Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 186: Inside SNK's Archives

Episode Date: December 10, 2018

SNK 40th Anniversary Collection producer Frank Cifaldi walks us through the process of creating a definitive playable historic record of SNK's decades-old pre-Neo•Geo catalog.

This is being good retronauts, all according to plan, the New Japan plan, that is. Hi, everyone. Welcome to, I guess, everyone, welcome to, I guess this is kind of like a bonus episode of Retronauts. Back a few months ago, I recorded a segment or a conversation with Fight Club about the S&K collection because he's an S&K super fan. And now I'm here with the person who is pretty much the whip, crack in the whip on the S&K 40th anniversary collection. And that is, of course, longtime friend and one-time host of Retronauts, Frank Cepaldi. Yeah, you host. You hosted a few episodes. Yeah, yeah.

You did some cool episodes or the one with the Tengen people. Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I guess creative director is what I put in the credits. I don't remember for asking. Fair enough. Something like that.

You can make up your own. Yeah, you can make up your own title. It's fun. Yeah. Who cares about business cards. So, yeah, we are here at Portland Retro Gaming Expo and you're showing off the, you're kind of in charge of the video game history museum. Do you want to talk a little bit about that before we kick in to

Oh, God, I'd love to. But I could fill your whole podcast. Well, we can... Give us the elevator pitch on it, basically. So, video game history foundation is a nonprofit that I founded, I don't know, two years ago, something like that. And we are dedicated to making sure that historians have what they need to tell the story of video games. So mostly what that means is building a library, both digital and hopefully physical. and one of the things that we do is every year

the Portland Retro Gaming Expo we sponsor the museum and this is our second year doing it and this is actually the first year that we really kind of planned it from the start as opposed to working with someone else's collection and laying it out and what we wanted to do, we knew we wanted to do NES like all the show organizers wanted that

John Hancock, who is a friend of the show, you know, he has a nearly complete set, and we have these walls that were already built to house the Atari sets. We knew we wanted to have the whole NES set. But what I wanted to do was, okay, rather than this traditional sort of collector show museum where it's like, here's a bunch of rare things, like that bores me. I want to tell a story. And so I thought, okay, let's just go all NES. And I'm going to build an NES exhibit that speaks to me that tells,

what I think of as the NES story. So we call it staying with power 35 years of the NES and its games. And the basic narrative that we're telling in this museum exhibit is that the NES started

in 1983 and has never stopped. We just, you just kind of you know, you have to know where to look. So a lot of it focuses on, you know, and we're telling this through artifacts and ephemeral. We got a lot of great stuff out there. We got the point of purchase display from the New York launch, which is, like, that's amazing.

Yeah, that was the one that says, you thought video games were dead. Like, even, even at the time, they were acknowledging, like, oh, yeah, video games, they're over, but wait, we're here to save them. Yeah, I mean, that's like Nintendo's own marketing line. That's not just something that people are associated with them. Like, they, they embrace that from the start. To be fair, the ads that you're seeing that we put in were in trade magazines. So this is Nintendo telling toy stores.

Like, no, seriously, it's okay now, right? Nintendo didn't do a lot of consumer advertising weirdly enough. You don't really realize that until you go into this stuff. But, yeah, we told a lot of that. We have a lot of cool ephemeral stuff. I don't know. Do you have any favorite stuff you saw? I know you went through it.

No, I mean, the most interesting thing to me was what you were telling me about the plug-and-play games. That were all new video games, NES games, created from scratch in, you know, the 2004- For Konami. Yeah, okay, so, well, yeah, okay, I'll go back to that real quick, which is that we wanted to tell the story that, like, the NES doesn't just stop at 94. It's like, no, it kept going. So in the late 90s, you're still seeing games made in Taiwan and Hong Kong just released constantly. And some of them, well, most of them really are, like, you know, blatantly ripping things off

and downporting 16-bit games and stuff like that. But there were still original games coming out, too. And, you know, I don't mean to downplay the ports because they're actually, that's real development by real people. It's just legalities are different there. But yeah, what you were saying is that what I think is really interesting that people don't understand is around 2003, a lot of the hardware patents expire.

And so in America, it is now legal to sell a cloned NES. And guess what? There have been cloned NES systems since, you know, constantly being manufactured in Hong Kong since the old days. So 2003 was when you really started to see them show up mall kiosks sort of thing. Yeah, like that's when they really started popping up. Yeah, those got shut down by Nintendo, not because they were, like, the, the technology

was illegal, but because all of them had like, here's, you know, 101 games, most of which are versions of Contra and Super Mario Brothers. But there were very legal ones, uh, mostly from Majesco. Um, and there's, okay, there's like a Konami five and one that's over there. There's, uh, and that, that is a brand new Konami product from 2004 and it has, it has six games in it. Three of them are classic NES games running on an NES and three of them are brand new Konami NES games

released in 2004. Like Frogger for the NES came out in 2004. You know, but I don't think people think of it that way because people tend to think of NES games as being these things in gray shells. Well, I think you know, people think of them as things you can play in an NES. Sure. Which you

can't really do with those plug and play systems unless you were to scrape the ROMs out somehow and no one's done that. No one's done that. Yeah, that's weird. No one's done that. It's hard. It's really hard as water. I'm sure because it's, I'm sure it's all bespoke hardware and like there's probably a front end to make it complicated and so forth.

Well, the complicated part is that the ROM chips on the board are covered in this black epoxy that you cannot get rid of. And so you can't expose the ROM chips so you can't read straight off the pins and what you have to do, do you know, Brian Parker, he runs RetroZone, Retro USB,

yeah. When Brian has experimented with dumping these plug-in plays, what he has to do is trace every pin out on the board put a wire on it wire that to an NES cart and then like start reverse engineering it through an NES connector

that's a lot of work and no one's doing that so like that Konami stuff is not dumped as far as I know you saw the Intellivision plug and play like they commissioned brand new I didn't realize that was television but it was NES it's an NES system and they ported Intellivision games to the NES.

The Atari Flashback 1 is an NES. I didn't realize that. Yeah, a lot of people don't. And actually, my favorite thing about the television really quick, I put them both there. There was the Intellivision plug and play thing, but they did a second generation of it. I didn't realize that.

He's like, here's the new one. I had some new games. It had Astro Smash 2 on it. They made an official sequel to Astro Smash, a fake one for the NES. And then my favorite thing is on that same package there's a brand new game called, I forget, something, something golf. And it's a brand new fake television game for the NES that they made in, like, 2005. It's wild, yeah. But yeah, we want to show that stuff off and, like, the evolution of the home brew scene and things like that and kind of ended it.

I don't know if you saw the, oh, you did the very end because your book was right next to it. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the very, very end, there's kind of this open-ended question where it's like, we're starting to see legit companies republish their games. So are we going in the direction of vinyl where, you know, this is just going to be normal now or is this just kind of a weird trend? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, on the floor, there's, what are they called, Infinite Lives? Yeah.

And they're the company that does the ICs. They create the ICs for things like I Am 8Bits, Mega Man remakes and that sort of thing. And the NES maker Kickstarter. or like the ROM dumper that you can buy for the NES maker product or that certain backers could get by supporting, like they've made that. So there's a company now that exists to create actual NES chips, not just, you know, like here's a Raspberry Pi that is running an emulator layer

or something and barfing ROM data at you, but actual ICs. Right, exactly. It's really interesting. It is really interesting. that, and I don't know if, I don't know. Like, I kind of got the feeling when I was making this exhibit, and I don't know if this is the truth or not, but I kind of feel like we've hit a plateau of, like, nostalgia for this thing or excitement.

I don't know. I might be wrong. I might be completely wrong because Gelfth just sold 1,500 copies in, like, a day. You know, you saw that, right? I bought one. Yeah. It's a, I don't know. It's a new NES golf game on a cartridge.

Why not get it? Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't know how to predict this stuff anymore. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's probably, not that I know anything, but I feel like it's probably going to be something that, kind of like you say, like vinyl, where, you know, like people who are really into it are really into it and are enough to create a, you know, create a boutique market for it. Yeah. But we're not going to see like new NES cartridges at Barnes & Noble. Well, I say that, but for all I know those, those Data East cartridges.

This might be at Barnesville. I have no idea. Yeah, I always, like, what I always think of is half-priced books. Like, someday when we see brand-new NES carts and half-priced books, that's when we'll know. Right. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. But, you know, I could see it's sort of continuing.

Yeah. And I'd actually be happy if, you know, people started focusing more on the new stuff. Yeah. And not so much on the old stuff because the market there has just gotten so expensive. It has. It's really kind of unrealistic. Yeah. You can still get carts for most games pretty cheaply.

And that's a whole other conversation that I've been having this last couple of days where it's like, the whole collectability thing, I feel like it's got to hit that comic book trajectory where it's like, no, actually the only stuff that's worth money is the dead mint, like, key issues and like, you know, any random 1980 readable copy of X-Men is now a buck and it used to be like 10, yeah, I think anyway. Yeah, and I think that would be fine. Yeah, totally. Then you could just get the things that you want, play them, and great, good. Yeah, I mean, there are so many clone systems being sold now. Yeah. Some really good ones, too. Yeah.

You know, in addition to, like, the analog systems, you have smoke monster doing the mister or whatever it's called. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah. And so I feel like you're going to see more and more of these, like, high-end F-PGA. Yeah. FPGA. I always get the accurate thing stuff. Field programmable gate array.

Yeah. Not gate array. I know what it means. I just always get the letters mixed up. Yeah. A little dyslexia at work. Yeah, like I think we're going to see more and more of those. Yeah. And, you know, people are going to want to use them with, you know,

the kind of ROM socket plug-in thing that Infinite Lives is making and be able to play from original cartridges. Yeah, I think so. And it's just, it's just, to me, it's weird. I get records. Because records are analog in nature and you can't replicate entirely that analog signal, you know, on a CD, you're a. p3 or whatever, I think.

And yes, it's just digital bits. You know, it's just... It is, but I mean, I think it's mostly just having access to the code legally. Sure. People who don't want to go to a rom site and... Yeah, yeah. But, like, I feel like there can be a legit you know, solution

that's legal. Oh, yeah. That isn't buying this tall hunk of plastic, you know, like, it's just, it's just this weird cage for data. And I don't... For me, personally, I think, I think it's weird. I think that I can see a future where there's, you know, really high-end compatible consoles that can deliver these games to you in some other way. But I don't know if people

want that. I think the people that like these kinds of games also like the physicality of the cartridges. Yeah, I mean, there's something to that. Like, there is a certain thrill in plugging in a Zelda cartridge, and wow, the battery still works. Beyond that, I don't know. I like to document it, but I don't necessarily need to hold it in half. Right. I'm okay with, you know, like an EverDrive or something. Yeah, it's fine. It's very convenient. Yeah, Ever Drive

is the same thing. It's the same game. It's just in a different shell. But anyway, that's all kind of the point. We were going to talk about the S&K collection, but, you know, I do feel like the NES, you know, the museum you've put together with all the ephemera really does tie into the philosophy you've taken with the S&K collection. That's actually true. Yeah. I mean, Fight and I talked about the. the games, a lot of the games that we knew about at the time and the games that we'd

experienced. But, you know, we had to kind of guess at the actual methodology behind it. And I feel like, you know, just kind of talking to you casually and seeing stuff you've tweeted, you've dug up a lot of interesting information that no one's ever really bothered to go searching for because, as in K has, like, very diehard fans, but they tend to gravitate around the Neo-Geo. Yes. So things that happen before the Neo Geo, it's kind of like, you know, before the NES with Nintendo or before the Genesis with Sega where people are like, oh yeah, that

happened, but let's talk about Sonic or let's talk about Super Mario Brothers. Yeah, because that was the thing that had cultural impact, right? So it's, you know, let's talk about magician lord, but who really cares so much about Vanguard or Psycho Soldier or something? Yeah, well, and actually Psycho Soldier

would be one of the few that that's actually talk about. Bad example. Okay, so prehistoric Isle. Right, yeah. Or like, I mean, you saw some of the obscure ones. Saske v. Commander. Sasuke versus Commander. Yeah.

Yeah. And for me, what I wanted to do with this product was my target audience, I think, was SNK fans who don't already know this stuff because I think that's almost all of them. And I think unlike the previous projects I worked on at Digital Eclipse, you know, Megaman Legacy Collection, Disney Afternoon, Street Fighter 30th, there's not really much of built-in fan base for these games. I mean, there's people who, you know, maybe remember and liked things like Akari Warriors and Athena.

God bless them. If they played them on the NES first, they probably didn't like them. But a lot of people did. Like, a lot of people... Like, I got it for Christmas, therefore I liked it. Right. Yeah, I am very, very recently, like a few days ago before this recording, recorded two hours of footage of Icari Warriors on NES,

which, by the way, is still not the complete game. That game just goes on forward. It's really long. Freaking ever. Oh, my God. It's such a slog. But, you know, I knew I was in for a bad time because I played it back in the day and I hated it back then. And I was much more tolerant of mediocrity in 1988 because, you know, I didn't have quite as broad a base to compare against it.

And even then I didn't enjoy it. And I couldn't beat it because the only way to beat the game is to keep abusing the ABA code to continue infinitely. Yeah. And eventually that code got me so that I saw. spawned inside of a like a trap so I couldn't get out and enemies wouldn't kill me and so I was it yeah well I'm done with this I mean as you know it was a micronics right my chronics joint so it was done very cheaply and quickly but yeah I posted something to Twitter about it and I had a lot of people who were like oh you poor guy but a lot of people also were like you know I loved this game

yeah and I think some people were saying thought I was trashing the arcade game which is not the case that game is really cool in the arcade it's actually great yes it's it's a mess but people still love it because, you know, like, it was maybe the first co-op NES action game. Oh, that might be. Now that I'm thinking about it, yeah, I need to add that to my script, I guess, because... You should look into that. There were two-player games, but, you know, you had ice climber, but that wasn't really the same thing. This was like a, you know, kind of just a running gun, mindless action game with another person. Yeah. And that makes

a big difference. You know, before that you had Commando, that was basically the only other game in the style. Could you do two at the same time in NES? No, no. Yeah, I didn't think so. Yeah, I think, and that also, I think, explains a lot of the frame rate issues and things like that, is it had to support two players simultaneous on, you know, a toy. There were a lot of bad guys and projectiles. Yeah. Micronix had trouble with frame rates on the best of days.

They did. Yeah, they, I don't know. I almost kind of respect it because I know how the NES works and I know that Akari Warriors is impossible to do on the NES correctly. But it's not great. I would not, okay, you should buy the S&K 40th collection. Yes, because it's not impossible to do Fire Warriors correctly on Switch. Right. PC.

Yeah. Well, I was going to say, you should buy it still, and you should poke at the NES one, but play the real one. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there were some great S&K NES games. Yeah. Crystalis is still my favorites, even if it is a little grindy. Yeah. But I think it'll be interesting for people to play.

Yeah, I think it'll be interesting for people to play these games. and experience the arcade versions for the first time because S&K arcade games were not common in the U.S. There was a convenience store near my house when I was in junior high, around the time the NES game came out that had Icari Warriors. And so I did get to see it in the arcade

and play with the weird controller and be like, oh, okay. We should talk about the weird controller. Yeah, please do. Loop lever joystick was, it was the first game they used it in was called Terrible Name. name here, TNK3. It was just called Tank in Japan. TNK3.

Yeah, I don't know. Why did they give it? Why is it three? I don't know. I don't know. I asked, we worked with a guy who was sort of there at the time in like a marketing capacity and he had no idea. The U.S. market? No, Japan. Oh, okay. S&K has been great about like access to Japanese. Like, so real, real breath of fresh air working with them is that this is the rare Japanese company that acknowledges that people worked there before right now you know so like it acknowledged that there's a history and we can talk to these people yeah that's that's very difficult it's very difficult to do and and s nk has been wonderful about that we got a lot of good insight and stuff because of it um but uh god what are they talking about

the the loop lever oh the loop lever joystick thank you so like they they created it for tnk3 and it's basically if you imagine just a joystick in an arcade you know and you tilt to move it just like a normal joystick but you also twist it to aim and you You can twit, and it clicks in eight different directions. Right. Yeah. So it's, you know, a joystick is basically a lever. Yeah.

That works, you know, in most cases, in eight directions. And you can loop it around. Right. And then, and then also on top, it's like you have the spinner from Tempest or something. So it's like two things in one, but you don't control it with two hands. You control in one. Yeah, you grip it in one hand. So you're twisting even as you maneuver the lever.

It's not good, actually. I don't like it. No? I don't like the loop lever. I think. that game, do you ever play Mad Planets in the arcade? You know, I saw that one and it freaked me out

when I was a kid. It's weird. It's a super who made that anyway? I don't remember. I remember. It was like Centurie or something like that. I can't remember. That game freaked me the hell out and I never played it. But, you know, that was another game that, like, obviously should have been twin stick, but wasn't because they were still figuring that out. And that had

a much better solution, which was it was a flight stick in your left hand and like an arcanoid dial in the right hand. And like, that works way better because you're You're hitting the trigger on the flight stick and you're turning with the other. It also makes it completely impossible to replicate on a home system. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you just cannot do it.

But same with the Carri Warriors theoretically, right? But luckily, for us, it is just an eight-way switch. It's not analog. You know, it's not infinite turning. It's not like arcanoid. And so we were able to make all these loop lever games into twin stick games. we were able to sort of like before we get to the emulator part we had the sort of layer that was just kind of injecting things and then it just knows if you tilt up on the R stick you point up and um technically like there's sort of a weird philosophical debate to have here because like you couldn't snap from north to south right with the loop lever that's one of the reason the NES version is so bad because they tried to recreate that because you are rotating your character right like their aim. So the Sprite shifts around, like the Sprite rotates to move.

You are a slave. You are a slave. You are a slave to their timing. You know what I mean? And like, and that's been the problem with Akari Warriors to date if you play in a maim or whatever. Or even like S&K Classic Zero or the PSP Mini versions. The way that they solve it is you have shoulder buttons that are turn clockwise and turn counterclockwise, right?

And that's just, it's not right. because in the arcade game with the loop lever, you could muscle memory like 3 o'clock fire, you know, like 6 o'clock fire. You could just figure that, like you could get to a point where you could instantly do that. And to me, the only way to replicate anything close to that is to make it a twin stick game.

So that's what we did. And I know why they didn't make it a twin stick game at the time because... Because it's hard. Oh, you're talking about in the arcade. Yeah, in the arcades. You know, Robotron, 2084 was, what, 1982. Something like that.

Yeah. And so that game did have twin sticks. Yeah. But the thing is, when you press in a direction to shoot, like the right stick is firing. Yeah. And you don't want that in Ikari Warriors because you have limited ammo. And you also have grenades. So the only way I think they could have done that was to have twin sticks with a button on top.

So I don't, that actually, that seems like it might have been an easier approach than what they did. But, you know, it was still the period, mid-80s was just everyone saying, we've got to do something different and unique. This is the arcade. We are making our own hardware. We're creating something and who cares about compatibility, who cares about sustainability, who cares if anyone is familiar with it. You know, it thrived a lot on novelty.

So they were like, let's solve this problem in a new and different way. And maybe we'll stumble across something that's great. And I don't know that it is great, but it's definitely interesting and it works. Yeah. It's very distinct. It is. And because it exists. existed, a lot of really interesting games happened.

Right. And, you know, when you do jump into a tank in Ikari Warriors or when you play TNK3, it really makes sense because your tank has a turret that rotates independently of the tank's body. Yeah. So, yeah, okay, all of a sudden, it kind of comes into place, or comes into, like, into focus. But, you know, when you're a guy, like, swiveling around your waist, it's a little odd, but it's fine. Like, it takes a minute. And, you know, you can, you can get it, but it's not ideal.

These games just feel like I didn't know I liked Dakari Warriors Until we got it working Twin State I actually didn't know I liked it Now I like it And actually I like it better than all of the ones that followed I like it better than Victory Road I like it better than search and rescue

It's actually a really cool game But yeah I feel like I really feel like a lot of the reason that people don't talk about these games very often is that you can't maim them correctly and so they just kind of to get forgotten unless you happen to have played them in the arcade or you go to

Gallup and Ghost or whatever. And so like, you know, I think our challenge was to, you know, not only sort of, I don't know, I think of this product is having to educate an audience, you know what I mean? Because like I don't, I don't, I might be wrong, but I don't think there's, there's that much of a built-in audience that specifically wants to play these games. But if we have this sort of boutique package that's like, hey, you like S&K, this is where S&K came from. It's where it started.

This is everything, you know, this represents everything before the Neo Geo. And if you really play the games, you see the roots of the Neo Geo. Like, that's what we're going for. You know, it's like, it's like a, I always think of these products as being, like, the equivalent of an art book that you play on your console that happens to have playable games. Yeah. And you've really kind of brought that to the fore with the museum portion of this. And that even gets into like, hey, this is what came before Neo Geo because you're, with the micro kit.

Is that what it's called? Oh, sure. Micron kit. Yeah, I was showing you, yeah, Miccon. Micron kit, yeah. Microcomputer is what that stands for, yeah. Because it was, I mean, it's in the 70s. So microcomputer in an arcade game, that's new.

Because it's not discrete logic anymore. It's actually chips, you know. Yeah, so, yeah, the feature that you're talking about, we put in, because we couldn't include all, I think it's like 60 games that S&K made in the 70s and 80s. we'd be working on this forever but like we did a curated selection of them that represents the breadth of the company I think but then in the bonus features

we talk about literally all of them because it's just it's just not done and yeah mycon kit was their first series of games were in the mycon kit series and it was basically like you were saying it almost predicted the Neo Geo because the Micon kit allowed you to put in

different Micon games and swap them out. So like Micon Block and Space Battleship Yamato and I forget what the other ones were. There were, well, we know there were at least three. There may have been as many as six.

We're not sure. And even S&K is not sure. No, no one knows. It's really interesting. We don't know. But see, that was a revelation to me because I've done research into that when I was first working on talking about the versus system. I was like, well, that wasn't the first of these. Data East had something like 1981, 82.

So they must have invented. I couldn't find anything, you know, even dating that, but then there is the Mycon kits. So that idea of like plug and play interchangeable, almost like cartridge-based arcade games has been around since the 70s. Yes, S&K may have pioneered it. Maybe. Actually, that's the weird thing going through this is that there are so many things

that I think S&K pioneered, but I'm not sure. continue. I think they invented continue in Vanguard. I really can't find an earlier example of that. And see, even games like Vanguard, like I am aware of Vanguard. It was a game that I heard about a lot when I was a kid. Yeah, because it got home ports and stuff, too.

And also, you know, it would just be in like books, like Jeff Rowan books or something like that. But it's not one that I've ever actually played. So I'm looking forward to playing this game finally after almost 40 years because I'm like, well, this is something that has been, been at the edge of my awareness my entire life. And I would like to know what the hell it is. Well, spoiler, it's not 1981 anymore. So. Oh, and I'm perfectly capable of transporting myself back in time to say, I mean, it's, I've covered more than 100 Game Boy games. Yeah, I know, I know. So let me tell you. Are you over 100?

Yeah, so I'm really excited to play some of these games. Yeah, I'm really excited to play some of these games. Yeah, I mean, not just the loop lever games, but just other games that I'm like, oh, Psycho Soldier. Like, I know why that game is a big deal, but guess what? I've never actually seen the arcade machine for Psycho Soldier. There you go. Yeah. So this will be a chance to, you know, get my hands on it.

Yeah, and especially with the DLC, we were able to put in some of the, the, what I consider more interesting and strange, more experimental stuff from the earlier 80s period. Like, I showed you fantasy for a minute, which you hadn't seen, before um that game oh actually just backtrack real quick i think i also think s nk invented the boss fight uh sasuke versus commander i'm pretty sure is the first boss fight um there are six distinct bosses in this very simple shooter game uh all of them have different powers they're all named and the flyer calls them bosses and this is like 1979 wow okay yeah i think those are the first Interesting. Yeah.

But anyway, fantasy is one of those really weird ones that, like, you just, you know, no one played fantasy. It's a weird game. But, like, SNK in the early 80s was really trying to break new ground. I mean, not just the boss fights and the continues and everything, but fantasy came out the same year as Donkey Kong. And it's very much in that same sense, like a narrative, you know, which is kind of a new concept. I don't need to explain that to you You know what I mean It's fine

Not necessarily everyone listening to us Yeah And fantasy does that but more Like you saw the opening cutscene with voice acting Right and like there is an ending to the game That's like even more cinematic than Donkey Kong Because like in Donkey Kong the ending cinematic is sort of like in the map But this one just cuts to a full like full screen like new art cutscene for an ending

with more voice acting and then it loops again and like you know donkey Kong had four distinct stages this one has like six and they're like the gameplay is kind of different in all six of them none of them are good like it's not that's why people remember donkey Kong yes exactly but like SNK had this really weird period where they were really into like pushing the envelope on like narrative driven arcade games like it was that and there's one after that called pioneer balloon that's kind of the same thing where there's like a clear narrative loop that's not as you know interesting as fantasies but um I just I don't know like I I think people never really give 80s SNK the attention that they deserve and I think that they were actually really

groundbreaking and interesting and it's it's really hard to find information about SNK it is I mean I'm sure you've explained this firsthand but you know when I was doing an episode of Game Boy Works on Dexterity, it was really hard to track down the specifics like who made this game. Was it actually made internally at S&K? It's, I think I sort of pinned down that it might have been 80K actually. That makes sense. Because they had released a game that was kind of similar to that beforehand. I can't remember what exactly line of logic I used for that.

But it kind of seemed like, yeah, so this might have been developed for them by 80K. And, you know, I had other people doing their home games. And I think you said that they had all, you know, like a contractor doing a lot of their arcade games. They did. They kind of, yeah, I think I'm not sure when S&K internal actually started. I don't think anyone really knows it wasn't there. Like, I actually suspect that the first S&K internal game might have been something like Joyful Road and 84, 85, something like that.

And I think everything before that was contract. Like, I know for sure that all of the, like, 80 through 82 games are Tose. Well, I suspect that anyway, because we know two of them for sure, and then the rest are, like, on the same hardware and have a lot of the same fingerprints. You know, we'll never know, really. But, yeah, and then, like, dexterity, to your point, like, you know, where did that come from? Contract would make sense, right? But then, as I was able to point out to you later, which I wouldn't have known if I wasn't talking to ex-SNK staff myself and hearing this from them, that dexterity was actually the follow-up to an arcade game that S&K had done internally. in 84 called Canvas Croquis, which I don't know what that title means.

What's a croquis? I know what a croquette is. Yeah, I was about to say it sounds tasty. It does. But Canvas Croquie is a very similar game to Dexterity. And it, you know, predated it by like six years. And it's like, Dexterity is clearly the follow-up to that. The guy that I spoke to who was at S&K at the time called it a sequel to Canvas

Crokees. So like, that's the lineage of it. But, I mean, that's the one guy. It's not, you know. But, I mean, S&K didn't make a lot of Game Boy games. They might have made just one. Yeah. So did it make sense for them to have, like, their internal dev staff, say,

let's get up to speed on this portable system for one game? So, okay. That was released right around the time that the ABS was hitting. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They, yeah, it's really interesting. If you look back at their history, like, they didn't do Genesis or Super Nintendo or anything like that.

They did arcade and they did NES. and then they did one MSX port. So the ICARI version, the MSX version of Akari was done internally. And then they did one Game Boy game, probably internally. So I think they were like toying with it and then didn't pursue it, maybe. But, yeah. I assume once the NeoGeo launched, it was all hands on down.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And actually, you know, we've dug up interviews with former staff that basically complained about that. You know, they just kind of felt that like we can't innovate in the arcade anymore because we're just stuck on this hardware now. The director of Akari Warriors said that, you know, in an interview once that, like, he felt that he couldn't really have done something like Akari Warriors

if he kept going on the NeoGeo because he was just stuck with those specs made for that kind of game. But I don't know, like that. I think historically that it was a good move for them to the NeoGeo. I think it allowed them to pump out way more games than they could have otherwise. it allowed them to, like, farm out games to other developers

and make money off of it, you know? Like, I think it was ultimately the right move for them, but I do think that you lose a lot of the creative weirdness that they had in the 80s once you get into the 90s. Yeah, and that's what makes this such an interesting collection. Yeah. Pluto TV is the leading free streaming television service. Watch more than 100 TV channels and thousands of movies on demand all for free.

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Bandastico. Carry-out only. for this limited time offer. Prices participation in charges may vary. Yeah. So how many loop levered games were there in total? Let me see if I can count. Let's see. Ikari, Victory Road, Akari Warriors 3,

which, by the way, is really interesting as an arcade game. It's terrible. It's the worst game on this set, like straight up. The arcade version, the NES one's okay. But I didn't realize until we got everything working that the way you're supposed to play Akari 3 with the loop lever joystick is that you twist to do roundhouse kicks

so like you hit the kick button and twist at the same time and like you can jump kick in roundhouse too it just feels very unfinished it feels like they had the tech going and they had to finish it and get it out um so the three Akari's Bermuda Triangles is a is like a schmop with loop lever so it's kind of like a twin stick schmup

um there's a very obscure sequel to that called World Wars. TNK. Oh, yes, thank you. TNK3, which is the predecessor to Akari. It stars whatever's name is, Clark, Ralph, I don't know.

Oh, does it? Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, technically he gets in the tank at the beginning. Hence the tank presence in the Akari War. Yeah, exactly. And I didn't realize that was like a narrative connection. I thought it was a narrative story, like a design connection. Yeah, it's a narrative.

Not there's really any story. Sure, but as much, you know, like the shared universe. Yeah, it is a shared universe for sure. it's a canon that the guy in the tank in TNK3 is whoever player one is in Akari, I don't remember the name. Search and Rescue is another one, and that's one

that no one talks about it. I think it's really cool. It's like, do you ever play Victory Road? Not really. It's, yeah, because it's only the NES version's accessible and it's really, really bad. But Victory Road is,

it obviously wasn't Akari Warriors, too. They just kind of made it that at some point, but, you know, it's basically loop lever shooter like in hell you're fighting demons. It's got like a weird sort of sci-fi thing element to it. And search and rescue almost feels like the follow up to that but in like 88 or 89

or whatever and I've never I'd never seen it before I worked on this but like it's actually really fun because it's you know it's loop lever aim and shoot but then also the second button is like jump dive and so you can like

jump dive and turn and do like you know like Max Payne's style like flying through the air stuff shooting John Wu. Yeah, exactly. And you can do that, you know, shooting like Geiger aliens with flamethrowers and stuff. And it's actually pretty neat. And that one, that one's part of the free DLC that's coming after launch. So that's, that's something I'm really happy about too. Like that's, that's not our decision at all. But, you know, NIS and SNK decided that we're adding 10 more games for free. Actually 11. But that one's funny, because we added an 11th one.

We're like, is this okay? Can we do this? Yeah, sure. Which one is that? It was World Wars, because we had Bermuda Triangle running. And World Wars is, like, it's a very, very similar. Like, it just, you know, once Bermuda's working, World Wars works. And when I say similar, it's like the same music.

Like, they didn't even change the music. It's just a sort of a weird quasi-sequie to Bermuda. But, like, we added an 11th for free. ourselves because we just wanted, I wanted all the loop lever games to be done. Yeah, so all the loop lever games will be on this collection. Yep. Once you get the

the DLC for it, the free DLC, it would be all the loop lever games. Okay, I should clarify all of the digital, oh, Time Soldiers. It's another one. Okay. Yeah. That's technically an ADK game. That one wasn't done internally at SNK.

It's done by ADK, but we included that one anyway, even though we kind of skewed more toward S&K internal than outsourced. But, yeah, I wanted to make sure they were all included because, like, getting that twin stick working is not an easy thing to do and, you know, not to super gloat or anything, but I don't know that anyone but us would bother knowing to do that and, like, executing on it.

And I just, like, I want to make sure that these games are actually playable, like, forever because I don't know if there's going to be an S&K 50th anniversary collection, you know, guys like us working on. This might actually be the last shot that anyone has on making World Wars feel good. Yeah, and, you know, it's not even beyond if you look beyond just S&K,

I feel like this is kind of a rare occurrence in video game curation because you have a company that is established enough that it's still around to say, hey, 40 years of history. Yeah. And it has this really extensive archive and

is willing to dig into that, but there aren't Well, somewhat extensive archive. Okay, okay, an extensive catalog. Yes, there, thank you. Yes, archive of games. That company was bought and sold, so things got scattered. But, you know, so it's big enough that, you know, there is this opportunity to look back and say, hey, let's get these games out there. But at the same time, there is this element of sort of this esoteric element about them.

So people don't necessarily know these games that way. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And there's lots and lots. I mean, oh, my God. The maim lists, it's just like, what are these games? Yeah, there's a million.

So many companies, so many publishers. But, you know, a company, again, like Centauri or Universal, like they're not around anymore. Yeah. Who owns those games? Does anyone own those games? No one knows in a lot of cases. So, you know, for those games, we're never going to see collections, at least not, you

know, for another hundred years when the copyright finally expires. Well, and then no one's going to care. Right, exactly. I mean, I don't know. there might be some weird market for, I don't know, I always think of, you know, when, I think of a lot of the retro compilations as being the equivalent of like going to big lots and it's like, here's a hundred cowboy movies on DVD for 10 bucks, you know, and like there might be something like that. Yeah, like those retro, um. Oh, retro bit. Yes. It's like those retro bit collections where it's, you know, just all kinds of random Jalico stuff on there. And you're, you know, it's just like no one has any connection to most of these games. games. No, but they can get the rights to them.

There's content. Here's Maru's mission. Enjoy. Yeah. No, I think, yeah, I think that there's only so many companies that have the rights cleared up for all these games and they just get them out. By the way, that retro bit thing, I got to find that. They have that, they have that console with a bunch of NES games built in. I don't know if they even sell it anymore because I was on the show floor.

They don't have it. But one of them that they have is the Bashy Bazook prototype that we dumped. I think it's on their most recent one. Yeah. Like, that's probably the. rom that we dumped that they just got from the internet so i kind of want to get like the official thing that's like of the prototype that i have i have an extra one of those i'll send it to you yeah yeah cool i'm i was so disappointed because they announced it was going to be on cartridge at c yes remember

that didn't happen yeah i was like oh i'm going to give bashy bazook on cartridge yeah i was looking like a weird loop forward to like the the jallico collection yeah because the jallico stuff's pretty good some of it yeah i like bashy bazook actually have you tried it uh no it's interesting it's a weird sort of like i'm not going to call it a metroidvania but it's like it's like theatrical metroidvania you know what i mean where it kind of feels like you're in a big world and it'll do things like you'll go down and there'll be a tunnel off to the side that isn't actually a tunnel but they'd like pepper the world up to make it look big interesting and the english translation uh is it's got one of my favorite video game lines that i just really loved it's

I mean, it doesn't sound that great in context, but it's like you have to take an elevator to get to the boss and you like talk to MPCs. And right before the first boss you talked to an MPC and it's the weird alien creature and they're like telling you you got to take, you got to get to the boss on the next floor down and they're like, but take the elevator, we're still mopping the stairs.

I'm like, that's great. That's a great line. Like, that's really fleshing out this world. Like, in a, in kind of a funny way, too. Like, yeah, you're in some kind of world-saving adventure are going to fight a big boss, but there's still people just doing their janitorial work. Can you not track through their floor, please?

I mean, the world goes on, even in crisis. People still got to mop the stairs because they get dirty. Yeah. That's very, like, Final Fantasy 7 shinra building kind of. Yeah, yeah. But it's just in this dumb platform game on the NES. It's really cute. So, yeah, we need to wrap up here.

But any final words you have to offer people for why they should consider getting the S&K collection besides, you know, we've already talked about. Sure, all the features and stuff, whatever. I'm personally excited about it. Like, I love the fact that not only are we going to be able to play something like Ikari Warriors with twin sticks, but because it's on Switch and, you know, it's going to work fine with the, uh, The flip grip. The flip grip. Yeah, we can talk about that. You will actually be able to play Ikari Warriors like in a best case scenario.

Yeah, you actually can't. Yeah, it works with, like, all of them work with it. So I'm happy to have, like, played a very tiny part in making that possible. It's kind of a cool feeling. Yeah. I guess that, that, you know, brings my objectivity with this project into question, but I don't really care. We made the maybe the first completely flip-grippable game. I don't know, because all the UI and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, you guys are the first. First, certainly, to have developed a game with that in mind. Yeah. There have been a couple of patches, I think, that have, like for Zakaria pinball. Yeah. That said, oh, hey, this didn't originally work with FlipGrip. We were in the wrong direction, but now we can do both. Yeah.

So it's cool that people are doing that, but this is definitely more down my alley. Yeah. Here's some classic games that are interesting. That were vertical and you've been playing correctly now. Yeah. You haven't been able to play them in a vertical mode before, so now you do. Yeah. I guess what I would say is that, like,

you know, I don't, to your point earlier, there's not going to be very many opportunities where someone's going to put real polish and love into a collection of things that don't have a big established fan base. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the only product we ever get to do like this, you know? And I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, and I, I really just kind of, you know, really kick myself a lot on this project just being like this might never happen again. Like it might be up to us to represent S&K's, you know, 80s catalog for the only time it's ever really going to happen.

And, you know, we spent a lot of time just making these games feel right and giving them the respect they deserve. And I just, it's the product I want to see for these old games. Like I mean, you know, you and I are, well, oh my God, I can't believe I'm going to say this. We're retro knots. You know what I mean? we explore, right? Like, we want to

explore and learn. That was the idea behind the podcast. Right, exactly. And that's why the name is there. And, and, and, and to me, there's no, like, products that let you do that unless it's accidental. You know what I mean? Like, something like a, a plug-in-play system that has, like,

Jalico and, like, Pico stuff and Wisdom Tree on. Like, it's just, like, whatever we can get the rights to. You like caveman ninja kid? You know? Remember that. Like, that to me, like, that's, like, that's like accidental exploration, but this is like, we treated this like it's a, like, we'd like to think of it more like a record label where we're curating, you know what I mean, a collection

of things that's representative of what this company was. And I don't know, like I, I, I think we did a really good job on this. I hope you guys like it. And, yeah, I hope we get to make more stuff like this. I would love to, you know, even with S&K, like something I've pitched internally to them is like we should do neo geo rarities you know just that as the title you know what i mean like i want video games to go in that direction right where like i mean like i had a record back in the early 90s called david gethen rarities you know what i mean and it's just like here's a bunch of deep cuts from all the guys on geffin you know and it had like a nirvana b side that wasn't on anything else and like all this other stuff and it's like i want video games to be like that you know

what I mean, where we understand that there, people can like this stuff enough to want to learn and explore, um, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, like, find buried treasure like that or, or, um, acknowledge that, that there is, there's, there's, there's, there's value to games that aren't, quote, unquote, good. You know what I mean? Like, like, like, there's games on this collection that I, I, I wouldn't call fantasy. good. Like, fantasy is not a good game.

I love fantasy. Like, I love that bad, flawed, weird game. And I want there to be a world where there's, you know, where there's commercial viability for stuff like that. And, you know, so

please buy this so that we can do more of them. Yeah, well, we need to wrap, but I'm really impressed with what I've seen so far. Thank you. I can honestly say that just the overall package, the selection of games and the presentation and all the extras. The watch mode we didn't

even talk about. Yeah, like all the stuff you put in there is really a complete package. It's like an M2 remaster, but instead of being one game, it's 20 or 30 games. Yeah, yeah. And that's really, like, it's great. So I'm I really hope this does well for you guys, and I hope

that you're able to use this to go to other publishers and say, let us do this for you. Yeah, I hope so too. You know, like Konami wasn't going to do Dracula X Chronicle on PlayStation 4 until Sony went to them and we're like, hey guys, can we put these games out? And Konami was like, video games have value?

Okay, go ahead. So why not go to Konami and say, look at what we did for S&K. You guys have some pretty great arcade games too. Let's get Quarth and Twindy and you know, all that stuff that's not licensed on here. It's okay. We can skip TMNT and aliens, but what about Contra

guys? What about, you know, like haunted castle? Come on. Well, that's That's its own challenge, Jeremy. I'm sure. That's the final boss level. Actually, Nintendo would be final boss level. Nintendo is final boss level. Absolutely, yeah.

But it's letting me do mother collection and whatever is final boss. Right, yeah. But this is like, Konami would be like the death before Dracula in Castlevania. I think Konami would be the one right before Nintendo. Yeah, I think so. Like Capcom's pretty easy. No, Square Enix. That's true.

Square Nix would be the one right before Nintendo. Yeah. But even they've worked with M2. So they're, you know, the second. In Zets collection. They're potentially open to it. You're right. You're right.

You never know. And they've got some crazy stuff out there. You get some MSX games compiled. Oh, man. I would love to do a Konami MSSX. Or like their, you know, sharp 68,000 games or PC88 or whatever the hell they You're talking about Square Enix still, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, if you get Inix in there, then all bets are off. My God, their early stuff? Yeah. Yeah. Let's get some Lolita syndrome in there. All right. Some weird, sketchy. Completely unplayable stuff that we have to translate.

novels. Yep. Maybe not that, but there's a lot of stuff. But Konami. Konami MSX stuff would be amazing. I'd love to do that. Yeah. And there was a Konami MSX collection for, uh, for Saturn. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I think there were like two or three volumes. Two volumes and they compiled them into a single. But they couldn't possibly sell that here. Nope. But maybe we can. I don't know. I'd like to. I don't know. So the future is wide open for you guys. Wait, way, I got it. Konami MSX and FDS. because those are both really interesting and call it Konami on disc. Oh, there you go.

All right. So if you're listening to Konami and make it happen. Anyway, I know you've got things to do here at Portland. Yeah, I got a panel to do. Let everyone know where we can find you online and where we can find us in K-40th anniversary collection and other projects by you. Yeah, so the foundation itself,

a nonprofit that I founded, we are at gamehistory.org. We have a real cool Patreon set up where you can get on our Discord and hang out and talk history and help me figure this whole thing out. And then me personally, Twitter at Franks Folley, that's C-I-F-A-L-D-I, one word, and DMs are open,

but I might not respond to you for weeks at a time because I'm a terrible person that's very busy. All right, and you've already heard the rundown on where to find Retronauts, so you know the deal. You're listening to us now. Thanks for listening. And be sure to check out S&K-40th Anniversary Collection, which should have gone on sale very recently by the time you're hearing this.

It's a bunch of interesting, some very good, some very bad games, but all curated with a lot of love and care and attention to detail, and that's great. So it's a great example of, you know, capturing not just a moment of video game history, but something much broader and more valuable, in my opinion. Thank you. With Domino's week-long With Domino's week-long carry-out deal, you can carry out large three-topping pizzas and now, medium-thre-topping handmade pan pizzas for $7.99 each.

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Carry out only. You must ask for this limited time offer. Prices participation and charges may vary. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House his 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 a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started showing. 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 and a man, police say acted as his lookout

have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.