Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 111: Metroidvania II - The NES years

Episode Date: August 7, 2017

Following up on the first Metroidvania episode from a few months back, we collect the jump boots and circle back around to take a look at the next stage of the genre's evolution: The NES era.

You're listening to Retronauts, and that's great, but how would you like to watch Retronauts too? Well, good news. This coming weekend, Bob and I will be presenting our second live panel of the year at Long Island Retro Gaming Expo, the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York. We'll be joined by Hardcore Gaming 101's Kurt Kolata and Game Club 1990X's Xerxes, as we do our best to explain the history of Falcom's Dragon Slayer series, a long-running RPG franchise that's every bit as confusing as our Wonder Boy or Bubble Bobble episodes. So come see us live Thursday, August 13th, at 12.30 p.m. You won't regret it, probably.

Hi, everyone and welcome. Entros are very good. Hi, everyone. We've had something to drink now. This is Jeremy Parrish, speaking for Retronauts East. Yes, it's time for another recording. Boy, that really threw me off. Man, I got to stop paying attention to you guys.

Is it, like, did it throw you off that I laughed at your funny joke? Yeah, no one ever laughs at the things I say. They're like, God, another dad joke. Shut up. Well, I like it. Okay. I'm a dead. Right.

So you're just like, oh, yeah. It's just normal for me. You don't even hear it as a joke. You're just like, oh, he's just communicating like a normal human. Hi, Dad. I'm Chris. Hey. Wow.

You guys want to become deads, too. It's awesome. Yeah, that'd be great. Anyone can do it. Not anyone. There's, there's, there's, there are some moving parts involved. There, you need, like, you need co-participation for that sort of thing. That's weird.

I thought it just sort of happened. The kids show up at your house. Oh, yeah. Are we doing this, part of Genesis? Are we doing this second one because we got so off track in the first one? I think so. We're starting where we left off with the last episode, which is nonsense. or retro nonsense as apparently this name of the show now.

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episode for you. We're going to talk about Metroidvania. But wait, Jeremy, you say, you already talked about Metroidvania. And that's true. We did. But we only talked about like half of the stuff that I had prepared notes for for Metroidvania. So we're going to hit the back half of the notes this episode. Or we're going to work through like a third of the back half of the notes with the way this conversation is going already. But what will be will be. And we will talk about nonlinear platform action RPGs by God or it will be the death of us. So, as you know, I am Jeremy Parrish, because this is the third time I've said that. But also, we have Benj Edwards.

And Chris Sims, here to talk about my favorite Metroidvania, Super Mario World. No. Damn it. We've already had this eschatological debate. Get out of here. Yes. So in a previous episode, a couple of months ago, we talked about Metroidvania games. Really, it was more about sort of like the origin of the action.

RPG and how the platformer and the action RPG sort of came together as both of those genres were sort of even taking root. You know, you started having Metroidvania games just a couple of years after Super Mario Brothers came along and said, hey guys, this is how you do platforming. And so to me, like the evolution of Metroidvania games through like 1994-95 or so when, you know, Super Metroid came out, is kind of like a parallel microcosy. version of the evolution of video games. Maybe I'm overstating that.

But I really like these games and, okay, Benj has got my back. So it's all good. So we're going to talk about the actual games that sort of laid down what the Metroidvania is as opposed to sort of setting the stage for it, which we talked about last time. So really a lot of games develop between 1987 and 1994 or so. Or however far we get with this conversation. So without further ado,

Let's mosey on in. So what is that theme you're humming? Jeremy's theme. Oh, yeah. It's like Valerie's theme, but more Jeremy-ish. See, I feel like my theme would actually be like an 18-minute-long progressive rock epic. I heard Jeremy's getting really into Prague these days. These days.

You can't start your progcast. yes, drum solos and stuff so I can't make that theme for you, sir. That's okay. What was that song supposed to be? Was it a real one? I'm just making stuff up. I mean, I like to make fun of this show. You need to go home and like... I honestly thought you were doing the first little bit of a vampire killer.

That one or the do do do do do do do do do do do That's the one. I did that last episode. Did you? Not do the thing. Yeah, I'm going to have to write a theme now for Jeremy. Yeah, okay. So anyway, we're probably going to cut this part. But anyway, so, where was I? Right.

We were talking about early Metroidvania games. We got to the Metroid. We got to the Vanya. We got to stuff like Wings of Modola and so on and so forth. Some things have happened since our last episode on Metroidvania games, though. Well, one thing has happened, and that is Nintendo announced a remake of Metroid 2, which is really cool. That's like the forgotten Metroid game that no one cares about, except then some fans did a remake of it. And I guess Nintendo was like, oh, yeah, well, we can do that, too. So they did it after a cease and desist. Do you guys have any thoughts on Return of Samus, or Samus Returns?

I'm excited about it, because I love Metroid. I mean, I love it. Where do you stand on Metroid 2, though? That seems to be the divisive. Like, you know, every Nintendo game, the sequel in the 8-bit era, was always like off-putting, like Castlevania 2, Zelda 2. Metroid 2. I got it when it was relatively new, you know, when it first came out. And I was disappointed just because of the...

Actually, no, I first thought it was pretty awesome. But the animations of the big clown shoes run around, just like, I can't take it. Samus has these big, like, she's like shuffling around the... Yeah, her animation's not the greatest. Is that really what ruined the game for you? Yeah. I mean, the graphics aren't that great. I think they really screwed up Samus.

that one, in my opinion. That's actually kind of where they designed modern Samus. Yeah, I mean, the ship was in that one first, right? Right, but they totally overhauled her armor from the original game. The original was a Metroid, she was on a pretty slim suit of armor, very, not form

fitting, but very, like, it didn't have the bulk that the later Metroid games did, and they gave her like those huge shoulder, not Paldron, what the hell those, what are those things? Eppolets. The bulbous epaulettes. I think actually Paldrons might be the word for it.

Might be, but those are some big-ass Paldrons. They're like beach-ball Paldrons. Beach-Baldrons. There we go. Okay, so she's got her beach baldrons. They added those to the Sprite because they didn't have colors. Like on the NES, you know, when you get the Varia, your color changes. But in the Game Boy, they couldn't do the color change.

So they were like, well, let's give her a different visual signifier. So they said, what about gigantic shoulders? Yeah. And that's how that came about. It sounds like the 80s of the big shoulder pads. Right. She was basically like the female power executive, you know, probably had a pencil skirt also. Probably. Well, that might explain the weird walk thing here going on. So it all comes together.

I was excited when the Game Boy Color came out because it sort of enhanced the colors of that game a little bit. You know, they had a built-in palette for that game. And you could actually see the action a lot better on that screen. And I remember playing it a lot after that. It's all right. I know there's, you go from one, you know, one of those alpha Metroids or whatever they are to the next one and you, you know, it's not as good as Super Metroid.

It's not. But then what is? I'm actually really excited about it. Castlevania Symphony of the Night is. Yes. Thank you very much. That is actually true. But I mentioned the last time we were here talking about Metroidvania's,

I was never a Metroid guy. Like I was avania player when I was younger. So I, the only way I've experienced Mr. 2 is literally from reading Jeremy's Anatomy of Metroid. And I'm really interested in it because I'm never going to go back and play a Game Boy game, like unless I need to for this show. So the idea of getting like a modern remake that, you know, isn't just like an HD remake, but preserves what works about Metroid 2 while also giving me a modern sensibility in a more modern way to play.

is something that I'm really excited about because it's the ideal way for me as a, I guess, a more casual Metroid fan to experience that game, aside from reading a detailed book about it. I'm curious to see how it's going to work just because Metroid 2 is the one Metroid game that Yoshio Sakamoto wasn't involved in.

He was the director-designer of the original game, the director-designer of Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, so on and so forth. Like the prime games he hasn't really been that involved in, but any of the 2D games, up to and including other M. What about Zero? Metroid Zero. Yeah, Sakamoto worked on Zero Mission also.

I love that. That was a cool remake, you know? It's a great remake. But Metroid 2, he didn't have any involvement in. That was a different section of Nintendo R&D1. So I'm kind of curious to see how he's going to put his fingerprints on the game, especially because I feel like his game design sensibility has changed a lot since Metroid 2 was new. I mean, he was the guy behind Metroid OtherM, which is a lot of people

think is an abomination in the Metroid name. I don't think it's that bad. The story is bad, but the gameplay was pretty good, if not exactly what I expect from Metroid. So I'm curious to see if he can reconcile that sort of modern design impulse with, you know, the content and the structure and design and sensibility of the original Metroid 2, a game that he did not work on. I'm really I'm really I'm really interested in the idea of this game of this game. that we consider to be part of, like, one of Nintendo's, you know, the three really core franchises of Nintendo, not counting Pokemon.

Fire emblem, Splatoon, and... Well, yeah, that now, yes. Well, in America, I'd say Metroid is one of the cores. Yeah, well, you know, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, those are kind of the three I'm thinking of. And Kid, Dickerous. But the second one, uh, like... Poor Kidacris. Was, the second one being a Game Boy game has always struck me as really weird, because that didn't happen with anything else.

You had, you know, Game Boy Zelda games. You had Game Boy Mario games. But with Mario... It did actually happen with Kid Igris. Did it, really? Yeah. Okay. Which was also by some of the same devs as Metroid.

Of myths and monsters. So I can say, like, the reason that happened is because Game Boy was developed and kind of led by Nintendo R&D1, which was the same division that designed Metroid and Kidigris. So they kind of, you know, once the NES started dying, they sort of took their ideas over to the platform they were working on instead of developing these. for Super NES, they put them on Game Boy. So that's why that happened.

But I do agree. I'm right there with you. Like, it is kind of weird that this legendary NES game got its sequel on Game Boy. Yeah, it's like, it's like imagining if Super Mario Land wasn't the weird offshoot franchise that it eventually became. Like, if that's where the core Mario series came from. Like, I think Metroid is really interesting as something that started on NES, then went to Game Boy, then went to Super NES, uh, as it was.

it's the one that hits all the consoles in its core storyline. I think it's really interesting. Missed Super NES though. In 64. Yeah. Was there no Metroid game for 64? There wasn't. I was disappointed. It was eight years between

Metroid games, Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. Those were like the worst years of our lives. It was a dark time. It was. I desperately clung to any Metroidvania game at that time because I was like, I need my fix. Fortunately, you did have the best one. I mean, you can still see the track mark.

It's terrible. So if we look back at, you know, kind of the Metroidvania concept in general, I think what you find is that most of the sort of formative games in the genre happened on the NES. And I think that is just a product of kind of the times. Like this is the time when platformer games were starting to go from single screen, arcade things that, you know, you played for a high score to something more exploratory, adventuresome. At the time, the NES was basically the dominant system in Japan where most of these games were being made.

In Europe, you know, there was still a lot of focus on PCs and different styles of games came into being as a result. And in America, game development was really focused more in PCs, like American-style PCs as opposed to the British microcomputers. So they tended to go toward more of like the, bigger in-depth RPG-type adventures. Like, the games you hear about being made for the home market in the mid-80s in America tended to be more stuff along the lines of Ultima or Might and Magic and things like that.

So I think just kind of as a consequence of the fact that the NAS was dominant in Japan and lent itself to the style of games, you see most of these games sort of evolving on the NES and then some offshoot on like Master System or other comments. consoles from other manufacturers, but mostly Nintendo systems. Do you think that's a function of the NES being essentially defined by Super Mario Brothers? Because one of the things that you've written about and talked about before is that the structure of Mario Brothers isn't just like that it's so big, like compared to games

that had come before, like, you know, the very idea of having, you know, eight worlds of four levels each was massive. But the fact that they flow together. and form a more or less cohesive environment? Do you think that's where that idea really started to take root? Yeah, I don't know if I necessarily say, like, people saw Super Mario Brothers and were like, oh, yes, that's what we should do in that sense. But I do think that Mario was kind of a part of just an overall movement toward a different

way of thinking about games, thinking about them as, you know, spaces and environments, as opposed to, you know, like obstacle courses on a single screen. you know, things were starting to turn into these more expansive, free-scrolling worlds. And so I think as a result, people started to, you know, start to think, like, is this a space? Like, can we define this? And Castlevania was one of the first games that really did that. And, you know, it gives you a map as you travel through the castle. So the little map that you're traveling actually lines up with the stages that you're completing. So there is a sense of like, oh, yes, I am in this castle. And look, here is how I'm moving through the castle. So, yeah, the idea of, like, video games having sort of a coherent geography, I guess.

I don't know that that necessarily came out of Super Mario Brothers, but certainly Super Mario Brothers was part of that movement, that trend. Yeah, I feel like Super Mario Brothers and Zelda defined that platform completely. So they, you know, there were lots of platform clones, and then there were platformers that had, adventure elements to them, which is kind of what we're talking about. And I think that came a lot from the Legend of Zelda once that came out. Yeah, and Dragon Quest also. That was the other big game. Not so much here, but in Japan, like there were so many games influenced by Dragon Quest. And once Dragon Quest came out and started to become big, then you start to see the actual RPG elements show up in these games, including Zelda, too. Yeah. So we'll talk about some of these.

So in the last episode, we talked about some of these games, but then I cut that part because the conversation didn't really go anywhere. We had to cut it off. Some good material you lost. That sounds like Patreon. on content to me. Cut to the replay. Yeah, you're just like a bunch of us screaming at each other. It was, it was, yeah.

But yeah, I would like to kind of go back and, if you guys don't mind, sort of recap some of this conversation, mainly about the Goonies 2 and Zelda 2. Because those are kind of, in a lot of senses, the first games that I think really, that in Riga also kind of kind of nailed this idea and do it cohesively and coherently. And effectively. Oh, boy. RIGAR. I'm a big RIGAR fan. When you say RIGAR, you mean the... The NES version.

Okay, the NES version. Although I do have a port... There's an arcade port of RIGAR on the links here. That's kind of neat. Yeah, so one of the things maybe worth mentioning is that game, like, arcade conversions to NES were always different. And that was partially a function of Nintendo saying, if you are going to put a game on our system, it has to be unique.

it can't be the same game that you would play on, you know, Master System or PC Engine or whatever. It has to be distinct. So developers would redesign their games, their arcade games, for NES, which some people hated. Like Double Dragon got its, you know, RPG mechanics, and Bina Commando became basically an entirely different game. Rigar also became an entirely different game. Yeah, definitely. So did Strider. Strider.

Akari Warrior Strider was just playing. Strider wasn't actually a conversion of the arcade game. It was developed in parallel to the arcade game. But Rygar was definitely one of the first games that did this. I'm curious if you'd like to talk about the differences there and what the games are there. I mean, Rygar and the arcade is sort of like side-scrolling. You beat up the enemies. I'm not sure your character progresses in any meaningful way.

No, it's very much like a Rast and Saga type game. Yeah, so you're just, yeah, you're shooting monsters. You're just, it's completely side-scrolling view and it's neat. You have like a holy pizza on a chain. Holy pizza, yeah. And you... What flavor is that pizza? Well, the toppings on that pizza, Jeremy.

I think it's just, you know, cheese. I think there's a power out for pepperoni. Spikes. Spikes. Spikes. Oh, Spike pizza? Spike pizza. Yeah, it's the worst pizza.

So, RIGAR on the NES, though, was a non-linear action adventure game where you can actually power up your guy over time and you find all kinds of artifacts. And it has two different perspectives. There's a side-scrolling part. And then there's the overhead. sections where the sprite looks pretty much the same, but you see an overhead view while you're traveling between places. It's just fun. Yeah, it feels like this one was really heavily influenced

by Zelda. But what I really like about Riga, when you look at it versus the arcade version, is that it starts out with such a great fake out. You're like, oh, it's a pretty nice looking conversion to the arcade game. You've got Rigar, the warrior, running, and there's the sunset behind them, and you're killing the same enemies from the arcade game. And then you get to the end of the stage and you go to a different area. You can go up. Wait a minute. You can go to the different area and then all of a sudden like this different area has

ladders and it has multiple paths and then if you go into one of the doors, all of a sudden the perspective changes and it's top down and you're like, what the hell is happening? Yeah. What is this? This is so awesome. And if you pay attention, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a subscreen that you can activate and you go to the subscreen and it's got like stats and equipment. Yeah.

And you can. Magic spell. But you can build up a potion worth of health. If you kill enough guys and get enough health things, they turn into a potion or something like that. Yeah, you get a potion drop every once in a while. But the little stars that enemies drop are experience. And you get stronger and you can get more life.

You have mind and last. You don't have magic power and endurance. You have mind and last. But as those go up, then you can take more damage. your magic becomes more powerful and yeah like you gain different magic spells like the ability to recharge your health or to zap everything on the screen every time you attack yeah the the equipment upgrades are cool that they're they function like the high jump boots or whatever they are and you know long beam and Metroid where they unlock new areas there's a a grappling thing

that lets you go across two stumps to get to a new area and there's like a vertical grappling thing and then there's I forgot what lots of grappling things yeah there's some grappling those are kind of the main ones there's some others

yeah there are some others I beat this game so many times of the kid but I always did this cheat thing where my brother figured out if you or maybe we read a Nintendo Power where like in the very beginning

you can tape down the controller with a turbo button and you just like shoot nonstop to build up you know kill lots of enemies and get the XP and stuff to make yourself

more powerful the game is a lot more easy to play and more fun. But it's neat. There are these big bald guys in these rooms that tell you information. I think those are guys are called Indora. Indora, yeah. And you can jump on enemy's heads and bounce off. Actually, there's Indora, and then there are hermits.

And the hermits don't have the third eye. Okay. The Indora are like the gods, and they're the ones who give you upgrades, like shields and things like that. Whereas the hermits are just like, yo, what's up? Go save my daughter. Yeah. I don't think you ever see his daughter, though. The bosses are cool, too.

There's a, I remember, one's like a lion thing with a. That's the, oh, well, there's a couple of them. Like, the final boss is Liger. There's Riger and Liger. Liger, yeah. But, yeah, there is, like, this, like, three-headed lion thing. It's neat. It's a great game.

It really is. It's a little tricky at first, but if you stick with it, I think it's one of the better, most underrated. RIGAR games. In fact, I think I put that on my underrated NES list that I did for PCMag Yeah, it's a really early example of developers stopping and thinking like, how can we make this game unique and better suited

for home play? And instead of just being, you know, like, the arcade game is like 64 levels that are all the same. It's actually really boring if you play more than like five levels. It's just like the same thing over and over again. Whereas this is constantly giving you different scenery and different objectives. Every area has kind of its own structure. Like you go into the woods and the woods are very linear, but then you go into the mountains and you have to go up and down a lot and find passages and use the grappling

wire and things like that. And importantly, every area has different music too, so it's not like the same thing. Yeah, so the music is all very good. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, to me, this is kind of where Tecmo sort of started to define themselves as a developer, as a home console developer. Yeah. They did something other than just the arcade game.

And you saw that in, you know, games like Ninja Guideon, where they really did something different for home games. That was Data East. And Carnov kind of does the same thing. I didn't include it in this because it's more linear, but they did add like this kind of adventure element to Carnov. Well, Tecmo had Mighty Bomb Jack, right, and Solomon's Key and, I don't know. Anyway, RIGAR is cool.

You know, it's definitely a proto-metroidvania. Yeah, for sure. And that top-down hub is interesting because it kind of, I guess it came out a little after Zalta, too. in Japan. And Zelda 2 did the dual perspectives. But this was, this is one of the first games that had the dual perspectives

where you played in both. Like you could still do your platforming and attacking in the top-down view. It was a little awkward because of the perspective. And there were even some dungeons and bosses that you had to fight that way. So I don't know. I think it's a really great game.

It's one that I meant to do an anatomy of games on but never got around to. But there is a lot of interesting stuff happening in RIGAR. And it's pretty dated now. But at the time, I don't know. Like, I didn't know anyone else who liked it, but I borrowed it from a friend and played through it in like a weekend, but was just like, oh, this is really cool. I really like this. And it was another one of those games that I played early on in my NES owning career that made me say, oh, yeah, I like games where you're traveling around and exploring and finding stuff and getting stronger.

It has unexpected depth. I think that was the most exciting thing about it. Yes. You know, you didn't expect it to have that much depth to it. What do you think, Chris? I never played Ragar. But you were just watching a video of it. What do you think?

It looks really interesting. I think it's one that I was completely unfamiliar with before you started talking about it. But it seems like it is well worth going back to. Yeah, it's one of those earlier, you know, it's a 1987 release in the U.S., I think. So it tends to be somewhat forgotten. I don't think people really paid a lot of attention to third-party games until stuff like Mega Man 2 and Injie Gaiden and Contra started to come out. So it kind of got overlooked, but I think it's definitely one worth re-exploring and rediscovering.

There's something to it. I like it. I think it's really well made. Agreed. Another kind of early game that came out around the same time as Zalta 2, at least in Japan, is The Goonies 2, which actually came out way before Zeta 2 here in America because of the Zalta 2 delays. But this was another one of the very first NES games that I borrowed from a friend, and it was not what I was expecting. Yeah, unexpected depth once again. Yeah, I liked the movie The Goonies a lot, so I was like, okay, cool, I bet this is going to be dumb, a game based on the Goonies.

And then I played it as like, wow, there's a lot happening here. See, I had the opposite experience as a kid who, and I think it might be because I'm a little bit younger than you. But I was a huge, huge fan of the Goonies. It was one of my favorite movies. You know, it's kids looking for pirate treasure. It's a great concept. And you see that game box. I think we talked about this last time, too, that the game box looks like that Drew Struzen poster for the movie.

That was part of the stuff I cut, I'm afraid. Yeah. Uh-oh. That's why I'm bringing it back up, because that is a really awesome game box. Like, the art on that is super good. But maybe it's because I was so young. Maybe it's because I was expecting something completely different. I ended up finding Goonies 2 to just be completely confusing.

It is completely confusing. Yeah, when it would go into the weird little shadow gate sequences. Like, I could not... Shadowgate sequences. Okay. You have the first person thing? Yeah. The adventure scene.

Mapping is useful in this game, too. It never occurred to me to make a map of a game before, because I was so used to that. This game came with its own map built in. On the subscreen, you go, and depending on which part of the game you're in, you get either a front map or a back map. Oh, that's right. And that's the part that kind of made me stop and say, what? Because I would, you know, pause the game, and it's like, front. It's like, okay, so that's where I am in the game.

I don't know why it says front, but there I am, I'm exploring. But then you go through the adventure scene to the, like, to the backside of the stage or the backside of the world and you get a different map altogether and you're like, wait, what's happening? And then there are warp zones that take you to kind of unexpected places. So the areas that you're exploring don't necessarily line up physically with one another because you jump around the map and go back and forth.

So this was, what, 87? Yeah, I would have been renting this from a video store like right after I got my NES. So the games I would have been used to would be like Super Mario Brothers. and it's such a different game in every way that I think I was just mystified by it and never, you know, when I got older, never went back to it. Yeah, this was, the first I ever heard of this

was a Nintendo Fun Club newsletter. There was a feature, a two-page feature on this. Howard Phillips giving you the hookup on that impression. Howard Phillips, it was, they didn't credit him. He was the secret gamer, but now I know it was Howard Phillips. But, yeah, that article talked up how cool this game was, and I was like, huh, it's not what I would have thought. But it did look interesting.

then I played it, I was like, yeah, there's a lot happening here. But something I think is helpful about the Goonies 2 is that if you look at the fact that it is the Goonies 2 as opposed to the Goonies, it kind of helps put some context into how platformers were evolving in this period of time, because it's the Goonies 2, not in the sense of this is a sequel to the movie, but rather this is a sequel to Konami's previous Goonies game, which never came to the U.S. on console. it did make it out in arcades, but I didn't discover that until after I'd already played the Goonies 2. And then I was like, oh, now I see.

I was like 17 or 18 when I found it in a Play Choice 10. And that was the first time that I knew that the Goonies 1 existed. There was a pizza place that my family would go to like once or twice a month, Sunday after church. And we would just have pizza with friends. And they had a Play Choice 10 there for a couple of years. The Play Choice 10 had the Goonies in it. And this was after I played through Goonies 2. And I was like, oh, now I get it.

Like, this is like the simpler version of Goonies 2. It didn't have the front back. But it was still kind of exploratory. The original Goonies for Famicom is based very much on the movie. Like, you start out in the Fratelli hideout, and then you go into the basement, and then you go into the caves, and then you end up on one-eyed Willie's ship, if you can make it that far. and like each of the six stages is sort of a self-contained space

that you have to kind of explore and go back and forth and you go into doors and kind of duck into the backside of the stage and you have to collect bombs and open up vaults where Goonies are hidden but there's also secret items that are scattered around invisibly and so you can like acquire these semi-permanent power-ups like raincoats to keep the water hazards from hurting you and so forth football helmets to keep stalactites from falling on your head and hurting you. So it does have this adventure element, but it's within the context of a level-by-level progression

game. It's just that within each level there is this sort of exploratory free-roaming element and you have a limited time amount, limited amount of time to find the goonies within that stage and to find the keys that you need to get to the next stage. And then once you have the Goonies rescued and collect all the keys, you can go to the next stage. And when you get to the pirate ship, then you rescue Andy and hooray, game over. Wow. Yeah, I think my... You're good at talking about video games.

I should do this for a living. I don't think about it. I think my problem was that my after church pizza places all had Neo Geos. Oh, wow. So it wasn't, like... This is a little bit of a tangent, but there was a nice restaurant in the town where I grew up called Big Jims. It was like a nice sit-down place.

But a thing that I didn't know, again, until I was a teenager, was that they had a separate restaurant called Big Jims in the back that you had to go around and it was like a diner and that's where the Play Choice 10 was which I didn't find out. This is just like Goonies. It's got the front and the back. $100 bill.

I do think that if I would have had like a, I was not yet a Nintendo Power subscriber and I never was on the, I wasn't early enough for the Nintendo Fun Club. That's for me. But if I had had something like that, I think I would have been, way more into Goonies, too.

And I know that because I was, like, briefly and mildly obsessed with Star Tropics. They are very much cut from the same club. A character named Mikey who attacks with a yo-yo in both games. Yeah. It's not subtle. Yeah. Well. But the Goonies 2 was a very confusing game.

Yeah, well, let me tell you, didn't it freak anybody else out when the Goonies 2 came out? You're like, was there a movie? Yes. Was there a mermaid in the first? Yeah, there was a, they said, I heard there was. was an octopus, but I'd never heard anything about a mermaid. A mermaid. No, I just thought there was some kind of sequel.

It just, you know, before you could look it up on the internet, you'd have no way of knowing. You'd have to go to a video store and it's not there. You'd know, you'd never know. I mean, it's literally, yeah, you would not know. It didn't freak me out, but it did make me wonder. I was like, so was this like based on a sequel to the movie that never happened? I don't know.

I didn't know. It wasn't until I came across the original, you know, Goonies for Play Choice 10. I was like, oh, okay. It's one of those childhood mystery. is that only falls into place when it all falls into place. Kids these days have no idea because they can just go on Reddit or whatever. It's the Mandela effect. People think Nelson Mandela died or something.

They swear they remember it. Yeah, but it never happened. I don't know if this is quite the same thing. The Goonies 2 actually came out, everybody. We're living in an alternate reality. Oh, wait, no, I'm thinking of Splash. Never mind. It's weird, but it's almost plausible because Splash did exist.

I had seen like Splash. I'm like HBO. I knew that the Goody's existed. I knew that sequels existed. And yeah, they found pirate treasure and there wasn't really anything magical, but maybe in the second one there's a mermaid. And then it turns out the answer is just no video game sequels were weird. So there was a big problem with the Goonies 2 for NES.

And that is that the instruction manual omitted a very important piece of information. So you mentioned the adventure scenes, the, you should call them Shadowgate part. I think it's more like, I think it's more like Dr. Chaos or something. like that. But yeah, you're like a first-person view and you basically have to kind of like find your way through and you collect an inventory and you only use this inventory specifically within these adventure scenes. They don't, they don't really come into use when you're running around. Like, you can get eyeglasses and a ladder and stuff like that. That doesn't have any effect on the platforming. But when you're in the adventure scenes, which are just, you know, you looking at a room and

trying to poke around and find secrets, like these things come into play. Well, there's a little too much inventory for a single menu. And so once you start to get items that overflow in the first menu, it goes to a second page. But the manual doesn't actually tell you how to access that second page. And so there was a part where you have to use a diving suit to go underwater from the adventure room. And I knew what I needed to do, but I would go to this room where there was a hole in the ground with water. I was like, well, I've got the diving suit. I found it, but it's not in the menu. What the hell is going on?

It turns out there's a second page to the menu that the manual doesn't tell you how to use or tell you how to access and you have to like press a specific button to do it. And I never knew what that button was. And I didn't realize that was how you did it. So it wasn't until like years later, like two or three years after I started playing this game, that I finally stumbled into, maybe I didn't even stumble into the information. Maybe it was just like I accidentally activated it or something. I don't remember.

but it took me ages to beat this game. But once I figured out that second menu, then I was like, oh, okay. So then I went underwater and beat the game, and it was great. But that was a very... Sounds like Batman Forever, where you had to push it down and up.

Kind of like that. You were in a real Batman Forever situation. But it wasn't even a situation where having the manual would have helped because I had the manual and it did not help. It just was not documented. So that was deeply frustrating.

Maybe that's one of those things they put in for game counselor calls, like you said, that they did in another podcast. He said they made games more difficult, so you had to call it. I think it was just badly... Incompetence.

Yeah. That's a shame. Did you ever call a game counselor? No. My parents wouldn't let me call those 900 numbers. I did once. I did once, yeah. Maybe my brother did once, but not...

I didn't do it. And I wanted to make sure I had all the endings to Chrono Trigger. So I was like, you know, this guy keeps telling me that my friends are in trouble, but I feel like I've helped all my friends. What am I supposed to do? And they were like, I don't know. That costs me $5.

Yeah, I had a... Never again. I had a very similar experience where I was stuck in the first level of the Spider-Man game for Super N-E-S. Because you go down a flight of stairs and the way the camera follows, the visual cue that there's something under that flight of stairs, it doesn't go down far enough to show it. So I didn't know that you just had to, like, duck and press jump to get down and go fight Dr. Octopus. So, again, I called a game counselor, and he was like, I don't know, man, you should just be able to get to Dr. Akapos. That's helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thanks for the five. All right, so next on the list here, Zelda 2, which I think is important to talk about. I swear we talked about Zelda 2 for like an hour last time. We didn't. We talked about it for a couple of minutes, and that part got cut out. Okay. So. Well, cut out this.

What did you say about Zelda 2 last time, Ben? I don't remember. Let's go cut to the replay. There is no replay. Deadly towers. Deadly towers. It was edited out. I don't know.

Zelda 2 is great. Oh, that's what I said. I said it's the most criminally underrated game of all time. Of all time? Yeah. Wow. That's a bold claim. I think so.

Because, I mean, it is one of Nintendo's flagship franchise entries, but it's just so, it was so put down for so many years for being different when everybody wanted top-down Zelda. I mean, I think in weird compressed time scales here, because I grew up living through this, and, you know, it seemed like the time between waiting for Zelda 2 and the link to the past was like forever, and everybody wanted another top-down Zelda,

but now that was probably like a couple years or something. It was, but yeah, I agree that there was kind of a sense of like, well, this game is a little weird, but I feel like we all kind of just accepted that because Nintendo kept making all those weird sequels like Mario 2 and Castlevania 2 and again, yeah, we mentioned this before, but I think the problem with that is that Mario 2 is weird and different, but it still looks like a Mario game. And Castlevania 2 is weird and different, but it essentially looks like Castlevania. That's true. Zelda 2 looks completely different. Yeah, it's a different genre. The color scheme is the same. And that's it. You're a little guy. You've got an elf. Yeah, but he's weird and tall. It's punishingly hard in many places, but you can power up your guy.

And I think we were saying also it was like that is a Metroidvania essentially very, very well. I mean, you can, it's a side-scrolling action platformer. You power up your guy. I don't know if it doesn't have a map. Jeremy, help me. Well, so I feel like what they did with Zelda 2 was say like, you know, with the original Zelda, we made an action RPG, but what if we took it an extra step further?

What if we made it more RPG and also made it more action? So it's like the more action, more RPG. So instead of being a top-down game where you're traveling like screen-to-screen, it became a side-scrolling game very much in the style of Mario or even more accurately Dragonbuster by Namco. And then the top-down view became sort of like the Dragon Quest style overla. world. I really feel like they saw what happened with Dragon Quest and were like, yes, we need to do some of that. But instead of just making a Dragon Quest clone, they said,

what if we took the game that we made that was already kind of based in the RPG genre and made it more like that, but without going all the way? What if we kept the action element instead of having turn-based battles? So... We're putting a lot of words into Nintendo's mouth here. We are, but I feel confident in doing that. Okay. Well, it also let them... I've met some of them before, so I feel like I know them. That is awesome. It also let them very clearly give players an idea of the scale getting ramped up because one of the things you read about anatomy of Zelda is you can walk to where the first game takes place and it's a very small piece of the larger adventure of Zelda, too. So they literally are like, well, if you like this, this is so much bigger.

Yeah, I feel like they really recaptured that in Breath of the Wild where you start out on the plateau for the first few hours and you're like, oh my God, this is so huge. There's so much to do. There's so much stuff. And then you get the three items you need for the plateau. And the old guy's like, all right, go have fun. Go have fun. And then you're looking around and realize, oh, that was like 3% of the entire world. Oh, my God.

All my weapons keep breaking and I keep slipping off the things. Yeah, it turns out of breath of the wild rules. It's good. But the Zelda, too, has strategy action where you can duck, you can block, you can, you know, jab high or low. There's a lot of, how would you call it? just agility action strategy. It is definitely a skill-based action game. It is not just a button-masher.

I mean, definitely you need to button mash some. But you can't get through it just by button mashing. No, but it feels like they said, you know, what if we took the side view of Mario, but then incorporated the elements of the original Zelda into that, where you are a guy with a sword and a shield? Like, how is that going to work? So, you know, when you attack, you drop your defense.

And you have two levels of defense because it's a side-scuble. scroller, and you can duck. So, yeah, it makes sense that you can, like, instead of just ducking, you're, like, lowering your shield and lowering your guard. A thing that I think is really interesting is that when, you know, when Smash Brothers came out, that Link has the Zelda 2 attacks, like, when he does the upthrust and the downthrust. Yeah, I feel like Zelda 2 was, I know I've mentioned this in a previous episode, probably

the Ocarina of Time episode, but I feel like Zelda 2 was somewhat repatriated into Zelda canon with Ocarina of Time because so much of combat felt like an evolution of what you had in Zelda 2. A Link to the Past did not feel like that. It was like a link to the past combat works for a top-down view. It's really smart

and really well designed. But Aquarina of Time kind of shift the camera down from that overhead view to behind the character camera view, which is basically like the Zelda 2 view, but rotated 90 degrees to be behind you instead of

beside you. So I feel like all the things that they tried to do with Zelda 2 and didn't maybe succeed entirely, they were able to express that better when, you know, when you had that that 3D view that was more liberated and not tied to a side-on perspective. Yeah. So with the Zelda series, you mentioned Occurion of Time that those really great games tend to overshadow, too, which that's why I think it's underrated. Anyway, I agree. But I feel like we wouldn't have things like Breath of the Wild if we didn't have Zelda 2. I think that was an important experiment for

the franchise and for Nintendo to kind of like say, can we explore these ideas in a different perspective? Does everything have to be top down? Can this work? Can we have like a Mario style game that also has RPG mechanics? And then they did the same thing with Akrona Time. It's like, can we make Super Mario 64

a Zelda game? Yeah. But at the same time it's also like, Akrona Time is also extremely a link to the past. Like most of the quest is basically a recreation of a link to the past. Similar items and stuff. Yeah. I think we're boring, Chris. He just...

He's asleep, but that's okay. Sorry, we're just talking about Zelda. It's good to take an app sometimes. I got distracted looking for a map of Hyrule. That's all. Yeah, but I feel like Zelda 2 is a pretty important step for the Metroidvania genre because it does incorporate actual RPG mechanics. You have, you know, free exploration and, you know, exploration that is sort of progressive

based on your skills and utilities and things like that. But at the same time, your character levels up based on your actions. That's something you don't really see in a lot of Nintendo games. Your power-ups are not so much item-based, but more like intrinsic skills. And you get experience for killing bad guys. So Zelda 2 is very much sort of the baseline for games like Symphony of the Night also. Yeah, I'd say so, yeah. And there's actually a whole bunch of the games on this list that really draw heavily on Zelda 2,

maybe more so than any other game. So even though we talk about it being underappreciated, it actually had... Influence. I think, not just influence, but I think it had, you know, like a big psychological effect on certainly other game developers who looked at that design and said, oh, yeah, we should do that too. Yeah. I think it was very influential

without a doubt but I was just saying it's underrated in the scheme of things as far as Zelda games are concerned I think it's very similar to what happens with Castlevania 2 where Castlevania 2 isn't looked on super charitably

but you don't get Symphony of the Night without it you don't get the Order of Inia games Yeah Yeah I agree Yep Some people are really into racing games. They spend thousands of dollars on complicated simulated driving rigs with analog steering wheels and force feedback chairs.

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And basically, the games after this are kind of a, I wouldn't say reaction, but they're building on that. There are other developers looking at these sort of landmark works and saying, yes, let's take it a step further and see what happens. So I wrote things down in a certain order, but let's just skip that order and talk about first the Battle of Olympus, because no game is more like Zelda 2 in the world than Battle of Olympus. Well, that's not true.

There was the Adventure Time game. That was just basically straight up Zelda 2. But until that game came along, that was, hey, Ice King, where's my garbage? Why'd you steal our garbage? That's it. The Battle of Olympus was a pure Zelda 2 clone. Have you guys played this one? I have.

I have not. But it's a surprisingly good game. It takes away the top-down RPG perspective, but everything else. It's basically like if Zelda 2 were just one entirely contiguous side-scrolling world. Yeah. So in that way, it's more like a Metroidvania than if it's all in one. Can you backtracks? Yes, you have to at some point. Well, the problem with Battle of Olympus is I never really played it as a kid. So I remember playing it about 10 years ago. I was like, oh, man, I wish I had had this when I was a kid, because I would have loved it. I'm sure the developers wish you had played it when you were a kid, too. Yeah, I'm sorry, developers. Who developed that anyway? That was developed by Infinity. It was a three, it was a three-person team.

Infinity, I did an interview with the guy who runs a company now a couple of years ago. They were a really interesting company because basically for the most part, they took American PC games and ported them to Japanese PCs. So they did stuff like populace and Doom and that sort of thing. And they took those to the PCs that existed only in Japan. And once Windows 95 came along and basically standardized all, computer platforms and all regions, they sort of lost their reason for existing. They still make stuff, but they're basically a forgotten little company now. But this was, I think, Infinity's second game.

The first one was a Famicom Disc System game. That's not very remarkable. But this, it was a three-person team. It was the company president, Yukio, Horimoto, and his wife, and then a composer. And they put together a damn fine rip-off of Zelda, too. said, like, we wanted to make a game that we thought would be popular. And so we looked and said, what is a good game? What is a successful game that we can use as, you know, as inspiration? And they looked as Zelda, too. And they did a really good job with it. It's a great looking game.

It's very challenging. It has, you know, like an RPG system in it. And it has a unique setting. It's set in ancient Greece. You play as, I want to say Orpheus. It's been a while since I've read the plot, but. Orifice. Yeah, that's right. You're Orifice. Yeah, you play as Orpheus and you have to go to to Hades and rescue Eurydice. That is an interesting concept for a, like,

a 1987 NES game. Chris is going to write the comic book of that one, too. I hope so. That one's already been written. I could find that now. Eaton beat him by about 100 years. Yeah. Ancient Greece.

Okay. But no, it's a really, like, it straight up uses Zelda's two, Zelda 2's combat where it's like, you know, high-low, swords, sword shield. You have some magic spells. There's a currency in the form of ambrosia. Interesting. And, yeah, like you travel, there's kind of like a world map that sort of tracks your progress.

But you basically do all your exploration and adventuring within the side-scrolling view. And you meet up with God, you get stuff. Eventually, you go to Hades, and you have a fight. that is pretty much a variant on the final battle in Zelda 2, where you know you fight Shadow Link. In this case, you're fighting Shadow Hades, but it's literally a shadow, and in order to be able to beat him,

you have to have a magic item. So to beat Hades, you have to get this magic artifact that casts light, and it creates your shadow. So you're like fighting Hades in a side-scrolling view, and you can't see him. But once the light is cast, then your shadow appears and his shadow appears.

So you're actually sort of fighting. fighting him upside down because you're fighting like the shadowy, you know, image that's cast of invisible Hades. So there's some pretty cool concepts. It doesn't, it doesn't stray very far from Zelda 2, but it does at least put some inventive spins on Zelda 2. And again, it's a really nice looking game. It has a really kind of distinctive color palette, which is tough to do on an ES because there were only like 52 colors. So having a game that has its own kind of visual style is a pretty remarkable feat. Yeah, I'm watching a video of it now, since we're talking about it. It's a

really good-looking game. Yeah. Like, the way that the color palettes move from screen to screen is really fun and distinctive. This could be one of the most underrated in US games as well. But is it more underrated than Zelda 2?

The problem is, Zelda 2 is just one of the greatest games all time. Wow. A lot of people don't like it. So, yeah, it's a sort of relativity thing. going on. Well, also, this game is extremely derivative. So it loses points for that.

And it's not popular. But it's also good. So it's underrated. That's good. There you go. So another game that I feel really drew heavily on Zelda 2 in a very surprising way was Pack-in videos Rambo. Did you guys ever play Rambo for NES?

Yeah. I probably rented it at one point. It is an open-world game in which you control John Rambo fighting through the jungles of Vietnam to save POWs. And it's... Power up your muscles. You fight moths a lot. And then eventually you like, you know, the moths give you enough experience that you can start fighting tigers and VC and that sort of thing.

But I remember I have a very small story, which is I bought this game used from a game store in the mid-90s or something. It's Rambo for the NES. And I played it for a minute and like, oh, this kind of sucks. But my brother started playing it, and then a day later he's still playing it. And I was like, what's going on? This is, you know, I thought this is just a crappy game. But, you know, tell us why it's great. I don't know if it's great, but it's at least interesting.

Tell us why it's mediocre. They put some effort into it. It's remarkable, if not great. Yeah, because they basically turn this, you know, the jungles of Vietnam into an open world where you are traveling around and, like, there's a little, occasionally you come to like little tiles in the ground that, say, in or S, It's like, I guess, north-south. So you go to those and you're basically like going into a door.

So you go to a different part of the jungle. So it's this kind of very confusing labyrinth through the jungle. And there's, you know, swamps and there's the waterfall from the movie. And there are huts and warehouses. And sometimes you have to fight, you know, like Soviet hindy helicopters and things like that. You acquire different weapons throughout the game. You start out with just a knife, a trench knife. but you can get a bow and arrow, you can get a rifle, you can get grenades, napalm.

Napalm's a little tasteless, I think, in the context, but is there a rocket launcher? Probably. How can there not be a rocket launcher? I think that's what grenades are for. I have two things I want to talk about with this game. Okay. One is that when it starts, Colonel Troutman comes to visit you and offers you the mission, and when he asks you if you want to accept, you are given the choice of...

Staying in prison. Choice one, I'm not afraid of death. choice two, I feel better in prison, which is an amazing, like, that's way better than just a yes or no. Yeah. What happens if you hit, I feel better in prison? Is it an, oh, but you must situation? You can just stay there, but eventually if you want to advance the game, you have to go and leave prison. The other thing is, what do you know about pack-in video?

They're a company not known for doing good things. This was maybe the best. that are evil? Yeah. If you've played some of their games, yes, you would agree that they are evil. This is probably the best thing they ever made. Certainly the most ambitious. Like, it is a big side-scrolling, open-world, RPG-inflected action game based on a movie that doesn't really carry that weight.

Like, most Rambo adaptations are just straight shooters. But this one is... Fighting Beatles and Pelicans. Yeah, they struggled for some enemy. concepts for sure but eventually you do upgrade to just killing people because that's what Rambo does best.

Does he ever go and shoot 100 moths I don't believe so. I think that was more of a Rambo 3 kind of thing. Okay, yeah. It took place in a desert and there's no moths

right now? There's probably desert moths. Okay, fine. A biologist? Come on. But yeah, it's a strange game. I did play it through back in the day

and finished it. And How does it relate to Metroidvania's though? That's a big question. I mean, it's like the jungle that you explore

is open and, you know, it's free, freely explored. Can you power up your guy? Other than equipment? You basically just have the weapons that you acquire. There are some keys to advancing

and I can't remember exactly what they are. But it's still, you know, very much in the sense of like you have to travel around and explore and you can't go certain places until you're strong enough

because you'll be destroyed. So it definitely has... It says EXP right there. Yeah, you have an experience system. Like you gain experience. Yeah, so... Right. You get stronger, but you...

This is an action RPG. Not in the Metroid sense where you're getting like double jumps and armor and stuff like that. Like, you're always a dude without a shirt. Do you do more damage? I believe so. You know how there's Azure Striker Gunwolt

and then they made the kind of retro-styled mighty Gunwold? This is like the Mighty Gunwold version of Mercenary Kings. That's an interesting idea. Isn't Mercenary King kind of retro already, though? It is. But so is that for sure you're going to bolt. Yeah, okay.

Fair enough. Okay, so two more games to talk about, both of which come from the same developer or are part of the same franchise, and that is Legacy of the Wizard and Fazonadu. Fazzanadu. Not Faxanadu, sorry. It's Faxanadu. It's Fahacanadu. It's Famacom Zanadu.

Both of these are variants of the Dragon Slayer series. Nope, not that one. It is a sequel. Well, Legacy of the Wizard is actually a drag. second slayer sequel i don't know if you guys are razzled family yep i love legacy of the wizard is one of my favorite games on it is so bewildering tell us why you love it because it's one of the 10 games we had when i was a kid and we just were forced to love everything we had back then we gave everything the benefit of the doubt even if it was terrible and tried to complete it because it cost 30

which is like 70 dollars today and uh counting to it inflation so but uh legacy of the wizard it has a lot of depth to it you can play as one of I don't know, four or five different characters, five. And you get a lot of neat items, and it's difficult in many places, but you can sit there and power up your guy and you get more, as in, I don't know if, I can't remember if there's experience. Is there experience? There is not.

You just get more life and more magic containers. Is this the one about the family? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I remember talking about this. Yeah, so you started out. We talked about it a little bit last time, but you may have cut it out. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is a weird one in a lot of ways because basically you have this huge maze and it's like, I think 256 screens total. It's just enormous. It's like 16 by 16. That's what we talked about because I printed out, whenever the internet first came out, that was great. I got the disc and I put it in. Then I downloaded a map of Legacy of the Wizard that someone made. That is a game that I would not want to map by hand. Yeah. That's why I never beat it. Because it's, you get. lost so easily. I would spend days and days just playing that and never really getting anywhere. I don't know if I beat the bosses at all, but I would just play it.

Yeah, so one of the interesting things about this game is that each each family member has his or her own capabilities and like there are certain items you can buy and only a certain character

can collect that. And basically the maze has like the central portion that anyone can explore, but then it has each of the four corners of the maze is is an entire section that really can only be explored by one of those four characters. And you have to figure out, like the game doesn't tell you which one. Yeah. You have to figure that out.

You have to figure out which items the characters can specifically use. What they're used for, like the hardest parts I think are with the father, Zemn, who has the ability to use the magic glove, which lets him move blocks around. So it becomes like this block puzzle game. But it's really, it's kind of cumbersome. it doesn't work that well. I think the most fun character to play as is the dog poachie

because the dog is a monster and so monsters don't attack poachie. Yeah, you can get hurt by monsters. Yeah, you can travel through and like the only danger that pochie has to worry about is falling from too high or dying to the boss

which is like a giant spider. That's like the only section I've ever beaten legitimately because it's much easier. But then the, I think the mother can like jump high or float or something. Yeah, I can't remember.

The girl can jump really high And she can wear the spike shoes I love the spike shoes You can jump on monster's heads and kill And then there's the sun And the only thing he can do Is wield the dragon slayer sword So everyone else has to do all the hard work

And then they're like Okay we found your damn sword Go kill the dragon So you just go and You fight the dragon I shall do it I don't think the wizard even shows up It's lame

Visually this It looks a lot like Goonies too Like it has those kind of screens and those kinds of animals. Except the characters are like really, yeah, they're only one square high. Little tiny, like, non-super Mario, like, cutesy sprites, which is pretty interesting. Everything is, yeah, it's a block system with those squares and the, yeah, the little guys fit in the squares of the game. So my, my biggest complaint, my biggest complaints about this game, there's two of them.

One is that just it's really, really full of unfair and punishing elements, like blocks that you walk across and will drop you and you'll lose, like, 10 or 15 minutes of progress and have to fight your way back. That really sucks. But also, the system, there is no leveling for this. But basically when you go into the mage, you have maximum life, maximum magic, and then you have to collect keys. So anytime you attack an enemy, you use up a little bit of magic. Anytime you get hurt, you use up a little health.

And the way the enemy drop system is arranged, like you're always most likely to get the things that you have the fewest of. So when you first start out, like you've got Max Life, Max Magic, no keys. So enemies are going to drop a lot of keys. But then as you explore more, you get more keys and your life and your health or your magic start to drop out. So then you start getting a lot more health and magic drops, which is fine, but it slows you down on the keys and gold, yeah, also.

You get a thousand keys and then you can finally get some life. There's like a key. Each block is 10 keys, right? And there's blocks of keys. Is that right? The tops are like 10, groups of 10, and the lower thing is groups of one. So every time you fill up the whole lower road, one of the top blocks. Like 100, yeah.

Or something. Yeah. So anyway, the point is like, there's a point at which you're not really making any progress on the stuff you have to collect. So it gets really frustrating because the game is just dropping like this succession of magic refills and you really want keys or you really want help. I remember playing this game and getting really far lost in some place. I was just, I couldn't believe how far I got, but I was terrified because I was low on health or something, and I knew if I died, I had to go back or start over, and it's a crazy feeling for a kid being trapped in a corner. There is like a warp rod or something that you can use, but if you don't have one, then too bad. And there are, there are ends that show up throughout the maze.

Oh, the enemies also like to drop poison at you. Yeah, they drop poison with skull on the top of the whole thing. It's a really brutal game. I mean, it's very much from the Falcom tradition of games that exist to basically put you. through the ringer and make you feel bad about life. I still feel like it's a competent game, though. It wasn't a bad game. No, it's not bad.

It's just brutal. It's just hard, yeah. That idea of having, like, characters that are specifically built for sections of the map, and that being the way that you chart your progress is, like, a really interesting idea, but it's one of those NES games that starts with that interesting idea and then makes it hurt. Yeah. Well, it was actually originally an MSX game, but the NES version came out shortly after.

So maybe that's why it is the way it is because it was designed for a computer and people were just expecting computer games to hurt you. It says on the Is this the one that says in the head off screen It's developed by Broderbund? It was published by Broderbund in the U.S.

In Japan, I want to say it was published by like Namco or something. Oh, wow. And the developer is Falcon. Nihon Falcom and I think Compile worked on the NES version. And it was, this was Dragon. Dragon Slayer 4, the Dazzle family or whatever. The Dressel family.

Or I think actually Drossley. Drossley. And I've never played Dragon Slayer 3, but I think Dragon Slayer 2 was Zanadu. So Fazanadu is the Famicom variant of Zanadu, and is nothing at all like the original Zanadu, but it's still part of that family. But that one was actually developed by Hudson. And is a much more, I think, reasonable and fair game in the Zan. Zalda Tumold. It also has a very unique look.

It's very brown. Are we talking about Faxanadu now? Fazzanadu. Fazzanadu. It's wild that it's a portmanteau that includes FAMICOM, which is already a portmanteau. Right. It's family Zanadu. Family Computers.

Except Dragon Slayer 4 is the family game. I don't get it. It's confusing. We need hardcore. The hardcore gamer. Hardcore gamer has a great article about these Dragon Slayer games. Yeah, actually. read about five times. It's really fun.

As a matter of fact, we'll be presenting a live panel at Long Island Retro Expo in August. So maybe after this episode airs and Hardcore Gaming 101, Kurt and Zertzies will be showing up and we'll be going through the Dragon Slayer series.

Wow. So we can look forward to that. And we'll actually explain what the hell is going on in the series there. But Fazzanidu is much more of a like, oh yes, a human could reasonably beat this game. It's very much in the Zelda 2 style where you're a dude you can't do the ducking thing though like in the original the early going of the game if you want to kill an enemy that's not tall enough

or that's not high enough for your sword to hit you have to like use a magic spell fall over and hit it on your side you can't do that you can't fall over it's terrible there's no no no no we rented that when it was new you know in the early days the nes and it we didn't like it me and my brother really yeah that's all i remember about it and i've played the It was then, but I didn't, I don't like it that much. That was when Nintendo picked up in the U.S. and tried to publish and give like the same vibe as Zelda. Yeah.

The box was like kind of a tan version of the gold Zelda box. Yeah. With a crest on it and everything. It didn't have the cutout. It didn't have a gold cartridge. But they were still going for like the, hey, it's a premium RPG experience kind of vibe. Well, the Zelda box was so incredible with the cutout with a gold thing. Right.

So they were definitely going for that, but didn't quite work. And Fizanadoo is not quite as good as Zelda, but it is good. It's a more linear adventure. It's not quite as free-forming. There's backtracking, but not as much as in like Zelda 2 or even Rambo, honestly. Yeah, gosh. But you're traveling through... Nothing's better than Rambo.

Hell yeah. You're traveling through the world tree trying to fight an infestation of dwarves who are killing the world tree and bring life back to the world tree to, you know, make all the elves. who live in little towns and the trees branches happy again, which sounds that sounds more like... A twisted Disney movie? Yeah, like a lot loopier than it actually is.

It should be dwarfs like in Snow White and Seven Dwarfs and you fight all the dwarfs. That would be cool. The dwarfs are like... Tulkine dwarves. Weird, distorted, bizarre creatures like bulbous looking creatures with long

spindly legs and I don't know what else. This is disturbing. It's a really, it has kind of a weird aesthetic to it. Um, but you, you know, acquire better armor as you go. And it's one of the first games I can remember playing where your character's appearance changes as you acquire better armor. Like, you start out as just a dude and like a leather tunic. But by the end, you've got like this like total steel play armor and this huge sword with like spikes on it and the big helmet with feathers. And you're like, I'm going to go kill the dwarves. Yeah. Pretty much. Kill the dwarves. And it has great

graphical effects like swirling fog and, um, I don't know. Like they do a lot with a are brown. Everything is brown until the very end of the game when you bring life back and then it turns green again. So it really is the forerunner of modern games. Yes. It is. Early 2000. It was the first Unreal Engine game. I want to talk about Clash at Demon Head, because, man, I love that game. I don't know if it's actually any good, but I love it. Do you guys love Clash at Demon Head? I can't remember which one it was like.

I'm sure I played it. Oh, my God. Chris, look it up real quick. I am. I am looking it up right now. Chris, how could you not know Clash of Demonhead? I'm familiar with Clash of Demonhead. Passingly.

Passingly. Glancingly? Glancingly. Does this have anything to do with demon heads? It does not. Clashing at a place called demonhead? There is a place called demonhead. Okay, geographical place called demonhead.

So basically, this is a game that takes place on, there's like a world map and it's broken into lots of different zones. And it's interesting because you don't travel, like you don't explore the zones themselves. The entire game takes place. and the routes connecting one zone to the next. So the zones basically are like, when you get to, when you get to a zone, you basically go back to the world map and then you choose, like,

which route do you want to take? And then you fight through that route through a platformer. So it's not like a contiguous world in the Rambo sense or the Goonies 2 sense. I guess Goonies 2 was kind of broken up a little bit. Oh, it's a Vic Tokai game. Yeah. I think this is the one that got us super off track when we last talked because I was obsessed with the idea of being a member of.

of the team called Sabre, which is the Special Assault Brigade for real emergencies. I don't think we even talked about that. Yeah, I don't remember that. We might not have, but I remember being, like, delighted by that acronym. What I love about Clash a Demonhead, the reason it really sticks with me is because it was one of the first games from Japan that didn't really try to obscure the fact that it was from Japan. Like, it has a very loopy sort of 70s, Shonen, look to it.

like there's these cutscenes where your your dude has just got like the big spiky hair like it could be you know the bastard offspring of i don't know captain harlock or something super shop amazing and it doesn't it doesn't try to hide that for the u.s version they didn't redraw the characters or airbrush well they did airbrush the cover and it looks terrible but it feels like this game should have been based on some sort of anime property from the 70s but i have looked and i cannot find any indication that the game is based on something. It's basically just an homage to, you know, the goofy, hyperactive boys, cartoons that Japan had in the 70s. It's like a, it's like kind of a retro homage.

Now in Japan is Dengkeke Big Bang. Big Bang. Because your character is Billy Big Bang Blitz. Right. Which is, again, delightful. This game is why localization was invented because I think I couldn't connect with it as a kid. It was two Japanese. That's too bad because I thought it was interesting. I was like, wow, this is like a crazy cartoon. I have no idea what this is, but it's weird, and I like it. Although I watched Robitron and Voltron and stuff.

And I had no idea those were Japanese shows when I was a kid. But didn't you recognize, like, the visual style of Billy Big Bang Blitz as being like this, you know, spiritually connected to Rick Hunter? Probably. Or? Yeah, in retrospect, I probably did when I was like, you know, six or seven years old. or whatever his name is. It's just like Rick Hunter.

Yep. I don't know. I never played that game that much, really. Okay, so the structure of this game, you know, you have the world map in like Super Mario Bros. 3 or buying a commando, and this has that kind of design. But it does some really interesting things. For one thing, there's no such thing as a bottomless pit in Clash at Demonhead.

Oh, I like that. If you fall into a pit, like you kind of do this transition, and then you end up in a cavern, and you're kind of like off track. a little bit and you have to fight your way back. But you never die if you fall into a pit. If you fall into lava and you don't have the super suit, you'll die. But eventually, when you buy the super suit, you can go into lava and explore in lava. So there's no such thing as a place that is out of bounds in this game.

You can even get a jetpack and fly up to find stuff like in the sky. No, it's really not. Exactly like Minecraft. That's all you need to know, kids. I really love the enemy designs in this game. They're also, like, big and weird. There's, like, a panda on a motorcycle. Yeah, okay.

It's a skeleton dudes. Skeleton dudes. Billy Big Bang Blitz lives an interesting life. Yeah, there's all just all kinds of weird stuff. Like, as you explore through the game, eventually you find your partner who's gone missing, and he's been, like, mortally wounded. And if you go back to him later, he's dead. And you can, like, meet up with people who are, you know,

NPCs and we'll talk to you. And if you shoot them, they shout, no, but you don't actually hurt them. And there's a shop in the game. And it appears in a certain location. But you can also summon it and it like flies in. And then you go into the shop and it's like this kind of chubby middle age dude, kind of like Torneco from Dragon Quest 4 and his daughter's there. They like sell you stuff. I don't know. It just has a lot of personality. I also really like that instead of like money bags or coins or something, you're just picking up dollar signs. Because Everything is weirdly reduced to a conceptual level in the world of the Clash at Demonhead. But yeah, it's just a game that you really need to explore and you can eventually acquire better items to let you explore better places. And there is a plot to it and you do have this progression that you have to undertake, but you kind of have to figure that out as you go along. And then eventually you have to stop a bomb from destroying the world and then the demons are like, ah, we'll get you next time, humans. You've defeated us for now, Billy Bing Blitz. And when night comes, you have to build a shelter.

The zombies will get you. Right. And also, the end of the game exhorts you to use science correctly, which I think is a very inspirational message. Anyway, it's a really great game. Are you listening, Elon Musk? Boom, really, really going after the avowed enemies of retronauts. I don't be powerful friends with us.

Did you guys ever play the NES version of Strider? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Maybe you guys can talk about that, so it's not just B monologue. No, not really. Because it was mostly my brother playing it. Again, it was one of those games that I couldn't get too far into,

just because I feel like I was bad at it. Yeah, it's hard. I felt like I was good as video games as a child. It's kind of a janky game. Yeah. When it came out, I was like, man, this game looks awesome, because the box was really cool and everything. And this is the coolest new game that came out.

Did the Nintendo Power have a feature on Strider? Probably. Whenever it was a cover game, you know, we were really excited about it. I can't remember if they did a cover on Strider. Yeah, I don't remember, but I anticipated it somehow. We would go to the, you know, this is the cycle is you get Nintendo Power, you read it, you go to the blockbuster, you rent it. You know, is it good? Yes, you buy it.

or you rent it again and be it again or no you don't buy it. Strider's a weird one because the arcade game and the NES game were developed sort of in parallel and they share some common locations and some common characters but the NES version is actually based on a comic that was being written at the time. So it's meant to be like a tie-in to a manga. The weird thing is though that the manga of Strider never came out in the U.S. and the NES game

never came out in Japan. It was supposed to, but it was canceled. So there's like this media tie-in that never actually connected because of, I don't know,

bad choices or something. But the arcade game is like the cinematic adventure. It's very linear. Like every single screen is just a crazy balls-to-the-wall action experience. You're just like,

what's going to happen next? Oh my God, it's a robot dinosaur. Ah, the Amazon's are killing me. I'm blowing up a spaceship. Ah, I'm flipping through zero gravity. Whereas the NES game is more of a measured adventure, non-linear, you're exploring, go to different places. You have a home base that you warp to,

but then you have to go back and forth into different spaces, get better key cards. Are you talking about the arcade one right now? I'm talking about the NES one, no. Good. The key cards. Yeah, the key cards don't exist in the arcade game. Arcade game is just like, go for it.

Beat them up. I play the Genesis this version of this game later after the NES version, I was confused. It was like, this is a totally different game. Yes. Because it was like the arcade game. And then the more recent strider was also like Metroidvania

style. Yeah, the more recent strider, the one that, was that double helix who did that? More recent strider. That was a French painter. That was a, I feel like they really took a lot of inspiration from the NES version, but it plays a lot better than the

NES version, although it is very repetitive because the scenery all kind of looks the same. And there's no quick travel throughout the world. So there's a ton of backtracking. And after a while, you're just like, I'm so sick of backtracking. One thing that I think the NES version of Strider did really well. A thing that was really appealing to me, even though I was bad at it, is that it has a feeling of, of motion and quickness to it. You know, because Strider's got his high knees going, his cool. His He's a nice. Oh, right.

His cool run. His cool Naruto run. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his attacks just happens so fast that even if it's like even if it was not a game I was good at, it made me feel like it was absolutely my fault. Because this guy knows what he's doing, clearly. There's no like, you know, there's no Simon Belmont drawing back the whip before you attack. It's all as soon as you hit the button. Yeah.

I remember that. that's cool. But what else is on our list? The problem with the NES version of Strider is that it's not very well made by Capcom standards. Maybe that's why it never came out in Japan, but Capcom always made like really high quality games. This one is weird.

It's like it's a cartridge, but sometimes there's loading time. You're like, how do you get loading times on an NES cartridge? What did you do? Yeah, maybe they're generating something random. No, not really. It's for simple things like you beat an enemy and then you go to a preset location with a key card and then there's like three seconds of black screen and then it's like oh you got your thing so yeah i feel like they did not finish that game and just kind of got it out for

release in the u.s it's really weird but but despite the jankiness and like you're supposed to be able to do wall jumps you know like batman the wall jumps are really hard to pull them off like supermetroids wall jumps are tricky but striders is just like why why will this not work for me They're inconsistent is the big problem. It's a pain of the butt. I recently did a micro episode on Blastermaster when Blastermaster Zero came out, the great remake. So people have kind of heard my opinion, but it is one of the great NES Metroidvania games. Surely you guys have played this one.

Yes. I have a story. Okay. Tell us about how this game inspired you to buy a pet frog. Yeah. I just caught them in the backyard. I didn't need to buy them. It was right next to the radiation.

Radiation tank, right? Yeah. Then they grew gigantic, and then I had to go rescue them. or something. Frog is the worst, man. But when NES games were incredible pieces of culture that every child lusted after, sometimes we'd first hear about them in the Sears toy catalog or something. There would be a little picture.

And Blastermaster was one of those games that came out sort of before Christmas or something one year or earlier before. And my parents ordered it for my brother, and we got it really early. So we had it like the earliest in our whole neighborhood, like in the whole city it seemed like. So we felt we were so awesome. And it was a damn good game. So it doubled the excitement. And it's just the production values are second to none in this game for NES games.

You know, just the Sunsoft hit every single note perfectly of the music, the sound effects, the graphics, the animation, the smoothness, the monsters, the design. You know, there's so many neat things about it, and it was too difficult for me as a kid to get past a couple, maybe three or past the first three levels or something, worlds. But, you know, my brother played a whole lot, and we would watch him play it. But I like the overworld thing. It's got an overworld, I mean, not an overworld. It's got an overhead perspective when you can hop out of your little car. You can go down into little doorways, and then you switch to an overhead perspective. and yeah it's worth mentioning that most of the game takes place like the action sequences take place while you're driving a tank yeah so it's kind of like a shooter like that but then you can jump out of the tank and you're like Sophia right Sophia the third

but then you jump out of the tank and you're like five pixels high and you're running around as your little dude and you're basically helpless but then you go into those doors and it becomes the top down view yeah and it's kind of like the goonies two in that most of the actual game advancement happens not in the main view, the action sequences, but in those top-down views. Like, all the bosses, you fight them in the top-down views. Like, you could probably paste all of them in about three shots of your tank, but you don't get to fight them in your tank, so you have to go hop out and walk around in that top-down Zelda style. Yeah, I thought that was really neat, because the graphics are great in the top-down view, too. And there's a cheat where you could, where Chris is watching a video of the, I think,

the first boss battle where you could push select or start and pause it while you grenade them and then it would just keep damaging it while it was paused and then you unpause it. Yeah, there's like three or four of the bosses that you can do that with, but you can't do that with all of them. Including the final boss, which is a shame. It'd be nice to just... The bosses are gigantic

in that game, which is another thing that was exciting back then. There's like a giant frog, a giant crab, I think, and it's that brain squid thing we were just looking at. And it was it's just a great game. It's one of the signature NES games

in my opinion, just especially third party games. Yeah, the idea of having this, like literally writing around in a tank and then having to make yourself vulnerable is it seems so empathetical to the way that a lot of video games play.

Like once you're in the tank, you don't get out. Right. But Blastermaster kind of forces you to depower yourself in order to advance. Look at that screen. When you pause, you see a side view of the tank. That reminds what they did in Super Metroid later where you see a diagram of your suit

and so like a wireframe thing with upgrades and you can upgrade your tank and the cool thing about that the tank car thing is it was just amazing you know for a kid like a little boy if you like cars and tanks and stuff that was such a neat invention it's so well designed with the giant cannon

and Nintendo Power had this poster or something that was somebody made a 3D model of that tank thing and they had a picture of it And Nintendo Power was just really cool. They did a great spread on that game. One thing I really like is that the two views of the game are really nicely interconnected. Like you can't advance in the game unless you get out of the tank and go do the top-down views.

And then, you know, the equipment that you acquire in the top-down views empowers your tank. And, you know, that's where the Metroidvania element comes in because your tank becomes progressively more powerful as you advance. Your character never really grows in power unless you, you know, get one. weapon drops, but those are very fragile. Like if you take damage from an enemy, you you depower a level of your gun attack, which actually is kind of crappy. But that's like the one big weakness,

and it's something they fixed for Blastermaster Master Zero, which was nice. But the power-ups you acquire in the game are pretty unique, actually. You get things like, you know, you have a more powerful cannon, but then you have the ability to, you know, climb on walls,

which you get actually after you gain the ability to hover and you would think well you know like being able to drive around the walls is not as good as the ability to fly but what you know the your tank has kind of like a horizontal orientation so there are areas you can't actually fly up to but then if you turn sideways and drive up the wall then you're able to fit through that that crack so they do a lot you know then there are spaces where you can only pass through if you're out of the tank so they do a lot with kind of like constrictive spaces and really kind of designing the game world that way to to gate things based on how you can fit physically into a space.

But then you also have things like the dive booster where you can swim around underwater in the tank. So it's a really smartly designed game. I don't quite get the gun depowering thing. It just seems so unfriendly compared to the rest of the game. But I guess they needed to make it difficult somehow. But it holds up really well. And like the Switch and 3DS remake definitely adds.

to the game, but fundamentally it is the same game, and it's still really great in 2017. Yeah, and the idea of improving your mobility is one that's so central to the Metroidvania concept. Like, if you think about Symphony of the Night or Metroid, like, the enhancements that you get and the upgrades that you get are often

you know, secondarily used for combat, and then primarily it's, you know, you don't turn into a bat in Symphony of the Night because you want to fight somebody as a bat. you do it to fly around, or that's why you get the big super jump. You know, it's all about... To get somewhere else. Yeah, it's all about mobility and moving around in the space. It's a lot like Metroid in a car.

Yeah. The first Metroid plus the top-down scenes. Yeah, in a sense, definitely. It's like Metroid meets Zelda in a sense with the top-down views. Although the dungeons are a lot simpler in Blastermaster. A lot more spikes in Blastermaster, too. You know, last time we talked about Metroidvania games, we talked briefly about Wing of Medola, which was also a Sunsoft game

and the difference in what this is like these games came out like two years apart the difference in technological capabilities within the space of two years like the standards that they were working to

like you wouldn't recognize Wing and Modola as coming from the same company as Blastermaster but it's like the same people probably I don't know exactly who worked on which games but this was Sunsoft kind of achieving the ambitions that they clearly had back when they were working on games like Winghamadola and Atlantis No Nazo.

They wanted to make these big, grand adventures, but they kind of sucked because they just didn't have the technical chops. Well, here they have the technical chops. And games like Blastermaster and Batman really made Sunsoft like a company to watch for during the NES era. There's Fester's Quest, which was like the top, the whole top-down engine from Blastermaster Yeah, I kind of feel like Fester's Quest sort of misses the appeal of Blastermastermaster. Yeah, it does.

It's all over the place. But the funny thing about Blastermaster Master is they, on Blastermaster 2 for the Genesis, I think they got rid of the top-down stuff. No, it's only top-down, isn't it? No, that's Blastermaster Boy. Yeah, okay. For the Game Boy. No, they kept it on Genesis.

They did? Yeah. I don't remember the top-down. Yeah, because I can definitely visualize, like, the more developed Genesis-style graphics with the top-down view. Oh, well. Yeah, Blastermaster 2. I've never played much of it,

but people don't think it holds up as well as the original. Yeah, it's not as good. It was one of those things that really blew under the radar. And I had to get it later. I was like, they made a Blastermaster 2? Wow, why didn't we ever play that? Oh, because it was on Genesis. Oh, because it sucked.

Yeah, that's the way I talked. Yeah. But definitely, if you haven't played it yet, definitely check out Blastermaster Master Zero, which is available for 3DS and Switch. I think maybe coming to steam. I don't know. But everyone should have one of those systems

because this is retro nuts. One final game we'll talk about, and it looks like this episode is not going to cover the full set of notes that I wrote up. There's a whole lot of other games that, oh my God. Yeah, we got like halfway through these notes. Okay, but this episode is basically... It's better than the third you predicted. That is true. That's true.

So I guess there will be a third episode. Oh, wow. Sweet Jesus. Why would they do that? Yeah, so it has a whole side-scrolling instead of overhead. All right. So one last game to talk about, it looks like this episode is just going to be NES Metroidvania's. So let's talk about a game that kind of ties it all back together. And that is a boy in his blob, developed by absolute entertainment. David.

And grain. Yep. Design led by David Crane, who basically got this whole thing started with Pitfall. So yeah, pitfall. And then Pitfall, too, took it even further. And Aboyen his blob, much to my surprise when I went back and visited it like 2009 or so after never having given it the time of day before, I was like, oh, there's a lot of this same DNA in this game. I did not realize that. But even though it's like kind of a level by level game, there is a lot of free exploration within those levels, especially like the main level, which is this huge underground cavern that's pretty much inspired directly by pitfall too. I feel like this is not a Metroidvania. It is not, but it's definitely inflected.

It definitely kind of dabbles. Like it dips its toe into the same pool. It dips its toe into the platforming, yeah, with some limitations, and you get some jelly beans that give you different abilities, your blob. But I feel like this is sort of its own genre into itself because I don't think you can even jump in this game.

It's not even really a platformer. You have to use your blob to get around everywhere. I mean, you're using the blob to get to platforms. Yeah, but you're going up and down on a, Ladder and form. Would you consider buying a commando, a platformer, even though you can't jump? Gosh, that's a good question. Platforming doesn't have to have jumping.

It just managed, it's about managing two-dimensional space with verticality. Yeah, okay. And the blastermaster. The blob is important for that because it is like the trampoline and the ladder and things like that. Blastermaster has proxy jumping. Proxy jumping. It's not real jumping. It's just kind of like jumping, but you get to it through a different mechanic.

I only recognize games that have a Pogo Cane mechanic as true platformers. Are either you familiar with the superhero Ultra Boy from the Legion of Superheroes? I am not. The gimmick with Ultra Boy, he's a Legion of Superheroes character created in the, I think, the 50s or early 60s. Is this a DC comic thing? He has all of Superman's powers, but he can only use them one at a time. So if he's flying, he can't be strong. If he's using his penetra vision, he can't be bulletproof.

That's brilliant from a storytelling standpoint because it forces you to do, like, to create setups where he's being challenged in different ways at once. A boy in his blob does that with the character. Like, we talk about Metroid and Castlevania, and those are games where, in Zelda even, those are games where you continually acquire and build on things. You get all the funny shaped keys. You know, you can use the hookshot and the bomb and the boomerang. You just have to switch back and forth. You can turn into a wolf and then turn into a bat in something like that I With a boy and his blob, you have to pick the specific thing that you do at that moment in time.

And I feel like that's, that necessarily slows down gameplay, but in a way that speaks to a very thoughtful design. And I find that really appealing, even though I am, you know, my usual goal in those games is to find the way to kill enemies the fastest. Right. Yeah, the interesting thing about a boy in his blob is not. Not only that, but also it kind of offsets your skills. You as the boy are not actually doing the things that you need to do to complete the game. You're relying on the blob, your companion. Like the boy can't do anything.

He's just like this stupid little schmuck with a backpack and jelly beans. But there's this little blob thing that is basically indestructible and can transform into any shape you can imagine, even like primitive mechanisms like a jack. If you give him an apple jelly bean, he turns into a jack. Because apple jack, it's a pun, ha, ha, ha. That's how alien biology works. Didn't get that until just now. There you go.

There you go. So, yeah. So it kind of turns the idea of exploratory platforming into a puzzle. And it's really interesting. Like this is not a Metroidvania in the traditional sense of the word, but it definitely kind of, you know, taps into that same spirit and then says what if you did it a different way so it stops being so much of a pure action game and becomes more about it's a puzzle solving yeah kind of a hybrid puzzle platformer but i don't think there's any character progression there's no leveling up there's

no but i mean so it's not like metroid mania i don't think you're gonna i don't think there's any percentage in being too particular about a made-up word what do you use the vitamins for We all have to agree on what a word means or there's no point in talking about it. Because if I say cheeseburger and you think hot dog, then what's the point? I've been to a place in Wilmington that actually makes burgers in the shape of hot dogs. So there you go. That's where we should record the next restaurant at east. I'm hungry now.

Let's go there. So no, I'm not saying like, Metroidvania burger. I'm not saying like, hey, this game is the definitive example of Metroidvania, but I'm saying that it taps into the same spirit. the idea of exploration and free-roaming in a platforming space, but it doesn't end a different way, which is interesting to talk about. Yeah, okay, I get it.

I get what you're saying. I get it. You're unlocking, you know, new, you're unlocking new areas with abilities and exploring a platforming space. Yeah, I think you have a tendency to get hung up on semantics sometimes, which I don't know is necessarily... I am a writer.

Yeah, I am too, but... Sometimes you just have to say, it's okay. Well, I think, I think, give the spirit of the thing. When we talk about Metroidvania's, we always focus on the action RPG. We always focus on, like, the platforming and the leveling. Like, like, you jump and you make your dude stronger. Yeah. But I feel like the, the puzzle-solving element of a Metroidvania is important and often glossed over in discussions.

Yeah, I mean, figuring out, like, missed could pass. Yeah. If the, if the pop-up didn't say, Miss. pass. Would you figure out that mist could pass on somebody the night? Yeah, one would hope, but who knows? There's also a like a block pushing puzzle and symphony that

you just push one box. At the very least, you need to have the first element of every puzzle is the enticement. So you need to have that, you know, you need to have that one platform in the long library that you can't jump to and you have to figure out, okay,

is there a thing I need to do here? Or is this a thing that I come back to later? Like the entire structure of a Metroidvania is based on more importantly than even the leveling up, I think, is the idea of backtracking, like figuring out that you have to go back. And that's based entirely around enticement and then finding the right key. So I think that puzzle element is part of it, even if, you know, a boy in his blob is, you know, no one would ever mistake it for a Metroidvania. But I see what Jeremy's getting at. Yeah, like it's a side story. I mean, really, I don't know if I'd even consider Clash a Demonhead a true methammedia.

Metroidvania because of the way it's broken up and the fact that most of your gained abilities are actually purchased in a shop and are, you know, limited time uses. It's really more about like kind of exploring where the spirit of this idea of exploratory, adventure, action RPG, games. Like, where does that take us? Like, what kind of offshoots can you create from it? Well, that's one of the reasons that when we talk about Castlevania 2, that I think Castlevania 2 is a failure.

because even if the leveling up mechanic and even if the exploratory mechanic was good, you'd still have those puzzles that don't make sense. You'd still have those puzzles that are such a block to progressing that, you know, the graveyard duck.

Yeah. Which was kind of like the precursor to milkshake duck. Yeah. Oh, gosh. So, no, I think there is value in like saying, here's what a word means, but I think there's also value in saying, like, you know, let's look at the edge case.

Obviously. Or I wouldn't be doing this. Would you? No. I thought you were just here for the gin. I mean. I'm on to you. The gin and the cookies. That's me.

But I want to see a boy in this blob Castlevania mashup now. Can you imagine? Like a Lou Card with jelly beans. Yeah, blob could pass. What a horrible night to have a blob. Also. Yeah, unfortunately with the subsequent

aboyna's blob follow-ups, they've really kind of scaled back on the exploration and just made them more about strictly the puzzle. There's not really any freedom to roam around. And I love the Wii game that they came out with about six or seven years ago. It was beautiful. And it had a dedicated hug button. Like, what the hell else do you need from a video game? But it definitely strayed away from the sort of pitfall to feel of the original aboyna's lob. Yeah, I got the, that's so weird. how it did feel a little bit like pitfall and stuff. It's just the David Crane thing, you know. Yeah. I mean, it's just like this big space underground. So it really feels like it was kind of cut from that. Something you don't know is I win as the blob for Halloween one year. It took about 300 pounds of...

Nothing can stop the blob. You just spoiled my joke. Oh, I'm sorry. Nothing can stop the blob. No, I said it took 300 pounds of Elmer's glue. That was my joke. There you go. Okay.

I'm glad it was a different joke that I didn't spoil. Anyway, I think we've really run out of time here, so we need to go. Yeah. So this is, this topic is far from exhausted. We'll probably do another one of these. Oh, gosh. And you'll be doing these for years. Probably.

I mean, you can, you can, you can, you can bail at any time if you will eventually get to guacamile. Yes. By the time we get to it, it'll be retro. Oh, my gosh. Well. So anyway, yeah, so Metroidvania. Yeah, evolved and explored, no, expanded, yes, on NES, and that's awesome. And it's fun to talk about.

You guys, if there's any of these games that you haven't played, you should definitely go check them out. Some of them are really good. I want to play the Olympus game. Yeah, Battle of Olympus, very, very good game. I've always wanted to complete that. I have a really crappy port for Game Boy, but I don't have the original game. I remember that, yeah. I actually asked the creator of the game if he had been a,

involved in the Game Boy port, and he was like, I didn't even know that existed. It only came out in Europe, apparently. Then he started smashing things. He kicked me out of his office, threw me out the window. I'm sure. I'll also play it. Okay. Anyway, so thanks for everyone who is listening.

Thank you for your patience. Bering with us through this episode. That's pretty much it for this episode, though. So you are free. You may go. Uh, in case you're wondering, I'm still Jeremy Parrish, just like I was at the beginning of the episode. And you can find me at GameSpite on Twitter or at retronauts.com. Retronauts itself is also at Retronauts.com where we post cool articles and interviews and reviews and

stuff. It's great. Uh, the podcast is on iTunes. It's on the podcast one network and the podcast one app. That's great. Um, we are supported through Patreon, patreon.com, slash Retronauts. I think that's it. Ben. And I am Ben Edwards. And I also need your help through Patreon. patreon.com slash Benj Edwards to help support my history and writing work. And you can also find me on Twitter. Also has three vintage computer a day habit. Yeah. Gosh, I just burned through those quickly. There goes another Apple tube. You can find me, Chris Sims, on Twitter at theISB, and go to the dashisb.com for links to columns that I write around the web, podcast. that I do. I've got two Patrions.

Wow. That you can find there. Jeremy has like four. Oh, so many. I have two. You can also just like send me money. That would also be great. Okay. Here's some. Oh, thank. Thanks, Ben. Just a solid guy. Pick your sound effects. And you can find me at your

local comic book store writing Sword Quest for Dynamite as well as Ash versus Army of Darkness. The 20. And some recent Marvel comics as well, like Deadpool Bad Blood. And I will also remind you that you can find exploration backtracking, puzzle-solving, permanent changes to the environment,

and a persistent inventory across levels, all in Super Mario World. One day. I thought we were going to make it out of here. Heyanko Alien. No, sadly. Now who's the one who's obsessed with Hayanko Alien, huh? That's me. Yep, it's you.

It's contagious. Yeah. All right. So that's it for this episode of Retronauts. We'll be back next week with another episode. It might be on Hayanko Alien. You never know. So please look forward to it.

Hey, no, no, no, don't stop yet. Every episode is secretly about Hayankyo Alien. I don't know what that is. Okay. Join us for the Hayankyo Alien episode. The Mueller Report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General.

Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. his way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others.

The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.