Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 183: SNK's 40th, Pt. 1

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Retronauts contributor and SNK ultra-fan D. Feit joins Jeremy Parish for a casual conversation about the games of SNK's 40th Anniversary Collection for Switch—the first in a two-part exploration of this landmark anthology!

This week in Retronauts, it's S&K or Swim. Hello, everyone. Hello, and welcome to the latest fabulous episode of Retronauts. with your host for the week, me, Jeremy Parrish. And I am here in lovely scenic, Kyoto, Japan. Not that it makes any difference to you, but being here does mean that I have access to a special guest for the week.

So a special guest, please introduce yourself with a catchy introduction. Hello, everyone. My name is Fite, and I am an armored scrum object. What does that mean exactly? I'm not sure, but that's what, One of the games we may talk about today was called here in Japan. It is.

Retitled something a little more generic overseas, but I'm all about the scrum. A scrum. Is that short for scrumptious? Isn't that a rugby term? I'm not a big rugby guy. Oh, like in the scrum, yeah. Isn't that a thing? I think so.

So apparently it's a space shooter about rugby players. I think that then there's the ball, it looks like a rugby ball, I think, a little space ship. Is that, is that what it's, okay. That's all guesswork for me. I don't know. I don't... So, huh. So that's where that name came from.

Yeah, ASO, Armored Scrum Object is one of those games that those of us who have ever taken a stroll through the world of emulation have probably seen in ES emulation, Famicom inulation. Because, you know, being ASO, it shows up, A period, S, period, O period. It shows up very early at the top of all those, you know, ROM alphabetical lists. It's like AAA plumbing. Yeah, exactly. Or I guess not Super ArtVark King or something. Yeah.

So it's one of those games that everyone who has ever done that little indulgence has seen and said, what? So now we know. That's a mystery solved. Thank you. This episode was worth it just for that alone.

All right. That's a wrap. Good night, everybody. All right. My work is done. That was a long way to fly for a two-minute episode. No. So this week we are talking.

about S&K, crap, what does S&K stand for? It's the Japanese, it's Shin-Nihon Kikaku, not Kikaku, but Kikaku. New Japanese company, a new Japan company. Kikaku is one of those words that has a lot of meanings, plan, project, design. Okay, yes. So I honestly thought you would open the episode by making a silent reference. Like we would have, you know, we have a plan, that kind of thing. Or all according to New Japan plan.

Right, all according to Kikaku, maybe. Right. Sorry. I didn't actually, so this is a weird episode of Retronauts. I didn't really do any research before coming in here because I figured why not let our special illustrious guest who is a huge S&K fan take the reins because you are, you are a huge S&K fan. I'm very flattered, but if that's how I'm known, I'll accept that. And I'm glad to be here on Retronauts. My only, my really second Retronauts ever? What was the first one? Was that the Sega Genesis episode? No, it was back in, I want to say, 13 or 14 when we recorded in Tokyo in the 8-4 studios. Okay. And we had...

Yes, I remember that. The golden year of gaming, Japanese gaming, I think. Yes. And it was, well, we had a lot of guests on that one, but I was one of them. Okay. That one is kind of a blur because, yeah, it was just sort of a roundtable, round robin, really. it was daisy-chained. I don't know. Anyway, this is much more sedate. It's just the two of us talking here in a hotel room, talking about SMK.

So the timing on this episode coincides, obviously, with the switch release of S&K 40th anniversary, a collection of games celebrating, yes, that's right. You got it. 40 years of S&K games. 40 years. So the company's only slightly younger than myself. Wow. And myself. But they've been making games a lot longer than I have. I haven't been making games at all. No, I was breaking games at that age in 1978, for sure. So you are responsible for like shattering a space invaders.

Not breaking the records, just breaking the game. No, my breaking game story is one of my earliest memories. A friend of my fathers had brought a chess computer to our house, which at that point was, you know, the most magical of technologies, a machine that played chess. And for whatever reason, this, what I assume was a new device, had a wire or something sticking out. And I decided, as a two-year-old, I'm going to touch this wire. And then a spark flew out. And I just ran out of the room to, at that point, when I was a kid, when I was disciplined, I was told to sit at the top of the stairs. So I touched the thing.

It sparked. And I ran straight to the top of the stairs and sat there until I was told to move again. So was the machine actually broken? I've never followed up on that. As far as I know, this person's still alive. So I'll look that up. I'll look them up when I get back to States. Oh, I see. Next visit. I thought you were saying you didn't kill them with your spark. Okay, got it. So, okay, yeah, 40 years of S&K games. And as with any company that has been making video games that long, those early games are extremely humble. and I'm going to be curious to see which ones actually make it on to the anniversary collection

because it's supposed to be what, like 20 odd games or something. It's a pretty hefty collection supposedly, but they haven't announced everything that's going to be on it. No, so far the first announcement only had some of the more high-end, more well-known titles, but you feel like with a legacy of this long and especially some of these games have been released before on previous collections, I feel like a, there's bound to be some earlier hits coming in there too. Yeah, I mean, this collection published by, actually, NIS in America.

Yeah. They have some sort of longstanding or new standing relationship with S&K, which actually is kind of cool because they have a good distribution system in the U.S. And they are fond of doing, they are fond of doing, you know, deluxe editions. So I don't normally go for collector's items, but I did, I did go ahead and pre-order the, deluxe edition of S&K 40th anniversary. I would do that if I lived in the U.S. So I don't know what it's available, but it will be here. But I definitely would like something.

I want to get something, a package. Well, you get better colors on your mini arcade cabinet. Oh, yeah. That's also a recent announcement as of this recording. Actually, do you want to explain that? Oh, yeah. They sort of dropped after some hints. They announced they're going to make a NeoGeo Mini.

but unlike the NES mini or the Famicom Mini or whatever the Genesis Mini is called, this is going to be a little... It's called a garbage. It's a little tiny arcade cabinet with a wee little joystick and some buttons and a screen. And I think there's a video out so you can hook it up to a big TV. Yeah, it has HTML. Right. So you can do that.

But if you're just on the go, you wanted to set it up and almost like a mini switch, I think people will make these things for the switch too. Yeah, someone's making a versus. red tent, like, stand for the switch. Right. Or the Astro City cabinet things, like those sit-down Japanese arcade things. And someone made a switch, like a switch plug-in for that thing. But, yeah, so S&K is making one of those.

And they've got a Japanese edition and an international edition. And the Japanese one is sort of bright and colorful. And the international one is kind of gray and there's a little bit of blue on there. Yeah, it's kind of weird. I don't get it. The cabinets, when I grew up in the U.S., The cabinets were all bright red and really, like, noticeable. Right.

So, yeah, so NIS is publishing the, uh, the switch collection in the U.S. And it's being developed by our friend, Frank Sefaldi and his crew at Digital Eclipse. So looking forward to that. Yeah. But one thing I really like about this, the, the collection is that it's not just, um, it's not just the obvious stuff. You know, when, when they first announced this, I got a press release. in my email saying, like, S&K announces 40th anniversary collection for Switch.

And my first thought was, who cares? Like, I can get every NeoGeo game individually through arcade archives at this point on Switch. Like, they've been releasing pretty much Hamster's been doing one a week. So, like, why should I care about this? I never would have guessed that in 2017, the Nintendo console I would buy would turn into a secret intent neo geo collectors model because it's it's loaded with my favorite neo geo game yeah it's it's got all sorts of king of fighters and metal slugs and uh world heroes too stuff yeah doesn't have kazuna encounter yet i don't know about that one technically that's one of the third party games but

s and k kind of absorbed adk at some point so a lot of those games are kind of assimilated in s nk at this point right i don't know where that is on the list though right uh but anyway Yeah, that was the thing, is that I just saw it and assumed it was going to be all those arcade archives games just clustered into a collection. And I thought, well, I don't really care. Like, these games are already available. And I bought so many of them that I don't see double dipping. But then there was the big surprise. I thought to myself, you know, I'll care about this collection when they give me Crystallus on Switch.

ha ha. And then I opened up the press release and read it, and it said, including hits like Athena, Ikari Warriors, and Crystalis. That was like, okay, well, you guys got my attention. But yeah, the way they're developing this, they're publishing it, is that it is a roundup of, it seems like, just as many games as they could get from before the NeoGeo. So the NeoGeo launched in 1989 in arcades. 89 or 90? I'm never sure which one. Maybe one had a very limited run in 89 because it was

oh wait, no actually no, sorry, it was 1990. I remember because I did research for this for the dexterity episode of Game Boy Works because that was a Switch game or an S&K game that probably is not going to be on the Switch collection. But they are putting a ton

of other stuff and what's interesting is that it's both arcade games and NES games. So instead of just going with, like, one platform, you know, previous digital eclipse projects have just been NES games. Instead of just doing the S&K NES collection, which probably would not sell that well because, yeah,

they published Crystallus, but they also had, like, Icari Warriors and Athena. Those are developed by Micronics and are garbage on NES. Yeah, a lot of the early ports are not good. No, but that's the one. You know, for me as a kid, that's the one I played the most. But, yeah, it was a pale, pale comparison to the actual arcade game that I thought I was buying. But those arcade games are also in this collection.

So you get both versions of Akari Warriors. And I assume they're going to come up with some sort of clever dual stick scheme to imitate or, you know, to duplicate the rotating stick design of Akari Warriors. That was my number one question. Yeah, that was my number one question. I think Frank's Folli discovered gave me a wait and see answer on Twitter. but I am waiting and waiting to see how that works. Yeah, by the time this episode goes live, we'll probably know the answer to that.

But at the moment here at the end, I guess, no, middle of May 2018, we're still several months away from the compilation coming out. So we don't know the specifics of a lot of things. But we do know that the emulation quality will probably be very good. You get arcade games, NES games, and there will be a bevy of display options,

including for, I think, four or five of the arcade games, the ability to play in vertical Tate mode, which is going to be really great with the vertical switch handheld grip that I've been working on with Fan Gamer. Like, it was made for games like Alpha Mission. I guess that's not what I had in mind. But, you know, being able to play these vertical games on the switch, on the go in handheld mode,

that's pretty cool. And as with all games that are showing up on the platform, that have that original format baked into the design of the arcade hardware, it's going to continue that tradition. So Switch, you know, despite the fact that virtual console is a non-starter for Switch, it's really become quite a great retro compilation machine, or not even compilation, just retro release machine. What was it, was it Chris Kohler who said that virtual console died so retrogaming could live on switch? Or was that you? I didn't say that, but I've read that quote. I said something about them taking old virtual switch out back behind the woodshed. Yeah, but that's a complaint for another time. I don't know. I'm not sad to see virtual console go. They really mishandled that after

about a year. So we're in a better place now. And the better place is that we're getting compilations like this. Virtual console would not like, I think this, I think this compilation will be much better than an equivalent virtual console because it's going to be however many games all at once in multiple versions. And back in the salad days of Wii Nintendo did publish multiple versions of certain games, including some arcade versions and then home ports. But there was a lot of the need for double dipping to happen there too. And this compilation is very reasonably priced. I think it's what, 40 bucks? I think that's the price they first announced. I think this maybe a collector's edition that's more.

Right. Yeah, the collector's edition is more. But, you know, you don't have to pay that much to get however many games on, on a switch cartridge or digital release. So, yeah, I'd rather have this than virtual console. It's just more consistent. It's going to be more consistent and a big chunk of good games and some bad games all at once. But, you know, I'd rather, it's better to get pay for it and get the whole collection than just to say, oh, well, I'm going to pay this much. money for Athena and this much money for Alpha Mission and just each one, well, better to get

them all at once and play the ones you like. Right. Yeah. By original virtual console pricing, getting the arcade and home version of Athena would be $13. So that right there is a third the price of this compilation. Yeah. $13 for two versions. That's $12 too much. I agree. Okay, so let's talk about the games that have been confirmed for the S&K collection. And then we can, you know, talk about some of the other games that have not been announced and may end up showing up, I don't know. Yeah, so how much experience do you have with these various games?

Let's see, how many do we know so far? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, plus, that's lucky, plus variance on several of those. I haven't played a ton of these. I have myself a lot of these coming up in the semi-near future for NES works. A lot of these releases are from 1987, and that's my next batch of NES games to cover. But I have not actually touched Alpha Mission yet. So, yeah, so looking back at these, the games in question are Alpha Mission, Athena, Crystalis, Icari Warriors,

Icari Warriors 2 Victory Road, Ikari 3, Guerrilla War, P-O-W, his prehistoric Isle in 1930. I love that title. It's so good. Psycho Soldier, Street Smart, TNK3, and Vanguard. So of those, how many have you played? Or maybe which ones have you missed? Honestly, the one that was the biggest surprise to you was a big surprise to me because I'd never heard of it. I don't know anything about Kristallis.

Oh, my goodness. It's so good. I'll tell you all about it when we get to that. I'm very excited to hear more about it. But yeah, a lot of these games, if not on NES, I play. played them in the arcades, although in the case of Vanguard, I think the first time I played that was on the Atari 2,600. That was, I remember playing that one a lot in its most limited form, but still had the essential gameplay factor of firing in all four directions around

your ship, which, you know, for me, as a kid was like, this is amazing, you've been shooting four directions. That's the most directions there could be to shoot. So the ones you missed out on were Crystalis and, um, Others, I think I encountered later just sort of offhand. I mean, I think in the, in the 80s at the time, I'm sure I saw Athena and the Akari Warriors games and the various beat-em-ups in arcades around me. I don't think I, I didn't get super into S&K, I didn't know who S&K was until they became, you know, the Neo-Geo people. And that's like, oh, these people make, you know, fantastic games. But even then, you know, in the early days of emulation and searching for stuff, you know, you start looking for stuff, oh, what did S&K?

make before Neo Geo. So I would end up playing these games at least once or twice, you know, in my rebellious pirate past. Certainly I don't emulate anything now. Are you a cop? What are you doing? I'm not, I'm not narging on you. Yeah. I have to admit, a lot of these arcade games I've never seen before. Was Psycho Soldier even released in the U.S.? I guess it was because there is the U.S., like the English version of the theme song? Yeah, they made a brand new version. They recorded the theme song again in English. They did their best to translate the lyrics about being a psycho soldier and making that sound like a good thing. Athena's name is magic.

Yeah, I never saw that. Ikari 3, prehistoric Isle in 1930. Like, I know of that one, but I never played it. I never saw it. Street Smart, I also never saw an arcade. That's what I was confused by at first. I think I thought it was the other kind of arena fighter game where everyone had big heads. It looked like Japanese tough guys.

But it's actually a little more, it's this, it's kind of a strange mix between a one-on-one fighter and like an arena fighter where it's, you're sort of in this ring surrounded by people and you're often fighting against the odds where you're outnumbered, but you're still just doing like punches and kicks and you've got a life bar and, you know, you're wearing them down that way. But the people are a little more human proportioned as opposed to that other game. The name escapes me where the heads were gigantic. I forget the name of that one, but everyone looks like a cartoon high school tough guy with a big hair and like they're, you know, carrying the sticks or whatever.

I know what you're talking about, but I do not know the name of that. These games are listed in alphabetical order on S&K's website or NIS's website. So let's go through them in alphabetical order. Athena is, yeah, my story with Athena is that I've never played the NES version, but I almost owned it. Because back in, oh gosh, 1988, I really wanted Castlevania, the original Castlevania. And, you know, Nintendo did cart production runs. And once a game sold out, that was it. It was sold out.

And the publisher would have to pony up for another production run. And so by the time I was interested in Castlevania, because Castlevania 2 is coming up and I was like, well, I should start at the first one. the original was nowhere to be found. Oh, no. And my family went on vacation. We lived in Texas, went up to Michigan for vacation that summer. And everywhere along the way, and everywhere in Michigan, I would stop and look for a copy of Castlevania and could not find it. And, you know, I'd go to Toys R Us and they'd have the placards out there, the NES aisle, like just these massive walls of NES games being presented with the display card.

But then you had to take the tag up to the security desk. This was like when that was first introduced, I think. And they never had the Castlevania tag, no matter which Toys R.S I went to in places like shops in the mall, never had it. And after a while, I got really frustrated. So I was like, I want a new video game. I want Castlevania, but it doesn't exist anymore. So I started looking at other games. And Athena had this really great cover art.

the American NES box art for Athena is beautiful. It's like this, it's got like a silver border around it because all of S&K's games from that era had like a certain trade dress. So it's like a silver border. And then there's this really great painting, like oil painting with lots of really great color combinations, purples and oranges and greens. And a very like, you can make that ugly, but it was, it's not. It's a very classy painting.

And it has Athena decked out in like, you know, she looks like a Greek goddess. So she's wearing like an armored mini dress, I guess, you know, like like an armored tunic, basically, and a helmet. And she's holding a sword in the air. And there's this big painting of Medusa behind her. And there's like over, it's kind of like a collage. And there's also a picture of her swimming as a mermaid. And it's just a really, really beautiful painting. So for you, there was a Medusa connection?

Oh, Castlevania has a Medusa? I didn't know about Medusa and Castlevania at that point. I hadn't played it. I was looking for Castlevania. I didn't know anything about it except that I wanted it. No, it was just a really beautiful piece of box art. And I, you know, flipped over the tab or the tag, the placard at Toys R Us and really contemplated it for a while. And I was like, I don't know if this game is any good.

Like, the graphics are very cartoonish and they look appealing, but I don't know enough about this game. I don't think I can, you know, I've got this $40 that I can spend on Castlevania, but once I spend this money, that's it. So maybe I should just hold out for Castlevania. And it's really good that I did because then a few months later, there was a production run of Castlevania games. And so I was able to buy that and play it, and it was very satisfying. But if I had spent my money on Athena, I don't know. I wouldn't be sitting here right now. Maybe I would have said video games are stupid and bad and a waste of money

and I never want to touch video games again. Instead of Metrovedia.com, it would just be athenoid.com. It'd be AthenaSucks.com. Screwsnk.com. So yeah, do you want to, I've been, I've been just ranting a long time. What's your background with Athena? And would you like to describe what the game actually is? It's a very curious, you're kind of marching to the right, and you've got this stick figure of a little girl,

and there are monsters that kind of run at you, but it's all about kind of, you have to fight the monsters, but you also need to break as many rocks as you can possibly break to find more and better stuff. But I think, depending on what you find, it's not always good. Some of the stuff is a downgrade, and the most powerful weapon is also one that eats away your life. So you can only use it sparingly. It's of that giant flaming sword. But it is kind of cute in the fact that as you pick up new weapons and new items, your characters of appearance actually changes.

You know, I think a lot of the classic games or even modern games, no matter what weapon or armor you wield, your character model is your character model and nothing ever changes. Well, Athena starts off wearing basically underwear or a bikini. I'm really not sure which, but, you know, very dainty. And then depending on what you find, helmets. I think it's a bikini. It's probably a bikini.

Certainly the Japanese box art. That's how it depicts her. Right. I do like the Japanese boxer. Sorry, go ahead. No, I think it's great. It's great. You mentioned that I was surprised, you know, a lot of those older games, they discarded the

Japanese art for their peril and decided, well, what if we just have a guy, air, brush something for us and that'll work. It sounds like they did a good job with, you know, localizing the Athena artwork for the, for the market. But yeah, the Athena, the Japanese art is a very cute sort of a girl and kind of a, not a sexy pose. It's kind of like a fun pose. Yeah, it's, it's that, that 80s, like, it could be sexy, but it's not style that that manga did back then. It's almost lum. Would you say almost? Yeah, it's very, she's, she's kind of rounded and not like skinny and not super busty. It's, yeah, I've, I've talked about this before on the, on the show.

Like, there's just something about that art style that appeals to me because it's, like, it just has a certain innocence about it. So it doesn't feel sleazy. Like, a girl in a bikini with a sword could be done a lot of, a lot of ways that are very bad. But there's nothing, like, there's nothing offensive about this or nothing, like, you know, unappealing. Like, ooh, what were they thinking? It's just like this, you know, this kind of whimsical, lighthearted. illustration of a warrior girl who's very happy to be wearing just a bikini and leaning on her sword. And it's just, she's on a flat field of bright pink. And it's in a big box because

it came with a cassette tape. So it's like the, the Famicom cartridge and then a cassette tape of, I think, the song Psycho Soldier, isn't it? Was it the Psycho Soldier song? Was it the Psycho Soldier's song or was a different song for the Athena game? Because the Psycho Soldier song is actually in the Psycho Soldier game. Right. No, it is from Psycho Soldier, but Psycho Soldier and Athena are like, you know, one is the sequel to the other. Right. But they're years apart, so I thought maybe they were different songs. I don't know. I actually do not know. I definitely played, I played the N.S version way more than the arcade version, so I'm not sure about the music rights?

Yeah, the complete Japanese set is pretty expensive. It's always been $100 plus, and I'm sure now that the prices have gone through the roof on collectibles here, it's probably $200 or $300. So I will never actually own that package, and what would I do with it anyway? But I have been curious to know, like, what is on that cassette? I want to listen to it someday. I have the Wavejack trilogy. So I feel like there's a part of me that's like,

I got to complete my collection of Famicom games with tape cassettes. So there's that, and I think Otoki also has one. But maybe it's just not to be. Yeah, but music aside and cute character aside, the game is kind of not a lot of fun. You know, there's so much random, what I assume is randomness,

or if it's just carefully hidden, then it's just carefully hidden. And you don't know, it's not obvious which way to go. you're just smashing all the rocks you can smash and maybe you get something good and, you know, you're sort of, you're jumping in a platformy way, but it's not a good jump. And, you know, the characters are all very, very skinny and they sure runs right at you. There's not. Well, we're talking about the, the NES version, right? Right. Specifically. My understanding, and I've never played it because I've never seen it, but the arcade version is supposedly better, but the NES version was converted to NES by a company called Micronix. which apparently was like one person. I feel like we've probably mentioned them on the show. I've definitely talked about them on NES works because they were responsible for early S&K and Capcom

NES conversions. The company was based here in Osaka. So, you know, both of those companies are based in Osaka as well. So it makes sense that they would be like, hey, local outsource people, like let's work together. Nintendo, on the other hand, was like, no, we're Osaka or Kyoto based also, but let's, let's not do that. Let's not work with Mycronics. Let's work with Hal instead.

Yeah, we got, we got this. We have better partners than this. But, yeah, Athena is not great because, like, the hit detection is bad. The controls are bad. It just is a, yeah, very frustrating experience. Yeah, and most of the weapons are, yeah, most of the weapons you swing them, they, they barely move a centimeter in front of your character. So even, except for the. big one, which, of course, drains your life and you have to be very sparing and using it.

Most weapons are extremely short range, and yeah, it's more frustrating than fun, if anything. And I think that goes for both versions, in my opinion. They really, you know, the arcade version probably looks a little better and sounds a little better, but the core gameplay is still very much like try and toothpick your way through these rocks or bash them with your head. Okay, so Micronics actually captured the essence of the arcade game. They did it, they didn't have, they made no horrible, horrible changes as far as I can tell. It's, it's still, it looks, it looks about the same and there's no, yeah, no, no, no, no magic was lost, in my opinion.

That's good to know. So, so maybe instead of going alphabetically, strictly, we should also jump around, because I feel like we should also talk about psycho soldier. Yes. In relationship to Athena, which one, which going came first? Which is the chicken, which one is the egg? Athena, Athena was definitely the first game and Psycho Soldier came out. I want to say one or two years later, I will double check my list of games here. But Athena was 85, 86, excuse me, and Psycho Soldier 87.

Yeah, so about a year apart. Okay. Maybe you're in change. All right, yeah. So that's why I'm thinking that the Athena Famicom game comes with a Psycho Soulter song because Psycho Soldier was the first arcade game to have a theme song written specifically for it. There's a vocal theme song.

There's the connection. So there was no Athena theme song. So it would make sense that, you know, the game, the Famicom game, NES game would have come out right around the time Psycho Soldier was hitting arcades. So yeah, why wouldn't you be like, hey, get the, buy the game, get the theme song to our cool new arcade release as well. And that song is very catchy, I think, in Japanese or English, and I can't believe they'd actually do make two versions. But I feel like that's a really, that's a really, gets in your head really fast.

And I'm glad they've sort of hung onto it over the years, as, you know, along with Athena's legacy, they just, they keep that song around. They remix it from time to time and put it in the background of K-O-F games and things. Right. And we have, we have mentioned it before, so I won't be a laborer the point. But Psycho Soldier itself, the game is, it's a different game than Athena. know, like, it's still kind of a side-scrolling platformer, but it's, it's got like tears to the, uh, to the stages. Like, it's got a more complex structure to it. Right. There's multiple levels. You're sort of, you're not, you're sort of jumping in between

levels and the enemies sort of tend to come along one row at you. And there are still things you have to break to find more upgrades and items. But in generally, I feel like there are more upgrades and downgrades. And the downgrades are very obvious. It's like a big like purple skull, I think that hovers there. It's like, don't touch this. But most of what you do is you uncover better weapons and stronger weapons and eventually power yourself up so you become a giant phoenix or a firebird or some kind of, some kind of mythological creature. It's a, you know, quick short-term power up that lets you just burn all the enemies at once. Right.

Yeah. So the structure of the game, the design of it kind of reminds me of Capcom's Sun-Sun. Oh, yes, exactly. Where you've got the multiple levels and you're moving between them. but it's more fluid, and, you know, it came later than Sun Sun. So it's a little more, I would say, fun and flexible. Certainly you have more variety of attacks and there's some long-range stuff, which, you know, compared to the first game where everything has to be very close to you,

now you have some more, some long-distance attacks and some, you get some balls, or energy orbs or something that's circle to the characters. And there's two characters now, which means you can play with a friend. Right. You play, player one is Athena. And player two is Kenso. Yes. C. I hope I pronounced this right. C. Kenso is how I was pronounced his name.

He would later appear, partnered with Athena in the K-O-F games. But, yeah, this was, as far as I know, his debut, as player two in Psychosoldier. He also shows up in Crystallus. Oh, wow. I'm learning a lot today. It's a very educational episode for everyone. It's also worth mentioning that Psycho-Solder is just a sort of Japanification. of psychic soldier, like psycho is used in a lot of Japanese media from this period to mean

psychic. And I understand why, because psycho works a lot better in Japanese than psychic because it ends with a vowel as opposed to a consonant. Right. I wonder there's also the pun aspect because of the, you know, psycho in Japanese is kind of like the best or the greatest. So if you were to look at that word and you hear the English word, like, oh, it's the same word, but the connotations in English are extremely different. Yes. So she is not a psychopath. She is not just like murdering people for the hell of it. There's no, there's no like cruelty. Athena is pure hearted. Her name is magic. And she's a little girl with power inside. Right. But not psycho power because that's that poison. Right. Anyway, so yeah, I'm looking forward to being able to play the arcade version of Psycho Soldier. Like I've, I feel like I emulated it briefly just to see what it was because I wanted to hear the song in action. But having it, you know, properly reproduced the play as would be really great. I certainly hope whatever version they make in this collection allows you to choose both songs. Oh, you know, I wouldn't be surprised if it does.

Yeah, I hope they do that. But they're both good. And I do appreciate the fact that, you know, they took the song, which is downsampled to like 11 hertz or something. And they still gave it English lyrics, which are almost impossible to understand. because it's like there's a girl singing to you through a telephone, and someone is holding the telephone into a pillow, and then they put the pillow underwater. So it's a little hard to discern what's being said, but if you listen carefully, you'll learn a lot about Athena.

It's very early sampled speech, but yeah, it's maybe a little better than the guy at bad dudes saying bad dudes. Well, it's interesting because the speech is sampled, but then the music is actually PCM. It's like FM synthesis. Yeah. So it's a really clever way that they approach that. They don't have an entire song saved as samples. It's just like the lyrics are samples. So it's mostly, you know, programmed music, which is very efficient in terms of memory space. And then just when they need the singer to vocalize, that's when the samples play. I guess that must have

facilitated the localization process because, oh, we just drop out these Japanese these lyrics we had. Okay, just put in the English one. Yeah, they didn't have to re-record the entire song. They just had to re-record the samples of the girl singing. So, yeah, I just realized that. But yeah, you're right. That's pretty cool, actually.

A notable for release just for that, but also, I don't know. I'm curious to play it and see how it holds up. But I can tell you that The next game on this list definitely holds up. I love that game. And it was one of the games that helped push me into being a fan of role-playing games. It's an action RPG very much in the same style as, you know, other games of the era. The Legend of Zelda, but, you know, like the post-Zalda games.

So, like, think Gollelius for Master System or the Guardian Legends, top-down sections, or East. It has a proper RPG leveling system. In Japan, it's called God Slayer. Oh, yeah, that would work. Yeah, to change that in America. But it's a really, I would say it's a very heavily, jibly inspired game. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. in the year 1997

nuclear Armageddon hit Oh, 1990X That's a bad No, it was 1997 They named it October 10th, I think 1997 Isn't that judgment day? That was 1999, wasn't it?

I think it was, it's very close. I mean, if the year you're saying this game predates T2 But wow. Yeah. I mean, there was a lot of It's weird. Everyone was very gloomy about the future

and it was just because of numbers. It wasn't because of like the nature of things. The world was getting better at this point. Yeah, so anyway, like, it takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting. Your character is a soldier from back in the past who was put into suspended animation and emerges and basically has to collect four elemental swords to ascend to a floating castle, like a war fortress, kind of like the Mana Fortress and Secret of Mana. Did the hero lose his memory when he woke up or?

I don't think so. The hero just doesn't talk. Oh, okay. So you basically just, you know, do what people tell you to do. But there's, like, psychics who will, you know, send you mind messages, kind of like in a link to the past, but before a link to the past. And, you know, the floating fortress is like the Mana Fortress, but before Secret of Mana. Is this post-Laputa, a castle in the sky? It is post-Laputa.

And, in fact, there is a, like, forest of myasma, and you have to go and acquire the bug flute, which you play, and it causes something that is basically an omu to come out. And so, like, it very, very heavily riffs on Nausica, but it was, you know, it definitely is kind of doing its own thing. There's a part where you ride around on dolphins. And Athena is a character, although they mislocalized her name, so it's Asina. But also, Kenso is in there. Yeah, I don't know. Like, you, there's a psycho armor is one of the top level armors. It's very kind of

referential to stuff that S&K had created before, but this was not an arcade game. It was just a straight up NES game and it's a very kind of expansive adventure. It's probably a good 10 to 12 hours of play. Well, look at that. Even the 80s, S&K, already working on that connected universe, all the games of people

in each other. It was more like cameos, but yeah. But yeah, it's a fun game. There's a little bit of grinding to be There are certain things you can't, like weapons you can't use until you hit a certain level. No. So you have to grind for experience a few times. But it's not too burdensome.

It takes just a little while, like 10 minutes. And then you're up to speed and you can go for it. The game was remade by NST and Nintendo Software Technologies for Game Boy Color. And I don't think it's a very good port. Oh, no. So this is the one to play. the NES original, it's a lovely action RPG, I'm a big fan. Oh, I feel like I really missed out on this title at the time.

Yeah, you did. Like I said, it really made me stop and say like, oh, I like this genre, this style of game. This is very good. So, yeah, when Secret Amana came along a few years later, I was like, oh, yeah, this is very much in the same style as Crystalis. This is great. I love this. If I had known about East at the time, I would have loved East.

Next on the list is Akari Warriors. Actually, there's a whole trilogy, Victory Road, Akari 3. Cari Warriors is another one of those games that has a very infamous NES port. And I would say that this is a case where my chronics completely failed to capture the essence of the arcade game. The NES game is boring. It is buggy. It's impossible to play without using the cheat code. It's a mess. Well, I guess part of the key problem is that Akari Warriors, it wasn't the first but it was probably the first big hit that had those twisty joysticks in the arcade, where you could basically walk in one direction and attack in another direction, and you could freely control that on the arcade joystick.

And given what they had to work with, you know, the NES controller only had the D-pad. There were, you know, only so many buttons you could use. They just figured, well, we'll just walk and shoot in the same direction. And that really does a disservice to the way that game works, where people can really attack you from almost any direction, including from the rear at times. Yeah, it's hard to describe the Akari Warrior's control stick because it works in a way that you don't really see with many controllers. But it's like it is a tall joystick and you, you know, hold it with one hand and then you use the other to like rotate this knob on top.

The ones that I saw was it was almost like a polygonal shape. And so he had had a grip to it. It wasn't rounded. Oh, maybe I'm misremembering. So you could hold it in your left hand and you could basically rotate it. And it clicked a little bit, not audibly, but you could feel a sort of click, click, click as you turned it. And that way you could march, you know, all the way to, you could completely, you could walk forward and actually shoot backwards if you had to. And once they develop that, that joystick, I feel like a lot of S&K games that will probably mention today sort of just relied on that board.

Because I guess once the board existed, they just kept saying, okay, well, here's a new game for that board. Here's a new game for that board. Okay, yeah, you're right. I'm misremembering how the controller worked. It's been a long time. But it was basically as in case solution to the dual stick phenomenon, like the dual stick concept, which Robotron did. And, you know, this was before geometry wars.

So everyone else was like, okay, that's one way to do it. But what if we did it a different way? They probably had a patent on it or something and, you know, some sort of protection for it. Possibly. Or maybe they made it and everyone else decided, oh, this is just too complicated to put. I mean, I can only think of one other game that was not made by S&K or an affiliated company. and that's heavy barrel. And that was also an arcade game that were,

you had the twisty joystick. That was Data East, right? Oh, I think so, yes. So outside of them, I can't take another game of that era where you were turning the joystick to control your character in addition to moving them with the stick.

I know there were some sort of like that, but a lot of times you had like a separate spinner on the dial, you know, like the Tron Arcade game had that. So, yeah, it was a two-player simultaneous game kind of in the Commando style. So that right there is pretty cool. Like, Commando was a fun game, but being able to play it with another person, that would have been even more fun. Yeah, I feel like Ikari Warriors.

And basically, if you look at the time, you know, Akari Warriors is 81986. So it's fresh off both the movies here, the movie Commando and the movie, excuse me, Rambo Part 2, no, First Blood, Rambo Part 2. Rambo, First Blood Part 2. right. And those two movies, I feel like whatever impact they had in America, they had a magnitude larger impact here in Japan because suddenly you see just a plethora of games that are all about a soldier who is marching forward. And, you know, Commander's, Commander does not look like Schwarzenegger in any way, but the name is clearly, clearly drawn from that title. But the Occurier Warriors, they both look like Little Ramboes. They have the headband. They have no shirt.

They're carrying a gun that is about as big of their torso. and they just march forward and they are just shooting everything they can possibly shoot. And the lineage is clear. In fact, if you look, you really get down to it. So in America, we call it Ikari Warriors. In Japan, the game is just called Ikadi. Which means? Rage, basically.

And if you look at the Rambo movies, the titles here in Japan all have some kind of Ikadi in them. Like they've localized, they, you know, they sort of transliterate the title, but they also put in a Japanese flare on it. So I believe either the second movie or the third movie is called like Ikati, you know, Daschutu, like the, like the Akari escape, like the rage escape. So that kanji and that term was very closely associated with Rambo movies here. So to have a video game and call it Ikadi, it's a very clear connection besides a graphical connection that just in Japan is like a one-on-one. I think anyone who saw those movie would have seen those arcade games,

like, oh, it's like, it's like that Rambo movie I saw. But the, uh, the, the, the NES version was not good, and it's not just because of the change in the control scheme, although that doesn't help, but there's a lot of slowdown, the enemies, I don't know, like the action feels very unconvincing, and it's extremely glitchy. Like, it just, it's very slow, like sluggish. It's very easy to get caught up on, yeah, caught up on elements in the world. Even if you use the cheat, which is the only way to clear the game, it gives you infinite continues by typing ABBA, it's very possible that you could spawn and you're inside something.

And it's like, well, that's what happened to me. Yeah, you're screwed now. Even if you die, you're just going to come back in the same spot. Well, there's no way to kill yourself. Like, I got to a point where I couldn't die. Like, there was nothing that could attack me. I was inside some sort of object. And so the game just ended there. Like, that was it. I couldn't get any further. Literally, I could not go any further. So it's a, it's a really. a miserable failure of a game. I'm glad for historic purposes that it's being put on the collection just because it's complete that way, but I don't recommend playing the NES version of Icari Warriors, especially if they come up with a good solution, like dual sticks for

the arcade version. Like, don't mess with the crap. I know that when Ikari Warriors was released as a PlayStation Mini, about seven years ago, I think, which, you know, obviously that's designed for PSP and PS3 and it works on some Vitas, I think. You may not be able to download it to your Vita, but most of those PSP Mini S&K ports will work on your Vita if you transfer them or whatever. And I think the solution they came up with at that time was, well, you can use the left and right shoulder buttons to sort of turn your character a little bit, but you still have to, you know, you're moving with the joystick or the D-Pad or the thumbstick, but you can use the left and right buttons on top to sort of turn a little bit, which is not a perfect solution, but at least

it's approximating, it gives you that ability to fight and move in different directions. That sounds okay, yeah. It's pretty, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a good solution for what is essentially an impossible, an impossible problem, which is, you know, we can't, we can't, we can't put a joystick out in, in, in the hands of consumers, but based on what the buttons they have in their hand right now, this is as close as we're going to get. So I, I, I wouldn't be surprised if a switch takes a similar approach, but the switch has two sticks so maybe you could even just twin stick it if possible. But, you know, I could also see if you

wanted to do like tandem play where you take the joycons off and turn them sideways and have two players that they could, you know, jump over to the shoulder pad approach. So I guess ideally they would give you the ability to choose. Like you can do dual sticks or you can go with the shoulder pads. And that way, you know, you can you can have it. Have it. Have it your way. I mean, whatever solution they use, I just hope it's better than the solution of, never mind. Just walk and shoot the same direction. Yeah, they

definitely won't do that. I have enough faith in them to know that that won't happen. But yeah, I am curious to see how this turns out. And supposedly, or hopefully Victory Road used the same solution. The two games are so similar. Based on my research, they both

came out the same year. So it was a query quick turnaround, I think. But Victory Road was better on NES than the original Ikari Warriors. Oh, you know, I think after I played the NES Ikari Wars, I don't think, I think I skipped the NES Victory Road. So I definitely think their games about it. I played their came fair amount. Uh, but yeah, the arcade game, that's the one where it's like, you're traveling through time or something. You're in a weird alien space, which is, you're either in another planet and you're fighting monsters or the monsters have come to Earth and they've

made their home there. But in any case, you're no longer fighting generic soldiers in the jungles of, uh, I guess Brazil. K-OF games make it clear that they're in Brazil. But unlike that, there are no more human enemies. Now you're fighting leaping spiders and little tiny green homunculi. And when you start the game, you're taunted by a giant kind of Zardaw's rock face who shouts at you, again, with, I guess, synthesized speech or sample speech, but he taunts you. Which, again, at the time, this is 86, 87, depending when you saw it, this was really reverence. Whoa, this game, this game is making fun of me for putting money in it. I'm going to be able to be.

Hey, everybody. Thanksgiving is finally here, and Podcast 1 SportsNet is your home for the best football podcasts to help you kick off your turkey day games. Get all your football chatter from the biggest names and football, including Dan Patrick, Rich Eisen, Jim Harbaugh, Russ Tucker, RJ Bell, the underdog network, and more. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us here at Podcast 1 and check out these great shows every week on Podcast 1 or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. television service. Watch more than 100 TV channels and thousands of movies on demand all for free. No credit card needed. No sign up. Pluto TV is the easy and completely legal way to watch your favorite TV shows and hit movies. So what are you waiting for? Never pay for TV again. Download Pluto TV for free on all of your favorite devices today. So there's also, um, Akari 3, which is like a totally different kind of game.

Yeah, that's, and that's... It's co-op, you know, top-down, but it's like a brawler? Yeah, it's also years later. It's a very curious decision that I guess after a few years, they decided, well, let's revisit this, but let's lose the guns. So now you're still the same two characters. They're basically identical. I don't know, I don't know where in the timeline the names are at this point. I know originally in America, they were called Paul and Vince, but these days we know them as Ralph, Ralph Jones and Clark Steele.

That's S-T-I-L, but it's pronounced steel, like the ghetto boy song. And so whatever the names are at this point, they are basically, you know, red guy and blue guy. And in Ikari 3, they're no longer armed to the teeth. It's more about punching and kicking. But you still got the twisty joystick so you can still move and punch and kick in different directions. Yeah, it seems like a strange game. I've never played that one. It's a very late, I want to say, 89 or 90.

So it's like one of the later, one of the last games they made before, just let's just do NeoGeo games at this point. Okay, that explains why the visual. are so much beefier. Like, your characters are very big on screen. Yeah, much, much, much larger. Yeah, the first two Akari Warriors games are so close together. It's almost, you know, today would basically, the latter would be like a DLC version almost.

But Icari, Icari 3, the rescue is definitely, it's like a brand new, brand new game, perhaps inspired by Rambo 3, which was, I think, 88, the movie. Oh, could be, yeah. So, and that was about, he was escaping, he was saving Colonel Troutman, I think, from the Russian prison camp in Afghanistan. Sure. Because we're buddies of the Afghanistan's, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. The, yeah, the Taliban were there. They were a pals. That's the, that's the movie that ends with the message of, like, you know, encouragement to their, to their brothers that had to be edited. It had to literally because, whoops. Did we create a monster? So speaking of creating monsters, no, actually, I do want to touch on two other games

that are very much in the same mold as Icari Warriors. Yes. Using, I guess, the same hardware and the same joystick setup. Very similar. Very similar graphics, too, I feel. Yeah, that's Gorilla War and TNK3. So Gorilla War is, that was Guavaa in Japan, right? It's amazing.

I cannot believe this is a real thing, but I was stunned to learn this. So, yeah, we got this game as Gorilla War in the U.S., but the original Japanese title is Gavera, as in Che Guevara, as in you are playing this game as a revolutionary, overthrowing the king, and player one is Che Guever, and player two is Fidelio. Castro. Yeah, it's audacious. I can see why they changed it for the U.S. Yeah, this is 1987. You know, the Cold War Paranoi is still red hot. I mean, Guevara himself was dead at this point, but Fidel Castro was still alive and he would be alive for at least what, two more decades, three more decades almost. He hung in there. He stuck around for a long time. His brother is still with us. So his brother could still play the Famicom game starring his own brother. Okay. Raul Castro, I think.

I don't know. I forgot his name. I'm not really up on the Castro family. But yeah, this one, like, all these games kind of blend together in my head because they are a lot of shooting and stuff. But this one came out after Victory Road. So, like, visually, it's more impressive. I feel like, you know, they made their Carri Warriors games. And then we're like, let's, let's keep, you know, hoeing this row. Yeah, you're back in the jungle and you're fighting, you're fighting human beings again. But your character, the two different characters are not, they're not quite just pallet swaps. have a little different, they look a little different, they're wearing different, obviously they are different colors. One of them has a beard and smokes. Yeah, exactly. But they certainly have a little, they have a little more personality about them. I know one of the big differences is, you know, in Akari Warriors, one of the big moves is, if you find a tank and get in the tank, it's a game changer.

And, you know, the tank changes color. So now, you know, your red guy is now red tank and blue guy's now blue tank. But in guerrilla war or Guevara, your character is kind of visibly in the, you know, the tank. So it's like you almost look like your half man half tank. You're sort of sitting atop it. And it looks like a tank centaur. Yeah, it looks kind of funny and it's cute. I mean, it's still, it's still a war game. It's not like tongue and cheek, but it just, it has a sort of visual flare to it. It goes a long way to sort of make it, make it stand out, you know, and even, you know, super cartoony later games like Meadow Slug, like once you're in the tank, you're in the tank. But no, Gorilla War Guevera, you're sort of

this hybrid, hybrid, you know, part man, part machine. And it just, it just looks funny. I just, I just laugh whenever I see it. Half man, half machine, all revolutionary. Yes. But in the case of Tank, I think Tank is actually the first game. That's right. TNK3 was just called TAN, like an acronym, TANK in Japan. So I think someone in America, you know, there's no Google yet, but like we can't just call the Tank game. I thought Tank and TNK3 were two different games. I think they're the same game. I thought one of them was more advanced.

Let's look this up. Whichever way you call it, I'm pretty sure that, yeah, the tank game came out in 85. So I'm pretty sure it precedes all these later twisty joystick games. I think it may have been the first one. Okay. Let's see. Yeah, it's, oh, according to Wikipedia, both games feature, okay, TNK3 or Tank, features the first appearance of Ralph Jones, aka Paul,

and uses the rotary joystick that would appear in Akari Warriors. For some reason, I thought this game came later. So, 1985, that's wild. Maybe he's part of documentation because the whole thing about tank is you are a tank the entire time. You never really see a person. Right. Well, that would explain where the tank element of Akari Warriors comes in. It was a throwback to this game.

Right. So, yeah, the tank game, you are a tank the entire time. You kind of, you have two weapons, but you always shoot like a, a short-range bullet attack, and that's whatever direction you're moving, you always shoot that way. But then you use the joystick to control the cannon of the tank, and that can shoot in different directions. So you have the, you kind of, like, you're always shooting in one direction, but you can control the sort of secondary fire, which I believe has limited ammunition. So then Ikari Warriors has changed. Like, okay, well, now you're a guy and you walk around,

you get in the tank, and then you have different attack modes. And same with guerrilla War Guevara, where it's like you're a guy and you run around, but then you get in the tank. And, well, in that case, you look like you're sort of sitting on the tank. But still, it's more about, you have options of, you know, some of your own in a tank, some of you're out of the tank. And that also allows for, I guess, for different kinds of terrain because in those games there are places where the tanks can't go. But in the tank game, it's just you're the tank the entire time, which I think isn't

as visually fun, in my opinion. If all you are as a tank, then, like, what's the point of human enemies if you're always a tank? Right. Okay. And so I looked it up. I was trying to figure out, like, is this game a sequel or predecessor to Iron Tank for NES?

and it is Iron Tank for EniS. They renamed it Iron Tank on N.S. Oh, another name. Okay. Yeah. So that explains that confusion I was experiencing. So this game has had three different names, Tank, TNK3, and Iron Tank. And given the way the game was released back then, we have no idea which game came out first or second, really.

They were probably all available in any Toys R Us in the late 80s, right? What on the NES? So for people in America, they probably saw Akari Wars first before they ever saw the Tank game. Yeah, Iron Tank was, it looks like 1988, actually. Or, yeah, it came after, it came out here in the U.S. Sometime after Rambo, Metal Gear, and Double Dragon, but before Life Force. So, yeah, those, that kind of weird, the way stuff was released in the U.S. versus, you know, original Japanese publication.

It was a mess back then. But even, I guess even in late 80s, there was still. some appeal to an arcade port, even if it wasn't perfect. You'd see something like, oh, I recognize that game from, you know, the arcades. And I'd love to play the home version, even if it's compromised. I guess maybe that's my confusion with TNK3 coming when it did chronologically, because I think of Iron Tank as being a more advanced game than Akari Warriors. And that's because I'm pretty sure that my chronics did not develop Iron Tank for an ES.

So you have this, like, super janky version of Akari Warriors that came out first. and then a, you know, a few years later, a much more refined NES port of a game that actually preceded Icari Warriors. So it's a mess, but... It's almost not Operation Condor all over again. Yeah, so I don't think... I don't think S&K's press site for the compilation

says anything about Iron Tank, but I would assume that if they're releasing any as an arcade versions, then if they're doing Tank 3, then Iron Tank should be on there, too. I'm going to assume you just get the choice, you know, pick your tank. All right. So we've made it through most. All right, so we've made it through most of these, the games that we know are going to be on the collection, but there are a few more to talk about, including the one that has the best title of all, prehistoric Isle in

1930s. And this is a vertical shooter very much in the R-type style. I've never seen it horizontal. Or yes, sorry, horizontal. That's okay. Horizontal shooter in the R-type style and that you have like an orbiting bit that like flies around you and can be, reconfigured and moved around and powered up and so forth. Yeah, even though as the name suggests, you are kind of flying an old-timey biplane, you know, that's something that Mr. Burns would own, and it's just

but you're shooting dinosaurs, so I guess it's kind of like a savage land, Savage Land-R-type? Prehistoric life force? It's a, there's a whole lot going on in this game. It's like science fiction, old-timey, like, yeah, land of the loss kind of thing. You definitely

get to shoot a lot of dinosaurs, and usually they're identified, and at least as I can recall, there are quite a few dinosaurs that definitely would never eat a person, let alone a biplane, but in this version, they are very aggressive and you must shoot them to their necks explode. Right. Yeah, the, you know, the brontosaurus has suddenly developed a taste for human meat. But no, it looks like a fun game.

I watched some videos of this just in preparation for this episode. Okay, I lied. I did do a little prep. And I love the look of it and the sort of goofy premise, but I have to admit the sound design is really bad. It doesn't have a lot of music and the sound effects are all kind of monotonous. But given it's vintage, I guess that's hard to avoid. Yeah, some shooters really live and die by the soundtrack.

I wouldn't say that this is a music that I would necessarily listen to outside of playing the game. But, yeah, it is, I do think the game is, the presentation is very fun. As I recall, the title screen, the dinosaur kind of like leaps in from the side, almost like, you know, you don't expect it to be dinosaur there. And then, yeah, that's basically the whole game is dinosaurs leaping it from the side. and you shooting them with your airplane. I mean, that's an okay premise. Like, I would say you don't pick on, you know, endangered species, but I feel like if dinosaurs are doing that well,

then, you know, you can afford to take a few of them out. Also, in addition to prehistoric Isle in 1930 under P, there's P-O-W, which I always get confused about. I always expect that to be another game in the Akari vein, but it's more like S&K's take on double dragon. Yeah, I mean, it is, you are, again, fighting two soldiers and you're in this desert, not desert, you're in a jungle place. And I think even one guy is red, one guy is blue, but they're definitely, they don't look like the Ikari warriors. And the whole game starts off with you already being in a prison camp and you explode the door.

And then you're just methodically punching and kicking your way out of the prison camp. Also stabbing. Yes, stabbing. You carry a knife up for a lot of the game. Yeah, you can get some weapons. And one thing I do like about the way this game works is that a lot of these games where you have sort of military. fighting games, the gun is sort of a special thing you get and it runs out of ammo and then your gun is just gone. But at least in POW, if you have a gun and you use up the bullets,

you still get to carry a gun and hit people with it. You know, like, you don't throw it away. You know, don't throw away the gun just because we're not a bullets. This is not a cheesy action movie. It's like, no, it's still a rifle. You can hit people with that. It'll hurt. So, yeah, I don't have any experience with this game. Are you a fan or, I mean, aside from, you know, people being smacked in the face of the rifle butt? I definitely play the arcade version a lot. I'm sure I saw the NES version at least once and decided, oh, this doesn't look as good, so I don't want this version. But it's definitely, you know, it's another two-player simultaneous game. I want to say POW is, yeah, 88.

So I guess that's pre-Final fight. So post-Dragon, but pre-Final fight. So the characters are kind of, you know, there's certainly bigger than double-dragon characters. So you've got a little more visually appealing. And I think some good sounds, some good punching and kicking sounds where you knock guys away. And as I recall, it's almost the, the levels kind of all chained together to, like you can, you know, like, I guess like double dragon, like you finish your, you finish one level and then you ride an elevator or you get in a helicopter and then you just, you go to the next place and you just kind of feel like you're on a journey somewhere as opposed to, you know, later beat them up. We're just like, now you're, you know, underwater level and here's the tower level. This feels like a progression through enemy lines.

Which makes sense. I mean, because it is supposed to have a sense of place to it. Like you are behind enemy lines. You are escaping from, you know, the enemy fortress or whatever. Right. P-O-W camp. Indeed, yeah. The Japanese title was just escape, dash-sutsu.

So P-O-W is kind of the English title, which is probably playing on the many, many late-era Vietnam war movies we got, which were about, you know, rescuing hostages. Again, more Rambo fallout. And then there's Street Smart, which I guess is kind of the evolution of this and a little bit. In the sense that, you know, final fight begat Street Fighter 2, this is kind of like, you know, taking the side-scrolling brawler and turning it into a fighting game. And this is a one-on-one fighter that predates Street Fighter 2, not the original Street Fighter, but, you know, you don't really hear a lot about fighting games in that interim period between Street Fighter and Street Fighter 2, which was four years, you know, 1987 to 1991. Clearly, you know, it's not like Capcom made Street Fighter and everyone was like, oh, that's a mistake. Like, lots of people were throwing, you know, throwing that concept of the wall to see if something could stick. And this is one of the, I think, stronger examples.

Yeah, it works pretty well. I mean, people make jokes about Pit Fighter, which is also of that era. But this, it's kind of a pit fighter-esque game in that your character is fighting other characters and you're sort of surrounded by, like, you're, I guess you're on the street. So people are watching you fight other people. and you're occasionally outnumbered, but instead of pit fighters, you know, at the time, kind of shocking, but let's face it,

kind of crappy digital graphic people, this is actually, you know, someone sat down and drew characters with, you know, attention to detail, and they have, you know, moves and punches and kicks. And one of the funnier touches

that whenever you defeat someone, an ambulance pulls on the screen and sort of calls them away. The S&K ambulance. Right. The S&K ambulance chaser. Someone took that name. S&K ambulance chaser.

That's a good one. But, yeah. You're still, so it's sort of a one-on-one fighting game, but instead of you and one person on a single plane, you're sort of, you know, you've got this movement up and down. So it's not isometric. What do you call that? It's kind of old. Yeah, like the fours three-quarters perspective. Right. So you can move up and down. You can move to the side. You can sort of flank people, but you are still just punching and kicking in a fighting game style. So, yeah, and you certainly the way the game works, you have a lot of different enemies you can encounter. And it's interesting how you can occasionally. be outnumbered and fight a disadvantage, which is probably good for them, you know, from a quarter-munching standpoint, you know. And I think there's a two-player option where maybe you can gang up on someone and then you have to then fight the second player.

Interesting. Okay. I feel like that's a thing because, as I recall, some of the music in Street Smart later appears in Fatal Fury, which was, you know, one of the early NeoGeo hits. And that's a game where definitely it's a one-on-one fighter game, but there is a mode for the second player to join in and then the two players double up on one CPU opponent, which was, you know, it's still pretty rare for, you know, versus fighting games. And given the musical connection, I'm pretty sure that's also a thing.

So interesting. Yeah, so I'm curious to see that one because it is a pretty ambitious fighting game for the period of time that it came out in. You know, it lacks the combo attacks and special techniques that would be so instrumental in Street Fighter to success. I mean, it was really the ability to chain attacks together that I think made that game. And that was even something that they didn't design intentionally. It just kind of emerged from the fighting game they created. So you can't really blame other people for not landing on that style when even Capcom didn't mean to. But the, you know, the sort of free-roaming arena style, that makes it interesting.

It's not just like it's somewhere between a brawler and a fighting game, like you said. but not in the sense that it's, you know, like a scrolling brawler. It's you're in a fixed space against a set opponent. It's just, yeah, it's not a 2D plane that you're fighting on. If anything, I mean, the main character you play is a little underdeveloped. It's basically a, I think it's just a guy in a karate uniform. So he's not that interesting, but I as I recall- It's a little karate champion.

Yeah. So, but as I recall, like, a lot of the games of the era, like, the real fun is seeing who shows up next and, like, those characters are a little bigger and brighter and more more visually interesting to look at, you know, kind of like how Batman's boring, but his villains are fun. Like in Street Mart, Street Mart, Street Smart, you're your karate guy fighting an array of more interesting people. And then finally, going way back to 1981, there's Vanguard, which is one of those games that I thought, I know this name, sounds familiar,

but I don't remember what the game is. But then as soon as I saw it in action on a video, I was like, oh, Vanguard, yeah. Like, this is one of those, yeah, it was just everywhere. Yeah, it's almost, it's a little bit defender-like in the way it looks. Like, you're, you're controlling a spaceship and you're flying, you're generally flying to the right, although unlike a lot of games at the time, you're sort of following this path. And that's sort of a, at least the arcade version, I think, had a very simple map at the top of show where you were going. And so you're sort of following this path up and you move an angle sometimes. And enemies can sort of fly at you from different directions.

and your ship can shoot up down, left, and right. And to be honest, I don't remember the arcade layout. I don't know if that was accomplished with four different buttons, or if you just had, if you just were pushing and shooting at the same time, I don't recall. But somehow they ported it to the Atari, which is the version that I played, and it still lets you shoot in four directions, and there were a bunch of power-ups you could get

that would make you temporarily invincible. And at least once in the game, you hear a musical cue that is stolen straight from Star Trek, the motion picture. which is kind of a bizarre choice, then, you know, that music ended up becoming the next generation theme song a few years later. So if you play this game now today, you will definitely recognize that that music. So it's like, da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, that riff. Huh, okay. I don't remember that. I'll have to check that out. But yeah, I would describe this game as being somewhere between Scramble and Defender. Like, it has a very defender-ish visual

style, especially, you know, like small ships moving really quickly, and the laser blasts you fire kind of, like they sort of, not ripple, but you fire and they have persistence as they move across. And so you create like this sort of cascade of laser trails as you move up and down and fire it in a means. Right. You can shoot a lot of laser beams in different directions and you sort of, yeah, it's a lot. It's not just little bullets. You are definitely firing streams of light. And I think at some point, the ship even rotates, I mean, not animated, but like, I think

you switch from a side view to sort of a almost a top-down view, I think, as you get towards the end of the game, because there is, I mean, the game sort of has a boss, but it's not really an ending because you just keep playing, you know, the game is loops forever, but there is sort of at the end of the map or tunnel you're in, you're always kind of flying on this tunnel. At the end, there is sort of a boss. that's behind some shields that you have to sort of fight your way through. And I think during those portions, even though you can always shoot in all the directions, I think your ship rotates a little bit and suddenly you're flying up and you're pointing up.

But, you know, from a gameplay standpoint, you're still shooting all directions anyway. So it's a nice visual player. Yeah, so the Scramble connection comes in the form of the environments you're flying through, like these kind of jagged caves. Yes. It doesn't have the refueling option that Scramble does. And Scramble, of course, you shoot forward and then you have the, a bomb that you can drop that falls forward in an arc. So it does have like a multi-planar

attack, but it's less, I feel like Scramble requires a bit of strategy, like an understanding of the decay of your, your bombs arc and that sort of thing. So it's a different style for sure, but I still feel like there is that, like, this was the same year as Scramble. So they were kind of thinking in the same directions. Well, I guess when was the Zivius? Was that also So this is pre-ZV, because I know for the sequel, which came out a couple years later, Vanguard 2, they kind of radically changed the approach. And instead of being a side view, it's more of a top-down kind of a Thunder Force game. And in that case, you are shooting forward and you are bombing targets on the ground. But unfortunately, in my opinion, the Vanguard 2, while it's visually more impressive than Vanguard 1, I feel like it's not distinct enough from other games.

that looked like that, where you're shooting, you're shooting one thing and bombing the ground. And so, unfortunately, I mean, we'll see. I mean, if Vanguard II appears in one of these collections, I'll certainly enjoy playing more of it, because I don't think I've played much of it as a young person. But I feel like in changing, in changing the hook from Vanguard to Vanguard, too, I feel like the kind of lost what made Vanguard unique. And I would say that, you know, Vanguard evolved into the final game on this list, which takes us back to the beginning, Alpha Mission.

Somehow we skipped over that, but that's okay because I feel like it segues pretty neatly. Alpha Mission is a top-down shooter in the Zevius vein, but also kind of Star Soldier-ish. And yeah, it has the multi-planar thing, like you're firing your cannons straight ahead and taking out other ships that fly, but then you have like a ground missile.

Instead of just a bomb where you're hitting like a set spot, you fire these ground missiles and they skim along the round until they hit something so they don't have quite as set a range and you don't have to be quite as precise as in Zevius, but it still does have have that like dual plane where there's things above and below that can be a threat. Yeah, so you have to, you sort of have to keep an eye on targets coming from different directions and yeah, I guess a lot of, this would sort of be the template for I think a lot of, S&K, I mean, not just S&K shooters, but certainly they did, they would make a lot of games just like this where you were, I mean, in a sense, it's almost eventually that's how gets, I think gets you from ships flying through space to soldiers marching on the ground. It's like, instead of having a ship bombing the ground, what if we're just a guy on the ground and you're shooting the enemy?

So I feel like this is a middle step, really, where suddenly you're, you know, instead of flying, you're just, you know, eventually marching. I mean, I guess we would call Ikari Warriors and those games run and gun, but it's so slow, I would think it's more like marching. March and gun. Yeah, it looks like Alpha Mission was 1985, so that does predate Ikari Warriors by a year. Of course, the NES version came out like about the same time as Ikari Warriors. So who knows when we would have seen it in the stores. So that's it for titles that we know about on the S&K 40th anniversary collection for Switch. I'm sure by the time this episode airs will know more.

But I feel like that's a, I don't know, like we've talked for more than an hour about these games. So there's definitely some history there, even though neither of us has played all of these games, I think between the two of us were familiar with everything and have a pretty good sense of where it fits into video game history. Yeah, I feel like S&K, you know, those early years, they, if you look at the full list of games, they actually had a very eclectic mix of stuff. They were trying a lot of unusual gambits. And I feel like obviously they're going to lead up front with the titles that are the

easiest to explain, you know, spaceship flying and, you know, man shooting and, you know, bombing bombing titles, but I think they are, they are an interesting bunch of games and they certainly have a lot of replay value because, you know, those, those simplistic games are very easy to pick up and play. I know that just recently, I was, I happened to be in an arcade here in Osaka and they had guerrilla war. So I just sat down and played guerrilla war for, you know, a good, good 10 minutes before I ran out of steam. But, you know, it's, I look forward to a collection like this where you can, you know, especially with a switch, you're able to play, you know, one of the things that was hampered all these home conversion was

not just the fact that controllers were different, but the fact that you're playing on a smaller screen. And so the perspective is that you have less real estate to see what's coming at you. So by making a port of this and having it letting you play with a vertical screen, you know, it's a fun way to revisit these games and, you know, a way that most of us probably never, ever really got to spend time with, unless you happen to be, you know, in an arcade, in 1988, and you just had, you know, a $10 bill in your pocket. The dream. So many quarters.

So we do have a little more time to kill. And you have a huge list of other S&K pre-Neo Geo games. So this goes all the way back to 1978, right? Yeah. Well, I went back and I went on all the resources I could find to get as many games as I could possibly discern. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the early times. are basically lost to time.

We have evidence they existed. You know, I'm sure, you know, as Frank's great work is, you know, he's demonstrated again, again, he finds old documentation, old arcade flyers. And I really hope a lot of this stuff ends up in the collection, you know, as some sort of digital viewer, because it is really kind of fascinating to me. So a lot of these early games, the 78, 79 games, we know they exist because they were sold, you know, and these flyers, there's scans of these flyers exist, but the games themselves may not be emulated or they're emulated poorly and we don't know how poorly because the original

is just, you know, unfortunately, lost the time. I mean, the earliest game, which I had never heard of until Frank tweeted about it was something called the Micon Block or Micon Kit, which looks like some kind of breakout, you know, again, we have no video of this. We just have still shots, but it looks like a paddle and blocks and a score. And, you know, given the time, you know, it just seems like that would be a thing people would make a video game out of, just knock, you know, Here's your cocktail cabinet. Put this game in here and break some blocks. But, I mean, depending on what resource you look at, S&K basically had two first games.

Okay. The one that's often called the first game is something called Osma Wars, which came out in either 78 or 79. And it's very clearly a Space Invaders, you know, clone or inspired by Space Invaders. it's every version I saw was monochromatic you know and in the the graphics were almost almost like asky art you know you've got you've got a ship and some some creatures moving down to you but they're very simplistically rendered but at the same time they are moving towards you they're not just lined up waiting for you to attack them and to a degree so kind of like what galaxine would do yeah but this is this is maybe a little earlier than that I think and in one of the more impressive moves you know for the time some of the ships actually sort of sort of as they approach you, they turn, they sort of turn their ship to strafe to you so they become a smaller target. And, you know, obviously it's all, this is moving at like three frames a second, but you play it and you can sort of see, oh, this is different. You know, if I was a kid in 19, if I was to say, if I was a kid old enough to leave the house in 1978, I would have seen this like, oh, this is, this is different than Space Invaders. I want to try this game.

And the other one, which is also a shooter, but it's a very different shooter, is the very different shooter, is, the Saske versus commander. I've heard of that one. Yeah, and that's usually dated 1980. And what's fun about that one, at least different to me that one, is that instead of being in space, you are a ninja and you are ordered to defend your Shogun against hordes of other ninja who sort of leap down. And the ninjas are coming at you from the top of the screen. So I guess it's kind of a Gallagher-esque and that they're dive-bombing you and they're throwing ninja stars at you. but you throw nino-stars back at them

and you can block their shots and if you hit them, then their body falls. So you have to dodge shots, but you also dodge their bodies because if the body hits you, it's basically the same thing. You know, you're out. And in a very curious, or curious, I guess, is almost

revolutionary, you have intermittent bonus stages where you have to fight a special enemy who might use different tactics. He might use magic powers. And if you defeat him, you get a big bonus. And if you lose, then you lose that chance and you just go back to the regular ninja stages. And if you can keep playing long enough, and I honestly can't play that long, but I was able, eventually you get more weapons. At some point,

I was able to throw two stars at once instead of the one. Or like if you could, you know, if you wait, you can shoot two stars sort of in a double shot. But if you rapidly tap the button, you're just firing a little bit faster one shot at a time. So, you know, it has some variety and it has some very primitive, but kind of cute little music based on what I'm I'm assuming his old Japanese folk music, you know, much like Frogger, just stole an old, old kid's song, you know. And I don't know, depending on the version, I know that Saske versus Commander was included in the S&K Arcade Classic Zero's collection, arcade classics zero collection, which I think was PS2 and PSP, but never came to America. It was only in Japan. Okay.

And they sort of highlight this one as like their first game, quote unquote, but maybe. Maybe Tose made it? I'm not sure. Looking at it online, I feel like Tose has a claim to maybe having a hand in this one. Right. But I mean, even if, you know, they did contract it out to a development studio like that, the concept was still probably, you know, created at S&K. And they probably, you know, took, you know, sort of like a creative supervision over it.

So I don't think it's wrong, you know, assuming that's how it worked. I don't think it's necessarily wrong for them to claim it as their game. Like, everyone knows that Donkey Kong is a Nintendo game, even though another company did the programming on it. Like, and that's been, you know, like a legal issue, apparently. But I don't think anyone's going to say, no, no, no, Nintendo had nothing to do with Donkey Kong. Like, they came up with the concept. It was, you know, Shigeru Miyamoto designed the characters and came up with the stages and all that stuff. So, yeah, I think, you know, at this point, we understand better, like, how development contracting works.

Yeah, maybe that's part of the name, too, if you think about it. I mean, Shinn-Nihon, Kikaku, I mean, Kikaku, I mean, Kikaku can just mean design. Maybe in the earlier days they were just coming up, maybe they were just an idea factor. It's like, we can do this game. Here's an idea. But not idea factory. No, not the idea factory, but maybe they were just, you know, spitballing ideas and finding companies who could actually make their ideas come true. because, I mean, the early works, they're so eclectic, and some of them are so bizarre, and even the ones that don't actually, don't actually look like fun, they, you know, their ambition is really there.

There's an early title, 1981's fantasy. It's just called fantasy, which makes it hard to Google, but it's sort of this multi-screen adventure, you know, and you have a character and your girlfriend is kidnapped, of course, and then you have to embark on a quest to rescue. your girlfriend from somebody or something, but this invention takes place over many, many different screens. You've got sidescrowing balloon levels. You've got ground-based overhead sort of action levels. Amazingly, the game actually doesn't have any buttons. It's just joystick.

So, you know, whether you're flying, whether you're dodging, whether you're fighting natives with an automatic sword. So it's, I would compare it to jungle hunt in the sense that it's sort of like telling the sort of episodic story. But the fact is that it has a lot more screens than jungle hunt. and it sort of does a lot more, even though there is no button, there's no command. You're just, you're just moving your character. And again, it has very early synthesized speech, kind of a very curious, how are you?

I'm fine. Thank you. Almost like the most English one-on-one sentence you could possibly put in a video game is between two lovers. So, and I've definitely heard some of these samples. I think there's a cry of every time you rescue your girl, she's a, scored it away again and she always shouts, help me. And I think that I've heard that sample elsewhere. So maybe it was in a sound effects library. Maybe they bought it somewhere. But it's,

it has lasted. To me, I found it to be an extreme curiosity, even though a game I never saw until I was doing research for this game, it still stood up to me as something interesting. And they were just trying everything. You know, the S&G had, you know, racing games and puzzle games. And even in 1985, they kind of made a softcore porn game called Canvas Croke, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Crokey being French for just art, C-R-O-Q-U-I-S. You know, if you can picture gal's panic, but not kicks or kicks. Do we ever figure how to pronounce that game? Quicks.

Okay, not like quick. People debate about it, but on the Japanese box art, it has the phonetics written out. So quicks. But in this case, it's not. nine of those, you're not drawing lines. You're just a character exploring these sort of tile sets and you're pushing a button to flip over tiles in a row and you're sort of dodging enemies who can either kill you or undo your work.

And the goal is to uncover... Wait, what? Yeah. That's dexterity. It's dexterity. Yeah, dexterity is a Game Boy game that I covered for Game Boy Works a while back. And, you know, it's very much in the sort of like crush roller style. that's really interesting.

Like, the mechanics you just described are pretty much dexterity. So I'm wondering if Dexterity was like a friendly Nintendo-approved port of, what is it called? Canvas Croquet? Canvas Croke. Yeah. Is there a way to fight the enemies in Dexterity? You can, if you flip over a line of tiles while one is an enemy is standing on it, it'll stun the enemy. Well, in Canvas Crokey, there are actually bombs.

the screen, and you can activate a bomb and then go to the plunger, which is in a different location, and activate the plunger and blow up the enemies around it. Okay, so not just like a pure adaptation. Yeah, but it's certainly, and again, I never got very far in my attempts to play the game, but it's much, much like Gals Panic. There's a first drawing, which is relatively tame, is the second drawing where there's underwear, and there's a third drawing, which I assume is even racier, though I couldn't finish that level, so.

Well, in Japanese, Dexterity was called Funny Field. So it does have the alliteration of Canvas Cookie. Okay, I need to look up this game. Canvas Crew. Yeah, that's porn. That sure is. But I just think it's funny. I cannot but laugh and to see all these different directions and attempts they were trying until they kind of settled on what I guess worked more for them, which is, you know,

more easily explained, you know, single-sentence pitches, you know, tank shoots things, Rambo shoots things, you know, soldier escapes camp. But, you know, I think there's rooms in the world for, you know, Marvin's maze and Safari rally. What is Marvin's maze? I've heard of March and maze. No, Marvin's maze is, it's a little bit Crystal Castle-esque in that you've got a cute little character and there are red dots in a maze, but you've got kind of a double

plane, almost like a three-dimensional chest, Star Trek thing. And you can go between the two planes. Your goal is to get all the dots and avoid the robots who are searching for you. And there are certain, there are power-ups that basically, I think, give you, each time you get a power-up, you get like one laser shot. And when you shoot a laser shot, it has a piercing. So if you can line up a bunch of robots in one row who are coming close to you, you can shoot them all in once and clear out a whole row of enemies. But basically, you're going with the two planes. You're trying to collect all the dots and then you move on to the next one and yeah it was uh it was Marvin's maze was 80 83 and that one was also released later as a PS mini and was on the arcade

classic zero collection. Hmm. Okay. So if you had to pick one game off this list that has not been announced for the collection, what would it be? One game. Wow. Um, That is a tough question. I mean, I'm tempted just because it's so strange. I want to say Joyful Road. Okay. I haven't heard of that one either. AKA Munch Mobile, which is an awful, awful title.

But in Joyful Road. Probably Munchmobile. In this case, you're a car. You're a car with big cartoony eyes. And you've got giant hands. And you're driving down a very, narrow road and you can use your hands to reach out and collect things that are sitting on the side of the road. And it's basically food or drinks. And as you pull them into your car, you get some points.

And then you can get more points by reaching out and dropping them into a trash can. And you can litter. You're allowed to litter, but you get much more points if you properly dispose of all your trash a trash can, which is very Japanese. This is a really strange game. It's very strange. You can also, if you pass by the water, you can grab fish as they leap out of the ocean and then, you know, again, grab the fish, pull them in your car, and then dispose of the skeleton in the next receptacle. Okay. But it's very tough because as you're moving the car back and forth, you have to control these hands going back and forth. And while the hands can hit items, the hands can hit obstacles and you just, you get a penalty

and you can't use that hand for a little bit, if your car touches absolutely anything, I think it bursts into flames. Oh, of course. It's real tough, and I don't, I own, I watched more of it than I actually played. And so I don't know what exactly is involved as far as moving the car faster versus controlling the car and the controlling the arms. But it's a lot going on there. And I guess I'm partially the idea of a big red car, you know, I guess we're all enough to remember the 80s cartoon where the teen turns into a hot rod. Turbo team? Yeah.

So this is the turbotene side story. Not to be mistaken for Auto Man. Yeah. Where he gets hungry and needs some grapes that are on the side of the road. Okay. Yeah, that's a really strange sounding game. I would be curious to play it. So I guess if it's not too late, Frank Sefaldi, you know what you must do.

What is that called? Munchmobile. Joyful Road. Joyful Road is the Japanese title. That's better. I'm for myself, I don't know. I looked over that list of games you came up with. And there's so many of those games I've never heard of. Like, S&K made all kinds of stuff that I just was not. aware of. If the game has been converted to a home console, I've probably heard of it. But a lot of

these games are just arcade obscurities that, you know, like, no one knows anything about them except apparently you. I only know about them thanks to the people on YouTube who, uh, play through them in their entirety. But, uh, because I, I didn't have time to play every game on this list. Uh, no, as, as, as, yeah. I did my best to try as many as I could just to see how they worked. But yeah, there are people out there who are playing through all. all these games, including, including the myriad of sports games that S&K made around the 88 Olympics, because I guess, you know, around 84 video games were still, I guess, too early to have and I guess the, the, the, the, the, the, Atari crash was too fresh for there to be a plethora

of sports games around the 84 Olympics, but by, you had, you know, summer games, winter games, that was epics. You had those. But by 88, I mean, as far as you can tell, in the year of 1988, S alone, S&K alone, made three different Olympic-esque games that were just about sports, including the weirdest one by far is called paddle mania, which when I first read about that, I'd assumed, oh, it's some sort of a ping pong game, but no, you are play, you're a character holding a paddle, but your opponents can range from a single guy with a paddle to a sumo wrestler, to a volleyball team, and you're basically kind of playing air hockey. You're bouncing a ball back and forth in this arena, and you're trying to get the ball, pass them into a goal. which is behind them, which may or not be moving depending on the stage. But there are Olympic rings in the field, so this apparently is a future Olympic sport where people are, you know, playing a human-sized ping pong.

Yeah, I feel like actually owning the Olympics license is a good way to come up with a really boring game because that sounds really interesting. Yeah, but that was only, again, one of three sports-heavy games that came out around the Seoul Olympics. And at least in the case of gold medalists, they explicitly say you are playing. and, you know, you were playing these sports in the Seoul, the Seoul Olympic Games. Okay. Which I guess was probably a big deal in Japan because that was probably, I guess at the time,

that was probably the closest Olympics had ever been to Japan. That's still the same time. No, the Olympics were in Japan in, I want to say, 64. Of course, sorry, the Tokyo Olympics. Yeah. But, you know, first time in a long time. Right. 20 years.

And now 2020 is Tokyo. It's coming up, yeah. I can only imagine how many, how many shovelware games are coming for the 2020. Olympics. So let's see. I'm trying to think. What would I want converted to this collection? Actually, I'd be interested to see some of S&K's Game Boy output.

I talked about dexterity. I'm trying to remember if they came up with anything else. But I don't think that any Game Boy stuff has been announced for that compilation. I guess it would be okay to have. the Game Boy Color version of Crystallus on there, which isn't that great a conversion. But, you know, just for the sake of completeness, I guess that would be good. But Dexterity was a pretty cool puzzle game. Like I said, it clearly was designed in the style of that porn game.

Actually, now that I'm looking and S&K's only published Game Boy game was Funnyfield Dexterity, which actually launched like a month after the Neo Geo. So I guess I would explain that like they jumped into the Game Boy market and then we're like, why are we giving money to our competition? We are at odds with the Nintendo. We are a fellow first party. Let's not do this anymore. Actually, speaking of competition in Game Boy, it would be great if probably not this compilation,

but eventually if we got some sort of Neo Geo Pocket compilation. Because a lot of those games, I feel like, would hold up. really, really well, and those, you know, those characters, those simplistic but very cartoony graphics, I think, would work really great on Switch if the gods were to be so kind. Yeah, there's actually a fighting game on Switch. I think it's out now that was designed in the style of a NeoGeo Pocket game. I love it. It has that art style. I don't know that one. I can't remember what it's called, but it's definitely out there. Oh, I forgot that the Super Spy was a, an S&K. joint. That was NeoGeo. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like a NeoGeo compilation is its own entity. So we, I think we're good on that thanks to the arcade archives. But I do love the idea that,

you know, S&K does see value in its pre-Neo geo work. Because I, yeah, I would love to see a lot of these games dredged up and compiled. I don't know exactly how big this collection is going to be. But I'm all for preserving lost games, you know, unloved games. So I hope that, yeah, I don't know. I don't know how obscure they could get like, it's sound like Akari Warriors and Athena, as bad as they were on NES,

they still have a certain name cachet. So I feel like those have to be published in order to get some of the other stuff in there. I don't know if they could do a standalone. That's just the obscure stuff that never saw home release. Well, I mean, that's, yeah, I guess it's probably part of the, part of the hook of the, the zero and the, the zero collection was the fact that, you know, here are the old, here are the game starring characters you know later on and just here are a bunch of games that we also made that you, you know, may not have heard before. I can't imagine how many PSP owners in 2011, you know, remember Tuske versus Commander. I don't, I didn't even know that this compilation existed. And I was always on top of compilations. Well, they had made, they had made one that was basically all Neo Geo games. And they called

They called it arcade classics, but it was basically all NeoGeo games. Yeah, I remember that one. And I think they called it arcade classics. They may even call it Arcade Classics one in the hopes that make it up, like, more. But then they made zero orders to say, oh, let's go backwards, you know, and go with some older, older games. And then I don't know if either it didn't sell well or the PSP was drying up. But they just, they never really went forward with another collection. Well, this is totally different.

So I'm happy that even if it's taken. 15 years to happen that it is happening. Yes. All right. Well, thank you for coming in and filling us, regaling us with the history of S&K and explanations of what some of these games are, because I can only take it so far. My pleasure.

I'm very happy to be talking about S&K in a room with another person instead of just by myself. Do you sit around and talk to yourself often about S&K? Well, certainly by making these notes, I had to look at this like, well, what the hell is this game about? I want to play this game, you know, to anyone who happened to be listening with probably my children who were uninterested in my, your old man murderings yeah oh dad's at it again uh yeah yeah i'm i'm looking forward to the collection there's a lot of stuff in there that i'm looking forward to playing again and stuff

that i'm looking forward to playing for the first time i mean i'm a person who still has the neo geo x so i will i will certainly buy anything that has a collection of neo geo games on it all right so that is it for this episode of retronauts i'll have to get you on again some time to talk about Neo Geo. I hope so. I would love to talk about almost, yeah, almost anything S&K has made, but, you know, I enjoy other games too, so, you know, don't lose my number. I will not. Actually, I don't have your number, but I know where you live. I know where to find you. So, yeah, do you want to tell us where we can track you down on the internet and read your stuff? Well, I'm pretty active on Twitter for better for worse, and I use the handle Fight Club,

F-E-I-T, like my last name, and club, like the weapon or a group of people. And, you know, I'm on Twitter. I use that name on Twitter and YouTube and Twitch sometimes, if you'd like to watch me play an old game there. And perhaps by this episode, by the time this episode goes lives, maybe I will have some work written on the Retronaut's website. I'd like to think so. Yes, that would be ideal. Maybe about S&K. I certainly, I'll lead with that.

Okay. And, of course, I'm Jeremy Parrish. you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite and at Retronauts.com. Retronauts.com. Retronauts, the podcast, you can also find at Retronauts.com on places like iTunes and on the podcast, one network. We're supported through Patreon, patreon.com slash retronauts. If you give us $3, we in return will allow you access to all of our podcasts a week in advance at a higher bit rate with no commercials.

It's a very cool deal. I think so. I'm not just a guest. I'm a backer. All right. Well, that's the best way to go. So, yeah, that's it for this discussion of S&K. Please look forward to another episode of Retronauts in a week. And look forward also to the S&K-40th anniversary collection because I want more games like that to come out, more compilations like that to come out.

So it needs to be a success. And there's some cool stuff on there. So, yes, that is it. Goodbye. So, go on. Stop! Now, stop! More this

please! Cannasemate Don't stop to make the tears

I love what I've I've I don't don't

chouquet chouquet The Moller The Moller report, I'm Edonahue, with an AP News Minute. It's going to be able to be it's going to be able to be able to be able to be able to be a lot. 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 officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous 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. Thank you.