-bit. Yeah, the pixel art rather than the sort of... The pixel art is awesome in this. That's really the best thing it's got going for. It's a second best thing, I was saying. There's some fun animations, too, like the pirates,

the pirates, like sliding down the mast, landing on their big sort of bulbous asses bouncing up. Yep. It's nice. It's like there's love put into it, I think. I mean, the developers were so familiar with Asterix, that already made Asterix games. from what I remember talking to

Albert about it there were other plants in store here there was going to be more platforming and kind of like I think it was a bigger game planned and then the scope just got cut, the money wasn't there for it and so it became a beat-em-up and I think that's also why

because I think it has like five or six stages. It's not very long. It's interesting that Asterix and Oblix is presented as the kind of bonus game when it's quite long. You know, that becomes more the meaty kind of proposition, surely. Yeah, yeah.

And I think that's kind of weird. Yeah, I think they knew kind of that, like, this is neat, but it's on its own, the package isn't fully there. So they ported the superintendent game, being that they were the original developers for it. And it's still infograms putting this out. So they could. And I mean, the Game Boy Advance was known for having Super Nintendo ports. Yeah. Like prehistoric man

Prehistoric man Yeah It's just even the music You know Alberto's back But you can tell that it's just kind of He doesn't have the time He needs to kind of

Get his juices flowing And so None of the melodies really pick up That energy that he's so known for But I think it does sound really nice again It does sound really nice Especially for a GBA game Because I hate GBA sound

is yeah. It's one of the rare GBA games with that arpeggio sound actually. I'd like to know about this because I don't actually know this, but my understanding is that the built-in non-sample GBA sound is horrible. Yeah. But then you can, which is why the sampled music is always so bitty and shitty sounding. Right. I actually think the best examples are games that combine them,

where you have a bit of that Game Boy sound chip with samples. You can create some pretty neat sounding stuff. such as, what sort of examples do you know? Do you know any examples that combine both? I mean, shinn and stuff. Yeah, shinn and stuff is probably a good example of that. Yeah. I believe it's kind of like similar to what developers were doing on like a megadrive conceptually

where they were combining the different types of sound to create some really cool sounding compositions, right? Because that was a combination of PSG, FM synth, and then you had the PCM channel. And technically on Game Boy, I guess you could. could do sample playback with the G.B. Soundship as well. But obviously, samples take up more space and it, you know, it kind of varied per game, whether they use it or not. But, uh, I think about it. I think the Sonic Advance might do it, but it's, it's, yeah, it's, it makes me think of something like Mega Man Zero where I love the music, but it sounds horrible because it's all done on the GBA and, and it just is crushed to pieces. And, uh, it's a shame. It's a real shame.

Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a. Outrek that's just a bit too reserved compared to the person behind it and also I think the hardware itself led to that. I think reserved is kind of what's called this the new game

here because Asteris and OBLOBCNs and Superdendo we can go back and listen to our analysis of that but it's the same here. It's a little bit more faded and it doesn't look as great as it does in Serpentando. It doesn't sound as great either. but it's still a good game

and they even they've even included the link up haven't they like for multiplayer which is kind of impressive yeah so yeah it's not a bad package at all again released primarily in France

so I was a bit of a makeup game after the last one maybe yeah for the past yeah yeah I mean compared to asterx no one takes on Caesar this is a

masterpiece so But there's better to come as well. Yeah. Speaking of which, I guess we should, I say wrap up, but there's still a few to cover, but they sort of come together a little bit, I think. Yeah, they kind of flip together. Yeah, yeah. At least two of them. Yeah, actually, these are pretty interesting, but go ahead.

Yeah, so this, we just mentioned infographics. Yeah. And there's a kind of important thing that happens here because Puff to Tatis is like, the very last Astrox game that comes under the infographics label because in Europe

is this time there was a big consolidation of companies happening I think around 1999 an American person

I forget his name um Bruno Bruno Bonel Bonel Bonel Should be it man yeah

Bruno uh there was kind of decided that like well Europe is too divided and there's so many software houses across it, but they're all doing different developments. It's hard to keep track. It should all be consolidated down to a company.

And so they bought Atari and started consolidating it down. So things like Ocean, GT Interactive, Gremlin, all these companies you've heard of, Shiny. I think even Hasbro was part of this for a while. All these companies got conciliated into one. Phillips Media, the development house that Phillips set up for CDI was even bought up. Another CDI trivia there. But what happened here was that Atari Interactive startup. I mean, this is not the Atari that you knew before or today.

No. This was the Infograms Atari Interactive, which, was one of the worst things to happen to the game industry, I think, ever. This does not get talked about enough, but the damage that was done across Europe of this consolidation was absolutely unfathomable because we suddenly now didn't have

this unique, widespread development scene across Europe. We had one big conglomerate that, very soon after, didn't have the need for all these companies, right? That might sound a bit familiar. So, yeah, this, it leads into asterix, I promise you, but do look into this. The story of infograms becoming Atari Interactive is a story that has not been told properly, I think.

And the damage that it did to Europe in the Vittigam sense is still felt. And if you ever wonder what happened to a lot of these. companies that were doing Commodore 64 games and the media games and what kind of happened in Spain and all these places which had like really vibrant development scenes this is what happened

but of course being infograms they still had the asterisk license so games from now on were published by Atari so after the stunning success of a take on Caesar the film

and the video game I think again, there was a fatigue happening because there was sequels to the live action films that were successful. But that success, it had kind of waned off in terms of its

merchandising again. So the movies were popular, but the merchandising was down. It went down, especially around the classic asterisk design. And so a bigger production was put in place

for this franchise. to revitalize it for video game players because as you've seen now, the video game's based on the classic property. We're all very similar to one another. There's either a beat-em-up or a platformer or a beat-em-up clone, you know? Yeah.

Either of the three. And so, but the one thing that I've never really done, which kind of throughout we've talked in these episodes, we mentioned old time, why wasn't there like an adventure game? Why wasn't there like a LucasArts type of game? Why wasn't there like an open world kind of experience with this really big franchise? This big world.

And so in 2003-ish, we finally got what is kind of considered the revitalization of Asterix and VitiGame form, which was XXL. Okay. So, yeah, Thomas and I, we loaded up Asterix and Obelix XXL. And I was moderately impressed with this. one. My real being impressed moment comes when we get to the next one actually.

A bit later, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this was respectable. This one felt respectable. It felt like a legit platformer, kind of of the the Kaya Dark Legacy Haven Call of the King level of platform game where it's very PS2,

lots of exaggerated geometry in their shapes to kind of give it that cartoon-y kind of look, right? And it feels a little bit weird, I suppose, in terms of just like the control. but overall it comes off as being quite competent and fun. Yeah, it is like you say, it's very much like a AA platformer of the PS2 era.

It's a little bit uninspired, but the locations are real cool. I mean, it's very recognizable immediately that this takes place in the world of Asterix. The combat system is, it's deeper than you would expect. And it's not quite like a Zelda or anything, but it has exploration and kind of puzzle elements to the stages, which a lot of them, a lot of different gimmicks from like using the

cannon and other gimmicks like that. It's not bad. You could tell that they were experimenting and having a lot of fun and freedom with the property. They also did some neat stuff with like, there's even those moments where I recall early on we saw the Romans like in their shield formation like you would often see and you just jump right in the middle and take him out that way. And it's just, it felt like they were really trying to tie back into the Asterix franchise in a fun way and bring it into 3D in a way that they, I would say this is, this is the first time

that we'd actually seen good 3D Asterix gameplay, right? Like the other, the other stuff prior was okay of the 3D games. The only comparison you really have, right, this like mini games. Yeah, that's true. Or the interstitial sections. Yeah, that doesn't really count, right? Yeah, well, I mean, it counts in the sense that, like, those, even though it's bite-sized, the locations and kind of the graphical design of the backgrounds and stuff are very vibrant.

It can't carry a whole game, that's my point. Yeah, absolutely not, but, like, you could see that they're picking up on these elements that later on will be used in this series as well. The one thing about this one is that, it uses a redesign for characters again. It just kind of gives them more of a darker. More earthy, I think, in a way.

More somewhere between the comics and the film, I think. It's not quite like, what if Nomura designed asterix yet? He doesn't have enough belts. No. But they do have new belts. That's my big takeaway when I bought this. It's like, why are your belts so different?

They're all like metallic and like detailed. I guess that was how they got across it. This is a real. asterix. Look at the belt. And actually... Estrex can't be in Kingdom Hearts because he already has an X in his name. They'd be too confusing. Yeah.

This was released in the US. Yeah, it was. Only out PlayStation 2, but it was called Kickbuttics. That's so shit. I'm sorry. That's like terrible name. I hate that. I don't think that XXL is that good of a name, but it's better than Kickbuttics. I mean, XXL illustrates

basically, like this is a much larger asterisk than they've ever seen and yeah it has kind of like a grim start by the way I don't know if you guys noticed but like you start the game and the whole village is on fire and which immediately so the story of the game

very much just standard asterisk fair but really well played out voice acting excellent character animations excellent it feels like an asteris adventure kind of through and through.

But as you'll notice with the later games, this game is just a tad bit too dark. And I don't mean like, oh, it's like the source materials dark. I'm just saying like the stages and the textures and just normal compositions. It's a tiny bit muddy, I think. It is. Yeah. Especially compared to what would follow. Yeah.

Oddly enough, I think the GBA version actually kind of solves that by making it much more sky blue kind of. GBA version, dude. Yeah, we cannot move on until we mentioned that. I want to briefly, with XXL, I mean, I just want to say, like, I don't want to be the negative person. I don't dislike this game, but I think it gets boring about two and a half stages in. It does. Because you'll go on to another screen, and if you're anything like me and you like collecting things, you'll see another huge stadium-sized area full of like 600 boxes.

Yeah. and you're just like, oh, yeah, there's a lot. And that's what, like, this game really... There's a lot. It brings it down. It's just a lot of boxes. It's a lot of just... Yeah.

It's very European. I think we'll get to it, but I think the sequel actually really tightened that. Oh, my God. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. It's a sort of a first try to get this working, and, okay, a lot of boxes, but...

Yeah. I don't think this is bad, but if you are a collect-a-thon guy like I am, you are going to hurt when you play this, because you're going to spend, like, 10 minutes in each area. If you run through it, it's fairly brisk. I mean, there's a lot of locations.

They vary a lot. They're just a bit dull. And they're very open and just, it feels like just kind of set pieces, but not interact. They're not very interactive. It's just very open spaces with like a few plings to pick up. Yeah. And some enemies and some boxes, many boxes, many, many boxes. I would say, well, it looks visually not.

as well. The locations do kind of run together after a while. You have different themes, but each area kind of feels largely similar. I think it's the muddiness. Yeah, maybe so. The textures start feeling the same. They remastered this, and I think they actually made that issue a bit worse with the remaster graphics as well.

Oh, we'll get there too. Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. This episode's never going to end. It's going to be part four coming up. But, uh... We've got half an hour. We can knock this out. We'll do. Let's quickly talk about the Game Boy Advance game because it's

legend there. It's crazy. It's really fun. It's done by Valesne Dubai, who that name isn't too familiar. Well, I mean, now it is for the Game Boy stuff that they did. But for me, I always liked them because they were Lory Ciel, who did, like, Jim Power and other very French Amiga games. Yeah. Jim Power, of course, had a soundtrack by Chris Holspec.

When they got to the Game Boy Advance, I mean, you look at all the games that they did, like V-Rae Alley 3 and all these wacky races. I mean, they pushed hardware in a way that, like, is absolutely stunning. I think when you look at it now and you have places like D.F, you can

pick apart what they're doing and kind of, oh, okay, this is how they did it. Yeah. So maybe the effect is muted now just because people like John Lemon have come around taught us much more than we knew back then. But thanks a bunch, John.

to get rid of the magic. When I got this on my regular Game Boy Advance, because I bought this, as you would expect, I bought this and the PlayStation 2 version, later on the GameCube version on the same day. And I could not believe what I was seeing.

The fact that you had this fully 3D game on Game Boy Advance, something that stood up in my eyes at that time to a next-gen game was completely baffling. Now, John, you can probably let us know now how they did it. How they did the GBA stuff?

Yeah. Actually, I mean, so I can't really say, I mean, the GBA itself doesn't have any special hardware for this. It's just really smart programming from the developers, right? It's an arm, it's a 32-bit arm processor, interestingly enough. But it's, there was a lot of that

3D-ish stuff happening on GBA, if you recall. Right. I think they brought like the driver games to it. They did, yeah. But this, this one, somehow they came up with this, like, what looks like a polygon engine, like a very simple polygon engine and with sprite characters, right? So that's obviously key, though, was because they weren't going to be able to do this, do 3D model characters.

But, yeah, the, the 3D engine they created, I admit, I haven't studied this enough to know how it works because it absolutely blows my mind every time I see it. Like it genuinely doesn't make sense. Yeah, there is, when you boot it up and look at it today, especially in the emulators, you can kind of see that they're using some trickery. Because like, even the 3D houses and whatnot, they stretch and turn what if you did. So there is a combination of a lot of 2D elements being used. Oh, there's some of that. But I think it's a lot of like affine texture work.

It's like PlayStation 1 basically, right? Or it's like a software rasterized solution that's cheap to render. But the polygon structures behave exactly like PlayStation 1 games. But I think they use even like lower resolution texture surfaces. And maybe they're not even used in traditional. I actually don't know how they're doing the texture work either. Yeah. It's baffling.

It really is. I remember I'm playing this on an emulates, because I played everything JBM. an emulator back then, and thinking just like, oh, it's like, it's impressive, but it's like the version of Doom or something, it's all 2D, but then I started climbing on stuff, and I was like, ah, okay, you can push boxes around, you can climb on the boxes, you can get onto the rooftops and stuff, this is crazy, I don't know how they're doing this. I mean, yeah, it is a fully 3D adventure game on Game Boy Advance, and it might not seem that interesting today, just considering

how you play games on the switch and stuff now. But having this kind of game handheld at this time, even for a Game Boy Advance was unheard of. This is before DS in places are portable. So you had like racing games and things that we mentioned that like some of them toyed with 3D, but it's racing games.

And there's only so much you can do with them. But like here you had like... Full 3D. villages and open areas and like things that you just know. I could not believe. Yeah, just all done on the CPU. Very smart programming. Yeah, they do, of course, also limit the draw distance significantly, obviously.

But still, it feels like a miracle. And actually, the sprite quality is also impressive. They're like pretty high-res, lots of animation frames. And it feels like it's well rooted into the world. So, yeah, asterix. Noblix XXL, well worth a test drive. Yeah, I would actually suggest more than the PS2 game. This is the one that people should just check out.

Honestly, yeah. I think it's more fun, the way that it's been cut down, you know, the way that it's been condensed. And they managed to get like the, there's like a river rafting minigame in there as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. And that's surprisingly good as well. I mean, I would rate this version over the big boy version for sure. Yeah. Something about the visuals keeps always reminds me of magic.

carpet, the magic carpet engine from Bullfrog, where it's got that really short view distance and kind of very warpy-looking terrain, but like somehow it just works. I guess the only thing I would knock it back for, and this is quite petty, is that it's possible only, I think. There's no battery backup, which is a bit annoying. Hey, but at least that means you can save without worrying about a dead battery. Yeah, that's true. That's true. There's always a positives, too. Yeah. And speaking of positives, I mean, so, yeah, XXL.

especially a Game Boy fan version, do check it out. The Big Boy one, if you can locate the PC version or something like that, I'd say just give the test because you might have nostalgia for this era.

Yeah. There is a remake like Stu mentioned that came out a few years ago. We'll quickly summarize those afterwards. Yeah. Do not, I wouldn't go for that one. So, but I would, however, absolutely go to the next game

and po-boy this one that's an upgrade for sure yeah who the heck made this like the programming guys like this is nuts what they achieved here

on which one the next one yeah the next one XXL too so actually you could still be talking about the Gameboy advanced games could I give a preamble to this

unless John you were about to do just that well I was just going to give an initial impression based in the very first room and why this like immediately floored me right You have that original game, whatever. It looks okay. This one, however, opens up in this gorgeous cityscape with, like, lots of rounded architecture.

You know, it has all these smoothed off. It's beautiful looking. You walk forward a little bit. You see these, like, fine marble surfaces maybe. I'm not actually sure what material it is, but it's actually reflective with, like, these, like, somewhat, like, diffuse reflections of environmental scenery around you. It's got blades of grass. the kind of like all filling the fields with these trees around it.

There's just a tremendous amount of detail everywhere. The textures are actually pretty high-res. And a lot of the surfaces and the stones are actually made up of polygon models as well. Yeah. And it's like, this is PS2 and it's 60 frames per second. Yeah. It actually feels like almost like naughty dog grade in terms of what they pulled off. It really does.

So this, the game you're talking about is Xxel 2, uh, mission, Las Vegas. them. And the lead-up to this game was actually one of the bigger ones for a Nastricht's game ever. I mean, comparable, I think, to when, like, the superintendent when NES games came out. Yeah. This was one that was actually promoted, believe it or not. It's been a while. For me, I only heard about this one because I think it was on a DVD preview for a magazine that I had or something.

And it was like, oh, yeah, this game is like, it's going to parody other games. It's going to have references. And this is before indie games rinsed the shit out of that idea. Sure. And I had never seen this happen before. And I was like, oh, okay, you've got my attention now. That sounds fun. Because this is not just like, it's not just a gimmick.

Because I think, I've talked to some Americans who've seen this and been like, well, it's just a parody. And I mean, yes, it is. But look at what asterix in itself is. And look at what they're doing now here with. video property, they're just appropriating the video game spectrum into what Asterix has always done.

And it does so absolutely flawlessly. So this isn't just a matter of like, well, this guy looks like Sonic and hey, this guy looks like Mark. They've all been contextualized into this world. Yeah, that's pretty funny. And they look absolutely

ridiculous, but in such an incredibly fun way. They got the Sam Fisher goggles. They got the, yeah. They got the Splinter Cell guy showing up. They've got a Mario with the water pack. Yeah, this is right after sunshine. Well, there is some stuff which is kind of like...

Tetris is in there. Like, it's there. Like, there is some visual gag stuff, but as you say, most of it's contextualized. Most of it's in-game. Like, you've got the Ryu guy throwing Hibokens at you. And when you kill him, he goes like... Yeah. In slow motion, it's perfect.

It's perfect, right? Yeah. And then you have like... puzzles with the Tetris blocks like you come to like this barrel sequence that's going down these like construction like things and you're like man is this like Donkey Kong you get to the top of it's Donkey Kong

you have like Pac-Man shows up and but it's done so lovingly that I'm actually surprised when I play this first time I couldn't believe it so similar to John said as well it just looks absolutely gorgeous we mentioned like dull colors on the previous

one yeah this one is just just color overload. It's one of the best-looking PS2 games, I'd say. One of the apps are best-ful-level-wise. Yeah, it was quite... Well, I was out to say it's quite late, but it's not, because PS2 had an infinitely long life, but this was quite like...

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't there on the height of the system, maybe. I got... This is one that I bought, and I bought... Because I didn't buy any of these other Asterox games, like, in the previous era, but I bought this one because of the parody thing. Yeah.

And I think it was also quite cheap when it came out as well, in the UK, at least. And I remember playing it and just being like, oh my God, like this has been, if anything, underrated. Why is nobody, like, this is really fun. This is like up there with the better platformers I've played on this system. It's an enormous fun. You know, John was saying like, Nottie Dog.

I mean, this feels like a platformer. Yeah, it's like one of the most polished. It's so impressive. Well-executed, technically and mechanical platforms you'll find out of the entire system. It just feels like with a first with a learn to walk and now all of a sudden they're just running. Right, yeah. Wasn't there, like, guys in there that, like, fight you with rings,

like, wearing, like, Sonic the Hedgehog style? Yeah. And they make Reefers as well, right. God, there's just, there's so, like, you're right. It's very funny now. There's also, like, like, Mario-style platforming with, like, Powell blocks and stuff, if I recall. But the whole thing is just, like, it's parody before that had become a big thing,

like you say. Like, this is the kind of stuff Matt Hazard wished it could have done. Oh, God. Jesus, thanks for reminding me of that one. And also, I mean, if you think about the time in 2006, of the feeling of, oh, we can do that actually. Interesting, because nobody did it before, at least not in a big capacity.

I mean, there have been smaller games that did a bit of that, but not like that. No, and it's done, I think it's done tastefully enough that never feels like it's, you never grown. And again, we mentioned like how it's whole contextualized. Yeah, it's done in such a way that you, You laugh with the game. Yeah.

And the game's not built around it either, right? It's the stuff that pops up while you're playing. Yeah. There's some stuff. Is this the game that has the thing where, if you beat up enough Romans, your hands go on fire? Yes. And you use that to solve certain puzzles as well, right? Yeah.

I thought that was so smart. Like, because they don't, it's like the previous game has, you're fighting for the sake of fighting. It's a bit repetitive. And in the second game, it's like, no, to progress, you have to beat up enough Romans to set fire to this thing or to beat up enough Romans like with these specific conditions. And you get all these new, like you can pick up Romans and swing them around, like, whacking other Romans, like, almost like Dynasty Warriors or something. It's crazy how fun it is.

Yeah. I mean, just an absolute smash for the platform. And I think this one was not released in the US. No, I know. That's the thing. Did they not release the DS or the PSP version? This would have been like 2006 era though. This was the year where PS3 was coming out.

God of War II, I think, was about out on PS2 and one of the last big PS2 games. I think things had been changing by this point. And I think PS2 just wasn't that viable. So it, why? Well, it was still viable enough, but I can't imagine them saying, hey, let's release this IP that's not that popular in North America in North America again, regardless of how good the game actually is. Yeah, it's fantastic.

I mean, there is a PC version, so you can absolutely play the original version. Or just buy it on PS2. Yeah. There's a remake again, which I think is quite all right, to be honest. It's okay, but they made some, there's some graphical changes and just... I think playing it on PS2 is the best way to go, especially for the Redsard Notts audience, because on PS2, it's a technical masterpiece. piece. In the remaster version, it's perfectly cromulent, but not much more than that.

Can I briefly mention that this was on PSP as mission YFikes or YFix or something like that? That I'm not tried, actually. It's actually not that bad. It's basically the same again on PSP, just obviously cut down graphically. But there's also a DS version, which is a 2D platformer, and it's also fine. It's fine, yeah. It's nice and smooth, like graphics and everything. So the DS version has a lot of these, like, touch puzzles. some things added to it and it actually

uses a lot of graphics from the comic book which is kind of interesting because the redesigns are in full effect here so you can have this kind of

inconsistency in the presentation but it's not I would say that the DS port is probably the least interesting the PSP one

is very much of its era PSP port nothing wrong with that, but just kind of, that's what you get. Could I ask you, so I know we're not going to harp on it, but the Rome mastered version.

Right. When you use the button that puts that into original graphics, is it still not the original graphics? So it's still higher res, which is some of the issues with it. But have they changed the gameplay as well? I can't really recall, because it had been such a while since I played the... Yeah, so

they changed some puzzles around. Oh, geez. It's, yeah, I don't want to go too much into this remake. They are out there and if you want to try them but there was also a new one XXXXX3 came out

Oh there's not very good ones aren't there They did like XXXL as well Yeah Why did they even call them XXL when they're nothing like Well I know why to sell copies but To sell copies Yeah

So yeah the remakes are out there And those were released In the US market So it's kind You get into like a difficult Territory there right Because it's like Well they didn't make it more available

but it's not the same experience. No. And they kind of, they're cheap, they're cheap remasters. I'm not a big fan of them. I wish, I wish they just took a little bit more time

to polish up and bring the games back as they were, but instead they're kind of, they're changed and kind of scaled back. So it's one of those remasters where it's like, I mean, it's neat, but you should just play the original instead. So if they didn't,

so they didn't release this in the U.S. Not the original now. So is the version that you would get in play, is it compromised or did they make it run at 60 hertz for this one? Oh no, it's the remake is in 60.

No, no, sorry, I mean like the original game is does it like it feel sluggish? Because I remember, I don't remember it feeling sluggish or they actually don't like that. No, it's made for. It was made for. It's fine, yeah. Sorry, I don't know. I was, yeah. I can't remember if it supports 60 hertz or not. It does not. But it does at least run at a

stable 50 frames per second. Which looks the same basically just with more flicker. You can't play the PC version at 60 though. Okay, true, true. But still, I think 50's fine as long as the game is a design for it. And this is.

Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I'm being a bit sort of too fussy here. It's bloody good. Like, you should play it. Oh, this is probably, I mean, apart from the arcade game and... Even then, this might be the best... I would personally say this was the best one for me. this for me exists in the like top 10 of PlayStation 2's library it's that good for me

so I mean that's a crazy thing to say but if you like I fix that much then I get you incredible system yeah but it's also very cheap it's very cheap so and yeah if you I mean there are ways of playing this right uh on original hardware or not so yeah but it's one that you or the remake the remake of two I will say is the least offensive of those remakes. Yeah, I would, see, personally, I would contend, based solely on my memory of the original being a little bit lesser, not lesser, like, it's a worst game, but my memory is just a bit, like, bad.

I thought it was fine when I played it, and I enjoyed playing the remake, but if it has been changed up for the worst significantly, then, yeah, you know, just buy the remake and then just play the ROM of the original. How about that? Yeah, like, graphically even, like, the way that the PlayStation 2 or even Windows version looks is just much more appropriate

whereas the remake looks super cheap. I was about to say an explicit, but it looks so cheap in the way that they did it. So you don't get that same pop from putting it in the first time. I just remember that there's a

character who's like Lara Croft except it's like a fat dude dressed as Lara Croft called Larry Croft. It's one of the bosses. That's so good I love it. He's on the cover too. And the cover, by the way, just like a GTA cover.

Awesome cover, yeah. You know, I never clocked that until you just said it and holy shit, it is a GTA cover, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's just straight up a GTA cover. Even the text, even the Mission Las Vegas text is GTA. Oh, this has changed my life. So this is one that if you're a fan of great games on PlayStation 2, I mean, this should be very high on your list. And, yeah, cheap to pick up.

Absolutely worth it. If you absolutely need, like, something on original hardware at, you know, your own refresh rate, go get the PSP version just to dip your toes in the water. Perfect, perfectly cramolent version. Yeah, perfectly fine. And there's one more game in this. sort of loose strategy, isn't there?

It's going to be back down again now. I wouldn't say it's bad, but... No, no, no, no. No, not bad, but I mean, we had just a really exceptional one. It's not as good as two, but it's probably better than one still for me. So, as I mentioned, there was an X-X-X-L-3

that came out two years ago now. It's not very good. But this game, actually, the X-X-L-2, Las Vegas. has a sequel that came out in 2008, which is the Asterix in the Olympic Games.

So this one is kind of weird because it was actually made to be a tie-in with the last, at that time, the last live-action film. But it uses the classic asterisk aside. So it's already kind of like, but considering what we got from a take-on Cesar, I guess that's a better proposition anyway. And it's perfectly competent, but going from kind of the nature of, the video game parodies and contextualizing that in Asterix and all the wonderful puzzles that you have in X-Skel 2. Asterisks in the Olympic Games is a much more straightforward and gimmicky platformer on the same engine.

As such, you pick it up and it's fine. It feels very much like, well, they ran out of ideas. And considering how many great ideas they had for, XXL2, it's somewhat of a shock because it just, you just feel nothing playing this game. That's the best thing I can say, you don't feel offended or anything like that. You could probably have a lot of fun with it. But if you come off XXL2, this game is just such a letdown. Yeah.

Like, it really starts with that opening, just chasing the bore around in the forest. Like, first of all, the frame rate is worse than the last game. Yeah. Yeah, like the, what you're actually doing there just isn't all that interesting. Yeah. And it just makes a really bad first impression. And it kind of continues as far as I've played anyway, where the level design and the scenarios just aren't as well thought out or fun or funny as the player game, right? You just kind of, it's just tied out to the movie.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So it's, you know, they have that movie tie in, which probably had to cap them. But also it's like the Olympic Games. have them back. It brings in this gimmicky, I mean, X-Cyl2 could have been super gimmicky too. They don't make me wrong,

because you have all these video game-based things. But what they did was like, they made a lot of cool puzzles based around the logic of those games that was, you know, basing itself on. So you have all this variation. You have all this wonderful, nostalgic feeling around all these different areas. Everything feels fresh. When you get to this, it just feels like another three-year-old.

platformer that happens to be tied into a movie and it's like just gimmicks around these Olympic games. In a weird way, crappy mini games, basically. It kind of feels like a sequel to XXL1 like if XXL2 hadn't happened, right?

Like it hasn't syncing a feel. Very good point. I mean to a point maybe, I think there's much more variety than there was in XXL1. True. But I think one of the problems that Olympic Games has personally is

it seems to borrow some mechanics from like, for example, Prince of Persia, so you've got a lot of clambering in this game that's very slow and that's not really what you want to be doing in an Asterix game. Yeah, it's just... I think it's better than the first one personally, but yeah. It is

better than the first one. You're absolutely... That's not what you were saying, I misunderstood you that. Yeah, it's as if two didn't happen. I agree with that. I think I agree with that. I think the difference is, though, that's like when XXL1 came out, that felt new and kind of exciting, but it quickly becomes boring.

this just kind of starts off boring and you've seen it before so even though it's better it's like it's more disappointing just because like well your reference now is that incredible sequel and so you go into this and it's just like oh I don't know like I have

more fun playing the last one and that's not how you should feel when you play a sequel and I mean this was also the first next gen at the time you know the Astrox game because this actually came out on 360.

That's right. Believe it or not, it came out on the 360 and PS3, right? Yeah. Where the movie didn't get released. That's right. So, extremely strange.

It's actually an expensive 360 game now in the US. Is there not also? I thought there was a PS3 version as well. I don't think so. I think it is 360. It's only 360? Yeah, I might be mistaken,

but I'm reasonably certain that's the case because I know I went to buy this on 360 with the expectation it would be cheap. Yeah, maybe you're right. That's interesting. No, that's right. It wasn't PS3. It also came out on the Wii. That's what it was.

I knew it was on two of those next-gen, quote-unquote, next-gen systems. I'm assuming it's the same as the PSC version with Weigel. I think the Wii version is just like the PS2 version, though. Right, right. Yeah, so the Wii version, I think it's exactly the same. I can't, there is some waggling on like... Some waggle. Yeah.

Yeah, on like the Olympic games. They're running in long jump system. Yeah. So is the 360 version basically the same as PS2, 60 frames per second, but with bloom? Is that what we're talking about? No, it's actually probably less bloomy in a weird way. Oh, okay. It looks very, well, there is some bloom, but it looks similar to the PS2 version,

but the textures are higher-res overall. It looks very similar to the PC version. Yeah, and the free rate's more consistent, basically. I'd like to get that 360 version, for God knows what reason. Yeah, I mean, I have. it for both regions. It's not, I mean, it looks like the Windows versions.

Yeah. It's fine, but the game itself is just the same of whatever. So like it's not that fun. The DS version. That one I've never played. Yeah, it is mostly just mini games. Oh, figures. And stylus-based?

Stylus-based. Of course. Yeah, so you have to like go back and forth in circles and it's one of those. You know what you're getting into with the old DS least license games there. So, yeah, it's just a shame because, like, XXL2's puzzles and stuff are so intricate and fun, and they traded all that way for cheap mini-games. I mean, that's what it is.

Would it be fair to say that Mission Las Vegasgan left such a long sort of tale that the microids games that we get these days have pretty much all been chasing that kind of clout? Since? Yeah. I mean, you've got stuff like Slap the Mall, which is very obviously them going, how you remember the arcade game or this is a shitty version of it I guess we were entering our very last thing here yeah so I mean this

was the last kind of big production original production that happened until 2019 yeah because after this you'll find Asterix games on mobile DS there was like a brain trainer game

and it becomes very kind of educational and you know because Asterix was now pretty much entering a stage where it hadn't really been passed down to the 2000 generation from the parents, right? Like the cartoons and stuff

had happened in the 90s, but now the people who have been born 2001, whatever. There's no more exposure. That's a thing. I mean, in German television, there was an Asthmaic movie every weekend, basically, on TV,

but not anymore. It's over. Yeah, it's stopped. But like anything else, once you get to the late 2010s, it becomes this icon again, just this recognizable property that kind of comes back.

I don't know what happens. There's probably a study of it, but a lot of these older properties, Ninja Turtles as well. Was that when movies like Mansions of the Gods were coming out of the Yeah, so the Mansion of the Gods was the 3D animated film,

which is incredible. It looks beautiful. I was really impressed by the visuals. Oh, yeah. Both of the 3D animated film. films should check out. Yeah. And they're not quite the level of the cryo game, but good enough.

Are Creo? No. They make you cryo when you play them. But do, if you do want to check out, kind of like what asked, do not watch the live action sequels, watch the first one, but the 3D films, absolutely fantastic. So if you can see those. So that revitalized. And of course, also new comics at this point that were better than what we had before.

Yeah. So, and Udarsu has passed as of this recording, the original artist. So both of them are not gone. So kind of asterisk is in completely new hands. And a lot of people now creating asteris are trying to kind of bring back the quality that they remembered from their childhoods. You know, people who are now in their 40s and 50s. My understanding is it's paying off, right? They're selling very, very well.

I mean, it's stronger now than it's been in. probably 25 years. And with that, you suddenly started seeing so and Microids picked up the license and did X-X-L. I need to get some microids cream over here. They did two before one, didn't they? Did two before one. Yeah.

Smart move, to be honest. Yeah, that's fine. Then they did one. And then they did XXL-3, which was their own take, in a brand-new game. It is not very good, unfortunately. It's not even a platformer. the top down.

Yeah, what's up with this one? This is one I have not played either at all. It's boring as hell. I played it as well as it about. I played it as the eyes as though it's that. It's really, really boring. You walk around, you hit boxes, you hit some romance. It looks all a bit brownish.

Imagine something like Diablo, except you have like one move and you don't get any stats. Like, you don't get any loot. Yeah. It's the point. It's just meandering. Yeah. It's really disappointing. That's all I can say.

I don't want to, I don't want to go too negative on this. No, no. These people, they're not terribly. games. So they're just kind of disappointing. And then you

also had slap them all? Slap them all. Yeah. Yeah, which is the brawler that has hand-drawn graphics.

It looks absolutely stunning in still. It looks absolutely boring in motion. Yeah, I think from all of us I'm the one who enjoyed the game the most.

Yeah. It's nothing wrong with that again, but it's just so there is not enough. The game is too long. There's too much. We live in an era

of Shreders Revenge and Streets Reh4 and like people who redefined the brawler and slapped them all just kind of it stays way way to conserve the

The thing is what I can say about that So I know people who are not into Brawlers at all Who are not into this classic arcade games They saw the game Saw the graphics bought the game

And enjoyed it a lot actually Yeah I mean if you are not That genre savvy I think you're fine with it But of course If you know Shreders Revenge and Switzerland

of H4, it just can't hold up. That was made by Mr. Nuts Studios. That's actually your name. That's a great name. They just, they announced a new one just as of this recording. A new Mr. Nuts? What are we doing a Mr. Nuts episode, by the way? Oh, we're doing that.

That's happening. Yeah, I'm down. If we do that, I can maybe get some of the organizers of the game. Oh, yeah. Get them and we'll, we'll berate them to their faces. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I love Mr. Nuts.

They're on the corner. They're in Frankfurt. I like Mr. Nuttop and Matt. How about that? So, yeah, I like that game, too. But anyway, so Asterix games today, they're still coming. They just announced to slap them all two,

which looks like is addressing a lot of the issues with one. As we mentioned, there's also X, X, X, X, L as well. And why not call them, slap them even more? I don't get it. It's X, X, X, L. and there are other things I've heard. So Asterix is going to continue.

There's new animated films in production. Cool. Do check out the 3D Asterx movies. They're fantastic. And I mean, this kind of ends the episode on a fairly good note. I mean, it's an active franchise today. It doesn't always get the best games. No.

But in comparison to where it was by the late 90s and then by the late 2000s, it is now back to being a cultural icon of Europe. I think people look at Asterix now with a lot of reverence and love and nostalgia. And I think we're able to pass down a lot of that quality to younger generations. So I'm pretty happy with where Asterix is now compared to where I felt it was 10 years ago when I wrote that original article. Because at that time it was pretty dire and it seemed like no new comics were even getting off the ground. So, yeah, if you're a fan of Asterix, we're now probably in the greatest time for it. Hooray.

What a positive way to end this. I mean, we should be sitting around the table with a bore in the twilight. Yep, strung up the old... In these three episodes we've done together. Yeah, let's bring up Parrish, maybe. Yeah. And I love Asterisks, as you can tell probably in these episodes. So it's very honored that can be here to talk about them.

And on that note, where can we find you? Should we wish to pursue you and shout at you about asterix on the internet? So I'm on social medias. There's several of them now. Pick your poison. But PC98 underscore Audi. You can also find me at Limitron Games, developing Carbon Engine games. And, of course, my favorite endeavor, you can find me alongside John Lindman as his little asterix in the corner doing DF retro here.

He's my little wacky on projects. So do sign up for the DF Patreon. Check out our retro features. And shout loud enough and just maybe we'll do some DF retro on Asterix. Oh, man, that's a tall order. But, yeah, as he suggests, I am also over on Digital Foundry. That's my main home base there. You can find me at Dark 1X on various social media platforms because, God, there's so many now.

Also, YouTube.com slash Digital Foundry. There's retro. There's modern. There's all kinds of stuff there. If you like looking at close-up screenshots of grass textures, you might really enjoy this month. That's my favorite. I do like looking at that. Touching grass.

Thomas, why can we find you? So, if you want to find me, you can buy M Games in Germany, of course. print magazine still around. You could come to university at Deburg or you just follow me on blue sky at Tapiafortuna. Hooray!

We did it. Yay! Sorry, that ended way sooner than I was expecting and I started building a house of cards. That's not true. I don't know I said that. If you... Thank you for listening to Retronauts. If you like the show and you like to support it, if you don't already, touch, tut, tut. You can find us on patreon.com

for a mere $5 per month, you can get a bunch of stuff. You can get two extra monthly episodes, completely unheard anywhere else. There's one over 100 on there now if you've not caught up. You'll get Diamond Fights, excellent this week in retro columns. You'll get access to the Discord where you can say

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Thanks very much for listening. and we're finally done with Asterix. I feel pleased that we've come this far. Unfortunately, I think we missed this one random DS games. We've got to do the whole thing over again from the start. Oh, no, no. We mentioned the brain trainer and some other things. Yeah, we've got to do it the whole thing over again because of what you did.

But at least you got to beat him, eat them in here. That's something, right? Yeah, at least we talk about B2 and Eatem for sure. We'll do a part four exclusive to Patreon. Yeah, for you just talk about the DS games. All right, thanks very much. And, yeah, keep in our out for that part four, which is definitely not going to happen. Thank you.

Ha ha ha.