Retronauts - 785: Capcom's Barbarian Legacy

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Patrick Kulikowski gird their loincloths to discuss some of Capcom's deeper historic cuts: games where burly men (and ladies) smash and bash baddies.Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This week in Retronauts, we relish seeing our enemies driven before us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts episode, unless something changes, 785. I make no promises. But I do promise that I, the person speaking, am Jeremy Parrish. And I am joined this week by some other people whose voices and names and probably their opinions will be very familiar to you if you've listen to the most recent episodes I've posted because we are continuing the series. We are not doing the Retronauts thing where we're like, oh, yeah, we'll finish that up in a while. And then three years later, we haven't finished up. I've got enough of those dangling over me. So this time, I'm actually making stuff happen. This is another Capcom episode. And joining me,

we have, let's see, based here in the U.S., we have Patrick Kulakowski, former Capcom person no longer, but still with that. Do your opinions represent your former employer? My opinions represent myself and no one else. Okay. So these are not official Capcom statements. No, no. These are, this is all hearsay. Okay. That you experienced firsthand. I mean, it would have been cool to be a fly on the wall in the creation of Capcom's arcade classics in the 80s and You weren't there for Black Tiger? Man, if only. Although, you know, you hear stories of the wild west of old school game development and how bizarre and out there it was back then.

And what it was like to sleep in an office for four months straight. Exactly, yeah. Glad I'm not a part of that. Yes, absolutely. Also, joining us from Faraway Lands. We have... Hello, hello. I'm Stuart Jep.

And I would like to just say, actually, and this is an exclusive. With regard to my enemies, as you mentioned earlier, I have actually recently banished the evil serpent man back into another dimension, and van Christelida, the cruel wizard Rathamon. I hate my enemies. They're the worst. So that was a really good afternoon. That's great. Congratulations on seeing them driven before you to other dimensions. Thank you.

Honestly, my enemies are one of my primary nemesies. They've had the thought on my side, I have to say. and I hate them. I despise my enemies. Thank you for allowing me to bring that up. Yeah, absolutely. Glad we could be here for you. So what we are not enemies of, if I can segue into the topic,

are Capcom's Barbarian Legacy Games. And this is kind of a loose kind of categorization that's just been sort of kicking around in my brain for a couple of years, mainly because I really just want to talk about a few of these games. And I feel like maybe they don't justify an entire episode individually, but we can certainly stitch a bunch together with very loose theming. And, you know, these games kind of sort of almost fall into other Capcom genre categories at times, but they also don't quite.

Like we talked about Black Tiger a little bit in the platforming episode, but it's not really that much of a platforming game because you do run and jump, but it's not like you can fall into pits and die unless there's something going on in some of the later stages that I haven't reached. But it does kind of feel like they, you know, with that game, they sort of started developing this motif of just like a general sort of style and ran with it. And there were quite a few games that they published through the 80s and 90s that sort of captured that same vibe. And, you know, if we make it that far, there were also some games in the 21st century that we won't talk about in depth, but that certainly seem to hearken back to that era of Capcom

and that little creative through line that they had. I don't know. Do you see this? Are you just joining in because you've, you know, wanted to talk about some good games? Do you actually think there's something here to what I'm saying? My initial thought, when you titled this like Barbarian Legacy is just, oh, yeah, all the musly, like, burly men in Capcom arcade posters or whatever. But not like Mike Hager. I mean, he's a burly muscular dude. But I don't think anyone looks at Mike Hager and says, oh, he's the mayor. Although, or he's a barbarian, he was the mayor.

But then again, you know, he was kind of based somewhat on. on Jesse the Body Ventura, maybe. So he's kind of a barbarian. He teamed up with Conan, which is to say Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, you know, it all sort of leads back to barbarism. There's got to be a fantasy element for it to be a barbarian, I think. I don't think you can have a contemporary barbarian.

I think that's, you know, like, Reacher, that's kind of why. You would never call him a barbarian. He's just like rock hard. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like there's some sort of like, you know, alignment square that has to be filled out, good, neutral, evil, bad, that sort of thing. And there's a, there's a certain area that barbarians occupy. Yeah. I feel like that, wow, I didn't put enough thought into this in advance. What, what does define a barbarian? Well, we could just talk about for 90 minutes, if you like. I mean, for me, when I see the word barbarian and I think about video games, I think about two things. One, the video game barbarian on the Zedex spectrum, which. is a horrible game. And I'm not even going to say anything more about it. But two, for me, the apex of the barbarian in a video game, you know altered beast? Right before you become an altered beast, but not at the beginning of the game, you're like this ludicrous, like,

Meeks love it too. That to me is the barbarian. And that to me is what you get here, I believe. You know, it's a very similar thing. Yeah, I think the idea of barbarian, there is an element of outsider to it. If I'm not mistaken, the word barbarian comes from like the Roman Empire, and that was just kind of their categorization for the sounds that like Golic and Germanic tribes that were sacking the latter Roman Empire made, Barbar. Maybe that's all BS. And I, you know, that, yeah, exactly. You know, they were doing B1. Yeah. So, you know, the idea is like it's an outsider, a threat, a powerful enemy, not as civilized as

one might prefer. But in this case, you know, in these games, you're playing someone who kind of has that barbarian vibe to them, and therefore you are the protagonist and maybe you're fighting the Romans. I don't know. In shadows of Rome, you are a barbarian

fighting for Rome, just because you're like a big burly dude fighting for Rome. I don't know. There is an interesting link to another contemporary. pre-ar archetype, which we will get to. I'm just, I'm teasing that because there is one, and it's coming up, and I will explain it when we get there,

okay? But will you, though? Are you going to forget this thread? I'll just do it now. At the end, you'll be like, oh, I forgot to say that thing. Okay, Tiger Road, when we get to it, the guy in Tiger Road, at one point says, make my day, and that made me think of Dirty Harry. And now, the loose canon, who plays by their own

rules, but gets the job done. Maybe a little violent, maybe a little over the top. That's the same thing as the barbarian. I think the direct link is barbarian to loose cannon cop, gets the job done. So vigilante, basically. Vigilante, yeah. That's a much more efficient way of saying that nonsense I just expoused. I also can't help but think about, when I think Barbarian, I also just think of the westernized version of key art for a number of these Japanese video games when they made the trek over to North America and Europe. Just take this Bishonan, pretty-looking boy,

and muscle them up, make him burly, and that's your key art for the West. Yeah, maybe the definition of Barbarian is, would this cover art be appropriate if painted by Frank Frisetta or Boris Vallejo? Like maybe, like, should they be muscular, mostly naked, oiled up, and possibly holding a dead corpse of like a fantasy monster, then they're probably a barbarian. Yeah, and is there like a lady in a bikini made out of metal, like, clinging to that leg, kind of like. Right, yeah, it's equal opportunity semi-nudism. Yeah, the cover of Hero Quest, if you will, if anyone's played that. So, with that said, let's begin our journey through Capcom's history of barbarism, which I believe begins properly in 1986 with a game called Trojan.

So, you know, again, we're kind of getting into that history of the word with the Roman Empire, or in this case, the Greek, antiquity, Hellenistic Greek, or maybe, I don't know. Was that Hellenistic? I don't know. Whatever. In any case, Trojan does not actually take place in ancient Greek. It actually is more of a fist of the North Star post-apocalyptic hellscape, where the world is dominated by gangs of mutants and thugs. you know, even though this, the game does have that kind of barbarian vibe to it. Every time I say barbarian vibe, I want to start with a V.

I don't know why that is. Barbarian vibe to it. You're actually playing kind of the most put-together guy in the kingdom. There's only like two other people who are as well-armed and armored as you, which is the final boss Achilles, who's like you, but much bigger and has a gigantic, Broad Sword, and then the pallet-swapped version of you who you can fight in the fighting game mode in the NES game. So, yeah, maybe not the most platonic ideal of the barbarian game, but nevertheless, I feel like, I feel like there's something there. How familiar are you

with Trojan? The heart is there, I think. I wasn't that familiar with Trojan. I'm reasonably be certain it was on at least one of the Capcom generations and possibly in the arcade stadium but I tried this out and I was sort of pleasantly surprised it reminded me a little bit and I this is so stupid sorry but it reminded me of

Maximo because of the whole shield thing and it seemed kind of tough obviously but it also seemed kind of doable because I did get reason I did do reasonably well on one credit in terms of I didn't just fail on the first sort of second stage I did obviously

I died, but I just got through it. And also, I was really surprised that this is an up-to-jump game, because that's very micro-computery, and that didn't seem like a... I mean, fighting games, for sure, but I don't know if this is... I assume this is pre-even the original Street Fighter. I think that was 88,

but... That was 87. That was 87. Okay, it was one hour. So, I'm glad that you have organically mentioned a Street Fighter, because that means I didn't have to introduce it myself. This game, Trojan, is the missing link between

Iram's Kung Fu and Street Fighter. All three of those games were designed or co-designed by Takashi Nishiyama, or Piston Takashi, who was kind of, in a lot of ways, the father of the fighting game. And

you can see a through line in Kung Fu to Trojan to Street Fighter of the way that your character has like high and low actions, how blocking is important, how jump attacks factor in. And, yeah, Trojan kind of takes the Kung Fu concept,

where you have like high, low attacks, kick attacks, that sort of thing. And it kind of puts a dragon buster spin on it, a little bit like the Namco arcade game, where you're a warrior running around with a sword and shield. And it sort of says, what if we take that very loose, floppy sort of action video game and made it more, more grounded, more like considered in the way you approach things. So, you know, for the most part,

you are just like stabbing guys with your sword. But then you also need to make use of your shield to block projectiles, to block sword attacks by other, you know, armed fighters and that sort of thing. You have to kind of recognize when is an attack going to overwhelm my shield and cause me to become disarmed? And, you know, kind of be mindful of that. Keep your distance. And, um, Yeah, I feel like spacing and zoning are very important in Trojan and kind of understanding the limitations and abilities of your enemies. You've got those like hobgoblin dudes who jump around and throw spiked balls at you and you have to either evade or block those. But then you have like the boss at the end of the first stage who fires a rocket punch at you. And you can block those to a certain degree.

But I seem to recall that like if you do it too much, your shield and sword will fly away. And if something explodes, it'll disarm you. So you have to kind of, you can't just rely on your shield, but blocking with your shield, it is an active measure. Like it is something you do consciously, which is why it's an up-to-jump game, because you have a sword button and a shield button. And both of those things are very important. I think what blows my mind is in there's this, I could not get past the second stage because there's this rolling bug enemy early on. And you crouch, put out your shield, and it breaks everything in one hit.

and then you're just left flailing your fists at it. And by that point, my health was already too low. And I literally could not get through this thing. I felt kind of stupid. Yeah, I haven't really spent that much time with the arcade version of this, but I did play the NES game a lot back in the day. And it was kind of one of the early, like, really good third-party action games. It came out in early 1987.

So it was out there when there wasn't a lot else for the NES. and kind of put Capcom's name on the map as like, oh, this is a company, when you see their little grid box, you know it's going to be good times. That and Section Z and Mega Man, if you could stomach the box art and actually play the game. So, yeah, there was something kind of appealing about this game to me. A friend had it and I borrowed it from him a lot

and actually managed to beat it, which I can no longer do with my old man skills. But as a kid, yes, I did destroy it. But yeah, it just like it's an interesting mix of a lot of different influences. And you can kind of see them all being worn on the game's sleeve, such as it is. But ultimately, like, I feel like the barbarian element is kind of the central through line there. And the thing that is kind of what stands out and makes it sort of like the launching point for a, you know, a whole line of. games by Capcom where you are a burly guy who has to fight a lot of other guys and,

uh, you just kill everything. But you know, that's a great video game tradition. Worth noting in recent times, it is available in Capcom arcade stadium, but, uh,

they couldn't carry on with the Trojan westernized name. So it's simply known by its Japanese name, Tatakai no banka, which just kind of means like battle requiem or requiem for battle, that sort of thing. Uh, got a love copy. rights, especially when they belong to a contraceptive company, a popular.

So they had to, that would be a trademark, not a copyright issue. Sorry, trademark. They had to change the name because of the condoms. I mean, I don't know if that's the exact reason, but that's my suspicion. That's actually very liberating, because I've been trying not to make a joke about that the whole time. We've been talking. As I come on the studio, don't be the most obvious. Don't be the most obvious man in the world.

And now I have a good excuse to, well, it's been brought up. so I'm in the clear, basically. Yeah, I have to say, I don't know if, is there any other Trojan brand? That's the only one I can think. The horse. The horse, yeah. I don't think that was trademarked. I think that was, I think that's old enough that it's public domain now.

Very short-sighted of the empire there. Wasn't it? Yeah. You know, it was a good strategy. He just wasn't thinking in terms of business. Yeah, I would be honestly surprised if there were. a trademark issue with the condoms because, you know, the way trademark works is that when, when two products or two entities use the same trademarked name, there's really only a problem if there is

some danger of them being associated. Right. And like, I don't, I don't look at an NES cartridge and think, ah, that'll, you know, that'll keep the little swimmers out. I mean, maybe, maybe video games are the ultimate prophylactic because you play video games and you'll never score. But that's kind of like a dated 1980s view of things. So I don't think that's it. I don't know. It is weird. You'd think they would come up with at least, you know, a different name for it. Or just literally translate to Requiem for battle or something, you know? Yeah. I don't know. They could be just playing it safe. You never know with these things. How, hey. I totally meant that. All right. So I think we're done with our condom jokes for the episode. We can move along to legendary wings, a game that I think is an edge case. It's, that that also was not a sex joke. So legendary wings kind of exists in a lot of different Capcom spaces. Sometimes it's a vertical shooter and sometimes it's a horizontal shooter. And it's kind of a barbarian game, but it's also not like the dude or lady that you play as. I can't remember the Aries, I think.

is his name. And then the female second player character is Michelle Hart, which is an interesting combination of names. But Aries has been completely forgotten by history. I could have sworn he was Kevin Walker, I think, might have been his name in the West. Maybe that's the Japanese name. I thought that was Street Fighter 2010. You might be right. I don't know why I'm getting this confused. I want to say, I want to, I didn't bother to really do much research on this one because it is, you know, kind of like on the periphery. But I feel like even though they fly around and they're shooting like robot faces and stuff,

areas and especially Michelle have that kind of barbarian futurism vibe to them. You know, Michelle is always wearing battle bikini armor. And also they fly with like angel wings. So it's a weird little game. I don't really know where to categorize it. But I did want to give it a passing mention. I hadn't really played this I think it's on Capcom Generation

is the first one like the Origins set and it seemed kind of boring like I didn't seem like that impressive of a shooter or the on foot but I mean the on foot stuff reminded me weirdly of Son Son with the kind of four-layered sort of stage design but the main thing I got from this game is that the music

gave me like a Proustian rush is it Proust or Proust I can never remember Proust? I was like, wait a minute why am I flashing back to the swimming pool what I learned to swim. And I think they had this. Like,

I think they had the cabinet of it there. And that's, that was the main thing I got from this. And in fact, from this entire episode. So thank you for that. It reminded me of a thing that happened in the past, which is the point of this show.

Yeah. I always think of those large stone robot faces in the game. That's like immediately what comes to mind more so than like the flying and the shooting and everything. I did think it was neat that they incorporated, uh, Michelle Hart into the first Marvel versus Capcom as like one of those support characters, like assist characters that can help you during the game. I thought that that was like kind of one of my first examples of like seeing a call,

like a really old school callback to an older Capcom game and like contemporary Capcom games. Which is now an actually an old Capcom game. Which is now oldest. Yeah. She hasn't been forgotten. But I'm thinking back to like the Capcom Design Works book from, you know, like 2001. That's a great book, yeah. It is, but it's also like 25 years old, and it's very much kind of cemented in that late 90s Capcom style, which is awesome, by the way.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, not exactly contemporary. So, yeah. That's the problem with time. It just keeps going, even if you don't. Tell me about it. All right, so on to one of the main courses. This is the feast for the ages.

It is Black Tiger, which we discussed briefly on one of the platformer episodes, but it's so good, we have to talk about it again. And this is a game where you play as basically a Frank Frazetta painting, and you are armed to the teeth. You've got a flail with a spike ball in the end, and also you, like, throw daggers, and you just keep getting stronger and stronger. But it doesn't matter because you die in two hits, just like in go to the end. and goblins, but you're much tinier and a lot more maneuverable than Arthur. You can climb and jump and also, like I said, you're armed to the teeth. So you just hit that button and you're just spamming projectiles across the screen. It almost has the feel of almost like a, you know, like a contra type game, sort of a shooter, but the, you know, you don't have that mobility.

And there is that kind of like short range attack element and a lot of climbing, a lot of in close combat. So if it's a weird space, it was very distinct and very memorable. And maybe that's why it captured my imagination, even though generally like the barbarian aesthetic is not a thing for me. But there is something about Black Tiger that's just really, really cool. It has that, it has that ineffable Capcom coolness that you got in the late 80s and early 90s. Just like, there's just something about it. It's so self-confident. It has kind of this swagger to it and it's hard as nails but also like when you lose your you don't feel like oh that's terrible I hate this game that sucks it's um there's something compelling about it and you think well you know

what I could do that better I just need to buy more stuff at the shop and maybe find find more of those old men who have been turned into stone to give me more money and more cool power-ups and then I can do better so you just you kind of keep playing it's got kind of that bionic commando level design style where you can go in one direction, but you can also go in a different direction. It's just sort of like a big space that you need to navigate. And, you know, the first time through, you think, well, what if I had gone the other way? So it makes you want to go back and try, you know, like exploring a different route. So yeah, there's just something that that all works together with this game, even if it's not necessarily the best made game of all time or like

the ultimate Capcom masterpiece. There's just something about it that I find. mind really interesting and fun. There's some cool verticality to it too. You're climbing these columns, which are also kind of a good place to escape from like enemies on the ground. But naturally, there are enemies on the columns too. It's fun, but man, the enemy placement in the hip boxes make it feel pretty cheap. I feel like the hip boxes are more unforgiving than ghosts and goblins.

Yeah. So I struggled with that. That was my issue with it. I just thought it was too difficult to be too, too, particularly. fun, though I do love the ludicrous visuals with the weapons. Like, just every time you hit that weapon, just like you're throwing the kitchen sink

at the enemies, it's fantastic. It's a huge number of projectiles. Three knives or what have you. Yeah, that's good. That's how you do it. That's called double tap. Yeah, it cracks me up that, I mean, I didn't get too far,

maybe three or four stages in, but each stage theme is just the stage one theme, but in a different key. I thought that was kind of funny. Like, almost as if it's, it's increasing the key to make things seem more daunting or more, I don't know, suspenseful, I guess. That works, you know, come up with a good tune and then just, you know, light motif it, basically. Yeah. But I think last time we mentioned maybe that this was the origin of Zinny in Capcom games.

Yeah, it was the first one. And I learned that from a Capcom USA blog post back when they were advertising. What was the, that? Oh, Capcom Arcade Cabinet. That was the one previous to Stadium in the PS3, 360. Is that the standalone joystick that says Capcom? No, no. It was the entire console. It was 360 in PS3.

Yeah. It was a bit like Arcade Stadium and you could buy the games that you wanted in packs, I think. Yeah. There was a very weird skew plan with that one. It was very, very focused on their earliest stuff I found, perhaps to the detriment. And Stadium was much more to my taste. Yeah. Stadium had a wider plethora than cabinet for sure. Both have weird skewed plans, if you ask me. I did a little bit of, I touched a little bit on the skew plans with the limited run releases of Stadium 1 and 2.

So I did see a touch of that. But I imagine the rollout was much more complex when it wasn't just like, here's all the games on a single cartridge. Yeah, it's more so. I think you get one game free like 1941 or something like that and then the rest are like either Al-A-Kar or in packs or whatever as DLC in a sense. Yeah, and there's always the trick. Like, what do you give away for free? You want it to be something that people are going to be like, oh, this is fun and good. I want to play this.

But not so good that they're like, yeah, this is it. I'm done. This is all I wanted. Like you can't put Street Fighter Alpha 3 in there because they're just going to be like, I got the good one. So I'm great. I feel like with two, they gave away ghosts and goblins, which I feel like it may have been a mistake. Am I crazy?

Was that like a bonus game or something? That was like a limited time free bonus. Eventually it became a paid game. But yeah, they were throwing it out for free as like an early launch bonus. Ah, this is, memories are flooding back. Any of that you are allowed to share that will not get you sued for breaking NDA? No, nothing. I can think of a versa.

But it is funny that you bring up the Capcom arcade stick or whatever. I think that was in 2019 or whatever. Captain Home Arcade, yeah, the only way to get Alien versus Predator. That's right. That's the one place you can, contemporary place, you can legitimately play Alien versus Predator. Yeah, I was really big into the mini consoles and things like that at the time. But even that, I was like, this is really weird. big and awkward and really expensive. And I just, I don't see the value here. Like, I just can't do

this. That was, that was because of some weird rule where they couldn't re-release the licensed game on a video game, but they could on like a, not a toy on like one of those plug-on plays or something. Yeah. That's something like that. Yeah, a lot of those like arcade, um, re-releases got, what was that? What was that product line called? But you, you, you saw like, Simpsons arcade get re-released that way and, uh, oh, and like the arcade one up. Arcade one up. Those, those units. Yeah. That was like the loophole or for whatever reason. I did have the, uh, Final Fight Strider, uh, 1941 for a while, but those things, even though they're not full size, they're just too big. Like, where, where do you have, who has space for

video games that big? Yeah. Yeah, seriously. Okay. So that's Black Tiger talking about it again. Now let's talk briefly about a different tiger, a worse tiger, a bad tiger called Tiger Road. I feel like this is one of those Tokoro Fujiwara games. I didn't look into it too carefully, but it's got the style visually and in terms of just like this game, like you can get through the first leg of it, you know, the first stage just fine. And then after that, it just says, screw you, I hate your guts. And like the second stage is one of the most demoralizing things I've ever played in a video game. It is absolutely ridiculous. And I can't imagine anyone getting to that part, dropping in quarter after quarter to make no progress in thinking, this seems good. I'm going

to commit myself to this and really just go for it. Like, why did they make this game? I don't understand. It's a weird one. It's so hard. It's so freaking hard. It's hard in a different way than Ghost and Goblins. Ghost and Goblins, I feel like you have a little leeway. But that second stage, like you get in there and you immediately are in this space where there's like multiple floors to a building and there's stairways and you can like jump up and you can climb down but you have to stand in very specific spots and press the controller at just the right time in order to navigate the floors and meanwhile there's these giant dudes with like huge arms who are just like following you around and clapping you and their their arms are longer.

than the range of your default weapons so you can't attack them until you get like the spear power up but you have to like get past some of those guys to be able to get that power up and yeah I don't know even though it gives you a stamina meter

which is kinder than ghost and goblins it just feels much crueler than ghost and goblins it's um yeah it's it's just a brutal like take your money but not in a fun kind of way it's not like black tigers you know It takes your money and you're like, ah, you got me. I'm going to do better next time. This one, you're like, wow, this, I hate this.

Yeah, and the latest, that's my experience. Yeah, in Arcade Stadium, I think Rewind is, is needed for this kind of game. This is why it exists in a sense. The nicest thing I can say is just that it seems like one of the earlier Capcom games that, like, used like the ancient Chinese motif and story, which I thought was kind of neat. But my familiarity with it has more to do with just a funny office story where one of my co-workers in the Japanese office bears a resemblance to the main character, Lee Wong. The entire face just looks just like him. And I remember posting a screenshot in our meeting notes and during one of our meetings

and just mentioning that. And he got a kick out of it. And then literally, like, a week later, I saw he had changed his office profile pick to that character. That's awesome. I think he's kept it ever since. So shoutouts to him. I'm surprised by the difficulty chat, because the only notes I've made is, this seems fair. It's challenging but fair.

And I'm not trying to flex, because there are loads of games here I couldn't get anywhere on. But I don't know. Maybe it just hit me right. It sort of reminded me of Castlevania, the way that you swing your weapon. I mean, it's not a whip, obviously, but it has a similar kind of a range thing going on. And also the stairs that you climb, almost exactly the same as Castlevania. But I would say probably not quite as good as Castlevania. It's not up there.

I do like the enemy sprites. I think that visually it's quite nice. But that's not really enough to bring it home for me. Yeah, I do like the visual style. It's got that Tokoro Fujiwara look to it, which I always find appealing visually, even if it makes me sad as a video game. But yeah, I also like the fact that it is different. Like Patrick mentioned, it has an ancient China setting,

which is why I kind of considered it an edge case for the barbarian games, because I kind of feel like, you know, to really kind of qualify for the barbarian video game, it's more Western fantasy. But, you know, this guy, he's got kind of the muscle quality and the, um, just the brutality of a barbarian type character. He's just, you know, on the wrong side of the continent.

I also feel like he's disqualified because he's bald. Like, respectfully, I think a barbarian should have flowing locks. I would also say the goal of the game is quite different because he's totally in Save the Kids mode. The children have been abducted by like a warlord and he must rescue them. whereas I feel in barbarian games they're chasing glory and that kind of thing. Right. Like F them kids, as Michael Jordan never said. There is that, yes.

So kind of an edge case. But, you know, just in terms of making you despair at your existence, I think Tiger Road really hits the right notes unless you're Stuart. Also, I reject the notion that a barbarian can't be bald. baldness is caused by high levels of testosterone so really I feel like to be you know properly manly you should uh you should okay well I think that the barber and barbarian comes from

barber as in you know having a hairstyle so I guess we'll agree to disagree on that one fair enough I'd be remiss to not mention the game's tagline in the English flyers become a tiger for the win. That's great. That doesn't tell me anything.

Reject humanity. Return to tiger. Tiger. All right. So another another sort of ancient Chinese themed game to touch on briefly is Son Son Son too, which, you know, obviously the name Son Son Son, comes from Songoku, from Journey to the West, one of the five classical Chinese novels. that are a foundation of literature, et cetera, et cetera. We talked about Sun San in the horizontal, no, not the horizontal shooters,

the platformer episode because it's almost kind of a platformer, but also kind of a shooter. Anyway, Stuart, you mentioned that it's a pretty good Metroidvania-ish kind of game, so I checked it out. People were also saying that it's like, it plays like if you gave Black Tiger a Sun-sun re-skin. And I don't think any, either of those things are quite correct, but there is some appeal to this game. I think Sun Sun's, his bow staff is a little, like the hitbox on it is a little annoying, but it does have kind of a wonder boyish sort of free-roaming adventure sort of thing going on. And there is a little bit of like the Spinger Zinni to shop, except in this case it's

fruit. Your fruit is Zinni. So it's an interesting It's an interesting economy But I do want to play some more of this And maybe put together a TurboWorks video on it Because it seems interesting But maybe you have more thoughts on it, Stuart I haven't actually played it for a long time

So when I did describe it as a Metroidvania That may have been a generous application of the term I remembered it being I mean Wonderboy is definitely closer But I just think it's nice looking kind of pastily And I think it's maybe not I don't think a lot of people know it exists You know, it seems like a very under-the-radar Capcom game.

And I remember liking it on PC Engine. I liked it fine. But in truth, have not revisited it, unfortunately. I've been in dereliction of my duty, and I apologize for that. I think the obscurity is just kind of an unavoidable side effect of the fact that it was released only on PC Engine only in Japan. So that kind of, I mean, that was a popular system. But it does kind of, you know, put it a little outside the reality. of the average Westerner and also, to my knowledge, it's never been reissued.

I don't think it was put on virtual console. No. If Hamster are listening, console archives, SunSung 2 make it happen. Come on. Yeah, God, that would be cool. Because it really does look neat. I'm not even sure if it was fully developed by cat. Maybe it was co-developed, but I know any C was involved at least.

I wish that Capcom, I know there are a million reasons why this wouldn't be easy to do, but if they were to do some kind of Capcom console stadium thing so they could get Demon Crest and a bunch of the ports, I would love that so much. Agreed. I think everyone would agree. So I'm looking at it up, and Game Developer Research Institute does not have any information on SunSuntu.

So I could certainly see Hudson having contributed to it, given that it was a PC engine game. And also, it does have that kind of, like I said, Wonderboy feel. and what do they do? They licensed Wonderboy and turned it into Adventure Island and they released they and NAC released a lot of both Adventure Island and Wonder Boy games on PC engine and turbographics. So I could see this being kind of like a, hey, let's turn someone else's property into one of these games that are, you know, part of the series, the forked series

that we keep dabbling in. So I don't know if there's something there to it. But, you know, In terms of Wonderboy comparisons, I'd put it at Wonderboy in Monsterland, where it's linear-ish, and there is an economy. Yeah, it has a similar kind of... And you have to buy power-ups, but it's not like a full-on, full exploratory adventure. I think it does have the Monsterland sort of trading sequence, secret trading sequence as well to get the good ending or the item that you need to beat the boss. But don't coin me on that. I will not. Thank you.

All right. So on to the main event, the true Capcom Barbarian Adventure, a 1990 arcade game called Magic Sword. And again, like Black Tiger, this is one of those games where I feel like the vibe and the aesthetic are not really my thing. I'm not really into like the beefy dude killing stuff and horrible monsters exploding around him. But anytime I saw this game in the arcade, I just had to put in some money. It's just, again, it's got that Capcom cool to it. It's so, it has such detailed visuals. There's so much happening on screen at all times. It's very, very repetitive and very limited and very sort of weighted against the player. But in a way, again, they're like, oh, I just got to keep putting in quarters to see what happens. And, you know, you can, if you have access to the arcade game or like a mister or emulator or something, You can tweak the dip switch settings. So it can be kind of kind.

You can give your protagonist like a lot of stamina or just a little bit of stamina and be very generous with how, you know, they continue on the spot and things like that. So it was kind of up to the arcade owner how kind this game was. I guess maybe I enjoyed it because the arcade owners were like, let's not be totally punitive. and it wasn't like they set your stamina to a single bar so you were pumping in a quarter every two seconds but it's a you know I would

I would almost describe this game as an attempt to turn gauntlet into a side scroller but instead of it being four players it's two players and then the other two characters are companions that are controlled by the computer and you can swap around

and there's like a primitive leveling system and upgrades and things like that, despite the fact that it is a very linear game, kind of in the Tower of Drew Raghavain, where you have to climb a tower that's 50 stories high, and each stage is a different floor. Yeah. I was pretty pleasantly surprised by this,

because it felt, I mean, and this was on default DIP switch settings, I guess, but I felt very sort of, it was reasonable. It wasn't just immediately putting you out. Like, I think I got through like about eight on, nine stages on a credit, which is, it seemed nice that they let me do that. I mean, obviously, it turns up the heat, but I was pretty impressed. I also thought visually this was a massive set-up as well.

Like, some of this, there's a heat haze effect on stage four that I thought was great, and it reminded me of the song, Heat Haze by Genesis, and that made me happy as well. But then, like, when you get to stage seven, you've got these big kind of golem enemies that just look red, and I appreciated the visuals. I could imagine if I saw this in an arcade like small Jeremy, I would have to go and play it as well. Yes, as repetitive as it is. I like how fast-paced it is. You're really like constantly on the move.

And I think certain levels just kind of have like this like you get to the end of it and it kind of loops around or whatever. But it was neat. I think some of the companions you get are a bit more useless than others. So there is that. And some of them are like, you unlock them by opening, using like a key to open their door, which the translation for them asking you to like, you know, get them out is pretty funny. I forget one example, but it's not, it's not well localized English, that's for sure. Yeah, you unlock those characters and sometimes those doors are so close together. You find yourself juggling between them because you're touching.

I was like, that's not the one I want, you know. But it was fun. I was taken aback by the, when you get to the end, spoilers, oh, no. The Dark Lord kind of offers you a talisman that you can accept to become like, you know, immense in power. And if you do, that's like the alternate bad ending where you become the bad guy. And it's like an early game over in a sense. Or you can just deny it and, you know, go through with the final boss fight or whatever, which I thought was interesting.

So kind of doing the Dragon Quest thing. Yeah, a little bit like that, yeah. Yeah, so we should talk about the companion element because there are a lot of treasure chests strewn throughout this tower and you open them. Sometimes they have like upgrades, like a thing to make your sword stronger or your shield kind of to boost your armor. Sometimes it's healing materials to build up your stamina because like in gauntlet, you have a stamina bar that's constantly depleting over time as well as when enemies attack you. And when it

runs out, you got to put in another quarter. But there are a lot of keys. There's like three or four different kinds of keys that you collect. And, you know, some of the keys are just to unlock the door at the end of the stage to the next level. But the other keys mostly are used to unlock the prison cells that you find along the way. And not always, but generally you'll find, companion character in there. And there's like a seven or eight different kinds of companions, and all of them are drawn from sort of RPG, D&D archetypes. So you've got an Amazon who runs around behind you and shoots enemies with her bow. You've got black and white wizards who, you know, have kind of different abilities but are mainly there to blast things with powerful

magic attacks. You've got, I don't know, like a big guy, I guess a brisers. or I just call him the Lummox, who's just like a big guy who stomps around behind you. I kind of consider him useless. The thief is also very useless because his projectile is a bomb that flies up and then lands and then explodes. And he can only throw one at a time. Then there's a paladin who's extremely powerful. Like you're already playing as a knight, but then you have the paladin who's basically like you but better. So it's, you know, kind of makes you feel bad about yourself. But he's really good at killing stuff. And he just like, blasts things with his

magic swords. I guess that's the whole point of the game. And then sometimes you can find a lizard man. He's very rare, but I have found him a few times, and he's just like a really cool lizard guy who follows you around and kills stuff. I mean, who doesn't like lizardmen? They're awesome. So the thing about this is it's really tempting to find like a character class, you know, a companion that works for you and stick with them and just, you know, run around with them for as long as you can. Eventually, they have their own health bars. They'll die if they take too much damage. But most things focus their attacks on you. So as long as you don't like fall in the lava and let your

companion fall in also, then they can carry a companion for a long time. But that's actually not the right choice. Because every time you free a companion character and let them tag along, then they level up. That archetype throughout. the game. So if you keep, you know, freeing the White Wizard or the Amazon, then after you've teamed up with them a few times, their weapons are much more powerful. They hit harder. They're more aggressive. They just have better skills. So there is kind of like this, you know, very, very simple RPG inflected leveling up system. And, you know, it kind of gives you something to sort of consider. There's also a sort of weapon charge system that reminds me a little bit

of secret of mana in that if you just like hack and slash your way through the tower, you'll hit things with your sword. Your companion will just like fire basic attacks. It's fine. But if you kind of hold back and wait a few seconds before attacks, then your attacks will charge up and you'll fire like stronger projectiles. You know, the wizards will fire big blasts as opposed to tiny little magic missiles. So it kind of gives you a lot to think about. And, you know, it sort of varies from level to level how you have to approach things because some levels are very straightforward. Some have a lot of platforms. Some are infinite loops. Some are full of instanced enemies that you kill once and they're gone, but others have a lot of respawning enemies who will just keep harassing you.

So you have to kind of look at the situation and say, what's the best way to get through here, it like do I want to use all my keys on this little cluster of jail cells and just level everyone up, or do I want to hang on to these for the next level because it might be harder? So there are a lot of considerations from stage to stage. And yeah, I just feel like it's a very fun, interesting, varied sort of take on the action RPG that's, you know, extremely arcadeish. There's not even a currency like shop system in this game. It's just what you find. So even though it could have the Zinni system, it does not.

So it's just the right balance of dumb, mindless simplicity and also like, oh, there's a lot of sort of stuff happening between the, beneath the surface with some systems. And you can see where Capcom took this and then built up to the D&D games, for sure. Yeah. This is how I find out I really shouldn't have been flailing my weapon, like button mashing it and not realize. that, yeah, that charge element, it's like, oh, I'm suddenly, like, attacking in a much more, like, stronger manner. And I didn't know what that was. So now I know. I was always curious. I feel like I've only played the S&ES conversion once and don't have much of a memory of it. But the arcade one, I've played a whole bunch more than that. I wasn't sure of, like, what made the cut, what didn't, that sort of thing. Stuart, is that something you can speak to? Not really, unfortunately.

It does seem like it has been kind of given a slightly more traditional sort of beginning to the game. And obviously, the sort of the learning curve is adjusted. But otherwise, it does seem like a reasonably faithful, but this is based really only at a glance, so I can't be authoritative, unfortunately. And I think it was one of, like, the first of, like, these games that we're talking about that got that sort of S&ES. conversion to from the arcade.

Yeah, and it came along a little later, so by that point, Capcom had figured out how to work with the hardware, so it probably didn't have the slowdown that you saw in like Final Fight. I have to admit that as much as I enjoyed Magic Sword in the Arcade, I never played the Super NES version because I just felt like the Super NES can't capture the speed and visual detail of the arcade game, and that was a big part of appeal for me. So I just never really wanted to play the home conversion because I just felt like it wouldn't live up to my expectations and I didn't want to be disappointed.

Looking at it, it does look good, but slow down with the other AI character on the screen, plus the projectiles looks very bad. And that doesn't mean it's unplayable. It's not something I mean, it's something I can deal with. But yeah, I mean, I want to play this. It looks pretty fun. Honestly, it looks pretty fun. Like, maybe a little bit less known kind of a Capcom super Nintendo game, overshadowed by the big hitters, I guess. But, yeah, it looks cool. For sure.

I feel like this is one of those that's begging for the remastering treatment that people do where they put Super NES games on SA1 chips or whatever, you know, to, like, put them on more powerful, more heavily ram-intensive cartridges and take away the slowdown like they've done with Gradius 3 to make it unplayable. I feel like maybe this would be one that would actually benefit from that as opposed to being like, oh my God, how can I beat this now? I mean, it looks like, yeah, I mean, that exists.

There is a ROM hack for that, so it probably has been. Oh, was there like the Fast ROM version? Yeah, Fast-Trom Magic Sword is out there, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which is good. I might have to check that out. And while I'm doing that, someone should talk about

Knights of the Round. Although I think King of Dragons came first. I don't know. Oh, sorry. Someone should talk about King of the Dragons. Oh, hell yeah. King of Dragons. I love King of Dragons.

It's a cool game. I actually hadn't played it until the Capcom Beat Em Up bundle that was released in 2018. But I was pleasantly surprised by it. Yeah, I think that's the same deal with me. I'm the weirdo. This is probably my favorite one of these games because I really love how breezy it is. It's super simple. and the levels are quite short

and don't sort of stick around very long and there's a lot of them because I play through this whole thing and just had a blast with it I think there's some really kind of deceptive cleverness going on. I love like the first boss has these two kind of chains, these two flails

but weirdly enough, the hit box actually is directly in front of them so you can stand in between them and not be hit which I think is neat. It's just not going to see that often in a belt scroller. So yeah, a big fan of this game. Lots of fun. Really great looking. Yeah, it's a great art design, great pixel art.

Yokoshima Mura composed the soundtrack seemingly after Street Fighter 2, I want to say. I will admit that I grew up on Knights of the Round. So going back to King of Dragons, which came out beforehand, I felt like I was a bit spoiled by Knights of the Round's gameplay and mechanics. But this one, at least you get to choose a class. there are several different classes, like kind of sort of D&D based. And so there's a lot of variety there. And yeah, this definitely feels like a precursor and a lead up to the D&D games that

Capcom would eventually create. But also neat about this one is the introduction of like three player combat, which I thought was really cool, that up to three people could team up together with different classes. And I think level up wise, it was kind of just you beat the boss and then your character levels up, or like at least their weapon levels up in a sense. So there isn't a whole lot of depth there, I think. But yeah, still a neat game. I just felt that Knights of the Round controlled and felt better to me at least. It's one I want to mention, again, the Super NES port for this, because it's shockingly good.

Really? Yeah. I mean, no three player, I don't think. this thing, there's no room for it, but like it's not plagued by slowdown. It looks really similar. Obviously not exactly the same. There's a few, the first stage doesn't have

the falling leaves effects and things like that, but it looks great. And the Super Nintendo, if I may be so bold, is a little bit star for kind of those beat-em-ups. Your final fight three is a really great one, but this is one of the best ones on the system, I would say. That's cool.

Yeah, and King of Dragons is pretty tough to find on the S&E to one of those rare Capcom arcade to console conversions. And I've never played that version, but I'm really curious about it. I cannot speak to this one.

I have not played it on Super N.S. And only give it a passing glance in arcades, to be honest. Likewise with Knights of the Round, but it sounds like that is the better game. That is the one to play. I, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's contentious among beat-em-up fans. but I adore nights of the round.

I grew up with the S&S one first and played that to death with a friend of mine. Unfortunately, that one was two-player, and when I found out the original arcade version was three-player, that threw me for a loop where I always grew up with these console conversions of arcade games, and when I would finally play that original arcade version, find out how it looks better and runs better usually, and just the fact that more players can play it, I had that same reaction to like Sunset Riders,

which did four players. Up to four could play on arcade versus the two on console. But still like a fantastic game. It follows that whole King Arthur story in like a fantasy beat-em-up format with plenty of RPG elements because you do gain kind of experience as you move along and defeat enemies. gather loot and that sort of thing. And it was pretty cool and empowering to like see your character level up on the field and it'll show their like armor beef up in a sense like there will be

visual changes to to to their like armor and equipment, which I thought was really neat. And you had the three characters, obviously King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sir Percival and they had their own kind of mechanics. Arthur was just kind of the all round, well-rounded like sword wheeler. He had had like an AEOE sword flurry that he did that looks a little bit comical because he looks like he's just flailing his sword like, you know, with reckless abandon. But Sir at Lancelot was more of like the kind of aerial focused, faster, like had a really like high jump, that sort of thing. And Percival, which honestly, even though I played the other two more often, I feel like maybe

he's the cooler one with the axe and he can actually dash when you double tap, you know, forwards or backwards, which I thought was cool. But, um, yeah, I never, I never played this game enough to realize there was a leveling mechanic, but yeah, it's interesting because Arthur basically turns into ghost and goblins or ghouls and ghost gold armor, Arthur by the end of the game. Like he's just straight up like, oh, this is the same Arthur. I thought it was, you know, different guys, but no, the guy in ghost and goblins is King Arthur, King of the Britons. Yeah, in a sense. Yeah. But yeah, follows that whole Excalibur story and everything like that.

Merlin is in the story, the whole shebang. But another thing I have to just say about this one is the music. It was composed by Issao Abe, who he composed just two tracks in the original Street Fighter to the versus jingle and Sagat's theme. And you can kind of get that sense of Sagat's theme in the music of this one. But it's so freaking good. It's got this like very serious kind of dive. vibe, but also very like upbeat, actiony,

very underrated arcade Capcom soundtrack, if you ask me. But all around, fantastic game. Well, now I feel bad for not having paid attention to it. Alas. So, kind of the last of the big

classic barbarian games, although only partially because you can play as so many classes, we have the Dungeons and Dragons duology, Tower of Doom and Shadow over Mistara, which these were, you know, I've never really spent as much time with these as I'd like, but back in the 90s, I desperately wanted to play these, and they were so hard to come by and so expensive.

I bet. Because I think you could only get them as imports on Sega Saturn. And they were Saturn imports that immediately just went price-wise. They just shot immediately into the stratosphere. And I've been told that they were pretty good Saturn conversions, like not perfect. But with the 4 megabyte RAM cartridge, they were pretty sophisticated ports. Yeah, I think all of these were CP system games. So Saturn should have been able to handle that pretty easily.

It could do all like the team-based fighting games. So something like this, which is fast-paced and has a lot of player characters, but is not nearly as intense and dynamic as a fighting game. should have been totally manageable. Yeah. And in a sense, this is a precursor. Since George Kamitani of Vanillaware fame worked on this one, it does kind of feel like a predecessor to like Dragons Crown and that sort of style as well.

Really fantastic art direction, Kino Nishimura, very legendary Capcom artist, too. She's still there, which is incredible. But yeah, like this took like the whole like level up mechanics. of like Knights of the Round and and that sort of thing and just kind of made it full RPG. I think, I think it's like a perfect blend of beat them up and RPG and the D&D license on top of everything. From what I understand, like, Capcom was given pretty free reign from, from the rights

holders to like do what they will with the story. But they, they were picky about certain character and monster elements of it. but otherwise they were free to do what they wanted to do with the story, which was written by, I want to say this person was at Capcom USA specifically, Alex Jimenez, but he was kind of like a D&D nut, so kind of a perfect match of like working with the Japan team and like writing out the story and scenario.

And I think when the game was initially designed, Jimenez actually made it a D&D scenario and ran it, in the Bay Area as a game master to like see how that would jive. And then they would they would make revisions in the Japan office based on like the player feedback of the actual D&D campaign, which I thought was really cool. I think that I admire the sort of the work that's gone into these games more than I enjoy playing them personally. But for me, playing these games is always a multiplayer thing because they did, of course,

re-released those for like 360 PS3, I believe. Yeah. And I think that they lean too much into the RPG stuff for my taste, because I don't like want to have to go into a menu, a nested menu, during a side-scrolling, beat them up. And the game sort of pausing, whenever someone cast a spell, I found quite a deemus. True. Yeah. I'm holding my hands up here and saying, like, it's incredibly impressive.

This is just a matter of taste, because the King of Dragons I love. because it's so simple, and it's so no nonsense. You're just going around. You've got like one attack button, and the attack button works more like something in a size scroll than in a beat him up. Like, it's not really a combo-based kind of a thing. But here, it's like,

knight of the realm was like the middle, the middle, like the proto for this, and then King of Dragons was a proto for knighted around, and they got here in the end. And I do admire, like, the depth of some of the secrets in, like, Shadow of them a Star, like getting the best sword and how you're supposed to go about doing that.

But then I think about the reality of doing that in an arcade. Yeah. And I just kind of feel like it's very cool, but it's not very practical. Yeah, I honestly can't imagine what it was like playing this in the actual arcades. I think I've only played it in arcades once. But yeah, it feels like more at home playing on a console than anything where you can more carefully coordinate with like fellow. co-op players of which, uh, yeah, up to four with this one. So it was quite the upgrade from, from the three player action. But it even had like choose your adventure moments where you decided

where to go at the end of a stage. And that led into entirely different outcomes and levels, which I thought was cool. But yeah, there were cutscenes. There were dialogue. There was, you know, a shopkeeper that you spent your gold, uh, on to upgrade your characters. And, and then yeah, shadow Verme Star introduced a ring menu. Kind of like mana, but not really, where it was just one button press to bring up a ring menu where you would cycle through your like weapons and spells and that sort of thing. And that in hand to end with the upgrade to the combat, which is kind of puts in a lot of like fighting game style inputs. Like in Shadow Over Mastara, you, you'd execute like a Hadoken input to like do like crouching and sliding maneuvers and there's upwards and death. Downwards aerial attacks and even crouch walking, which looked kind of funny to just crouch down and start like crouch walking to like better hit, you know, lower enemies and that sort of thing.

It was just really impressive, the amount of things you could do on top of the different classes, like the fighter, the elf, the cleric, the dwarf. It's more of a cleric guy myself. But yeah, I had a blast with this game. A Tower of Doom is a bit more slower-paced, I would say. and Shadow Over Mastara kind of added some quality of life improvements, and I felt like the progression felt a little smoother than its predecessor. And yeah, just incredible pixel art on top of everything. Just really impressive for its time, like that 94-96 era of arcade beatem-ups.

Yeah, the color choices, I think, were really, they really stood out. There were a lot of pastels and a lot of, you know, instead of going, for like black outlines on stuff. There's, it's, it's just more subtle. It has, you know,

again, that Kinu, Nishimura style. And, you know, these were, these were games. Part of my interest in them at the time

came from that Capcom Design Works book because they showed up a lot in there, especially the thief and the elf, I think. Nishimura really loves drawing her female characters. So,

the artwork of them appeared a lot. And, you know, The whole thing feels kind of Record of Lodos War inspired in terms of a lot of the visuals and just the overall vibe. But I guess that makes sense because Record of Lodos War was basically some guy saying, I really had a great D&D campaign and now I'm going to turn it into like a multimedia standalone franchise, which, you know, good on him. But especially the elf character is just very much like, oh, yeah, it's Diedlet.

Yeah, that's not the first time I've seen that. In comparison, too. It's funny. And yeah, the most recent port of this was, yeah, on PS3, 360, Steam and Wii U of all platforms, Steam version is like still available, never been delisted or anything like that, which is nice to see. But what blows my mind and befuddles me to this day is, so this came out in 2013 Chronicles of Mistara, Pact Tower of Doom, Shadow of Mastara into one collection. In the West, it was ported by Iron Galaxy. And then in Japan, a port of it was developed for PS3 in-house by Capcom Japan. And that involved some of the original developers that worked on these arcade games. And it just blows my mind. Like, these two projects were going concurrently, and the Japanese version was exclusive.

and if you play one after the other, it's like a night and day difference in the quality. You know, Chronicles of Mustara is a lot more like a lesser budgety, like emulated port of both games. It's serviceable, but it's not, it doesn't feel as pristine. And when you play the PS3 version, which is really up there in price in the physical Japanese markets, it's like, I think it's a straight up port. Like it's the musical quality. the audio quality is clearer. The pixel art looks like better color-wise.

Just everything about it. There's more quality of life and visual display options in the PS3 version. And it really upsets me that it's only available in Japanese. And that version never came out here. And I would love to be, I would love to be the fly on the wall or know what kind of like politicking what's going on when these were being made like side by side. and the West got the inferior port of the two. Like, it really blows my mind. Capcom at the time we're doing this thing.

Like, they did Final Fight Double Impact, Dark Stalkers' Resurrection, and this. I'm not sure if there are any more. Oh, yes, the Marvel versus Capcom classic origins collection as well, where they would not just let you play it. It was like constant feedback of like some challenge that you were in the middle of that.

Yes. Yeah, that was such a weird element of those ports, yeah. It felt like they just did not trust you to play the game as it was presented, despite the obvious level of quality. It was just like, no, we need to constantly dopamine these people. Yeah, the third strike, a Street Fighter 3 Third Strike online edition also had the like, yeah, this, it's like these games are in four three. There's nothing on the sides. We must put information on the sides of this white screen. It's stuff like, like jump five times. Yeah, it really strange stuff. Really, like really odd just over the top level of feedback.

Luckily, you can turn it off. You can turn it off. Yes, thankfully, but it's just like, it's on by default and it's very obnoxious. It's like, just let me play the game, you know? Yeah. Yeah, really strange era, that one. But yeah, the emulation quality between these two ports for D&D is just apples and oranges to me. And, uh, yeah. I know. I'm irrationally annoyed that we did not get this PS3 version that Capcom, Japan worked on directly. So I've never played these games in the arcade. I've never seen the arcade machines. Was there a way to retain your progress for the game? And like, you know, some machines, you know, even back to the NeoGeo had, you know, some sort of save persistence. I feel like this would be, like, these are pretty long games.

games. And I feel like it would be kind of annoying to have to start from the beginning every single time you want to play and not be able to like jump in and explore different story branches and stuff. But I don't know if there was a Capcom mechanism for that sort of thing versus like how Sony or not Sony. Oh, Sega, yes, you know, with like Miami's and stuff like like that. So I don't know there's a mechanism for that. Yeah, Gauntlet Legends was another one. Yeah, no, I don't think there was. And yeah, that kind of like stresses again the fact that these have console ports and like that saves your progress and sort of thing. Like it feels like it works better in a console setting than an arcade setting.

That's always been kind of the tricky part of arcade RPG type games, even going back to like Tower of Draga, where it just feels like, you know, this is really. even if you play it efficiently and know what you're doing, a pretty big time commitment. It is. You know, even beyond how many quarters you have to pump in to keep going, just the amount of time you have to stand at the cabinet. You know, not everyone is, you know, lives the Jazz Rignal standing at the Defender machine for 12 hours, lifestyle. So, yeah, it just seems like a lot to ask. And it's cool that these games did kind of emerge from the arcane. because it meant that they were produced at this really high level of quality

visually and musically and in terms of just like the overall design of them, you know, in a way that you probably wouldn't have seen if they had started on consoles. But it does seem like they really begged to exist on consoles. Yeah, I'd say my main experience with the, particularly Shadow of a Mastara is with three players via maim, or via the ports recently mentioned. With a number of players, it's more, it's breezier because everyone can contribute to boss battles and things. And you can get through them in, I would say, about, I would say between an hour and hour and a half.

But if you want to get the secrets, if you want to get the best sword and such, then that's a much taller order. Yeah, yeah. When they designed the games, like Tower of Doom was designed more so to be played, like, alone. like you don't have to play it alone but that was kind of what they were going for and Shadow Over Mustara was where they like really wanted to like expand the

co-op element and make it feel more like a party based like team based game that sort of thing yeah interestingly enough Chronicles of Mustara on Steam there's a even though these days the game will be heavily discounted as a

you know just buying it once but they have a four pack where you can buy four copies of the game and send three, like gift three to fellow friends to play online or whatever, which I think is kind of interesting, but... Not big fans of a DS-style ad hoc

gameplay, I guess. Yeah, I guess not. This was a great COVID game, for sure, too. I had a blast playing it through Steam online with friends. And that was before I knew about the PS3 version and got all irrationally angry about it. So here's the big controversial question. How do you feel these compare to Guardian Heroes?

Oh. I never gave enough time to Guardian Heroes, and I feel bad about that. That is a cool game, but I guess because I haven't put enough time into Guardian Heroes, I have to pick Shadow over Mistar over that one. I'm in a similar position, being that it was a Saturn game, which I didn't have, and then an Xbox game, which I also didn't have. I didn't get to play a Guardian Herodian her as the amount I'd like to, which is unfortunate because I do love treasure and I have given it the old college try, but I always found myself thinking, I really should at the very least read the manual before I play this because it seems, I mean, it has never play a treasure game without playing without reading the manual. The three layer kind of like, rather than being a true bell scrolling sort of thing, you're leaping between these three layers, right? Now, what I did play is advanced guardian heroes. That one has a very hammy English translation for Game Boy Advance game.

Oh, it's fantastic. I can't, I couldn't believe it. I am probably the world's most staunch defender of Advanced Guardian Heroes, but I will tell you here and now it's probably worse than this. Like, it's an absolute parrying, obsessed, like, ludicrously challenging. But I do love that. What is it? Let's attack him with the forbidden spell of difficult counts. the timing. Like that

kind of dialogue. Like, really. It's very awkward. Yeah. That kind of gives it a level of appeal. But no, I mean, I would love to play Guardian Heroes more and I will. I will do it. I pledge here and now. I believe you. And I will come back and talk about it. Was the

360 version, like, a decent port of it? I was always curious whether like it was better to I've heard only good things about the Xbox version. Okay. I'm not super familiar it myself, just that I heard that it was rather good. I feel like people were pretty positive on all the treasure compilations or conversions

to 360, like Ikaruga and that sort of thing. Cool. Okay. Surely we've done a treasure episode of retro notes before. Have we? Well, we're going to now if we haven't. I think that deserves. And one final footnote for the Dungeons and Dragons duology is that there was an attempt

to kind of recapture that vibe and Guardian Heroes. Oh gosh, it's probably been like 15 years now by creating a very similar style game with artwork by Kino Nishimura called Code of Princess, but I don't think the gameplay was as good. And also, it's really hard to get past the character designs. It's just like... Oh, this was 3DS, right?

Yeah, and they put it on Switch since then. Now, this is weird because I played the other day for absolutely no reason, the fighting game Blade Strangers that Nicolus put out. Why would you play that? Because I didn't know what it was. It was in my steam list, and I was like, what is this character roster? This is the lady from Coda Princess. That's Curly Brace. Cota Princess, Belfower, whatever name is, and Umihara Calais.

Isaac from Binding of Isaac is it. Just a big Isaac crying. It's absolutely insane. It's also quite bad. I should probably add. Yeah. I wasn't that impressed. Yeah.

Anyway, so that's not the best footnote to the D&D legacy. But nevertheless, there was a certain, you know, there was enough of a following, enough of a legacy for those two games that people have tried to go back and say, oh, let's, let's dredge this back up and recapture this to varying degrees of success. Like Castle Crashers a bit. Just a teeny bit maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dare I volunteer very briefly that I feel as though the successor to these games is the Baldersgate Dark Alliance games on PS2.

I really feel like they are quite similar games. Those are cool games. Excellent. So I wanted to mention them. Yeah, I always kind of thought those were more inspired by, like, Diablo in a way. But maybe it's kind of the, you know, the middle ground between Diablo and D&D. It's the simplicity of the, you know, the, you know, the middle ground between Diablo and D&D. It's the simplicity of.

you know, the direct attacks rather than clicking, there's an attack block, and you can get very simple loot. And that does remind me of a bell-scrolling game. All you do is go along a corridor hitting enemies. So I think the comparison is definitely there. Well done. All right.

So you got some deep thoughts out of this episode, everyone. More than your money's worth. Okay, so those are the classic games. I do want to touch very briefly, I don't want to go too long here, about some of the modern, which is to say 21st century, games that Capcom has put out that kind of capture, you know, like pull from these classic games

we've talked about. At this point, some of these 21st century games are classic games. They're 20 plus years old. But never mind that. Some, I think, like, the connections are more obvious than others. But nevertheless, like, you know, from time to time, Capcom does kind of dip a toe into the world of barbarian action to varying degrees. of enthusiasm. I would say by far the biggest of these and kind of the first modern successor to the barbarian legacy would be the Monster Hunter series where you play literally like dudes or ladies, you know, muscular and dressed in bear scraps of fur at first, just going out and hacking the hell out of all kinds of giant creatures. It is, it's like primal, you know. And of course,

your earning Zinni by selling meat and things like that. But a series started in 2004 and made the very brave choice of being a multiplayer game on PS2, very, very difficult, not in terms of the gameplay, in terms of making the multiplayer on PS2 actually work. But, you know, the series has been running strong since then and has gone in all kinds of interesting directions like the Monster Hunter Stories games, which are much more of a traditional JRP. But the classic Monster Hunter games are very, they're very much action games with an RPG like kind of background radiation, but very much about cooperative play, teaming up with other people, really, really doing the best job of any of these games, of emphasizing

not just multiplayer, but actual cogent multiplayer of coming up with. strategies and people taking different roles and laying out plans to take on some of the more aggressive and dangerous creatures and sticking to those plans and, you know, really kind of working in symphony with other people. And it's, you know, I can see for, for the series, why it really took off on like PSP because it was so easy to just, you know, do that quick, Wi-Fi connection with another person. No worrying about internet connections or anything like that. You just sit down with someone and you're like, let's go kill a whatever the hell.

I don't know the monster's names. A Ratholos, let's say. Yes, those, those guys. It's like a buffalo, but with wrath. So, yeah, I feel like that kind of has been sort of the through line for the 21st century of Capcom saying, Viva Barbarians. Monster, go ahead. I was going to say, I mean, this is a series that got huge on like PSP, right?

That's where it really, yeah. I could never get into it because two main reasons. One, it's multiplayer and two, I always feel like, because I have played one of the more recent ones called Rise, maybe. RISE, yeah. And I thought I could see the quality and I could see the level of the polish and I could see the vision. But I always found like, when you fight an enemy and they basically don't react, it's very MMO-ish to me. They're sponges, yeah.

Yeah. And that kind of, that for me did not really work. But I do feel as though if I had a proper kind of squad going and I actually knew more what the mechanics were, I can see the appeal of taking your role and doing what you're there to do and helping out your friends and, you know, sharing in the loot and everything. Yeah. And one of those days, I think I would like to maybe sit down and put a lot of time into it. But the structure of kind of like going out into this kind of the worlds that you don't really explore, it just felt like they were kind of there, these habitats. And then you'd get your loot and you'd go back.

It's like it's almost like destiny, except with hitting things with a sword instead of shooting them in the phase. I guess you probably could shoot them in the face as well. Yeah, I think the teamwork. The teamwork, us. Yeah, the teamwork aspect is the most satisfying thing of Monster Runner for me. But yeah, I think what brings people back is that reward loop of working together, taking down these larger-than-life monsters that take forever to kill and that sense of accomplishment from taking them down with that said teamwork and carving their innards to make your next improved weapon or gear or what have you and rinse and repeat. And sure, there's a story there, but there's not much I can tell you about that because it's largely forgettable. Yeah, it seems kind of like a number-go-up game, which is why I compared it to Destiny.

But that's not a negative thing necessarily. I do like Destiny a lot. Yeah. Or did like it until they killed it. Rip. Alas. Wow, we can talk about Destiny on Retronaut sometime now that it's a retro product. so long or around.

So anyway, Monster Hunter. People love it. It's still a pretty big thing. For a while, it was the biggest thing coming out of Japan, or at least in Japan. You know, even with the claw grip that you had to use on the PSP, I would go places, you know, 15, 20 years ago. And I would just see people sitting around playing Monster Hunter with each other, like gaming bars and things like that or other. or other spaces. And, you know, I could tell it was a really big thing.

And when Capcom jumped over to 3DS and Wii, you, I want to say, we and we use. Yeah, it was, you know, Megaton betrayal. But showed that Nintendo understood they needed to, they needed to get some juice for those systems. And they weren't afraid to throw money for exclusivity at it. So. Yeah. And Capcom for their part was like,

yeah, we're not afraid to play the money exclusives game. So good on them. I hope everyone ate well. And then World just broke new ground and just broke records. And that record still hasn't been broken somehow. It almost feels like a fluke. But, yeah, World just came out at the right moment,

at the right time on the right platforms, and it exploded. So I want to just kind of jump quickly through the next three games because I really really have not spent any time with them. All of them, I looked at them as a member of the press at previews and was like, ah, these aren't really for me. I'm sure they're fine. One of them, according to IGN, was not fine. But I think people disagree. Those games are Shadow of Rome, which I mentioned earlier, Godhand, and Osirah's wrath. I feel like all of these are very much in the, like, cut from the classic Capcom barbarian cloth in different ways. Shadow of Rome is more of a...

How would you describe it? It's not an action RPG. It's like a hack and slash, basically. Yeah, well, it alternates between two really just completely different gameplay styles where you're in the arena, the Coliseum, and you're fighting, and it's very violent. Like, really, like, it felt like they were angling for controversy level of violent. Yeah, that was definitely the thing that they touted it. It's so brutal and violent.

Well, the thing that sticks in my head is that if you've already injured an enemy and then you approach them, they will sometimes lose control of their blood. And to me, that's like, that's a bit much, isn't it? Like, it's, it's, you get a points bonus for frightening your

enemy so much that they, they pee their Roman pants or whatever. It's a bit much, isn't it? And then the point, yeah, and then the points bonus is called You're in trouble. Uh, yeah. The 2000s.

Yeah, but then you, you jump between that and the stealth levels where you're playing as this little fellow whose name I forget. And he can't do anything. And I liked those levels. They weren't bad or anything, but the juxtaposition of like being the hardest man on the planet and being just this kind of little guy sneaking around like going, who, who, you can't catch me. It was just kind of weird. But it was, I liked the game. It was a cool game. I'd like to play it again.

Did he? I never played my copy. The little guy, like, were people after his lucky charms? Because that's kind of the impression you gave me. I was not aware that there were stealth stages in that game. Like when I saw it at demos and events, they were just like, look at all the dudes you can kill in the arena. They definitely downplayed the stealth bits.

They're like, they're like really stealth bits, as in you don't have any weapons. You can only distract or sneak by enemies. but I liked them because they set their rules very clearly. It was very difficult to be like, oh, that's not fair, which is a huge issue I have with stealth games in general, not feeling like it's fair. But those games, I think they did a good job. But I can imagine a lot of players would have probably been in the kind of when are we going to get to the fireworks factory, like mindset when they played those stages. I can see that.

What do you feel about Godhand, the 3.0 out of 10, according to IGN, that has become kind of a cause celeb for people talking about how much the game's press is horrible and corrupt and stupid just because one person didn't like this game. I think it was a beautiful evolution of the

beat-em-up genre for me. The customize ability of the moves and the really over-the-top slapstick comic relief of it. It just felt so unique in that regard. I had a lot of

fun with it, but I also suck at it and never got very far. So, but one of Clover Studios' finest games, if you ask me. Yeah, I feel like the sort of like, let's be quirky and interesting and try to evolve genres in different ways that Clover and then platinum deal in, I think it took a while for at least American audiences to really kind of cotton to what they were doing and say, Oh, oh, okay, yeah, they're having fun here. Video games, they're allowed to be fun? That's interesting.

I think Godhand, based on my limited experience of it, it's another one of those games I do want to sit down and really get my head into at some point. I feel like it initially can be quite off-putting because it doesn't control like any other contemporary game. By then, Twin Stick, like, camera was the thing. And this game is very rotate on the spot, like Croc or Tomb Raider, sort of initially kind of like, what am I doing here?

It feels very, what's the word, stiff. But it's obviously by design. It's all designed around that. I mean, that's not my IG. Like, my better noir review scores would be IGN giving double dragon neon a three and Jeremy Parrish giving Twilight Prinches a tan. You're saying it should have gotten an 11? It's not going there.

It could get ugly. Wait, who gave Double Dragon Neon a three? I think it was a three. That was an IGN thing. That's the one that I get mad about, but I don't go in, I don't docks anyone. I just sit in the corner and fold my arms and harrumph about it. But Godhand, I think that it may have been a similar deal with Godhand, because it's not a game that is very giving at all. It is not, you have to really learn how to play it.

And that sounds a bit kind of like hardcore gamers, oh, get good. I don't mean it like that. I think a game should be accessible. You know, even a difficult one should have some measure of like, here's the way we're going with this. but Godhand really just kind of throws you in and goes, deal with it. And if you can deal with it, then that's great. That's really, really cool. Was this camea or was this a camea joint?

I don't remember. This was, no, it was Mikami. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, of course. Because I feel similarly about his game of the Evil Within, which is very similarly kind of like,

this is really hard and you're going to die if you don't learn how to play with this and play this immediate. And The Evil Within is one of my favorites. So I probably would like this if I really got my head in the game. What's funny about Godhan, Mikami was inspired or driven to make it after he played the Capcom USA produced Final Fight revenge, the Japan-only fighting game of Final Fight. He was so disappointed with it, called it, I quote, shit.

But I mean, I'm sure he said Kusuge or whatever that term is, and declared that he'd have to make a better, him up game. I was convinced that you were about to say Final Fight streetwise there. It's remarkable that Final Fight has two games you could say that about. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, Revenge was definitely the kind of the groundbreaking release just in terms of like, look what Americans can do so much worse than the Japanese. I guess, you know, maybe Street Fighter the movie kind of went there first. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to, I liked Final Fight Streetwise when I was younger, but it's not good. I mean, the Final Fight game where you collect Slipknot songs is weird. Like, it's just a word thing.

Yeah, he had a rough time in prison. You know, everyone has their coping mechanisms. Yeah, he did his time and he wants out for sure. Yeah. God. All right. What do we feel about Osir's wrath? I feel like this was one that is extremely, maybe not style over substance, but it really, like, it is very much.

about the style of violence. Yeah, but it was basically a glorified quick time event in a sense. But really, really cool. I liked the, the ideas of it and like the hyper active energy of it. But I just never gave it the time of, I guess. Because I wasn't sure if I wanted to sit down and actually play a QTE. That's not something I usually think about wanting to do. That is pretty much exactly my experience with.

I heard about how good it was, and I think I bought it and the DLC when it was on some deep Xbox cell, because I do not believe this hit PC. I could be wrong about that. No, it was just the S336. This is a game that has its ending, is a DLC episode, is my understanding, which is something that became a bit of a thing around this time.

And obviously, I haven't played this. I don't think I've even launched it because of that whole, when am I going to, I don't really like telltale games. I don't really like that kind of thing. I'm not a big fan of that. Not because of, oh, not real game. It just doesn't, you know, if I want to watch something, I kind of want to watch, like, something like a movie.

So, I don't know, I would like to give this a go, and it is on the big list that never ends. Yeah, same here. It never had a huge appeal for me to do a kind of, I don't like QTEs. So the whole game of that kind of thing. Kind of a deal breaker there. That's what Dragon's Lair is, I guess.

But maybe at least this one tells you which buttons suppress. Yeah. Okay. Well, I, yeah, like I said, I didn't have a lot to say about that one. But I do feel like just the bulky, muscular screamoid guy who stars in it does kind of connect it to that barbarian legacy. But the final game I want to talk about is definitely maybe the last original property that Capcom created that really embraces the barbarian legacy. of the 80s and 90s. And that is Dragon's Dogma,

which is kind of like what if Magic Sword were an Elder Scrolls game? I'd heard kind of negative sentiments about this game based on early previews from some of my co-workers and peers at One Up and in the media.

So they put this in front of us at Captivate 2012, the big media press event. And I went into it thinking, well, this is going to suck. And played it and immediately was just like, this is wonderful. This is so good. It's janky, but it's ambitious and interesting.

And this game 100% feels like they said, let's make magic sword a modern game, where you play as, what are they called the Heartless or the? The Arisen. The Arisen, that's it. thinking wrong video game series. The Arisen. But then you have your pawn who follows you around, just like the companion characters and Magic Sword. The demo they put us in was like this underground space that was kind of like a, it had this really long, winding stairway around a huge central well.

And to me, it just like immediately made me flash back to Magic Sword. And yeah, it was, it just kind of came out of left field. I had heard nothing but negative about it. And it's so good and so just this pile of interesting ideas that really just reminds me of all the cool things that I loved about classic Capcom games. But in a more modern context, and it makes me happy that the series has continued, well, the game has continued to kind of have legs and continue to see ports to current day systems. and, you know, sequel ideas. Has Dragon Dogma 2 come out yet? I can't remember.

Yeah. And there's a Darkerrism version coming on Switch 2 soon, right? Yeah, calling that Darkerrisen when the first one was already, Darkerrism threw me for a loop. But then it occurred. Is it like that a version of saying Turbo? Exactly. I realize that this is the Dragon's Dogma version of calling something super turbo,

what have you. Yeah, I haven't given to a fair shake because, frankly, it came out shortly after my layoff there. So I wasn't interested in checking that out, even though it does look awesome. So maybe I'll wait for this darker as inversion. But yeah, the first game, it didn't really click with me initially the first time because it did feel a bit like a kind of janky open world RPG. but like the combat was was the strong point and you know with Hideaki Itzuno the Devil May Cry director at the helm and like the yeah some of those designers from Devil May Cry involved with the combat system and like that free flowing feeling of it and like the diverse hack and slash elements of it and like throwing in Shadow the Colossus style like climbing onto your enemies and attacking certain weak points and and fighting that Camera. and like severing its tail and like snake tail and like beheading its lionhead, like really cool dynamic elements to it that that I fell in love with.

And yeah, the pond system was neat. And I never made that magic sword correlation, but it kind of makes sense. I don't know if that was like a conscious decision on their part, but it certainly makes sense, except now you get to design those pawn companions and share them with other people online, which I thought was pretty neat. and unique.

So even to this day, I don't, I don't think you can really do that in a lot of games, like design a companion to share with other people online. It's usually just, yeah, you jump into people's campaigns and co-op together, that sort of thing. But that's not the case here. Yeah, Dragon's Document 2. I had forgotten that it did come out and I just have not had time to touch it or look at it. But, yeah, maybe I can put that on my. pile of ambition, games that I want to play and never will find time to, but I mean to,

once that comes to Switch 2, at least then the cartridge is very convenient and I can carry it around with me everywhere I go to say, I'm going to play this someday. And we all know it's a lie, but you can tell my heart, like, I mean it. I'm really earnest. I want to play it. It's just who has the time. And like the original, from what I hear, it's super hard. You can very easily venture into an area you clearly shouldn't be in and get one-shotted. So it's kind of got that draconian RPG element to it. But I like that. I like, you know, when it's not an arcade game where I got to put another quarter,

when it's, you know, something where, oh, you wandered in the wrong place in this open world, well, have fun. Maybe you can do something interesting, but you'll probably die. Like, you know, my open world approach is. basically like, oh, they told me to go that way. I'm going to go the other way instead, and I'll see what happens. And, you know, that yields interesting results, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But it's a good guidepost for your life.

When your game sort of forsakes, like, level scaling like that, I always feel like it feels more rewarding when you eventually come back and steamroll the stuff that was giving it. It's like, also, as Jerry mentioned, in games like, sorry, Dark Souls, when you go in, for example, the skeleton graveyard, which the game sort of guides you towards. at the beginning. It's like, you know, you're going to die at the beginning of the game, but if you are, like, sneaky and you run away,

you can find some pretty useful good items you can take back with you. And Dragon's Dogma, I mean, I've got to be, I mean, I have tried to play this and bounced off it, like, three times, and I really want to try again, because I feel like it's going to hit. It seems like it's going to just suddenly go, right, oh, I see. Because I feel like every time I've approached it, I've been trying to play it like something else, like Dark Souls again. Yeah.

Because it did get that comparison, but it's just clearly not that. You know, it's definitely up there on my list. Not quite. And yeah, it can appear unforgiving, not just in those difficulty spikes, but even with side quests tackling them, there are ways to, like, seal yourself from side quests because of actions you partake in and, like, you know, no way back. Like, good luck trying to save scum or things like that. you're just kind of locked in with your decisions, so deal with it in a sense.

And I like having that kind of permanence to choices. It really upsets some people who want to be able to fill off every little box on their check card for a video game. But I don't know. I think it's interesting when it's like, oh, well, you made a choice and that has a consequence. And now you have to live with that or go back, revert to an old save or something. I will say that too has a pretty extreme element to that consequence thing that that was generally Oh, Dragon Rock. The Dragon Rock.

I remember everyone complaining about that. Yeah. Yeah, I think Darker isn't might be introducing some quality of life improvements to that. I haven't really delved into it. Was that a thing where you could pass like a disease through pawns and other people's games? Yeah, the pond would be diseased. And from my understanding, if you don't take action to treat that or, like, remove it, the next time you, like, sleep at an inn or something with your pawn, you'll wake up and, like,

the Dragon Rock Unleashes and, like, kills everyone in town, walking you out of quests permanently. And that sort of thing, it's pretty out there. I mean, it kind of sounds like a gamified, deliberate take on, was it World of Warcraft, where there were diseases that could spread and they kind of got out of hand in ways that the developers didn't intend and they had to do some fine tuning to the way that worked.

I'm trying to remember what game that was, but yeah, it sounds like, as with a lot of things in Dragon's Dogma in that series, that the designers were like, that's an interesting thing we heard about. What if we turned that into a game mechanic? What if we, you know, explore that? And yeah, I can't believe

I haven't played the sequence. But the first one I just thought was really just such a, almost like a courageous game because it was so, you know, it really worked on its own terms in an era where games were so like obsequious to the player. Like, oh, we must, you know, give you everything. And, you know, Dark Souls, I think, was big in part because it wasn't like that. It was, you're going to play this on our terms and you're going to learn to play it the way. this game was designed to be played, and that's just how it is. Dragon's Dogma didn't hit in the same way that the Dark Souls did, but I'm glad that it did find some space for it.

Because to me, it's more, like the way it plays is a little more appealing, a little looser than Dark Souls, which I feel is very kind of like, you really have to play like just a handful of specific ways, whereas Dark Souls has more of the, or Dragon's Dogma has more of the openness where it's, you know, figure it out. Maybe you'll have good luck and maybe you won't. And at the very least, you have pawns that will help you. And if you really want to be carried, you can recruit a pawn that a player, like, leveled up, like, extremely high.

And then it becomes a bit more easy mode in that regard, too. There is something to be said for, you know, doing the Jesus one set of footprints in the sand with an NPC or an AI character. Sometimes it's okay. Yeah. All right. Any final thoughts on Dragonstogma or really any other Capcom barbarian adventure? I just recall when they were teasing Dragon Stogna the first time, there was like a website with like a silhouette of a dragon and Breath of Fire fans were freaking out, especially because the series director Makoto Ikehara was also teasing about something on Twitter at the time. And we're like, oh, my God, Breath of Fire 6 finally happening.

And, no, it was this new property called Dragon's Dogma, which looked cool. But you could imagine Breath of Fire fans were not too happy. You did get Breath of Fire 6 eventually. Yeah. What are you complaining about? Did it not live up to your expectations? So much to unpack with that. I always thought Dragon's Dogma, not till, I mean, I don't think it now.

I thought it was related to that deep down thing that they showed right at the beginning of the PS3. Yeah, that was its own thing. Yeah, not related at all. So when is that coming out? Don't ask me. I don't work there. Okay. Yeah, whatever happened to that?

I remember seeing a demo for that, like, God, how long ago was that? It was like a, it was like a... 12 years? Yeah, it was like a science fiction fantasy thing. like you were like warped from the modern day into like a dungeon. I thought it sounded really cool. Right. They were,

they were showing off an engine. They called the Panta Ray or something like that. And that was when they were revealing details about the PlayStation 4, I recall back in 2013. That was one of the first things that the PS4 games that we saw. I just, I always thought that looked like it would have been a continuation of the barbarian legacy. Yeah.

But I guess barbarians just aren't cool anymore. So it had to. die. We still love barbarians in our hearts, as long as they're from Capcom. You saw what happened with the Masters of the Universe movie. Nobody cares. Yeah, there's a lot to say about that one, too, I'm sure. But since I haven't seen it, I'm part of the problem or part of the solution, perhaps. I don't know. That's not my call to make. Anyway, this has been a fine and exciting episode of Retronauts. Let me check and see if this is a public-facing episode or a secret bonus for the cool kids who support us.

Nope, it's public-facing. So that means you are listening to this episode possibly for free. And if so, it's by our immense largesse. No, just kidding. We hope you will say this episode is so amazing that I would like to support these people and help them to create more podcasts in a similar vein, but about different topics, perhaps not Capcom Barbary. games. We're versatile. We can talk about many things. And if you look back over the past

784 episodes that we've published, you'll see that we've covered a pretty wide array of topics. And we will continue to cover a wide array of topics as long as, you know, we can support the crew and make that happen. So with that being said, you can always listen to Retronauts for free on public feeds. But if you want to be part of a cool, exclusive club of people who support us, you can go to patreon.com slash retronauts. And for just a few bucks a month,

you can get every episode that we publish on the public feed a week in advance with higher bit rate quality. And there's also a bonus tier where you can get episodes every other Friday as well as weakened columns and mini podcasts by Diamond Fight and Discord access and various and other goodies and incentives. So check that out, patreon.com slash retro knots. That's Retronaut as an astronaut, not as in Retro Zero. And I guess that is my pitch for the show.

So I will turn over the floor to our other. participants. Patrick, where can we find you on the internet? I am known as P.K. Rockin on Blue Sky and Threads. And I run a Breath of Fire fan page called Breath of Fire fans, but it also has a website called dragnir.net. So please go check that out. And the homework I leave for everyone for this episode is to listen to the Dragon's Dogma vocal theme song called Into Free Dongon by the J-Rock band Bees. it is incredible and it's only in the vanilla version of the game but it's such a yeah i remember that i remember the the title name and thinking wow this is this is really something this is really something and does not fit the vibe of the game at all but it's awesome and steward what about you

you can find me on blue sky a stewart jip that's g i double p everyone gets that wrong and says it wrong but that's okay because it's spelled in a silly way um or you can read my book all games are good through press run. And I recently started doing a zine called Oath, which is just a bunch of games writing that I sort of do in a sort of automatic trance mode. But it also has contributions from Leanne Hamilton, who's done a bunch of the covers for retronauts and David Lloyd from the Thirsty Mage RPG podcast also contributes. There's some more writers coming in. It's just a fun thing that you can buy and it's not very expensive and you'll get to read a bunch of opinions about old and new games. Yeah, I'm kind of annoyed at you for starting a zine because I'd been thinking about doing that as a Patreon incentive and started working on one for this summer.

But now you've done this. So it's just going to seem like I'm stealing Stewart's bit and I don't want people to think that I'm that kind of person. Well, if you want, you could say it was my idea. And then it would just be like, oh, he's doing two zines. There's no place to reason, that's. Yes, that's the idea. Anyway, you can find me on Blue Sky as Jay Parrish. and publishing books and podcasts and many other things.

My precious child, the baby, that my creative baby that I cradle, is my video series that I publish every Wednesday. Video Works at the moment. I'm talking about some Tripographic 16 games from 1989. And, you know, I'm really sad that I missed that system when it came out, that I didn't really ever see it or couldn't afford it, because it's so good. it's just like the NES but better and that rules. So anyway,

come see me enthuse about turbographics games every Wednesday for a limited time only. By the time this episode comes out, I'll probably be back on to Master System and Genesis, but I'm sure I can find nice things to say about those two or else Stuart will be very upset. So check it out on YouTube.

Anyway, this has been Retronauts. You have been listening to Retronauts And we thank you for that. Please come back again in a week because there will be a new episode, and it's going to be very awesome, and you're going to love it. So until then, barbarian away. Barbarian. Barbarian.