Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 196: Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom

Episode Date: January 25, 2019

You've heard of Hudson's Adventure Island, but how about Hudson's adventure games? Though the developer was mostly known for platforming and bomber men, in their pre-console-development years, Hudson cashed in on the adventure game craze. And one remnant from this era managed to sneak over to American shores: the NES port of Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Nina Matsumoto, and Chris Sims as the crew ponders this clunky-but-charming vegetarian adventure.

This week on Retronauts, you can win Friends with Salad. Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. Yes, we've gotten your letters and your phone calls. We're finally doing an episode on this classic game that everyone loves and knows about. Before I continue, who is here with me today in this room in? What city are we in? National Harbor. Is that really a city?

Or is it more of a... It's like the Vatican. We can see the Washington Monument from the window. Just say Washington. It's more of a series of strip malls. But I'm Bob Mackey. Who's here with me? Oh, hi.

I'm Jeremy Parrish. I am best served with lime and tonic. And who else is here? I'm Chris Sims, and I am ready to reboot this property. Oh, me too. It has been fallow far too long. Oh, I see what you did there. In 30 years.

And who else is here? Try to look away. Wait, what did you say? Try to look away. Oh, okay. Yes. It's a reference. The classic fighting system in this game.

Yes, which is very Japanese. It's a combat system on this game. And hard to localize. They tried their best. They did try their best. I asked for this podcast, by the way. This was Nina's request. She's our special guest for this episode, and I asked her,

you're going to be in town for retronauts or you're going to be at this convention for retronauts. What do you want to do? She gave me a list of topics. And I have a connection with this game and she does as well. And it's a classic adventure game and one of the first that I played

and possibly, no, it's not the first that was released in America for the NES but it's a very formative game in my opinion. It's Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. It might be my first adventure game ever. I should qualify that. It was the first Japanese adventure game

I believe to make it over to the United States. And that's why I think it's an important game. And it's just so weird, I think it merits talking about. And where does a shadow gate fall into your east-west rubric? Because it was those are developed by a Japanese company, but they're ports of an American game. So I don't count those. They're Hapa. Is that half American, half Japanese? Did you say Hapa? Hapa. Is that a term? Yeah, it's like slang for. I've never heard that before. Isn't it a Hawaiian term? I think so, yeah. Okay. I'm a big fan of adventure games in general. And I feel like this kind of sparked my love for adventure games.

I can't, I'm not sure if this is my first adventure game or if Maynick Mansion was. Manyk Mansion was definitely my first. Or, I also used to play Commodore 64 when I was younger. And there was killed until dead, which is a murder mystery adventure game. But Princess Tumania was like the first adventure game I played all the way through. I never really finished Maniac Mansion. It was too hard for me back then. It was too hard.

But just a little kid. Does anyone else have experience with this game at all? Um, mostly what I know of it is that the forums that used to be affiliated with, well, forums that are still associated with the site that I used to run my personal blog, uh, talking time, uh, had let's plays and someone did a let's play of this game in thorough detail, which was very funny and turned Percy into like our forum mascot for years. And he still shows up like peeping around from, from things and like they created new emojis based on him and like Sprite art.

It's like he was a phenomenon in our forums for years. This was like a decade ago. Percy is quite a character. He's very memorable for this game. He's the worst. Yes, I agree. But I also love how he's a very Japanese fruit. He's a persimmon, which most people, especially most kids back then, did not know what the

hell a persimmon was. I still have never seen one or had one in my life. It's delicious. They're good. Yeah. And like. A friend who lives in Alameda who has a persimmon tree. It's very nice.

When Arino played it on GameCX, he made a joke about like, Who puts a persimmy in a salad? But I did that myself. I put a persimmon in a salad. It's really good. I recommend it. Interesting. Pickle persimins are very, very good.

I don't know where to buy them. Dry persimids are good, too. But Chris, do you have any experience with this game at all? No. Okay. I'm just here for color commentary. Yes.

I remember seeing it because it has a very distinctive cover. It's got that not claymation, but it's, yeah, no, it's the diarama style. Which is very popular on Japanese covers for a bit games. Like, there's so many of those that I just, love and you didn't see a lot of that year. It's really cool, but it's different from the Famicom cover for this game. The Panicom cover is like drawn, which is also cool. Is that why

the first issue of Nintendo Power had a clay cover? It could be, yeah. I mean, that was a East West collaboration also. The localized English cover for this game was used as a flyer, the ad flyer for Princess Tomato in Japan. Yeah. But yeah, I never ended up playing it. I just remember seeing it because it looked, because it was a photograph, I think in my head, I associated it more with movies in the mid-80s VHS era. It has like a 1960s viewmaster slide to look to it. It looks like they're going to teach you about Jesus. No, it looks like Snoopy is going to shoot down the red baron using salad.

Precisely tomato vegetales. It looks like a Rankin' Bass special based on the NES cover art. You know what? This is one of the few times where I actually prefer the NES cover art to the Japanese cover art. Yeah. Like they're both cool. I like both, but I just, I can't, I can't get over my love of, like, just photographs of clay figures of characters. You want to hug the clay percy?

I do. As much as I hate Percy as a character, he is huggerable and lovable in clay form. I think Percy's fine. It's just fine. I'm also not an adventure game guy. Like, I, they do not click with me. Because the logic required for adventure games is very specific. And I think if it clicks with you, then you love.

love those games. And if it doesn't, you can't get through them. I will say that this is cut from the mold of mid-80s Japanese PC adventure games, which is very different than like Sierra Online, early 80s PC adventure games. It's not nearly as punishing. It's not nearly as like, oh, you forgot to do this one insignificant, unintuitive thing 10 minutes into the game. Well, 20 hours later, you can't complete the game. Sorry. You're talking about Sierra, right? Yeah. Sierra games They're all like that, yeah, which is why I prefer LucasArts to Sierra games. Me too. Like Kings Quest series is like notorious for that.

It's terrible. One thing that's great about LucasArts game, you can't die. So you don't feel like you're punished for trying everything. And most of them, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And when you die in like Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island, it's an Easter egg. It's like you have to work hard to die in those games. Yeah.

Yeah, this is more in the style of, you know, the PC adventure explosion that happened after Portopia's serial murder adventure by Yuji Hori, where it's much more about talking to people and going. through all your dialogue options. Like Phoenix Wright, which I do like. Yeah. It's, I mean, Phoenix Wright is very much an evolution of that school of game design.

And this is, this is an early example. Before that, it was mostly like murder, murder mystery adventure games. Like Portopia, like you said, and like, what was it called the, I can't remember how to say it in English. Like, Ophottsk. Is it Jake Hunter? No, not Sabroji, Jinguji or whatever. It's like another one by Hoor Yuji.

He did a Famicom Adventure Murder, Murder, history game. Yeah, there's another one. I can't remember what it's called. Mystery of a Hotsk or something. It's like a weird kind of ocean, like north of Japan, also south of Russia. Yeah, it's like, it was featured in Game Series 6, which is how I know about it. But yeah, it's kind of similar to Portobia.

We're talking about the influences of this game. Let's get into the history of the game. So it was released in May of 88 in Japan in February of 91 in the U.S. It was developed by Hudson, I believe, released by Hudson in the U.S. as well. Right, but you're talking about the NES version. The NES version, right. But it was previously a PC game. Right, yeah, I'm going to get to that.

Okay, okay. I was actually released in 84 for the first time for various microcomputers. I think like three or four microcomputers, and it was a much different looking game. And that is really where it came about in the wake of the Portopia boom. So 83 was Portopia. I think 85, the Famicom Port of Portopia is the real big adventure game boom in Japan, but it was still making waves on my computers in the early 80s, earlier than that. And Portopia established this menu-driven adventure.

game in Japan. I mean, so original Portopia developed by Yujihori, who is the creator of Dragon Quest. Original Portopia has a text-based interface, but the NES version has a menu-based interface because you obviously don't have a keyboard. And that is where almost every Japanese adventure game draws from after that NES port of Portopia. Yeah, I am, I recently interviewed, uh, Koichi Nakamura about this, the, uh, the guy who runs Spike ChuneSoft now. And he was the programmer on Portopia and Dragon Quest and so forth. And, you know, I asked him, like, what kind of access did you guys have to adventure games, you know,

before Portopia? Like, was there a boom in Japan? Did you guys just import the games? Because those are, you know, it's not like an action game where you just play. Like, they're all based in language and have text parsers. And he said, you know, like, I played games like Mystery House in English and, you know, kind of did my best with the foreign language. But they were really fascinating.

love to see them. They said, you know, pretty quickly that Japanese developers started to create their own. And the first game that he really, like adventure game that he really loved, was created by Aski Magazine. And it was basically just like a computer game that you typed into your computer yourself from the back of Askey Magazine. And it was just like an adventure through Aske's offices. Oh, wow. And so that was, I don't know if that was the first text adventure to come from Japan for Japanese-speaking audiences, but it was one of the first, and, you know, that came along pretty early. So there was kind of immediately this uptake of this style of game over there, and kind of like with RPGs, you know, it came from a foreign culture, from a foreign

country and a foreign language, but there was enough interest and enthusiasm for it that the local market started developing its own pretty quickly right away. Yeah, you're right. Noropia was definitely the big, first big hit, kind of like the Black Onyx was in RPG. Like the first creature to crawl out of the muck was a mystery house. Like you said, it was the 1980s here online adventure game that was localized for Japan. I don't know when, but it was still a text adventure, but there was like a still image per room you were in, which was a big deal. And the original Princess Tomato was much like that and that it was very angular graphics. It was very much to fit the technology of the time.

If you've ever seen old computer games like this, when an image is displayed, it like fills the colors in like your playing Mario paints. Yeah, it's kind of like drawn and has to be, you know, angular lines because you're going from vectors. of vectors. I think it's cool. I like that and look. I kind of miss that. I'm old enough that I program basic programs that did that sort of thing. So to me, it's just like, it brings back memories of painfully and slowly watching your image fill in to see if you made any mistakes. Oh, no, I blew it. Oh, it just filled the entire screen with blue. Real-time rendering. Have you seen the full play-through of the MSX version, by the way? No, I haven't. It's very short. It's like 12 minutes long if you know exactly what to do.

Okay. It's so short. I know they added a lot to the NAS version. Yeah. But, uh, you Yeah, this is also part of an era of Hudson Soft, which I believe Sega owns now in which... Konami. Oh, Konami. Okay, I forget who owns what, but they had a mini-adventure game era in their development. And a lot of this is buried in Japanese research. So basically everything I know about Hudson's adventure game development, I know through hardcore gaming 101, and they also gave a lot of information about the Japanese version of this game.

But they released a series before this called Desaignee World and Desnailand Land. Yeah, it's a French term. Yeah. Like, French comics are called Ban Designe. Yeah. And so it's basically like, it's like a design or art book. So, okay. So not just a bootleg of Disneyland.

I think that could be the pun they're going for then. Yeah. The rare triple language pun. Yeah. Yeah. And they were, they won the triple crown. And they were specializing in like comedic adventure games, which is this very much is. And like Desinay land and Desnei World were sent-ups of popular theme parks.

and just parodies of Disneyland and Disney World, but you're doing adventure game stuff in them. And that was basically where they started. I'm sure there's a lot more going on in Hudson development of that time, but it's very hard to find things in English language about that, like, microcomputer game development in that era. It's like no one has really dug that deep.

It's really opaque, yeah. But there's lots of differences in between the micracputer version and the NES version, and some big ones will get to. But the NES version, like I said, borrows a lot from the Famicom Port of Portopia, where, again, you don't have a text part, or you can't type in commands, so you have to select verbs from a screen.

So I don't know when the Kempco Seca ports of the ICOM games came over, but they very much had the select verb thing, and that predates Maniac Mansion as well on computers. But that had existed beforehand. I want to say those came over in 88 for the NES. So around the same time as this, but yeah, it has very much a select a verb and then select one of the items on the screen, but you're not moving a cursor around.

If you've ever played Snatcher, and I think that that is probably the game of this vintage that most people have played, even though it's not available. You probably emulated it, but Princess Tomato plays a lot like Snatcher. Okay, well, you're pure still. You're pure and holy, but... I borrowed Shane Bettenhaus and that's what I did.

That's the best way to do it. Find Shane Bettenhaus on the street and ask him. He loves to Linda's games out to strangers. Just hunt him down. I'm sure. He's got a lot of games, though, so I'm sure he won't mind if you borrow a few. But yeah, it's basically, it just boils down to going through every menu option,

like talking to everybody, looking at everything, checking everything, and just getting the most out of every variable within the game and it's different than a Sierra game and a LucasArts game in that you can eventually brute force your way through it because you only have so many available options. So even if you're stuck, there's only so many things you can do in these games. Yeah, and there's not a lot of opportunities to backtrack. Yeah. Like, you know, in some nonlinear games, you can get into a place where you're like, you have to do

something kind of arcane or obscure and you're like, I don't know what to do. And then you waste a lot of time backtracking through the entire world, trying every option. This game really is very strict about sort of cutting you off and it's very sort of chapter based so you only have so many locations in which to to explore through and every chapter is self-contained so there's a device in which your psychic character which will get to he will lose all the items you won't need for the next chapter sorry boss I fell down but it's that's helpful because he's getting rid of all the right hearings you don't exactly and you know I like that you can't backtrack because this is a big problem with Sierra games like especially Kings quest is you can

easily find yourself in a dead end where you didn't do like one specific thing like hours ago and then you're screwed so if you don't have a safe file from back then good luck you have to start over you don't run to those going to dead ends in this game just great and also there's a password system and if you did there are checkpoints exactly yeah as a chapter but yeah like I mentioned

the psychic character that is something that started in Portopia which would be in like every every Japanese adventure game where you would have a psychic character because often your main character doesn't talk or you need someone for him or her to talk to so in this case it's Percy the Persimmon and things like Ace Attorney

it's Maya and in the Dangan Rampa games you'll always have like a friend character who's always with you to help you solve mysteries and stuff like that. So that is very much a trend started by Portopia, the idea of having like a partner character who is often comedic or is often the voice of the game where the main character cannot talk. And in this case

the main character is for cucumber. You don't even see him until the end of the game. I know and then you're like oh, it looked like that gross. I'm a man with a vegetable head. Yeah. Grotesque cucumber headed guy. I was kind of surprised to find out that it does seem like Percy is the voice of the game, where if you try to pick the wrong

option, it's like, boss, you can't do that. Yes, but... It's like, what you do it, Percy? You call Percy a psychic character, but I think it's only because in the original Japanese version of this, there are no quotation marks. So, often there is not a line drawn between who's speaking and who is

a narrator. And I feel like a lot of times it is supposed to be the narrator or the game speaking, but it sounds like Percy is talking almost. And that line is not clear enough, the English pronunciation, unfortunately. So it just feels like Prissy knows all the names, all the characters somehow? That's what I choose to believe. Like, whenever you see somebody, it's like, oh, look, it's

Mrs. Plum. Oh, it's Octabary. Oh, it's the cherry birds. It's meant to be a narrator. But in the English version, it just sounds like Percy knows everybody for some reason. He's a social butterfly. Social persimmon. Like, you don't know where you've been. He knows everybody. He's a baby. How does he know everybody? He's a little kid. Yeah. He's a country who doesn't love persimmons. So is this supposed to be kind of like a monseye comedy thing where you have like the straight man and then the sort of goofy crackball tendency? I wouldn't say so. like, I actually, to prepare for this recording,

I watched all of the Japanese version in this game, and I don't, I didn't really like that vibe. Like, I feel like, like, Bob, you brought up A.C. Turney. And Phoenix in the games is very much of the streetman part of the Manzai group or a combo. He's a Tukomi, and Maya is more with the boke, the clown. They definitely had that kind of dynamic. Whereas in this game, I don't think Sir Cuncabur ever says anything.

He never does, yeah. He never says anything. So it's just, firstly, saying weird things or dumb things, and I don't think he's meant to be the boke role in a, like, a monseye combo, exactly. You're still comic relief, though. Yeah. You're just being haunted by a very talkative persimmon. Which is not like most persimmons.

Who here is eaten in persimmon, by the way? I have. Oh, yeah? I'm the only one who hasn't had it. It's good. It did not talk to me. It spoke to me with its delicious. It didn't drop your stuff.

Was it a fuyu persimmon or a hachiya persimmon? I don't know. It was the one my friend gave me. Huyu was a, it's like a flat one. Hachia is like shaped like an acorn almost. Which one is Percy? Okay. Yeah.

Hachia is like, you're not supposed to like eat it when it's in its normal state. Like you're supposed to wait until it's super, super, super, super ripe and pulpy and sweet. Otherwise, it just tastes like you're eating like something really tart and like almost like potty. Yeah, it's really gross. This is an episode of fruitronauts. Oh, I'm on the wrong podcast. I'm sorry. I'm going to see myself out now.

Please leave. So, yeah, like I said, this game has a menu-based input, but I feel like it's not perfect. This is not, like, an amazing game, by the way. There are some flaws, and I feel like one of the flaws when you're playing it is there are a lot of redundancies that I'm not sure. Maybe it's just a localization problem in that there are very redundant verbs you can use. Like, look and check are, they kind of do, like, look is basically let me know what's happening on the screen all at once. And then check is like, I can check individual things. But I feel like there might be more of a distinction in Japanese between.

those verbs and what they chose to localize them as? It's more like look and examine. Yeah. Just like check. I mean, it makes sense to me. And things like fight and hits where fight is basically enter the fighting stage of the game. You just physically hit things. But I feel like it could have been just one command and it could

have meant the same thing. Hit is different from battling. Oh, okay. You can hit things without battling. Right. But I feel like if you hit something and then you get into a battle, it would just serve the same purpose. Like for example, you can hit a door. Yeah, that's true. That means you knock on it or you hit like a picture frame. Yeah. I mean, I guess it depends on how drunk you are. You might actually be in a fight with the door. Hang on, I'm going to slam this real quick and we'll see. I love how you make Percy hit everything. Yeah. You make, uh, you select hit. You're making

Percy do it? Yeah. You're making a baby hit things. Oh my God. He's not a baby. He's a little kid. They describe him as, like, uh, the verb you use like use water on baby when you first see him. He's not a baby though. No, he can talk. Yeah, he can talk. He knows everybody. He wears overalls for God's sake. He's a little kid. I hope he's not a baby because then certain number is a very bad Also, the way he talks in Japanese is a very specific kind of country pumpkin dialect. You know how, like, there's different ways to say I in Japanese. Yeah. What he uses is Oira, which is what was used for Sands in Oirtale.

Oh, okay, cool. Like, when Undertale was not, like, officially localized, there were different fans' relations, and they kept, like, interpreting, like, what they felt like each character would refer themselves as. And when Oira came out to be the official localization, People were like, what? Because it's like a more laid-back country bump. Did that become a meme or something? I think it did, yeah.

I think it really did, yeah, because people were not expecting that. But that's what Percy uses. So he's not a baby. Like, he's not a baby. He's a little kid, though. Percy was not meant to be like your partner character. Like in the original version, yeah. Yeah, you do save a persimon who's like thirsty in the row,

but he doesn't become your partner. I think they were really just picking up on the success of Portopia and saying people like this idea for a game. So let's just run with this. probably there's something kind of biblical about giving water to a thirsty persimmon by the side of the road it just seems like a very acts of the apostles kind of thing yes it's like uh the good the good persimian persimmon sorry persimian's a kind of monkey and then he's indebted to you forever yeah it's true that's why he's with you you give him water he's like oh my god you're my boss now i'm gonna follow you around is he called you ka cho in japanese uh no what is chief or boss or what does he call you kachcho kachio was like or you know in games seriously. Yeah.

What does he call you in Japanese? Like, in the American localization, he just calls you, Hey, sorry boss or hey boss. Is it a Sempai? Not Senpai, sorry. Nina's checking. I'll tell you about the story of this game

and that playing through it again as an adult for the first time. It's oddly dark and that it's about a millet. Oh, go ahead. Oyabun, which is like, Oya-Bun is more a gangster way to call your boss. Oh, no way. So it's like a boss of a gang.

Kind of, yeah. Yeah, I was going to ask, is it like an Oyaboon, Kobun kind of situation. Yes, it is. Okay, there you go. Coboon. Yeah, you know those frogs in the sewers in Chrono Trigger?

Yeah. That's Oyaboon and Coboon. And then Coboon are like the servebots, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, kind of thuggish. So I want to talk about the story. And they are cute and Percy is cute. It's a cute gang.

It's like the Brady bunch. So the story is oddly dark and it's about a military coup in the vegetable kingdom where the instigator actually turns on his own kind. Minister Pumpkin betrayed King Broccoli and kidnapped Princess Tomato and he stole the turnip emblem, which has mystical powers. And he fled to the castle in the zucchini mountains. And then he sent his army of farmies, which are humans, to terrorize all the vegetables in the saddle kingdom. You only see a farmy once in the game, despite the fact that they are the enemy forces.

And in that case, it is a human. You see two farmies. Oh, really? I see one in silhouette. One in silhouette. But it's very much a... Oh, Princess Tomeo's sister. She's a farming?

Oh, you're right. She's a human. I was wondering about Lisa. I'm going to get to that later. I'm going to get to Lisa later. So Lisa, like, she betrayed her own kind. I'll talk about it later Okay, okay

But the The farmies are very much Like the Japanese farmer Kind of stereotype They're so Japanese looking Yeah Like if you played mole mania The villain in that game

Is sort of like the archetypical The Japanese farmer Like when you encounter the Like the one male farmie You see in the game Where you battle him They're like

Oh no, it's a farmie But in Japanese they're like It's a farmie gosaku And gozaku is a very Country bumpkin kind of name Oh so you're fighting like Farming hillbillies Pretty much yeah

It's like hey it's a farming Billy Bob I feel like I see those characters That character type in anime a lot Like in Romo one half When Ryoga gets lost in the countryside You see a lot of them Like villagers and that sort of thing

Or if you know the Famicom game I'm a famous bad game I know that game intimately The game is about having a farmer's rebellion Yes Okay you are a farmer in that game I really like the farmies In this game because

I hate the vegetables I think the farmies are very good villains Because they're eating people True. But they also eat themselves. The vegetables, like, also, they make wine and grape juice, and they, there's, like, salad growing. There's a grape guy who drinks grape juice. Yeah, he's sick.

Here is my question. The designs of all of the Princess Tomato in the Seligand characters are the entire fruit is a head, and then they have a humanoid body. So does the existence of the farmy's posit a world where there are just severed human heads growing on trees? That's a good question. I think we're dealing with a goofy. I think human heads are a root vegetable. We're dealing with a little like a goofy Pluto conundrum here. There's no real answer.

I think it's more like a world where people or people didn't evolve from like monkeys or apes. They evolved from cabbage? Yes. Cabbage and radishes and carrots. Also, it's kind of like that. Also, I do think Mr. Pumpkin made a bad move aligning himself with apartments because sooner or later it is going to be Thanksgiving. Yeah. And that's it.

There's no Thanksgiving in Japan. And this is a very Japanese. Japanese games. It's a very, very, very Japanese game. We should talk about that. I want to talk about that. Yeah. There's a bit of a cheeky edge to the original version of this game that I noticed. Like I can see like what they tried to paint over and they try to do a good job of this with the localization. But if you've played a lot of Japanese games and you understand like certain naughty things that were allowed in Japanese games, but on American games, you will definitely see what they cut out. So number one, lots of smoking. There is so much drinking in this game. There are so many drunks in this game. It's amazing that they, even decided to localize this game. It's very adult. It really is. Like, I feel like, again, it's like, I wouldn't call it like, um, like a dirty game or a nodding game, but it's very cheeky. It's just like, there are like body characters. You go to like, in one case, um, I just noticed this for the first time. And like, in the second level, you go to a cabaret, but you are at a hostess club. You are in a hostess club. Although it is called a cabaret still in Japanese,

but it's very much a hostess spy. Yeah. A hostess club. It makes me wonder, like, who is this game for exactly? Like, is it for kids? I don't know. I know it was marketed towards. They grew up so fast back then. I think the original version probably wasn't for kids because all all the vegetable ladies are stacked in the original version. We did not mention that. To mind, who was playing PC games in

1984? It was not children. Lonely adults. That's true. There's a lot of tomato cleavage in the original image version. That's true. Which is kind of weird because they're very like cute cartoony characters and like everybody's head is a fruit with big happy eyes. There's less of a divide I feel in Japanese media between like cute and sexy

and just because something is sort of cute doesn't mean it can't be for adults. That's true. And there is a lot of, like, I'm Japanese. I grew up with a lot of, like, Japanese manga and anime and all that stuff. And there's a lot of sexy stuff in there that's not, that people will not consider appropriate for kids here?

Yeah, I mean, consider Dragon Ball, like, the early issues where you see Balma in her birthday suit. Oh, I've been reading the Gona guy, the original cutie honey. I feel like Gona guy is, is aiming at an older audience, whereas Dragon Ball is definitely like kids. But, like, the original cutie, this is a tangent. The original kitty honey is like a school story, though. It's very weird.

I mean, I grew up with Doraemon, and there was like tons of nudity in that. Yeah, like nudity, but I feel like the smoking and drinking, the authors and the writers are like, well, just people, they smoke and drink. Who cares? Kids see this. As the adults do these things. Exactly, yeah. But obviously, Nintendo of America did not want that things in their game. But also, there are some darkness in this story that I really, that's like why this game is memorable to me. So the darkness of this game is that it's really about like a vegetable genocide in which these vegetable people are rounded.

up and tortured and killed. And one of the first images you see in this game that sticks with me to this day are like vegetable people buried up into their heads in the dirt and they're all they're being dehydrated to death and you have to give them water. And then when you come back later, some of them have been quote unquote harvested.

Right. So it's an ugly like a melon patch. Yeah. Yeah. Like actually it's more kind of like depressing in the English version because like the the shot you see of the four melon guys like buried in the dirt. In the English version, they enhance the artwork so that the dirt looks dried up.

He's got the cracks in there. Oh, they want to make it more depressing. Yeah, I don't know why they chose to do that. Like, there are some graphical differences in the English version, and that's one on them. Wow. Yeah, it's weird. As a vegetarian, how do you feel about this game? I was conflicted about eating a salad after playing this game.

But, again, very Japanese, lots of Japanese cultural things, lots of, like, shrines, uh, fruits and vegetables that really are only, like, in Asian countries. Like persimmons, for example. Soursops. Actually, when doing the research for this podcast, I had to look up what a Sour Sop was because there's a Sour Sop character. A so-called Sour-Sop character. He's actually what? A Bok Choy. He's supposed to be a Bok Choy. I don't know why they call him a Sour-Sop. It might just be a mistranslation. I think so. Does anyone in this room know what a Sour Sop is? I've heard of it. It's actually a fruit. It's like spiny.

Yeah. It's weird. It's almost like a durian kind of, but not. But not stinky. No, but the guy looks like a bok choy. He's meant to be a bok choy, but they call him a soursop in the game for some reason. Yeah. I don't know why they do that. But like we were talking about before, this game is self-contained. One of those little, like a little horned melon. Sort of.

It's like a thorny melon. Like we were saying before, this game is contained in chapters. There's nine of them. And like the ninth one is basically just the ending. You can walk around and talk to people. And they're like, congratulations. You get into a fight if you want to. Basically, some of the chapters have an immediate goal.

Like, here's what you need to do. Like break out of this place or investigate this place. But many chapters start with, you're in a new area, figure out what to do next. And those are sort of the more difficult areas to figure out. Like the second level, I think I never be. that as a kid because it's just like there are a lot of people to talk to and it's never clear like what you have to do and the goal is to punch the guy at the bookstore to give you I love I hit everything in the game by the way it's hilarious because like I don't know like did you try hitting everything when you first play this game oh yeah it's great like do you remember what happens when you try to hit the pear guy the pair guy who owns the antique shop no what happens so like the pair guy there's a guy with like a pear head uh who's name is bart in the english Japanese friends him by the way because he's a bartley pair oh that's great but in and he's called mr pear in the English version. He sure is called him part.

Part, yeah. Yeah, so you hit him and he says, he says something like, hey, stop doing that. My brother-in-law is a lawyer. That's great. Can you get yourself into a fail state in this game, though? No, you can't. Because I know, like, in some stages, there are currency that you need to buy things or to get into places, but...

You can't ever just spend all of it, though. This is in Zach McCracken. Okay, yeah. We talked about that on a previous episode. That's why I don't like about that game, where you have a currency that you can run out of, but I think you can always find more if you go to the right place. So I don't think there are any real fail states in this game. Yeah, that's what separates it from like some of like Sierra games.

Like, there's no like dead end. Unfortunately, sometimes it can be hard to find out what you're exactly supposed to do. Like there are some times where you have to do the same thing. You have to try the same thing over and over. Like keep going back to the same location and trying the same function over and over. And you don't know that you're supposed to do that. Like there's no good clear indication. Yeah, that's a good tip.

Like if you're going to play this game for the first time, know that often for this style of adventure game, especially of this era, you have to do the same actions. over and over, like talking to someone once won't always work, checking something once won't always work. And often a new character will show up at a new place for no reason. You've, like, you know, mark this flag in the game programming. Now this character will be here and go, go find him. Yeah, like there's one point where you, uh, some character has a headache and you have aspirin, so you give it to him. Yeah. You're like, oh, thanks, we're going to use this on him. And then you have to keep going back until he's like, uh, this game sounds like the

definition of insanity. It really is. Like, try the same thing over and over again. And at one point, like you have to dig something up and you have to use a dig command like eight times and like twice it will give you the same text so you figure like oh i've already there's nothing else for me to do so i think it's more clear in the japanese i have to change it up a little bit at least so you know you're not just like same thing or whatever yeah like in that in that sense it can make the game kind of difficult but it's kind of like a false way of in logging the game oh for sure yeah it's a fairly short game like the long play is two hours so if you know everything you have to do in the game it's about two hours long

If you like my show, you're going to love my show, you're going to love the shows on the Collider Network on Podcast One. The YouTube channel turned podcast Super Network has got everything for your pop culture needs. Check out Collider Sports, Jedi Council, one-on-one with Christian Harloff, movie trivia shmodown, movie talk, and so much more. Check out the Collider Network every week on Podcast One or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And caller number nine for $1 million. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of...

Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Oh, gosh. Bad network got you glitched out of luck.

Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast, nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. I'm gonna be the I'm gonnae

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm and I'm Who here is actually played the game, and how old were you when you played it? I played it when it was new, and it came out in 91 in America, so I was nine. Wow. Yeah.

You very well. You have been older than me when I played it. Did you play it the Famicom version? No, I'm probably the N-S version. Okay. Like, even though me and my older siblings grew up with very few NES games. We've only ever rented games once in our lifetime, Blackbuster. And we rented Ninja Guidon and Princess Tomato.

Wow. It's quite a spread. Very different games. We've read the very Japanese, but... Wanted to have a nice, easy time. Yeah. We had fun with both for different reasons. Why ran again?

They're the best games in the system. We didn't finish Ninja Guideon for a good reason. It's too hard, but we did finish Princess Tomato. Wow. It was great. Like, we just loved how... Japanese the game was, which we'll talk about later, but it really stuck in my mind. So when I was

a little bit older, and old used NES games were still sold in, like, normal stores. And they were still incredibly cheap. When I see normal, I mean, like, I bought Princess Tomato used the cart, just a cart, not box, but it was at a grocery store? Wow, yeah, yeah. I remember those days. Probably like late 90s, right? Yeah, and it was $9. And now the game is like $100 or more on eBay. Yeah, I believe it.

I'm so glad it's gotten crazy expensive. I mean, this game has picked up a cult following, for sure. It was one that people, I don't think, really knew about until, you know, a few years ago. And then it started to become sort of notorious as being this sort of kooky NES adventure game with a funny personality. And it had this little stupid persimmin guy that's a total asshole. And so I don't know, there's probably, again, a YouTuber who wrote about it or talked about it. And it became all of a sudden a thing everyone had to have. Yeah, I think the, I mean, I discovered this.

game when it was new just by seeing it in a store and saying, hey, this was cool. I'll rent this game. But I think it really experienced its boom in terms of popularity when the emulation boom happened in the late 90s, early 2000s, where people were discovering cool games for the first time, or for, not for the first time, but they were rediscovering old games that were great, like River City Ransom. Like, I feel like no one really cared that much about it until everyone was playing it on Nesticle in 1998 or 1999. Oh, Nesticle. So classy. So I want to talk about the the differences the NES version brings

and the Famicom version brings and they're very much of their time of this console era especially for 1988 in Japan so number one this game adds first person dungeons very much a huge fad of the late 80s

especially in Japanese games so things like Fester's Quest Google 13 these games are not first person RPGs but they have first person dungeons what other games have first person dungeons I'm sure you know of a few more

from like 88's 87. Verm and there's Cosmo Tank for Game Boy. Cosmo Tank. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that was a weird one because it was multi-format, but it did have like first-person shooting dungeons. Interesting. Yeah. And I think like you don't appreciate what Fantasy Star did for first-person dungeons until you actually see how other games did this where just like in Festers Quest and in Golgo-13, the transition to a new square of the dungeon is just a flash and a new piece of art. It's not like gentle transition into, you know, the new art.

None of those games had Yuji Hori programming. No. You mean Yuji Naka. That's right. That's right. That's exactly what I said. Exactly. Goonies.

Oh, Goonies. I guess first person rooms. Yeah. I mean, if you want to go that way, what was the game that was so similar, not Solomon's key? Dr. Chaos. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of like just weird inexplicable first person sequences, you might not have been moving.

You might have been moving. But just the way to just be more quote-unquote immersive, I guess in a 2D. Those dungeon systems, though, like I feel like it's the biggest low point. of this game. Aside from the battle system. This is not like Etrie and honesty. They're easy to graph out. Yeah, exactly.

And the maps are online if you really want to play this game. Yeah, but man, that's like, whenever I play this game, I have played this game a few times, but every time I get to like the celery forest or whatever, I'm just like, oh, this part. It is kind of a drag, yeah. It really is. And when Arino played this for Game 3CX, he really did not like this game at all. And he, when he was going through the maze part, the dungeon part, the dungeon. parts, he started falling asleep

off screen. The music is pretty droning. It really is, yeah. And you're not sure where you're supposed to go, where you're supposed to do. Like, there are certain points of the maids you're supposed to go to to pick up items. So even if you get to like the actual goal point, like there are things you have to pick up first. You have to explore like every square of the maze to get everything you need. Or in the in, uh,

the minister pumpkin dungeon, the basement dungeon. You have to fight certain monsters before you get to the robust monster. Yeah. It's a, it's a major drag. It is padding for sure. Yeah, it is. And the other padding they add are Junkin battles, which are finger battles, which is basically rock paper scissors. Most of them involve knowing in advance which sign your opponent will throw just by talking

to people in the world and, you know, exploring. I think one of them is just random. I'm pretty sure towards the end of the game. I'm not entirely positive because I... Oh, the last one is random, yeah. But there's a certain point where you're taught by some other characters like what signs you throw to win the battle. And maybe the instruction book explains how this is played, but as a kid, I had

no familiarity with rock paper scissors at all. And especially the, I think it's the very Japanese part of rock paper scissors where it's like look in a direction. A chiwitikoi, which is a very, well, like, Junkin Pond or Rocks is a favorite, is a very Japanese thing to begin with. Yeah. And then you throw in Achimu DeKoi, which is not a cultural thing here at all. Like, you don't do it here.

You guess which direction the person will look after you win the battle? You have to point in a direction, yeah. And then if they look in that direction, then you win and they lose. and they try their best to localize I think they did a decent job they say try to look away you know yeah it kind of works but also like

I'm sure a lot of kids who played it were just like what the hell am I supposed to do at this point if I got that far as a kid I would have no idea it's part of the attract mode and whenever that would pop up as a kid I was like what are they even doing there's an attract mode in the game where it just like talk to all the characters explore all the worlds and they show like a little clip of the battle

system too and when that popped I'm like what even is this yeah so a lot of times in, like, Japanese rock set of papers. Once you win or lose the rock setter's paper part, then you have to go in the second phase, which is Achimu DeKoi. And it's four directions you can look in. Yeah.

Okay. Which is not something you ever do here. Yeah. What's the third phase? Like a gun battle? Quick draw. You play jacks. Oh, wow.

Well, Nina, you played through the Japanese version, or you actually watched the playthru of the Japanese version, and you wanted to talk about sort of the differences, especially in terms of like the things they censored, but you had a lot of examples you were telling me about. I really want to know about those. Yeah, I own both the English version, the NAS cartridge and the... Oh, you own it, okay, yeah.

So I played both. And, well, first of all, I want to talk about how the... I don't know how the English version of the game was marketed here. I tried to find out information about that online, but I couldn't find anything. There's no, like, TV commercials or, like... There's a print ad. Oh, okay. Yeah.

What did it say? How did it advertise it? It is basically... I'll look it up while you were talking, but I actually... just tweeted it out and it's a pretty silly print ad but it's in comics it's in comics right uh i think it it might have been in comics i saw it in print magazines though but it's just uh it's fairly i mean it just shows how wacky the game is but it plays it it plays it straight it plays it's like here's the premise of this game it's by vegetable people and it's by hudson so they they had marketing behind it

there was market a marketing push behind it i feel like it's i always wonder like who were they marketing towards for this game in japan yeah because like you said the mx of MXX version was very adult and they kept a lot of the adult parts in the game and when they featured the game on Game Theater CX they said this game is very popular with women and children but I don't think that's

who they marketed it towards I think they tried to market it towards a more generalized audience and the actual slogan they used for the game oh yeah I've seen it's a printout it says do you search your as you're luckily with a tomato and then I cropped it but below that is the premise of the game like you are

The big white with the black. That doesn't explain what kind of game it is. It doesn't. I don't think they wanted you to know what kind of game it was. I don't think it sets the tone well at all. Yeah. In the Japanese print ad for this game, the slogan they use is a line they took from a song, a Japanese song, called Salada No Kinambi or Salad Day. And the line they took was, I'm translating this to English roughly. They say children are raised by their parents, but a tomato in a farm becomes red on its own.

It's very deep. It's about nature versus nurture? Yes. That's going to be the tagline of the reboot. The AAA $60. It's a very... It's a strange, poignant, philosophical line they used to advertise this game. About tomatoes.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's a cool line, but it's like, why are you using this to advertise this game? Was it a song of that era? It was, yeah. Maybe that's why. They're piggybacking off the popularity of it, maybe? Yeah, I think so. The reboot opens with Sir Cucumber getting spiraled.

Oh, I love spiralized, but I like making zucchini noodles, not cute names. Zoodles. Zoodles, or Zoodles. And yam noodles. That's the plot now. Udels. The Farmy's you're trying to make zoodles. I'm pro zoodle.

Yeah, there's like, I watched through all the Japanese playthew of this game to recover this recording. And first of all, it's not king broccoli, because broccoli is a very western vegetable, I feel like. In Japanese, it's king onion. Really? But I wonder why they changed it. Why change onion to broccoli?

Like, onion is not the king of vegetables. Broccoli aren't? Onions are in everything, though. Broccoli are packed with nutrients and they fight cancer. A tomato can't be an onion's child. That is obvious. Well, we can't even get into this part of it. Oh, God, yeah.

It's complicated vegetable genealogy. Also, a tomato is not a vegetable. It's a fruit, technically. But they're both in this game. They're oranges and craigs and fruits. True, yeah. By the way, the, uh, the, Definition of fruit is something with seeds in it.

So a tomato is a fruit. But you would put a tomato in a salad. I guess a cucumber is also in a salad kingdom. They say you shouldn't put a persimid in a salad, but I tried it, and it's delicious. Is that a line in a song also? No. Different song, different song. Different song.

No, I already know in GameC said, why would you put a persimid in a salad? But I tried it. It was good. Yeah, so, yeah, King Broccoli is King Onion and the Yam Medallion, which is show to everyone to show your part, the rebellion. or what a resistance troop is actually the onion medallion. So they have a big thing about onions against onions in the English version. Because you don't see onions come up at all, I don't think.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's like a very onion-like vegetable. Shallet? Shallet. Yeah, there's a shallot in the game. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, they, in that case, like, for example, you don't see King Broccoli or King Onion ever in the game, which is kind of weird. Yeah.

He's referenced, but you never see what it was like. Not even in the ending. Oh, wait, he died. He's dead. Part of the darkness of the game is he died of grief. He's been sauteed and he's caramelized and, oh my God, so delicious. Served with sesame tofu. His daughter, Princess Tomato, got kidnapped by Minister Pumpkin.

And then he died of grief. Yes. Which is really sad. That's what they tell you in the opening of the game. Yeah, that's the opening of the game. It's so sad. Tight zoom on Minister Pumpkin. He's robbing a snow glow. Where is King Onion?

I guess that's one guy of sadness. serve. Salad is coming. That's one way of, like, localized in the game, I guess. Not that kids don't know what an onion is, but broccoli is more relatable to kids here. Broccoli was a big punchline in the late 80s. Broccoli is not much

of an Asian vegetable. It culminated in the first Bush presidency. Yeah, George W. Bush. This was of that era. Yeah, like 91 would have been of the Bush era. Broccoli, not going to do it. The vomiting broccoli on the prime minister? Bad for diplomacy. I don't think he vomited broccoli. I think he just

vomited, but he didn't want to eat broccoli. He said he didn't like broccoli. Yeah, but it wasn't he had the flu. It wasn't a broccoli-induced vomiting. Anyway, so yeah, this game is like, so Japanese, which me and my siblings at the time, we played, laughed at a lot. Like, I love it when there's so many Japanese, like,

cultural themes in a game that was brought over to America or North America. They try their best to hide it, but they can't hide it completely. Like, these have a triangular donut. There's something black on the outside. I love these hamburgers. Well, the part, the part where you're jailed. Are you like, is that like a Chinese prison that you're in? I thought it was like very

Chinese the area of the prison. Just like the way the, uh, the soldiers are stationed and like sort of the caricature of general pepper. It seemed like like more of a like a crude like Chinese caricature. You mean Sergeant Pepper. That's right. All right. I forgot about that. We'll talk about the localization soon. But there's two Sergeant Pepper's in the Nintendo Canon. There's this guy and also in Starbucks. Oh my God. I forgot. But he was promoted to a general. He's General Pepper. Oh, yeah. Admiral Pepper. He's, he makes a reference. So before he made the rank adjustment, he was a pepper.

He makes a reference to fighting Andross back when he was just a sergeant in the Nintendo Power comic. Ah, very clever. That was an English localization joke they made for this version, by the way. That was not in the original. We're talking about the Japanese version. The localization, I would say, it's below the par for today, but for 91. Oh, it's really well done. Someone was a native speaker of English writing these lines.

There are references to lots of pop culture things like Manuel Noriega and Sarton Pepper and Hogan's Heroes. Wait, where was the Hogan's Heroes reference? The guy who was like, I know nothing when you got the book story. He's like German for some reason? Yeah. He was not German, the original version. I bet, yeah. But it was a cabbage.

I forget what he was. But yeah, definitely Hogan's Heroes reference. I mean, if you were a baby boomer was writing this script, obviously. But yeah, I was surprised. It's very clever. And they localize Percy's voice, obviously. And you're saying he talks like a bumpkin. And this, in this he talks like sort of like a wise guy, like a, like a street kid or whatever, like a street kid.

Like a street urchin, like a newsy, if you will. A newsie. He doesn't sing. Just like Christian Bell. Yeah, exactly. He's like the artful dodger. Exactly. Yeah.

Without the cockney accent. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's like a bunch of different things in the English version. Mostly, like you said, they took out the, all the verses to alcohol and like smoking and such. Yeah, like grape juice is wine and clover juice is sake, even though they kept in all the kanji for sake in the game. Yeah. They were like, oh, kids wouldn't know what this is, except for Japanese kids have played it. Yeah, so like, yeah, there's a, there's a grape guy who drinks grape juice, which is sick.

That is sick. It's like drinking mummy juice. It is, yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, disgusting. Well, they did used to eat mummies back in the days. That is true. Who are they?

Victorians? Yeah. Yeah. This is true. Yeah, look it up. It's real. They would actually eat mummies. They thought they would give them power. I mean, they only drink gin because water was too dangerous. I assume, like, real food was too dangerous.

So they were just, like, subsisting on mummies. They couldn't drink water, so it was all mummies. So, like, the second level you go to in this game is Saladoria, the city, the fruit and vegetable-based city. And you meet a wanderer in the park, and he wants, in the English version, he wants coffee. And then when you bring him coffee, he's like, I want a donut. Do you have to bring him a donut? And in the Japanese version, he wants a cigarette. I mean, you bring him a cigarette, he wants a light, which takes more sense.

Like, who's going to be like, hey, I can drink this coffee yet? Where's my donut? What the hell? I'll let it turn ice cold first. I mean, you go to the so-called donut shop. It's definitely a cigarette shop. Oh, okay. Run by the old plum woman.

Oh, that makes sense. So, yeah, in the English version of the game, when you find a donut for the guy, you find it in the bathroom trash can of the cabaret. And he eventually you give it to him and then he eats it. So I thought that was like naughty humor, but I guess it made more sense. You never actually get to give it to him. You give it to him in prison, though, later in the next chapter. Sort of, but by the time you get it, you go out to the park, he's gone. Yeah, I assume he eats it, though.

I thought, I should know this, but I thought by the time you meet in the jail, he's like, oh, I don't want that anymore. Oh, maybe. Maybe. I remember giving it to him, though, but it could be wrong. Okay. You think, you know, cigarettes would be great barter materials. Yeah. Even a used blood that you found in the trash cannabis cabaret.

They tried their best to clean up the scheme. They didn't cover up any of the cleavage, though. No. There's some fruit cleavage. And there's some peeping in the game, too. There is. There is a time to talk about the horny orange. Oh, God.

She even says, you pervert. She says you pervert, but she's winking it. Here's a tip. Yeah, it's weird. No, I just loved how Japanese game is. Like, like I said, the old plum lady you see who runs the so-called donut shop, which is a cigarette shop in Japanese. She's so Japanese.

She's, like, wearing a kimono. And stereotypically, in Japanese culture, old people like. sour plums. Umibushi. Like, I love sour plums myself, so I get made fun of for liking that. You're an old lady. Yeah, exactly. Oh, oh, man, almost 35. I'm so old. But yeah, like, she's all wrinkly, and she's wearing a kimono,

and she's always Japanese. There's so many characters like that in the game. There's the old curate hermit in the mountains. Yeah, that's right. Who's very Japanese-looking. He lives in, like, an old hut with, like, tatami mats. He drinks sake or clover juice. He's in front of the sliding paper doors. Exactly. And there's, like, another old hermit

in the mountains who's like, I hate the city. And he's like, what is he like? A radish or something? I think so, yeah. There's so many little touches like that. I love it. There's a character called Miss Eggplant in Saladoria. She's like this kind of sexy so-called eggplant lady. I'm pretty sure she's meant to be a grape because she sells wine at that store. She's at a liquor store, but in the English version. Okay, so in the Japanese version, she's like smoking a cigarette.

She's like leaning on the counter smoking a cigarette. She's got a ball of wine next to her. And a glass full of something. Yeah, in the English version. They took that all away, so she just was bored. It's like leaning at the counter. Like, she's, what are going to do? Smartphones haven't been invented yet.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's meant to be a grape. Okay. I like that emoji didn't create the idea of a sexy eggplant. It was actually a Nintendo game. That's true. She also has a Kansai accent in the Japanese version, which they didn't keep. But they did put little characterizing tattoos in the English version.

For example, Miss Peach has a southern drawl. That's really cute, yeah. It's really cute. Like, she does not have that in the Japanese version. But, you know, it's like a Georgia peach. So he says, come back real soon, y'all. You hear something like that. He does our southern.

True. We all know. I was going to say, like, so Hudson, Sega owns them now, right? Correct? We've been through this. It's Konami. I want Sega to own Hudson. They would do more with Hudson than Konami does.

I think so. I mean, I'm sure there's like a Princess Tomato Pachinko machine at this point. I wish. Erotic violence, Pachinko. Although, actually, like, the only new video. video game Konami is created in the past two years was Super Bomberman R, which is they had some properties. And, and a Princess Tomato

reference. Oh, yeah? Yes. It's the only one I know of in existence, like, of them referencing this game. What is the reference there? Like, Bob didn't even know about it until I brought it up. I did not. Can you play as Percy as one of the bombermen? No, you play like as Princess Tomato basically. You're a

Princess Tomato based bomber woman. No kidding. Yeah, I wouldn't look at up. I was so shocked when I saw that. I was delighted. I was like, oh my God, they acknowledge the fact that Princess Tomato exists. It's amazing. I don't know why, like, I don't know who made that happen, but I am so happy that someone remembers Princess Tomato, yeah. If this was comics, there would have been like a headline that was like, Princess Tomato confirmed for 2019, question mark.

Princess Tomato should be in smash. I agree. Or at least a spirit battle, right? Yeah. Or a trophy or something. Yeah, I totally agree. Something like that. The thing is like there's very little Princess Tomato accessibility in our modern age.

actually released for the Wii Virtual Console, but also every Hudson game was out for Wii Virtual Console. Jeremy, have you noticed that, like, in that era, it was like every Hudson game? Yeah, I mean, when Konami had just bought Hudson, they were like, let us make some bank off of these games. So yeah, they really pushed the NEC TurboGraphics virtual console. We got tons and tons of Hudson games on virtual console. And even, you know, Wii U virtual console, like at the tail end of it, it was all Hudson games for free PC engine and turbographic.

So this game did have re-release in 2010. Unfortunately, you can't download it again, but just take it from the internet, it's fine. If you want to play this again, that's the only way to play it, unless you somehow downloaded it before, what, two years ago when we virtual console was still online?

It was up until like a year ago. Yeah, it wasn't too long ago. Well, actually, no. You could still download stuff from virtual console until the end of this month, January, 2019. But you can't, The last time you could put money into your Wii shop account was like March of last year. So you might possibly have 500 Wii points floating around in your account.

Go online now, check it out for your Wii or Wii. You can still buy this game. The last thing I want to mention, though, is the soundtrack, which is really good. Yes. And it's super catchy. Do we have the name of the person who did that soundtrack? I love the soundtrack to this game so much. So the negative side of the soundtrack is all the loops are like 40 seconds long,

and they play throughout the entirety of like maybe a one hour level. but after that they stick with you forever I don't mind the loop because I love the music so much except for the some space music it's not great but it's very it's very all over the place in terms of the style like some levels are very mega manny

in it yeah yeah especially miniature pumpkins palace like I never mentioned I never thought about it before but when Bob mentioned it's very mega manny I listen to it again I'm like yeah it is like a mega man boss game so

my I have to mention most of my ringtones are Prince of Tomato songs because I love it so much the soundtrack is by Tomotune Mayano who's done a lot of like Hudson's MSX adventure game music Intopia which is for

TuroGraphics 16 Yeah Momotaro, Densatsu 2 and Battle Ace Tengai and Makio Zeria did a lot of stuff back in the days but I don't think he's done much past that era. It's one of those people I just sort of disappeared after 5 or 6 games

because the music in this game is so good I love it so much. You'll hear a lot of it throughout the episode, so I'm going to include the best songs. Even like the password selection music. Like, by the way, the passwords in this game are insane in English. Oh, yeah.

They're not as bad in Japanese, but in this one. And the English version, there's like a percentage sign, other punctuation. There's forever. Are there O's and zeros? Yeah, and God forbid if you were right down the wrong password.

Oh, no, I love it, though. It's so good. So the final thing I want to talk about is, Nina works for fan gamer. And number one, I want everyone listening to go on Twitter and send a message to at FanGamer and say, we want Princess Tomato merchandise. I want at least a pin or a sticker or a t-shirt by the end of 2019. That is going to be our, we're going to make things happen on Retronauts. I'm using my power to make this podcast, number one.

Number two, I'm using my power to get a Princess Tomato T-shirt made by the year 2020. I would love Princess Tomato merchandise so much. I feel like I'm one of like eight people in this world who cares about this game enough, though. But I think if you created like a Percy pin or something People would buy that Especially if it made fun of him I see more obscure things Or if it were just like hey boss I dropped your stuff

Oh yeah What you do is you put the Percy pin on fan gamer And then when people order it They open up the package It's just a little piece paper that says sorry boss I mean Last year I did Sunset Riders merchandise For a fan gamer

And that was like an impossible dream of mine But we did it And we even happened to do A whole live action film a short film, advertising our immersion days. So, sunset writers based. But again, Konami owns Hudson. You guys have a Konami connection.

Yes. Pick up the phone, ask for Princess Tomato. I want the Princess Tomato license so much. I'm telling everyone listening. I want you in a non-harassment way. I don't want us to be responsible for that. But please contact Fan Gamer. Hey, I will push fan giver to get the license for Princess Tomato.

You never know. That's going to be our goal as a podcast before 2020. Get me a Percy PIN. Get me a Percy Plus. or at least a Princess Tomato key shirt or anything. Anything, like the characters are so great in this game.

Like, I want... They're great. They're great for it. If you don't even know what this is, it would be a cool shirt, I think. Do you think we go downstairs right now? We'll find Princess Tomato cosplay.

I have never seen it in my life. I've never seen it either. But that's an idea. Absolutely not. If you want to corner the cosplay market, Princess Tomato cosplay. I'll be Lisa. The one human human, yes.

You were listening to this. You could be the world's number one Princess Tomato cosplayer. Actually, I wanted to talk about Lisa, by the way. She's weird because... She's just the inexplicable number, only human in the game. She shows up, she shows up, and she is Princess Tomato's sister, but she's human.

She's a part of me. They don't explain it at all. They don't. So I watch the Japanese version to find out, like, if there's more to her character that was not revealed in the English version. So in Japanese, her name is Apple Lisa. Apple Lisa. Yeah, as in the 1983 computer.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I had no idea. I'm meant to reference that. That's a deep cut. I'm surprised I didn't keep it as Apple Lisa in the English because that would make it more of a salad or fruit vegetable theme.

Yeah. But they just called her Lisa in the game, the English version of the game. Her name is Apple Lisa. And then, so this is one thing I always baffled me in the English version. So you go to Lisa's room, her bedroom, and she has a picture frame on her makeup table and you have to hit it. Like, you look at the picture in the English version and it says, oh, it's a picture. picture of king broccoli and precious tomato and then we hit it another picture fall out of the frame it's a hidden picture and this picture of Tom Cruise that's what it

says in the English version okay so I was okay I wonder if in the Japanese version it's like another Japanese like idol or celebrity or something so I looked it up I actually like played the Japanese version of the game to look this up because it was not any of the YouTube play-throughs on here because I think most people don't go around hitting everything like I do exactly I like to hit everything so so I did And in the Japanese version, the picture of her, the picture she has in the frame is of a lady for me, it says. So it's like a female human. Okay.

And then we hit the photo. Another photo comes out. It's of King Onion and Princess Tomato. So I feel like that implies that Lisa's mother is a farming. Oh, okay. Who got an on with King Onion and had her. It's like a little secret origin there, which they didn't want to include in the English version. Trist in the Little Kingdom. Wow.

Yeah. That's going to be a heavily reference part of the reboot that I'm looking at. So I think she's more like Princess Tomatoes step sister and not full sister. We're going to do like a full bioware style, King Onion and a human lady sex scene. I do love how they kind of hit that in the English version and made a hidden picture, a picture of Tom Cruise. Where else in N.S. game would you see a reference of Tom Cruise? Days of Thunder. That's it.

Well, I mean, that's a Tom Cruise film, so. Is he in that game or his likeness? He didn't have to pay for that. He's definitely not in the top gun games. Oh, no, no, no way. But yeah, I mean, uh, contact fangamer, tell them nicely. We want to give you money. Are we still on this?

Yes. This is my goal, Jeremy. I'm going to take over this entire network with my evil demands. I mean, I guess everyone has their New Year's resolutions. Yes, I mean, this is all I'm living for now. Please make me a happy man. And I want to wear a Percy shirt. Oh.

By the end of 2020. We do. We do have the bomberman license. Yes. So maybe we could do the Princess Tomato Bomber Woman. You're almost there. We're almost there. Yeah, we're one step away.

Yes. So make it happen. Make my wish come true. I will try my best. Please do. But thanks for listening to Retronauts. This has been our Princess Tomato episode. I hope I enlightened you with this salad wisdom and tomato knowledge.

But as for us, we are Retronauts. And we are supported by the Retronauts Patreon. If you go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts, you can find out to support the show. For only $3 a month, you can help us out and pay for every. everything that we do and also get every episode at a week at a time and add free and at a higher bit rate. That's a great deal. I think it evens out to about 50 cents per episode. So please go to patreon.com slash retronauts to find out how to help the show and we'd appreciate it a lot. I will go last. Everybody else, what do you do? Where can we find you and how can we

give you a hand? Jeremy. Hey, it's Jeremy Parrish. And you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite or on other places on the internet as Jeremy Parrish. It's very exciting. Check out my YouTube series. It doesn't have a name. But it's a series. It's a series. of series called Works I guess, NES works, Game Boy Works, Virtual Boy Works. I'm chronicling video game platforms

year by year, game by game. It's weird and exciting and I keep finding out strange new things about Virtual Boy. Join me on this mad endeavor. Nina. Hey, I'm Nina. If you like Princess Tomato like me, please at me on Twitter at SpaceCairo. That's SpaceCaioli

but with an L at the end instead of an E. You can also find myself on Fangamer.com. Go there, go to collections, and select by artists and click on Space Coyote. You can see all the official video game merch that I designed for hanging around there. Hopefully, Prince deMail will go up on there someday. I also have a website at spacecoyote.com. Chris.

I'm Chris Sims. You can find me on the bad website as at the ISB. That's T-H-E-I-S-B. You can also go to T-H-E-D-S-B.com and find links to most of the stuff I do, including a bunch of podcasts. I'm also a writer. I've written a bunch of comics for Marvel. self-published, and independent comics as well. And if you want to hire me to write that Princess Tomato reboot with all the gritty action

that today's modern audience craves, it's, I can do it like the new god of war. I promise you. It's going to be very good. Oh, so you're like raising Percy as your little, your little beige? Yeah. Percy. But Percy's the exact same. Sorry, boss.

Drop much stuff. So lots of naked orange ladies? Yes. Oh, man. Twice as many naked orange ladies as there are. There's got to be a reboot. A graphic novel, an animated series, a serial involved? Live action film.

Yeah. Please hire me as a key artist on that. Oh, okay. Look, if you, if you, we're just getting touch. We'll do the work. All right, we'll talk. The key to the success of this game is going to be the physics on the boomering-like backhoe. Yeah.

So patrons are now funding our Princess Tomato reboot, just so you know. No more podcasts. We're just going to be working on this and paying people to make it. But as for me, I've been your host for this one, Bob Mackey. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also do other podcasts for the Talking Simpsons Network. Go to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons to find out more. We do two podcasts over there, Talking Simpsons, and What a Cartoon.

And they're all animation-based. I think you'll like them if you like hearing about old cartoons. If you like old games, you might like old cartoons, too. Who knows? But as for us, we'll see you soon with a new episode of Retronauts. Goodbye. 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 say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.