Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 207: Capcom's Disney Afternoon

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

East meets West, and then some! Jeremy Parish and Chris Sims (east) meet with Bob Mackey and Nina M. (west) to talk about the franchise that brings people of all coasts together: Capcom's Disney games for NES.

Hey everyone, it's me, Jeremy Parrish, co-host of Retronauts. You may have noticed that we've moved back to Libson after being on podcast one for a couple of years, which means you can listen to Retronauts on platforms like Google Play again, and you won't hear any more creepy geotargeted ads. Now that we're setting up at our new home, our new hosts would like to get to know our audience a little better. If you're a fan of Retronauts, we'd be truly grateful if you could take a few minutes out of your day and complete a quick survey for us. Please head over to Survey.Libson.com slash Retronauts

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This week in Retronauts, we will solve no mysteries, but as usual, we will rewrite history. Everyone, welcome to another episode of Retronauts, and this is a different and exciting one, wow, we're all really close together here. This is a very intimate episode. But it's also the very first crossover between Retronauts Prime and Retronauts East, if you want to call it that. So let's go around the table. Let's go in reverse mic order and do the usual introductions. I'm Jeremy Parrish, but of course here with me is...

Hey, it's Bob Mackie. And you are the Retronauts West part of this... Is there going to be a rap-style feud between us now? I hope not. Bob Mackey shot. I didn't bring any rhymes. That's terrible. And then next to Bob is...

I'm Chris Sims, and I'm tougher than the toughies and sharper than the sharpies, and I did it all fair and square. I'm going to assume that's a reference to... It definitely is. I knew it. To something? What? It's to the first appearance of Scrooge McDouged. Oh, okay. I haven't seen that one. And then finally, rounding off the cast...

Hello, flying in on a plastic bottle strapped to a balloon. It's Nina Matsumoto, and I belong to no retronaut. That's true. You are your own retronaut. I'm from the West Coast, though. Yeah. And you are here on this episode because you are actually somewhat associated, affiliated with the product we're going to be discussing today, or a product that we're going to be discussing today, kind of the impetus for this entire episode, which is about the Disney Afternoon Collection. And you were involved a little bit in the production of Capcom's recent PS4 Xbox One Steam release. Yep.

I was asked to do the key art for it, so the cover art that you see for the store. and when you open up the game, all the characters come bouncing in in the opening screen there. And that's all the stuff I drew. Even the little squiggly's in the background. That's all me. So I'm actually really interested in kind of learning more about the process and inspiration there because there's a long legacy with these characters of cartoon art.

And we're going to talk about that because the games really were kind of inspired by the cartoons, which were in turn inspired by the comics. So, yeah, like, as an artist, what was that like for you? Kind of stepping into those very large, duck-shaped shoes. Spats. Yes. I was really surprised that they asked me to do it because it was Capcom who did the collection and they asked me.

And I'm not sure why, because I'd never done any work for Capcom before. And all of a sudden, they just email me saying, hey, we want you to do something for a secret project. And I'm like, ooh, okay, sounds exciting. And then it turned out to be this collection, which had not been announced yet at all. And it's kind of the perfect project for me because, like, even though it's Disney, I'm not the biggest Disney fan, but I'm very familiar with Disney Afternoon because I watched that, like, every day when I was a kid. I also loved the games growing up, especially Chip and Dale. So this was kind of like a dream project that I never asked for. But I've also never drawn in this style before ever.

I don't think I've ever drawn a Disney character before this, except for doing fan art of the games, like Chippendale. But you have a great ability to just mimic other artists' styles, so I can see why. Yeah, that's kind of my thing. Maybe that's why they asked me. I still feel like they could have asked someone who had at least one piece of Disney art in their portfolio. But I guess they trusted in my abilities when they saw that I could mimic the different styles there. But I also mostly do, like, anime style, though.

So I was surprised they asked me to do something. so, like, Western cartoonie. Did they give you any, like, pushback or pointers or say, like, oh, you need to work on this, this is too off model. Did Disney have to do, like, approvals and that sort of thing? Because I know that when you get that many different licensors involved, it can be kind of nightmarish. It was actually a really surprisingly smooth process.

I was super intimidated by this project because, you know, Disney is involved. And, yeah, they did have to approve everything. Capcom and Disney. Like, I'm a big Capcom fan. but actually I asked for model sheets but they couldn't provide me with any for the characters so I had to go off of Google image search stuff although I Google image search for model sheets and I found those so it was really helpful sorry what was the question I don't remember no just like what kind of you know what kind of like pointers did they have or like did you have a lot of revisions where they said oh no this isn't quite right you got to work on the feathers or something no actually like I thought they would give me a ton of notes, because I also was a penciler for Bongo comics for a long time. So I did Simpsons comics for over 10 years. And they give me a lot of notes. And they're a lot harder to draw that you would think in that style. So I was like, oh man, this is Disney. Like, I bet they're

going to be really strict about things. But they surprisingly were not. Like, the only thing they asked me to be careful about were Chipendale's faces. And those are the characters I was most familiar with. So I was surprised. Like that's like those are the characters I felt I drew the best, but then they gave me some some notes on the faces. But aside from that, yeah, like they weren't very picky. And the only thing they asked of me, oh, by the way, the whole concept of the cover art was something I came up with as well. Like they didn't have too much of an idea what they wanted. All they knew was they couldn't have the characters look like they're in the same space, the same universe. Like, they have to be strictly separated, which is why they're in, like, those panels.

Well, that was the only thing they asked of. So the rest was just like, okay, I decided to make sure each character looks like they're from the game and not the cartoons. So all of them has something in there that's an element from the game. Although with Darkwing Duck, it was a little bit harder. Oh, actually, no, they maybe changed the gas gun to a grappling hook gun. That was the only thing. I just thought of that. Yeah.

It's weird Disney has that rule, because in Kingdom Hearts, they break it. Like, everybody gets together in the same universe in Kingdom Hearts, but... Maybe it's different with the Disney Afternoon characters. Yeah, they're weird about those characters. And in a way, I don't understand. Well, I mean, everyone in Kingdom Arts is kind of siloed into their own kingdoms. That's true, but there's like the Little Mermaid universe and the Pirates of the Caribbean universe. There's also those worlds like the first town you go to where it's a bunch of different...

It's a mix of characters. But, yeah. And summons. Yeah, I guess just because this is based on specific cartoons where everyone does have kind of their own, like, standalone own universe. Well, Ducktails and Darkwing Duck are canonically in the same universe. Right. Yeah.

I mean, they share characters. But, like, what the hell does tailspin have to do with any of that? I disagree with that, by the way. Oh, what? Actually, the creator, I interviewed him not too long ago, and he said that launchpad in Darkwing Duck is an alternate reality version of launch pad from Ducktails. They're not the same launch pad. Wow.

Oh, right. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. That makes me really want one of those flash of two world style covers with launchpad about to be hit by a girder. They look the same. so it kind of loses something.

But I think he was just trying to troll people who want that, like, a crossover with Scrooge McDuck and Darkwing Duck. It's worth in so many fan fictions. Where does Disney Afternoon fit into the Zelda timeline? That's what I'm going to know. It's after Canon dies? After the flood?

Yeah. There's a flood, right? Cannon Duck. And it's just a bunch of duck people. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Like the world of the White Ducks. It's only inhabitable light ducks.

Oh, so it's kind of like the Sputoon world. Yeah. And so Medley is the progenitor of all the Disney ducks. That makes sense. She's Webigail's great, great, great grandmother. There you go. Disney was kind of liberal about some of the visual interpretations of these characters. Because if you look at the Japanese packaging for ducktails,

like that was clearly drawn by Kaji Inafune and it's got some visible quirks. Like, you know, the thing where the two characters, two middle fingers are together. Yeah, so like you can definitely see some little ticks in there. And I guess that was kind of, you know, sort of the beginning of the legacy of some of the artists behind the comics is that, you know, They had their specific tells, and so people recognized their art, and, you know, Carl Barks was known as the good artist or the good duck artist because no one knew what his name was, but they knew that when he drew Duck Tales or Donald Duck or Scrooge McDuck, it was going to be great stuff. So, yeah, actually, why don't we jump in and talk about the history here? Because I think this is the part that appeals most to Chris, the comic history behind the Disney afternoon. But first, I guess we should explain what the Disney afternoon is.

We've described, or we've mentioned it, but we haven't described it. And that was a block of syndicated programming run by Disney that ran roughly from, I guess, technically from like 1990 to 1997, but it kind of started in 1987 when Duck Tales began. Yeah, shows were grandfathered into the Disney Afternoon. They had like existing syndicated shows, and then I think Disney Afternoon started with 90th with Tailspin. Yeah, I mean, they officially made it a powerful. package that they sold, you know, solicited to syndication in 1990, but they, you know, kind of started taking over the afternoon cartoon broadcasting at the after-school section of television sometime, around the time Ducktails launched. And, yeah, they grandfathered in the gummy bears cartoon,

which started in the early 80s. And they had a few other things. Yeah, like 85 or 86. And they were remarkable because the animation, especially early on, was really good compared to something like He-Man or, you know, Thundercats or even the Warner Brothers stuff. Like, I loved Animaniacs and Tiny Tunes, but those were not usually, especially artful in terms of the illustrations in the animation, you know. And then you compare that to gummy bears or ducktails and they look great. Yeah, they look like Disney cartoons. With some anime thrown in because they used all the best Japanese studios, which is why I love how those, like, that era of it's Disney. Disney and anime together at the same time

which will never happen again. It's really awesome. Never. What about Big Heroes 6? Oh, oh. I was thinking more like Atlantis was the last time it happened. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Atlantis, I was the star of that, apparently. No, at the time people were like, hey, that's you, the main character. Oh, God, no. And I was offended.

Yeah, so I guess this game collection compilation is pulled together from six different NES games that were based on the Disney Afternoon. But I don't think at any point Capcom said these are the Disney Afternoon games until the collection came out, at which point, you know, they sort of officially pegged it as the Disney Afternoon Collection. But before that, I heard that term tossed around, but I never saw it officially. I think it was like something fans assigned. And then Capcom was like, sure, why not? I didn't hear anything about that. Yeah. As far as I know, it was always that,

but you could be right. Well, the guy who contacted me to do the key art, when he told me up with the collection, I was like, ooh, are you guys kind of called the Disney? Afternoon Collection, he was like, we're trying to get that name on it. Maybe we will. Yeah. They weren't sure about it yet. But then, I guess he eventually got that name somehow. I don't know if it was a tough process at all, though. Do you think they're worried people don't remember it? I'm just, Disney is really weird about their TV properties. I was just at Disneyland. And people my age with a lot of disposable income now and who have their own kids, I'm sure they're really nostalgic for those shows. And that's why Disney Afternoon Collection came out. I'm guessing because

of the nostalgia, but if you go to Disneyland, they have, they're just there to sell you things. There's so many shops there to sell you things. And I swear, there's like one piece of merch for every Disney afternoon show. There's like, there's a dark wing duck mug or a tailspin pin, but that's it. I think Disney sees television as somewhat disposable. And yeah, it just doesn't have the gravitas in their eyes that they're theatrical releases to. That's a shame, because that's a Disney stuff that I like. So if I went to Disneyland, I would look for that kind of stuff. That's what I've seen the most of, too. Oh, really? Yeah, the TV stuff, for sure. Yeah, I mean, especially in, you know, the 80s and 90s before you had wide digital video availability and it was easy to find stuff on the internet, you know, kids couldn't necessarily see the movies that easily.

Disney would bring them out on VHS tape for like a year and then retire them to the vault. So you couldn't buy them for another 10 years. And so unless you lucked across, you know, a VHS tape, really a lot of kids' main exposure to Disney was through the car. cartoons that aired on television or on, you know, like the, the Magic Kingdom on Sunday nights throughout the 80s. But, yeah, like, I think they hold their movies in high esteem, but their television properties are kind of how kids got to know. Like, those were the worlds that we lived in on a daily basis. And I don't know that they realized that.

Especially because I brought this up on podcast before, but the classic Disney cartoons were all segregated to the Disney Channel, which was a pay channel. So this was the only Disney content you could watch for, quote, unquote, free, you know, for broadcast TV. So, like, I didn't know any of the classic characters growing up. Only later when DVDs came out that I actually watched, like, old Donald Duck cartoons. But these are the characters I know the best because they were on TV. It's actually a really good point. I never really thought about it.

But I didn't grow up going to the movies at all. I didn't really watch films. So maybe that's why I latched down to Disney after doing so much. So just in brief, the Disney Afternoon Come out in 2017, which now is two years ago. Wow, that's amazing. And was published by Capcom. and I guess co-partnered with Disney.

I don't know how that relationship worked. But it was developed by Digital Eclipse, you know, and our friend and sometimes co-host, Frank Sefaldi, former co-host, was kind of the producer on that. And it was built around the same tech that they used for the Mega Man Legacy Collection, the first one, which is Digital Eclipse developed on the Eclipse Engine, which was specifically designed to emulate or simulate a variety of different, computer platforms or console platforms. These are all NES games.

Unfortunately, they didn't include any of the Game Boy ports, which would have been not necessarily great to play, but fun just for archival completeness. But there is a huge archive of images and box art and sort of like production trivia within the collection. So that's really cool. It really feels like it was kind of their dry run for the S&K 40th anniversary collection,

which I have to say is a much better collection just because I think they had more free reign. And also it encompasses a much broader span of games and game types. Although I think, you know, Disney is more the crowd pleaser. Like, people realistically would rather play ducktails. Everyone would rather play ducktails than Athena. But, you know, as a piece of historic curation, I like the S&K collection. As a piece of like, hey, I love these characters and these are fun games that still hold up pretty well.

Disney Afternoon Collection is the way to go. And I think this is where they introduced their rewind function, too. So it's a pretty good collection. And it still seems weird to me that they haven't announced it or given any indication that it will be on Switch because these are all Nintendo platform games. And the Nintendo audience, who now owns Switches and buys them for their kids, like grew up playing these games. So it kind of seems like a missed opportunity. But, you know, it is still available on three different platforms. So it's not hard to come by.

and it's definitely worth playing for sure. It's always on sale at this point. You can get it for like $5 most of the time. It's totally worth it. But yeah, the rewind feature in these collections, that should be in every classic game collection, that rewind feature. I'm done with quick saves.

I just want rewind forever now. It works so well. Have you tried the 40th anniversary of the S&K collection? I haven't. The rewind collection of a feature in that is fantastic because you can like step back and yeah, it just like it creates like save states as you play. So you rewind

and you can just have like complete control over it. I think you can jump into other people's games at any point? Basically, yeah. It's not other people's games. It's for each game, basically Frank completed a playthrough of it and every frame of that

is its own save state. So you can watch it like as a demo. And then if there's some point where you're like, oh, this seems fun. I want to jump in. You can just pick up and play from that frame. That's great. That's not in the Disney afternoon collection, which is a shame. but it's, I imagine it's going to be in digital eclipses, their productions from this point on, because it's a really cool feature.

Are there any Mega Man ports with that function? I want to say the later legacy collections have rewind, but not the jump in, because I know Digital Eclipse didn't work on the second Legacy Collection or on the Mega Man X collection, Legacy Collections. So, you know, whatever is in there is actually a much less fully featured set of options than in the Digital Eclipse ones, which is just kind of a disappointment, but, you know, whatever, whatever Digital Eclipse does next, I'm sure we'll include this. But who knows, maybe they'll add it to the Disney Afternoon Collection when that finally comes to Switch. Who can say? So, anyway, the collection encompasses six games, all released on NES between 1990, 1989 and 1994. So that's Duck Tales, Duck Tales 2, Chippendale's Rescue Rangers, Chippendale's Rescue Rangers 2, Darkwing Duck, and

tailspin. And I think we can all agree on which the worst game is. What's your vote there? Oh, uh, tailspin. Chris, do you have an opinion? I never played the tellspin game. Don't. It's actually... It's what I hear. It's not great.

From Bob just now. Yeah, I'd say tellspin or Chippendale 2, actually. Really? I haven't played much of that one, but it's pretty much the same as the first one, but prettier, yes, but it's not a... Not nearly as fun as the first one. Really?

I guess we'll have to talk about that when we get to that game. I feel like Tailspin is a well-made bad game. Yes. It has a really cool idea that they don't do anything good with. They mess it up in a huge way. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely interesting. But, you know, if you can compare it to contemporary Capcom shooters of the era, you know, that was the same time that you and Squadron came out.

Yeah, that's true. It's such a better game. I mean, yes, it's an NES kids game versus a hardcore arcade game. But still. I don't know. It's a little disappointing. But yeah, so these six games were pretty big hits back in the day. I mean, DuckTales was the first Capcom developed NES game based on the Disney license and was a huge hit. And that kind of was, you know, the beginning of their long relationship with Disney.

And in addition to these games, they also produced several other Disney-themed games, including Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, the Little Mermaid. I think there was a Beauty and the Beast game. I can't remember. They produced a bunch. The magical adventures of Mickey Mouse. Whatever the S&E's trilogy is, it's really good. The Mickey Mouse games. Those are amazing.

In Beauty and the Beast, who do you play as? The Beauty or the Beast? I think maybe both. Miss Pop. Yeah, it could be... The sexy feather duster. Ooh, me. Yeah, and they also published Hudson's Mickey Mouse Capade, which the less said about the better.

I'm glad that's not in this collection. Yeah. Fortunately, Konami probably owns some. rights to that and didn't want it on here. And good riddance. But anyway, yeah, so there's six games, and I think of these the most momentous and significant are

definitely the Ducktails games. Those are the ones that everyone seems to love. The original Ducktails got a remake in like five or six years ago for HD consoles. It just has a huge kind of following. Lots of nostalgia. It hit at

just the right time. The NES was really huge in America in 1989. And Ducktails was really huge on TV in 1989. And so millions of kids bought it and said, I love this. And it is burrowed into their brains at this point. It's probably my favorite NES game. Like still. NES game, period.

Yeah. All of all NES games. Yeah. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that it was one of the few that I owned as a kid. It was the only thing I asked for for Christmas, Christmas, 1989. So I spent a lot of time with it. but I still think it is extremely playable, extremely good, very cleverly made, just really fun stuff in there.

Yeah, so we'll talk about that, but let's first talk about the kind of the legacy behind these games, because I think that's, you know, that's really important to understand where these games are coming from. They are based on the cartoons, but they also kind of reach a little bit beyond that. And the cartoons themselves reach very deeply into Disney's history, more of comics than of anything else. And that is Chris's area of specialties. So, Chris, why don't you walk us through the history, the prehistory of Duck Tales? Well, Disney has a long history in comics, which is fairly obvious to people who are into comics,

but I don't know if people who come in it from the animation side are that aware of how far back it goes. And they have a long history in adventure comics as well. In 1930, Floyd Godfrensen takes over the Mickey Mouse Daily newspaper strip. And boy, were those something. They're really good. They are, unfortunately, comics from the 1930s, and so you occasionally get into some very unfortunate and regrettable caricatures, which is weird because it's mostly about mice.

Yeah, but I mean, we've all, I think we've all read mouse here, Arch Bogleman's mouse. So, you know, you can imprint a lot of things onto animals. That is true. It's pretty easy to do. I mean, we are at a convention where there's all kinds of weird art involving animals, I'm sure, out on the show floor. But those comics, the Godfords and comics are as good as the bark stories, honestly.

And so there's this kind of high standard stat from the beginning in Disney comics. And then in the world of actual comic books, once the 40s and 50s happen, you get these massive glut of Disney comics that were being produced by Dell and Gold Key. And those get worldwide popularity. they're still huge in in Europe Don Rosa is like a superstar in in Europe well-known guy I thought Don Rosa came along later

He does he did He comes along in the 80s But he's like those comics are still very big And in fact if you buy New issues of like Uncle Scrooge or Donald Duck Or Mickey Mouse that are being published in America More often than not they're translations of Italian comics So they're still like they have a long huge history

in Europe. But Ducktail specifically has its roots in the Carl Barks, Donald Duck Stories, which are great. They hold up today as wonderful comics. And if you're curious about them, Fantagraphics has these really nice collections of all the Carlems stuff. And slip cases and everything, they're really nice. The commentary and the colors are redone. They're very, very good.

Scrooge himself comes from. a story called Christmas on Bear Mountain, which is from, I believe, 47. And as his name implies, I thought Barks started in 1952. When did he actually begin? I might be thinking of Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck ending in 47. Okay. I had trouble finding an exact date for Carl Barks's tenure, but what I came up with was 1952 to 68.

That sounds right. Okay. I felt like it was maybe a full 20 years, like 47 to 67, but I'm not. Mike, you're wrong on that. It's been a while since I've read all the back matter in life and times, which I'll get to you later, but everyone should get that camera. But it's a Christmas story, and as his name implies, Scrooge is a Ebenezer Scrooge, pastiche, who is this mean old man. He's Donald's uncle, and he hates everything and lives alone in seclusion and decides to invite his useless nephew to a cabin on Bear Mountain to mess with him. on Christmas and prove that he is a idiot and a coward, which, of course, Donald is.

The story is really good, and Scrooge himself became a popular character based on that story. So Barks keeps revisiting him and telling the story of the richest duck in the world. And I think Scrooge is one of the top five comic book characters of all time. And one of the reasons is the idea of Scrooge is that, and this lends itself both the director and especially to the game, he's rich to the point where all he can do is acquire more wealth. So if there is a valuable thing, you can build a story around it, which means he can go anywhere and do anything. And he has this long history of adventuring. So you get stories that become highly influential.

The opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark is famously based on a bark story where the big boulder comes down. There's plenty of really, really good stuff. And as you said, Barks becomes known as the Good Duck Artist because none of the Disney comics were signed. Yeah, it was all just written as by Walt Disney. Kind of like how Matt Granning has a signature on any piece of official symptoms are. And up through the 70s, Bob Kane on the Batman books, which is a travesty that is a topic for another time. But Scrooge becomes highly influential. And those stories, it's this massive library of just really solid all ages adventure stories.

and so you get that becoming Duck Tales and then you get a revival of Scrooge stuff post Duck Tales because obviously Duck Tales was a worldwide hit and that in turn leads to Don Rosa who is kind of the heir of Carl Barx who grew up as a big Carl Barx fan

he ends up doing this massive Eisner winning comic in 9798 called Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck I didn't realize that was that recent Yeah. Because I remember reading that in like, I don't know, 2004 or 2005. I didn't realize it was a contemporary comic at that point. Yeah, it was spaced out over two years, I think, two years worth of Donald Duck comics.

And what that does is it goes back and takes all of the kind of factoids and references about Scrooge's early life that are in all the bark stories. Like going back to Dismal Downs and finding the treasure, the lost McDuck treasure in Castle, McDoug, and weaves them into a single narrative that is the origin story of how Scrooge became, you know, went from a poor kid in Scotland to being an extremely rich duck in Calasota, the state that encompasses Duckberg. I didn't realize that was in its own state. Yeah, the 51st state of the Union. Yes.

It's in there somewhere. It's weird shaped. But yeah, so that's, those stories are all very, very good. Incidentally, if you ever meet Barks or Don Rosa at a convention, do not talk to him about duct tales. He hates it. Really? That's what I've heard. That's really all I know about him, how angry he is, especially at people who like duct tales and, you know, that's all they know the characters from.

There is not a bigger gap between the absolute joy of someone's work and the absolute joy they exude as a human being, Don Rosa and his Scrooge McDuck out. He has a sign on his tables. Yeah, I've seen pictures of that sign. That's really how I know. He is a friendly guy, though. And he does convention a lot.

He's very nice. But there's this, there's this aura when you approach him that's because of that sign, which, of course, is Disney lettered. Uh, yeah. Yeah. What does it say exactly?

Like, no ducktails art or something? It says, these are not, quote, duct tails. Uh, got it. You will get a lecture if you mentioned ducktails. I like, a lot but and especially I love his comics I've got a bunch of signed stuff I've got a sketch of Donald that he did uh in my book I asked for Donald Duck being as mad as he gets and uh

and I got a really good one on that so they make duck tails and there are changes there's weird changes too they um kind of visually the most notable one is they flip the colors on his coat he wears a blue coat with uh with red trim on the show he wears a red coat with black trim in the game and in the original comics, which I think is interesting. Which do you prefer? I like the red coat. Yeah, I like that one, too. And there are magic powers attributed to the number one dime in the show, which I know is a big sticking point for Rosa.

Because the number one dime has emotional significance, but it's not lucky. So magic at a spell is not in the comics, then, right? Magic at a spell is in the comics. Okay. Hey, she's magic. Yes. It's in her name. She's magic. The dime is not.

I see. All right. So I think that's a pretty good rundown of the sort of origin story for Duck Tales. But what about the cartoon itself? I admit I really did not watch it. I was, because I'm an old man, I was like, I don't need to see Disney cartoons after school. I'd rather like go to the arcade with my friends or try to hang out with girls and be rejected. That sounded much more fun. So I kind of missed out on Duck Tales and actually kind of missed out on the games that we're covering here until many years later, but I feel like you guys are all

sort of in the right age demographic to have been like, yeah, hell yeah, ducktails, all right. I think it was probably the first cartoon I really liked growing up. It came on when I was five maybe, but I watched it up until the early 90s because it was rerun a bunch, and that's really why I love the game. And I bought one of the DVD sets, and it's not

as, it's not at the level as cartoons are now. Like, I heard the new ducktails is really good. Yeah, everyone says really great things about it. It is. And people who worked on Gravity Falls, I think, made it or something like that, or a lot of people behind that that cartoon, which is really good. But yeah,

like, it is very good for its time. And as someone who loves animation and does animation podcast, it's really worth revisiting just to watch it. Because it was made by Disney and also during Japan's bubble economy, for the most part. So it was like all the money

of Disney and all the money of Japan making the best TV animation ever. And it looks really, really good. Do you know which Japanese studios worked on it? I believe, I could be wrong about this, but it could have been Tokyo movie Shinsha or TMS. They eventually became part of that company became Tokyo Disney, like Disney Animation Tokyo. So for a while, they had their own animation studio in Tokyo to outsource to, and that's where the best animation that they did came from on TV. Yeah, I mean, any animation you get for like a TV show in the 80s that came from Japan, you're always just like,

this is punching so far above its weight class. Like, I just watched The Resilion. And the first season, especially, it's just like, why is this cartoon that is about selling light guns to kids, just like Laser Tag Academy did not look this good, is what I'm saying. It's pretty wild. Yeah, it's, like I said, go back to watch it just for the animation. Like, nothing will ever look that good on TV again.

They can't, they can't spend the much money anymore. It's just too expensive. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's lots of digital. cheats now, but you can tell. It just doesn't have... I mean, you know, you compare the way Modern Simpsons looks to when it was hand-drawn, and there's just a difference. Like, you can do things when you animate by hand that are impossible with computers, and vice versa. But I like the sort of the idiomatic quality and the imperfections of hand-drawn art. There's something to be said

for that. And it's unfair, but that's sort of why I didn't watch the new ducktails, although I really want to. It just, I want to look as good as the original. And these are not just my memories. I watched it again on DVD and I was like, oh, this looks so good. But even Disney now can't spend that much money. I mean, they could, but it would be a waste. They would not make that money back. Yeah, I mean, television audiences are a lot more fragmented now. There's just not as much money as there used to be in TV. I mean, probably collectively, there's a lot more money, but it's divided into hundreds of tiny pieces of pie as opposed to three. Yeah, when Ducktails was on TV, it was very much the three-channel world. So a third of the Children of America were watching

Duck Tales at one point. I guess it was actually four because I think it aired on Fox in my but still like that's it's a very large piece of a pie. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, I

guess maybe someone could step in and describe what the premise of the Ducktail's cartoon is about. I mean, obviously Scrooge McDuck, but it was always weird to me just kind of as an outsider that Donald Duck was nowhere in this cartoon. Life is like a hurricane. That is the premise. Well, the show disposes with Donald.

Donald goes and joins the Navy because he's a singer. That explains his outfit. Okay. And an interesting thing is it is never revealed who the nephew's father is. Even on Rosa's big family tree, he's like covered by leaves. Okay. I mean, they're Donald's nephews. And then I assume Scrooge is their great-uncle.

Scrooge's their great-uncle, because Donald is the son of, I believe, Della Duck, who is one of Scrooge's two sisters. And then he has a sister whose name I do not recall, who is the mother of the nephews. And I, or maybe that's Della, because I think in the new duck tales, they're looking for Della. Okay. I mean, it's okay. It's very, there's a lot of D-names in the McDuck family tree. So, the idea is that Scrooge gets these nephews, and the nephews accompany him on his worldwide money-making adventures. It's free labor.

Yeah. But I think, would you say the real reason why Donald is not on the show is, well, Disney did not want one of their main characters on a TV show because it was too valuable. But also in the comics, Donald Duck talks a lot. Yes. He has, like, paragraphs and paragraphs of text. And you don't hear, like, when I read those comics, I don't hear Donald Duck saying them. I hear like a man saying them. It would be incomprehensible if you had the

Right, exactly. Just can't do that. All Donald can do is basically kind of G-rated swears when he's angry for the most part. And he doesn't really talk that much in ducktails either when he's on screen. The existence of Scrooge McDuck and the nephews raises questions about Donald's voice that the television show was not prepared to answer. But the premise, like what is what is Scrooge's relationship to the nephews in? the TV series because you know he started out as this like very cold-hearted uh avaricious

manipulative kind of cruel man but you know as as he was fleshed out in the comics he became less so but i feel like he's more like a stern uh disciplinarian in the the cartoon as opposed to just like super cold and like mean-spirited scrooge gets really softened in the comics but only towards the nephews he hates Donald. Donald, I think, canonically, in the Carl Bark's stories, works for Scrooge for 14 cents an hour. And he's always trying to teach Donald a lesson. But he really, like, the nephews, he loves, like, because the nephews are fun and capable. And Donald is not. Like, Donald's, Donald's a comedy character. The nephews are kind of competent foils for Donald, which then makes them good sidekicks for Scrooge. which is the dynamic that kind of comes through on the show where Scrooge is old and a little stern but

but you know the nephews are adventurous in the same like they inherited the adventurousness from his side of the family got it. There's also a five part pilot for DuckTales the TV series that explains the entire premise and I think part of it was on broadcast TV it was a big like event thing but that was that was pretty common back then like G.I. Joe Transformers

those all started out with like five part miniseries to kind of set things up. Disney did it with Gargoyles too, a later series they would do. But yeah, it's a five part. I don't know which DVD set it's on. It's not on the first one, which is weird, because it is the origin of the series, like where it all starts. Interesting. So, Neenie, you've been, you've been kind of quiet, but I know you watch the show a lot. Do you have any thoughts on it or specific takes? Did Ducktails come after Gummy Bears? Yeah. Gummy Bears was like, I think you said 85, and DuckTills was 87.

Yeah. And gummy bear started as a Saturday morning cartoon, I remember. It did. I was still watching Saturday morning cartoons kind of at the tail end of my child at that point. It was like, wow, this show looks good. I don't care about it, but it looks amazing. I still, I watched gummy bears because it was on, but I really didn't like it. So whenever Duck Tales came on after that, it was like a good breath of fresh air.

I was like, ah, finally. Yeah, gummy bears and the littles both had just like this super high bar of animation that I noticed. Even as a kid, I was like, these shows look. so good compared to everything else on Saturday morning. But I don't really know that much about Gummy Bears itself. But it did, like, DuckTales did come after. I guess Gummy Bears never really took off much because they never made a game

based on it. Yeah, they didn't. At least not for Nintendo. I guess it was too early. Also, it's not a great show. No, I mean, it's, I think... They could have easily made a game based on it, though, the little bouncing. I think so. There's lots of bouncing. Yeah, I mean, Ducktails has the bouncing.

Maybe, no. It was never going to be a Gummy Bears game. But But, I mean, the potential there. Maybe they couldn't do a gummy bears game because they were like, well, we've already got bouncing in ducktails. That would be stupid. I don't know. Cargoyles are better. It's a more 90s, edgy gummy bears.

Yeah, we were just talking about that at dinner last night. And I had never watched gargoyles either. But apparently it was like basically the entire cast of Star Trek. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm voicing all these characters who like blur Shakespearean fiction with real life. it sounds really interesting and I want to watch it now. The main antagonist is Jonathan Frakes or anti-hero.

Is he the antagonist of the show? Zanatos? He's an antagonist. I wouldn't call him an anti-hero. Yeah. He's sort of the Elon Musk of that world. He's a smithers. That's also, like, really good animation, mostly from Japan.

One of the last times Disney was able to do that for that. It was like another prestige thing they did. Was there gargles stuff at Disneyland? No. There was no gargles. Gargoel stuff. No bonkers either. We're leaving bonkers out of this.

Was Bonkers Disney? Bonkers was Disney. Wow. I did not realize that. Okay. That was when Disney after New was dying out, I think. Pretty much, yeah. He wanted to revive it with bonkers.

There was a Capcom. What's that? They want to revive it with bonkers. The Redheaded stepchild's redheaded stepchild. And some of that show is really good animation, too. It's sad because of the actual content's bad. But also, yeah, there are bonkers, Genesis and S&S games, both by Capcom, both different games. Like, they didn't stop making these.

And there's a Gargill's Genesis game as well. But no Super Nintendo game. I don't know why. Yeah, I did like Duck Tales a lot. Like, not one of my favorites to the Disney afternoon line up there. I really like Gizmo Duck as a character. Like, was he ever in the comics or was he a creation of the cartoon?

Gizmo Duck was, I believe, a creation of the cartoon. Okay. Who then later made his way into the comics. A bunch of the characters in the cartoon, I do know, were invented for the cartoon. Like, Launchpad McQuack definitely was invented for the cartoon. Gizmo Duck came up in Darkwing Duck, too. He appeared there.

But I guess it's an alternate version. It would have to be, yeah. Didn't they make Darkwing Duck because Gizmo Duck was popular and they want another duck cartoon, a duck hero? Yeah, I guess we'll get to it when we get to Dark Wing Duck, but Dark Wing Duck started as an idea for Launchpad to be like a James Bond style character. And I believe Gizmo Duck was going to be part of the show, but Gizmo Duck was developed and added to the show because of Robocop. Like the famous children's movie Robocop? I like the part where they blew his body into tiny pieces of bloody gore. That was when GizmoDuck shot that guy in the penis

There's such a weird permeability between media in the late 80s though Because there was like a robocop cartoon Yeah, yeah It was a robo cop comic That's like an all-ageous comic And there was going to be like a more adult-oriented Robocop comic

But Dway McDuffy's pitch got rejected And it became death lock So thanks Paul Now I'm just thinking of those corkscrewed duck penises Oh God Oh no You've tainted this Okay, time we head on to the video games.

If anybody out there wants to do some fan art, Oh, no. Gives me a talk point of up. Well, I was going to say, even though I liked the cartoon a lot, I never played the N.S. game growing up. I never had it. I didn't know it was that popular, actually, because I grew up with Chippendale, so I had no idea that people had, people clamored for the Duck Tales game. I didn't even know it existed back then, I think. I had the PC, no, I had an MS-DOS game, Quest for Gold, Duck Tales Clos for Gold, if you remember that at all. I've only seen Screenshots. It's not a platformer, is it? It's like various kinds of games. It's like little mini-games. Okay. So there's like a picture-taking game, kind of like Pokemon Snap.

And there's like platforming parts as well. Was it more based on the movie than the series? The movie? Yeah. Yeah, a treasure of the Lost City or Lost Land? Yeah. I've never seen that, so I'm not sure. But it's like, Scrooge has this rivalry against, what's the name again?

The other Rich Duck? Flintagland Old. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they're, like, competing to see who can collect the most money by the end of the week or something. That's the premise of that game. Okay. Boy, it makes me mad when people say, I think his name is glum gold.

I've heard that a lot. No, glom means glom. Like, grab onto something. He wants to glom gold. His name is not subtle. Yeah. The Dutch South African rich millionaire doc. So anyway, yeah, onto the video games.

We've chatted a lot about this. But we should talk about how the video games played and how they, sort of absorbed all the elements of the comics and the cartoons and basically created this little great compact package of Scrooge McDuckiness. So the NES games, the first one especially, was developed by basically a big chunk of the Mega Man 2 team sort of contemporarily with Mega Man 2. So we're talking like Capcom and its 8bit Prime.

They were really starting to get a handle on the NES and really starting to explore great fun ideas and video games. And you can definitely see the Mega Man Ness of Ducktails. It has, you know, kind of like the same character proportions and the same sort of feel to the movements. And the sound is really similar because they have the same composer. But, oh, yeah, and you have like a level select screen at the beginning of the game. You don't go linearly through the game. You get to pick one of five different stages.

say, well, let's find out what's here. And they're very Mega Manish environments, too. Yeah, yeah. But the game is very different for Mega Man in the sense that it's not, like, once you get into a level, it's not just a strictly linear thing. It's more of like a, not a maze, but you're more kind of poking around and exploring and trying to figure out like where are the secret passages and what are the treasures hidden here.

I mean, the game is a treasure hunt. The goal of the game is not to beat the final boss. It's not to save the world. it's to make Scrooge McDuck as rich as possible, and that means like smacking everything in the environment to find as many little diamonds as you can. Isn't he rich enough? Come on.

He's never rich enough. He's the ultimate capitalist. He's only a fantastic trillionaire. He's really trying to fill some kind of void in his life. It's in his heart. What's missing? Yeah. So, you know, it is very much in kind of in tune with the Disney vibe.

You're not, it's not a violent game. in that sense, or like a Save the World kind of game. It's very true to the characters. And to that point, Scrooge doesn't have like the kind of standard attacks that you would expect from a video game character of the era. He carries his cane around and he can use it to whack stuff. But it doesn't work as a weapon in that sense because in order to hit things, you have to like press up against them and then he'll sort of enter this little like wiggle his butt

and do a golf stance. And then you can smack it. So if you try to do that to an enemy, obviously you're just going to take damage. So you don't have that direct attack. Instead, Scrooge can use his cane as a pogo stick, and you can knock out enemies that way, but they, you know, they'll return. So it's not like you're killing them. You're just knocking them off the screen.

Yeah, and that is a, that is a video game creation. Yeah. Scrooge does not pogo jump in the comics. Or in the series, to my knowledge. Yeah. But, I mean, I'll allow it. They had to come up with some sort of mechanic to make the game. Yeah.

I mean, you can look at a, the little Nemo game for an example of a platform action game in which you can't really attack your foes and it's it's more frustrating than fun so so having that element of self-defense in there and it's not it's not like a super breezy mechanic either it takes some some skill to master it because you have to jump and then press the attack button and press down at the same time so it's not like it's not like in Zelda 2 where you jump and press down and you just automatically stab down you have to press that extra button in there and that makes big difference. I feel like it makes it more complex. You can be, but the game punishes you for

that. That's one of the things that I like is if you just kind of like hold down B and just pogo everywhere, bad things will happen to you. Like enemies will appear unexpectedly or in the Himalayas, you'll stick in the snow. So you have to be mindful of how you get around. I remember my dad getting unbelievably angry about his inability to master the pogo jump. they made it a lot easier after the first game. Even the Game Boy port, which is the one I play the most of, you just hit B when you jump and you go into Pogo mode. Yeah, the Game Boy port is a pretty good remix of the NES game.

I was really impressed when I covered that for Game Boy Works. I think most of the level layouts are the same too. They're very similar. They've been changed up some, and like some of the placement of things has changed up, but it's very similar to the NES game. They did a really good job of converting it. The fact that so many people like this game

really speaks to the testament of how well it's made because it's so short. I can play through it and maybe 20 minutes. And I love how like the big, this game ends on the biggest shrug. It's like, what's the last level? Go back to Transylvania. Who's the last boss?

I don't know, Dracula. Who cares? Game's over, goodbye. Is it Dracula, Doc? It's Count Dracula duck. It's not even a good pun. Not even Duckula. I guess they had those copyrighted.

Yeah. And then you've got to fight Magico. That's kind of cool. But I just, I wish there was a real last level. But then the remake added a last level, which I hate. I've actually have not finished the remake. what is the final level in the remake um it's like this lava level kind of thing it's been a while since i played it but i just remember um i can never beat the um the race with glomgold glomgold uh up to the top we have to race them up to the top after you beat the last boss and it was just like two like memorization based and if you die you have to start over at the beginning of the level and fight the last boss over again so uh i've got some conflicting feelings about that remake um if we want to talk about that at some point yeah but i I feel like the NES game is very strong.

I don't think it's the most amazing game. I can't agree, Chris, that it's the best NES game. I really love it. But, you know, it definitely is kind of a showcase for what Capcom could do. And it's also a great example to hold up to say, you know, not all license games have to be bad. Because I think at that point, we were starting, you know, anyone who in an NES had been burned on some crappy license games. I mean, you had LJN and a claim just shitting it up over there. And then Disney came out with Ducktails.

and you're like, well, I played Mickey Mouscapade. This isn't going to be good. And then it's good. They got a Nintendo Power cover, which means a quality game, right? I mean, no money changed the hands. For a while it did. Yeah, no, Nintendo Power was pretty good about highlighting the actual biggest games for a while there. Because the game is built around finding things and finding secrets, and that in turn leads to, like, the Pogo jump mechanic.

It becomes a game about movement in a really interesting way that's also about acquisition. in a way that still feels very Scrooge McDuck and Barry Ducktails. Yeah, I think a big part of the replayability is the fact that there's so much in the world for you to find. There's a ton of stuff. Yeah, you can beat it in 20 minutes, but did you really beat it? Like, have you really mastered the game? Have you gotten the best possible ending? Have you found every single diamond and found, like, the maximum wealth that exists in the game?

Did you find launch pad and then go back so that you could go through the first part of the stage again and double the money that you got? All the tricks. Right. So, I mean, it was very much a game about, I think very suited to young audiences at that point. Like a little complex to master, but not so hard that you couldn't do it, just enough so that you were like, yeah, I get it. I'm a good video game player. It had a little bit of challenge to it, but nothing that you couldn't surmount. It was pretty brief, but it allowed a lot of freedom to explore and poke around. It was basically like a little world that you could live in for a while. And it was full of secrets. So there was always. something to discover and you could tell your friends like, oh, hey, I found this one thing. And they would say, oh, I never found that. So, you know, you swap that knowledge that was so important back in the NES days. There's a lot of really sharp and precise platforming. And then there's a lot of platforming that's actually very easy that feels very difficult when you're a kid. Like in the, the diamond mind, diamond mind level, when you, there's a secret treasure that's

like way off to the right and you have to jump on the enemies that are popping up. up like uh they're like uh black lagoon creatures or whatever yeah but they naturally show up wherever you you know in the arc of your jump but it feels because you can't see them like you're doing this really complex platforming and that's a there's a similar trick that in the moon level that's a little harder with a hidden treasure yeah i mean they they do a good job with that i think um the one area in which the game falls flat is the mind cart and that's mostly true on the game Boy, like that mind card is really hard on Game Boy. Every time I, like, I probably did that, you know, three or four times, like took three or four attempts through that stage and could never get past that when I was trying to review it. So I can't beat the Game Boy game. Bob, maybe you can speak to that better. It's just really just practice to understand how that works. It's not very good. But the mine cards don't work very well. But it's all just knowing the timing.

I'm glad that it's not just me. I'm going to be the same. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. We're going to be able to be. I'm going to be. So, yeah, any other thoughts on, on the original ducktails?

Like, I feel like it does a pretty good job of bringing in some, I think, deep cuts? Like, you fight the king of the terra fermis, that's pretty esoteric, isn't it? Was that like a major thing in the cartoon or? There was a cartoon adaptation of that comic. Actually, I think I had the comic, the reprint of that comic in the beginning. It's like, here's the Duck Tales episode it was in. They were right about that. So, yeah, that was, they didn't adapt too many comic stories from what I've heard.

What I don't really know a lot about the comic. Maybe Chris can talk about that. Do you know if they adapted a lot of the comic stories? Not that I recall. I don't remember a ton about the show. But I think they didn't, yeah, I think they didn't do a lot of strict adaptations. I think it was more just like influence combined with, you know, all the stuff you've won out of a afternoon cartoon of going places and getting things. So it was a big hit and four years later, Capcom finally followed it up with a sequel, DuckTales 2.

Did that have music that was as good as the moon theme? No. No game has music that's as good as the moon theme. Mega Man 2 does. Close. Chip and Dale, really? Yeah. You're going to stand up for Chip and Dill's soundtrack?

Yes. I don't actually remember it. Like, it didn't stand out to me. It's fantastic. It's one of the favorites, yeah. I would not say as good as Ducktails, but. Well, we can talk about that later. No fights.

Yeah, so Duck Tales, too, I have not played. And that is because about three years ago, it went from being a game that no one cared about to being a game that is astronomically expensive. The cartridge sells for like 250 bucks now. It's idiotic. But it's a late NES game, so it's produced in small numbers, and was largely overlooked by the, you know,

the core gaming audience for a long time. So I think when finally people realized, oh, wait, there was another ducktails that was good and I need to go play it. I'm sure there was like an angry video game nerd episode about it or something or Metal Jesus Rocks. I don't know. Some YouTuber, some influencer said, hey, this game is good and now everyone wants it. So, yeah, so it is on the afternoon collection, which is a much more affordable way to play it. But I haven't really spent much time with it. But it is pretty much from what I've played the same basic thing as ducttails.

know can one of you speak more to duck tales too there's there's more to it there are like upgrades to your cane so you can um like break certain blocks and uh i think hang off of certain oh yeah excruition hang off of things and i've duct tales too as well they can do a lot more things with your cane but it is also a fairly brief game uh there's more things to find you're trying to find pieces of a map uh in between stages you can buy items yeah there's like a hidden level if you get all the maps yeah i think so but um it's uh it doesn't feel as special to me And the music is not as good, but it's not a bad game. I think it's much better than Rescue Rangers, too, which came out a year later.

Yeah, maybe that's the thing that I'm feeling here is, you know, the reason I've never really spent that much time with it, even though it's on the Disney Afternoon Collection, sometimes, you know, you get that old school game that's just like it hits all the right notes. And then they follow it up. And even though it's technically better, you're just like, I don't know. It's just not working for me in the same way. I don't know. What is that? it's never been able to hold my attention the way the first Duck Tales did

and again I don't know why because it's very similar but I think the differences are just enough that it doesn't feel right maybe because I spent a ton of time playing Duck Tales The DuckTales won

And it kind of feels like it's a more drab game In terms of the colors It's not as fun to look at Like Ducktails for the NES Just every bright primary colors in your face In this game I feel like they're trying to do like a more realistic Look more details

More detailed and so the color palette is darker. Yeah, yeah, like more earthy for the most part. So it's not as fun to look at, but it's a very well-made game. If you didn't grow up with the original game, I like to know what you think about Duck Tales 2, because I think I'm just trapped in nostalgia for the first game. No, I mean, I don't really have nostalgia for the first game, but I like it, but I just haven't been able to stick with Ducktails 2 for any amount of time. I played it and I'm like, yeah, okay, I did this one already, but, you know, more colorfully. There were mummies. Okay, so we've talked a lot about Duck Tales, and there were

other games on the Afternoon Collection. Why don't we talk about Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers 1 and 2? That seems to be a personal favorite for you, Nina. So... Better than Ducktails. Well... What can you tell us about the cartoon that is based on? It's like Chip, or Dale is Magnum P.I.

And Chip is Indiana Jones. Yeah? I didn't understand those since growing up at all, so... I didn't either. And both of those guys are kind of Tom Selleck. Didn't Tom Selleck start try out to be Indiana Jones? Yeah, that's true. I don't know who Monterey Jack is. That was just part of the Australia craze.

Yeah, well, I feel like, I feel like there's a bit of rescue rangers in this show, or not Rescue Rangers, the Rescuers. And there was a rescuers down under around the same time. So it's kind of like a vibe, something that was in the water at Disney. I don't know. I don't know too much about the original Chippendale cartoons. Like, were they just little side characters? Yeah, when they were naked.

They didn't wear clothes, yeah. They're like, I mean, they're like Tweety Bird. like they're antagonists for a for Donald right yeah I mean they they yeah except they're just fighting each other all the time they mess with Pluto it's like a chain scratchy oh okay yeah and the only difference between the two were just I guess in their facial facial features like Dale has the red nose and like the sleepy eyes and then put some clothes on and then give them more differences make them detectives I think it was Disney in the 40s or whatever trying to do Tom and Jerry but not not violent it was like they'll be mischievous but they'll be mischievous but

They'll break your Christmas ornaments or eat your food or whatever. They won't, like, chop your face off or put dynamite in your ears. They're like heckle and jekyll, but not racist. Yeah. Yeah, so it's just them, but they decided to team up with some other rodents and go to adventures together. They teamed up with the hottest babe on planets. Oh, you're a gadget man, are you? No, I'm not.

But lots of people are. Lots of people are. Lots of people. Well, she's like a naked, she's a naked mouse. What? She's flesh colored. She's flesh colored. Yeah. They knew what they were drawing.

Right. Yeah. Well, she really fills up that jump suit. She's basically a human girl with some ears and a tail. I mean, that was like a major, not to get too far off topic. That character sparked so many awakenings in people. Not me. And it's cool if it happened to you, but it's just amazing. Why are you looking at me? It's a cultural touchstone, Jeremy. I guess. I mean, is she related in any way to Minerva Mink? No. And Minerva Mink was calculated.

Yeah. That was a weaponized. Bob is saying Gadget was also calculated. I think Gadget was maybe intentional, but Minerva Make is like, specific. Well, Minerva McA is like a bombshell. Yeah. Gadgett is just like a cute, kind of geeky girl character. Yeah, someone was drawing, like, I'm going to draw a cute mouse girl and they drew it. And Minerva Mac is like, yeah. I do like Gadget as a character a lot, though.

Because, yeah, like a lot of people sexualize her, obviously, but she doesn't, she isn't drawn to be sexualized, I don't think. She wears a jumpsuit. Yeah. Coveralls. Yeah, and based on her name, I'm assuming she, was like a tinkerer like an idea. Yeah. Yeah. She's very smart. It invents a bunch of things. I think she was the first like Disney TV character that was a, like a girl or a woman leading

the show or like a major, not character that you rescued or whatever, but a lead character. But in the game, of course, you don't play as her and she just helps. Oh, you have to rescue her in the game. Oh, you do? Yeah. She's been captured by the large cat with a story. Oh, is that, who's like a James Mason impression? Okay. But you know what's interesting about the game though? It's like you don't end with the gadget rescue. Like you rescue her like kind of 80% into the game. Yeah, that's right. And then she makes you a rocket ship or something

or direct you to a rocket ship that goes up and then down. I don't like how she looks in the game at all. She looks like a zombie when you give her the flower. Oh, okay. I don't know what that spright looks like. Okay. It's still better than the original princess peach print. Oh, God, yeah.

But the Chippendale, like I love all of the like very, like chibi, very anime-looking Disney sprites in these games, just like how I love the Simpsons arcade game. They look very mega-manish. Yeah, like I love the Chippendale. The Chippendale Sprites are so cute in this game. So, like, similar to how Chris loves

Duck Tales, the Ducktails game because he grew up with it, and he said you didn't have that many NES games growing up. Same with me, like, I didn't have that many NES games growing up either. And Chippendale and Rescue Rangers is actually the only game I've ever asked for, and I didn't know what it was like at all. I just liked the cartoon show

so much. So when I saw that it was a game, I was like, oh, I want this. And I consider myself very lucky that that's the one game I've ever asked for. And it turned to be a really, really, really good one. Because, you know, with licensed games, it could go horribly wrong. I could have asked for a Simpsons game. We never did. There's a lot to like about Chippendale's Rescue Rangers because, you know, it's a cooperative

platformer, which you really didn't see very often. So you can play with another player. I never play with other people. He screwed each other over. That was the one Disney afternoon game I did play at the time. A friend of mine rented it. And I was like, really? Well, okay.

So we played it together, and I was like, okay, this is actually really fun. I apologize for doubting you. But, yeah, like running around with a friend throwing stuff at giant robot dogs and stuff. Throwing stuff at your friend, throwing your friend off of. I thought you could only throw the friend in the second game. Can you pick up the case? You can throw people off things in the first one, too. Cool.

I was, like, super into the show. Like, I, because I was a kid who loved Indiana Jones and I loved cartoons. I had like a shirt with like Chip airbrushed on it holding a sign that said my name that was brought to me from Orlando. I don't think from, I think just from the city of Orlando. Right, like from the parking lot, Disney World.

Like I would, like that was the show that like when I was a kid, I would force other students at my elementary school into their roles. We're like, no, you are Monterey Chad. You got to be zipper. I do, I distinctly remember. this one girl having to be zipper who could not talk. Oh, yeah, I was going to say, you don't talk. And I never owned the game, but it was one of the ones that I would rent constantly.

Because back in the 80s and 90s, that's what you would do. You would just rent a game. And I really liked it. Like, I loved, you know, hiding under the box and you could see the eyes. All the stuff, we were talking last night. I love that all the levels are, they actually do a lot with the, concept of scale. Like, things are kind of disproportionate, but in a fun way.

There's like kangaroos are the size of Chippendale. Yes. It's like as long as a book. It's not consistent, but the idea is there and it works. Yeah, but you get to like move through a kitchen and do like, you know, deal with like a kitchen that has like eight sinks for some reason. I mean, it's like a, you know, it's like a restaurant kitchen, I assume. Maybe.

That was, that's where my mind went. I conquered Ducktails as a kid, but I found this game to be really hard and I still do. Really? Yeah. I only played a single player. I don't know why. People say it's easy. It's supposed to be easy,

but I have a lot of problems playing it. So, like, I'm really bad at video games, especially platformers, but since I grew up with this game and I played it so many times, I am really good at it. And if I were to speed run any game, it would be this.

I was speed running this game when I didn't even know what speed running was. I was just a kid, and I wanted to see how fast I could beat it. So I knew how to, like, I'm not as good anymore, but, like, especially the first few levels. I can get through that so fast.

I know, like, the best, the fastest, most efficient, way to get through those. Yeah, so, like, I have a lot of fond memories of this game just because, like, I've played it over and over and over again. And it's, like, the one game I can actually play, the one Ennius game I can play and get through. Yeah, I think everyone has games like that. I know I have a few games like that. And when I record them to do, like, videos about, like, I realize after I capture the footage, like, I can't use a lot of this because I played it so efficiently. You don't really get a feel for the game. But, you know, whatever. Well, that's also why I don't like playing with other people. because it just slow me down. I'm like, oh, come on. You're adding frames to this playthew. Yeah. I'm going to throw you off the screen now.

Just go away and let me play by myself. It is fun to just mess with the other player and throw boxes at their heads, though, because it stuns them. I don't know, like it's such a... I imagine it caused a lot of fights. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like the Mario Party of that generation. Yeah, I mean, you get that same vibe in New Super Mario Brothers, the console versions. And I definitely have felt angry. agree at certain people when I've played them cooperatively.

It's got charkey. And, yeah, it's fun, but also fills your heart with hate, like a good video game should. What I really like about this game is, like, there are tons of references to the cartoon, like all the enemies and like the bosses and such, especially in the first level. You see the mechanical bulldogs. And that's on the cover, too. Like that, I think that's what drew me into. I think that's what made me want the game, seeing how like, oh, I recognize these characters,

like these enemies. And, you know, with other, with other licensed video games, sometimes you see the enemies here, like, what are these? I've never seen these before in the show or comic. It's supposed to be based on. But they did a really good job with this. So it's not like the Ninja Turtles game for NES, really. What is this thing?

Why is there a man on fire? Or the Batman game for Nias? Well, I was going to ask you, Nina, you worked with Bill Morrison from Bongo Comics, and he actually did a lot of the Disney VHS covers of that era. Do you know if he did the cover art for this era of NES games? Because it looks a lot like the VHS covers for the Disney art.

I don't, like, well, you've talked to him more than I have at this point. I didn't ask him this question. I don't know if he did stuff for video games. Okay, yeah. I think he just did VHS stuff, like for the cartoons. It's a very similar airbrushed look to everything. I should ask him if he knows, actually.

Yeah, they're good covers, too. Lots of interesting angles and very dynamic action. The good old days of drawn cover art. I miss those. I like the Game Boy ducttails more than the NES ducttails, though. I know we talked about ducttails, but they have different covers sometimes. where Game Boy Ducktails like launch pad and Scrooge, like standing on a hill with the helicopter behind them.

Like the sun is setting. It's very dynamic. It's cool. It's emotional. So, what can you tell me about Chibbendale's Rescue Rangers, too? How is that different from the first game? Is it better, worse? I was really disappointed by it.

So we touched on it a little bit earlier how it has better graphics. Like, it's prettier looking, but the music isn't nearly as good. The gameplay is very similar, but I don't know. I just don't like how it looks and sounds. And I just love the first game, like the visuals and the music, especially the music, so much that when I finally got to play this, this was when I received the actual NES card of the second game as a gift. And it's really expensive and rare. Yeah, it was a 1994 game. So it was one of the absolute last NES games published in the U.S.

So it's way up there too. But I don't think it's as expensive as Ducktails, too, just because it's not as sought after. But it's still really, really expensive. So I was like, oh, I finally could get to play this game. And I played it. I'm like, oh, it's not very good. I was going to say, is Wario's Woods expensive or there's nobody want it? I don't think it is.

I mean, it was a first party game, so I'm sure it was produced in volume. They made too many, frankly. And also, wasn't there a super Nious version of it? Oh, I think so, yeah. So that helps cut the desirability of it considerably. I actually want to talk a bit about the music of the first game. Yeah, go for it. It's so good.

It feels very Mega Madnish, I think. That's just part of the whole It just feels very Capcom in this game More than any of the other games in the collection, I think Like I said, the sprites Like when Chippendale are jumping up They have like the same pose that Mega Man has

And they blink like Mega Man too Yeah, yeah, their eyes similar, their mouths are similar I think it was produced by Tokoro Fujiwara Who also did a bunch of the Mega Man games But it was a 1990 game So it's contemporary with Mega Man 3 So it's probably using like a lot of the same sound techniques as Mega Man 3

I feel like Capcom's NES sound kind of went off the rails with Mega Man 4. They started making use of new ideas and trying to do drum beats and stuff like that that I just don't think were as catchy. They're harsher and less melodic than the earlier stuff. So I feel like there is a difference, kind of like when you get to late Capcom stuff on NES, you're kind of like, eh, not really doing it for me. So I can definitely see being disappointed by a soundtrack that came along later. It's like they try to make it more polished, but somehow that took the charm out of it, especially with the visuals.

Like, the characters look more like the characters in the second game, but somehow I like the simplicity of the first game, sprites. You're right, the sprites are different for the main characters. They're totally different, yeah. They're a lot more detail, but also the charm isn't there. Yeah, like I said, when you try to polish something too much, it takes some of the charm away. Like we were talking about, like, modern cartoons versus old cartoons. I like the grittiness of old cartoons compared to, like, things looking way too clean. when it's digital now.

Like, I understand why everything switched digital. Like, I totally get it because, you know, I've studied animation for a year, and it's a lot of work to just, like, hand-draw, and then hand-color everything, but I don't know. Oh, actually, unrelated to what we're talking about right now, but I like how Japanese this game is. Have you noticed that? Some of the enemies?

Oh, no, like, what are they, can you give examples? Okay, well, I just mentioned how, um, how, like, the enemies are, a lot of the enemies are based on a cartoon, but there are some enemies you never see in the cartoons. They're snuck in there, like these, um, like Japanese flying squirrels. They're dressed like ninjas. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Like, that's a very Japanese touch.

And, um, like, the crabs that, like, spit out bubbles. That's another very Japanese thing. You, you know, you've probably seen that a lot in, like, uh, you know, video games made in Japan and stuff like that. Like, it's just a thing that, uh, it's just a thing that, uh, is this. stereotypical cartoon thing in Japan that crabs have bubbles foaming at their mouths all the time. Yeah, with Konami's license games, they would always just put a Japanese level in every game. Like in the Simpsons and Ninja Turtles and Lone Rangers, like, well, you're interested in Japan in this level. Have fun in Japan.

By the way, we made this game in Japan. Right. Far away from Japan, we have tailspin, which takes place somewhere in the jungle. I don't know exactly where. It does not take place in the jungle. It takes place at Cape Suzette. What is that? Is there no jungle there?

No jungle. No, it's surrounded by a cliff that you need to be an expert pilot to fly through, but it is a very 40s-looking city. Oh. It's the prequel to Porco Rosso. Okay, well, I'm going based on the video game, which is definitely set in the jungles. Well, I did not watch the cartoon. I never saw it. The premise is very strange.

It is. It's really weird. It's a good cartoon. It's a confluence of so many weird influences. So it's the jungle book, but it's also Casablanca. and cheers and moonlighting. I was going to say it's very adult. And there's a cool kid.

Yeah, and there's a cool kid. There's like a Barker's a baseball guy. I have a theory that leads to tailspin and Darkwing Duck. Because there's a weird 40s media revival that takes place like in 1990. And I think that's all down to the massive success of Batman 89, which is very 40s aesthetic. And then for the next 10 years, people are. are like, oh, it's not that they like Batman. They like stuff from the 40s.

So you get Dick Tracy comes out in 90 as a film, which is also hyper stylized and hyper 40s. The Rocketeer. The Rocketeer. Then in the mid-90s, the shadow. And then in the later mid-90s, the Phantom, slam evil, Billy Zane.

My boy. But that also bleeds into TV and other media. So you get stuff like the jungle book meets Casablo. which is kind of the big high concept. Yeah. But it is mixed with all these other things.

Even though that is like a space jam level premise of this does not make any sense. And then that further bleeds into what if we did the shadow but a duck? And he's also a single dad. Yeah, that's true. I only know these characters from tailspin. So whenever I see the jungle book, I'm like, why is blue naked? Why is he not in his head? Put some clothes on.

Yeah. But, uh, no, it's a great. cartoon, what happened was, like I said, I interviewed somebody who worked on a lot of Disney TV shows a while ago. And this came out the same year as Tiny Tunes. So it looked lame as hell because Tiny Tunes was like really meta, pop culture, influence, kind of adult. And Tailspin was developed before that. So Darkwing Duck was developed while Tiny Tunes was on TV. And that's why it was more like characters talking to the screen and, you know, deconstructing the idea of being in a cartoon and stuff like that. But Tailspin is just like very adventure. It's very

much like ducktails like playing in straight adventure stories but um with a more like sort of like based on old serials i'm guessing too like uh yeah like old like commando cody cereals and you know aviation stuff like that and there's a little bit indiana jones and all this stuff yeah for sure like like i mean chip dresses like him like there's obviously like a weird back and forth influence with duck tales in indiana jones and then it comes into the serial nature of uh tailspin thinking back i wonder why I enjoyed tailspin so much as a kid with all these adult influences. It, I mean, I remember really liking it while I was on. I've never revisited it. But I remember, like, really being drawn to that premise, because, you know, that was all

stuff that I liked, Indiana Jones and DuckTales. And then, of course, you know, Batman the animated series comes around in, in 92, and that's also super art deco, super retro influenced in terms of visuals. You know, I kind of want to try watching it again. Is it on DVD? I think so, yeah. Okay. And I was making a joke about it, but it is sort of like Porco Rosso in a way. Yeah, I never really thought of that way.

It's like really, I mean, again, it's a very expensive show and lots of scenes of flying and planes and lots of cool like action scenes too. So I think there's even more action than ducktails. It's like sort of like duct tails, but with more action in it. Yeah. And more guns. Yeah, more guns. There's lots of guns. Yeah.

And so for this weird confluence of influences, they decided to create a video game that is a weird, clunky shooter, like an auto-scrolling, side-scrolling shooter. And it does something really strange, which is that it basically sets the orientation of your plane to the direction in which you're pressing the controls. So in normal vertical shooters or horizontal shooters, when you press the D pad, you just move laterally across the screen, even though that's not necessarily realistic, you know, if you press back, then you'll just kind of slow down and move back to the back of the screen. but here if you press back your plane flips around upside down am I thinking right

I remember playing this on the Disney afternoon collection and you flip your plane and then the screen starts rolling the other direction was a good idea yeah I mean I think the idea is cool

when you can do something with it but it's not executed well at all and also it doesn't help that when you start the game it's sort of like like Grodius or whatever when you start the game you're at your weakest point

but he's too weak he fires one bullet at a time and it's just it's not enough to, like, it's such a rough first level. Yeah, it's, it's really clunky and really hard. And, you know, Capcom already had solved the problem of how to have an auto-scrolling shooter where you can face in multiple directions with Section Z and with sidearms and with, what is it, Forgotten Planet?

I can never remember the name of that. Forgotten Worlds? Forgotten worlds. Yeah. Like, in Section Z, you pressed either the forward attack button or the backward attack button, and you flip directions. And in sidearms, you had the ability to rotate your aim in through 360 degrees while your character just kind of maintain their orientation. Those, those work really well, those systems.

But the like the flip your plane upside down and now you're kind of defenseless from the other direction until you flip back to the right way, that is not so good. And a lot of the levels, they move vertically instead of horizontally. Yeah. So then you're like, it's really hard to get a beat on anything. Having to flip your plane to shoot left or right. Yeah, and you're trying to avoid enemies and you're flipping in the process. It's just, I don't know why they did that. It's too much.

Sort of like rubbing your stomach and patting your head. This is what this game controls like. Kind of while people are shooting at you. Yeah. I can't remember. Can you like, is this one of those games where you can actually go back? Yeah. Like when you flip your plane, it starts scrolling the other direction.

Yeah, which is pretty rare. Yeah, which is cool. And they could do something with that, but the controls are so bad. But what I do like about this game is, like, I say don't play it, but watch a play through. It does some wacky stuff. Like, it does not care about the TV series it's based on. And speaking of very Japanese, like, levels and ideas, one level you fly through a baseball stadium. I was just, you're fighting things in a baseball stadium.

I was like, am I crazy or does it go through a stadium on point? You do. And another level, you go through like a haunted mansion or like a haunted castle. It's like, it's like a horror theme level. It's like they don't care about whatever this is based on. They're just like, okay, let's make a bunch of fun. flying stages. Unlike the Chippendale game, it's like, it's like they never watch the show.

Yeah. I like the, I also like the Sprite of Ballou, like the giant like body coming out of the tiny plane. And I think in the, uh, they call it like the mini sea duck because in the, in the show, he pilots a sea duck, which is a biplane. But it, you know, he can fit inside of it. He's not sticking out of it. But in this one, it's like, well, we need to have the character on the screen, you know, with the plane. So let's make an excuse to have him his head popping out of it too, which is kind of cute. So finally we should wrap by talking about darking duck, which is, yes, another show that I've never seen because I'm an old man.

So it's so good though That's what I've heard It seems interesting And the game is also interesting Although what I've noticed about all of these Capcom Disney games Is all of them have some sort of gimmick to them Or some sort of mechanic that sets it apart

So in the case of Ducktails You have the Pogo attack In Chippendale's Rescue Rangers You have basically like the cooperative multiplayer Which is great Tailspin you have that weird orientation system For your plane And in Darkwing Duck you have like a grappling

ability. And the thing about the grappling ability is that Darkwing just wants to stick to everything. And it makes the platforming really hard. Like the first boss is crazy hard because you're on these scaffolds and you're trying to fight him and avoid attacks and then like move around

to take a swing at him. And you're constantly sticking to whatever is above you when you jump. And it makes it really, really challenging. And I think it's a cool idea that maybe they didn't quite think through properly, like, there's probably some way that could have worked a little more

smoothly. But I will say, like, the graphics and the sound and just the overall vibe of the game are very, like, the most Mega Man of all these games. We've been invoking Mega Man here a lot, but Dark Wing Duck is, like, Mega Man. This is, I think, in my opinion, the most well-made game of all the ones we've talked about. It's not my favorite, but it's like number two for me. And I own this game growing up. And I think it's better than Mega Man, like, the, like, the second trilogy on NES. I think it's much better than those games. It's a little shorter, but I think it's much more focused.

And it's just, it's incredibly well made. I think I don't have the same problem as you with the platforms, but DarkBring can also do a lot more than Mega Man can. He can hang. He can also put up his cape to block projectiles. And there's even, there's so many Mega Man things in this game

like you have different ammo you can cycle through, and also you need to power that with another power up. And there's also like like the sniper joe guys are basically in this game too which is great can he duck though he can duck he can't remember it would be ironic if he were a duck he can and is it's very philosophical i don't have a lot of memories of the game um but i loved the show the show was amazing yeah because it was literally what if you're a comics fan yeah because it was literally what if duck tales of bad man the animated series and there's so many weird deep cut references

It says, like, I was 30 years old before I realized that Drake Mallard was a pun on a pun on Kent Allard, which is the Shadow's secret second real name because the shadow is Lamont Cranston. But Lamont Cranston is secretly World War II pilot Ken Allard, who crash landed and assumed the identity of Lamont Cranston who died. It's a real arm in Tim Zerian. Yeah, it's a real, it's a real weird deep cut. The creator is way into Silver Age comics. And I didn't know anything about them then. I know nothing about them now, but I still like the show. Like, you don't need these deep cuts, but it's cool.

they're there. Yeah, it's like not knowing that as a kid did not hurt my enjoyment. I also like that all of his villains are just Spider-Man villains, but animals, which is very fun. So like the rhino, what would they do with him? Well, there's, there's, there's an electric dog. There's a, there's a, there's a hydromam, but also a dog, I think. There's an octopus that is a doctor. And then there's Negadog, who is a very, very good, uh, evil opposite. An Earth three guy. He's, he's yellow, right? Instead of purple. He's yellow and orange. Yeah. But there's a Also, so like I said earlier, this show was originally going to be like a James Bond parody with Launchpad. So part of that show is in this as well, where there are villains that are Bond villains alongside the Spider-Man style villains.

So there's just like your normal spy villains, like Steel Beak and whatever their version of Spector is. I think it's called Fowl, F-O-W-L. So it's like part of that show is in this show, just the villains really. They didn't throw those guys out. So it's a weird confluence of James Bond and The Shadow and Marvel. DC Silver Age stuff and also like the Simpsons too Because it also has a cool kid

Yeah But that's like the weird ducktail element Where they brought in the idiot sidekick And the single dad Cool kid, competent kid relationship This is a very weird comic That a guy I know wrote When Boom did a Darkwing Duck comic

That's all about Like it's the Dark Night Returns But for Darkwing Duck it's very odd Is it like really dark and edgy? Yes It's got a really cool cover But, like, in a very, like, parodical way. Okay.

And also, I think they go full in with Gizmoduckus Roebocop. Oh, nice. I want to see that now. Does he eat baby food? Yes. Okay, because that's the most important thing about Robocop is that he eats baby food. Second most. Second most.

Yeah, we talked about it. Right. Sorry. Okay, enough Dick talk. More duck talk. Right. I just put a lot of penis discussion on this episode, which is weird because it's a Disney episode. It's real big tails.

I mean, every, ever since I showed Batman's little guy, it's just been downhill for kids' media. Oh, boy. That's right. So anyway, sorry, I always called him, I was caught him a little Wayne, and that's probably not where we want to go. So I think we probably had to wrap this up. Any last thoughts on Darkwing Duck? I feel like we kind of gave it short shrift, and I apologize for that. If you guys want to, like, stand up for it and proclaim its excellence in more detail, please do. now is your chance?

It's really difficult. I'll say that. I think I'm good at it just because I grew up with it, but I can see someone thinking it was too hard. I don't think I finished it legitimately. I can get the last boss, but he would destroy me. So, yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough game. And I feel like it's a little too stingy

with what you need to fuel your special gas bullets. Like, there are certain things like arrows. There's so many cool things in this game, like you can get these arrow bullets that you can use to climb things and hang from them, but they're very expensive in terms of the resources they use. So a lot of the game can be just like walking back and forth and shooting enemies to grind for the resource you need, which is kind of dumb. If they made this game today, I think they would not even have that resource.

Yeah, that's very like last stage of Mega Man too. Oh, I got to fight the gun emplacements, but they only can be hurt with one weapon, got to grind on these hard enemies for that. You think they would have ironed that out by what, 1992 when this game came out? That'll help pet out the game at another 20 minutes. I like how Bob likes Darkwing Duck, Chris likes Duck tails. I like Chippendale. That means Jeremy has to like tailspin. God damn it.

You're stuck with tailspin. I like Mega Man, the origin, the font from which all of these games flow. But nobody likes bonkers. Get out of here. There was no bonkers in a bonkers game, yeah. Boy, we should do a second game, second episode with like bonkers and goof troop. And the goof trip game is cool. Yeah, yeah.

It's gargoyles. It's equal to Resident Evil. Yeah. Was there a Gargol's game? Yeah, for Genesis. Oh, okay. I can see that. I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to back up and explain GoofTrupe being the people of Resident Evil.

It's true. Shinji Makami developed Goof Troop and there is like apparently code from Goof Troop in Resident Evil. Something to do with the controls or something. I don't know exactly. And Goof Trip is a sequel to Pirateship Higamaru, I think. Something like that. Like an old Capcom arcade game. Yeah, which I think is somehow a variant on ghost and goblins. Weird.

You could be mistaken on that one. But Goofy is the master of unlocking. True. Gosh. Open me a chest. Yeah. Do very good Disney voices, Jeremy. I'm very impressed.

Thanks. It was my secret calling in life. I didn't play the games, but I can sure make fun of the characters. So I think that's going to wrap it up for us. We have a panel that we need to go to and present this kind of babble in front of a lot of people. So we're going to go do that now. But I'm glad this episode finally happened. We've been wanting to do it for almost two years ever since the Disney Afternoon Collection came out

and just never quite got around to it. but we had like so many people here to short my weaknesses. It was finally time to make it happen. So thanks all three of you for making this episode possible because I couldn't have done it on my own. It would have been really bad. So everyone, thanks for listening. I am Jeremy Parrish for Retronauts.

And as usual, you can find Retronauts on iTunes and on other places where you can download podcasts for free. It's what you can do for free. But you can also subscribe to Retronauts for $3 a month. and for that modest donation we give you very generous things such as early podcast access a week early at a higher bit rate than you'll find on iTunes and without advertisements that's pretty great yeah so check that out at retronauts or sorry check that out at patreon.com slash retronauts and as for myself I am doing retronaut stuff I work with greenlit

content so you can find me on the internet doing all those things Check me out on Twitter as GameSpite. Bob. Hey, everybody, it's Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And if you like hearing about cartoons, well, by golly, you'll like my other podcast, which I do a lot of with Henry Gilbert. There's Talking Simpsons, which is a chronological exploration of the Simpsons.

And what a cartoon? We'll look at a different cartoon from a different series every week. We've also done an episode on Darkwing Duck. So look that up if you want to get into the show. And we have a Patreon, too. It's at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Check that out. We have so many bonus episodes.

out there for you to listen to that are exclusive to the Patreon exclusive series. Lots of stuff going on there. If you sign up, you'll have thousands of hours of our voices on there. And Jeremy's been on it too. And Nina's been on it. Chris, not yet. Well, I haven't been on Simpsons, have I? No, but you're on what a cartoon. You're on G.I. Joe and the Max. And Futurama. And Nina was on Clone High. Yeah. Yeah. And like at least three Talking Simpsons episodes. Yeah, so far. I'm much more

talkative on those, by the way. I know more about Simpsons. I feel like Chris probably knows some things about cartoons. We'll talk after the show. We can do duct tales, Chris. Do you want to be on Duck Tales episode? I would have to go back and re-watch all of Ducktails. You don't have to watch one episode for us.

Okay. Then yes. Okay. All right. We'll make it happen. So, Chris, tell us about yourself and where we can find you on the internet. You can find me on the BAB website as at the ISB. That's T-H-E-I-S-B.

You can also find my homepage at T-H-E-S-B.com. That's got links to everything that I do when I remember to update it. But I write comic books. and I do freelance, so if you got work, holl it's a boy. But I also do a bunch of podcasts. I do one about comics called War Rocket Ajax. I do one about movies called Movie Fighters. I do one where I get paid to eat things called Snack Situation.

I do one about Sailor Moon called Sailor Business. What about Zena called Zena Warrior Business? And I do one about the Bible, which is called Apocry Pals, which is where two nonbelievers read through the Bible and try not to be jerks about it. You do a lot of podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

There's a lot. So finally, Nina. Hi, I'm Nina. I'm a former Simpsons Comics penciler. Now I work for Fan Gamer designing video game t-shirts. I'm seeing a lot of them at MagFest right now, actually. So if you go to Fangammer.com and go to collections and buy artists, you'll see a banner that's SpaceCoyote, which is my online name. We can see all my shirts and other things I've designed for Fangamera on there. You can also see my personal stuff at SpaceCoyote.com, where you can also see the cover I drew for the Disney Afternoon Collection. You can also find me at Nina Matamono.com. to spacecaughty.com. And I'm very active on Twitter under the name Space Coyotor. That's Space Coyote with an L at the N, 7E. All right. Thanks, everyone.

Again, and we will be back with another episode in, I don't know, several days. I hope you can hold out until then. Please do. Thank you. Thank you.