Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 226: Aladdin Games

Episode Date: June 14, 2019

Now that Disney's live-action Aladdin movie is out, we finally have a great excuse to jump back in time 25 years to examine the animated version of that property—one that was oddly important to the 16-bit console wars. Virgin Interactive's Genesis game mostly overshadowed Capcom's SNES interpretation thanks to some still-impressive technical tricks, but the conventional wisdom about the Sega version being superior might not hold together 2.5 decades later. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as they explore the Aladdin games of the past to find out which one is the true diamond in the rough.

This week on Retronauts, we're so ticked off, we're molting. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Retronauts. host for this one, Bob Mackey. And today's topic is the Aladdin series of games based on the famous cartoonie movie from 1992. As I said before, I'm your host, Bob Mackey. Who's here with me today? Keep throwing apples at me. It's Henry Gilbert. Apples are a viable weapon in at least two different games. But yes, so we are now recording this shortly after the release of the live action Aladdin remake. It's made like $450 million at this point. Yet no one is talking about it? It's a real shrug of a film. Is it one of those things where it's only making money

in China and China doesn't have Twitter, so you're not seeing the tweets about Aladdin or what? I mean, it broke like 150 in America. Okay. Though these things are, I mean, it's like the business model of them is they do good in America and then triple it in foreign markets. Yeah, which is why they have to make a lot of weird choices that don't appeal to us anymore. As Mickey Rooney said, in Radioactive Man, the foreign markets are more important than ever these days. And that was back in 1995.

Yes. Yes. He was ahead of the curve. But another reason we're doing this is cross-promotion. So at the end of the month of May 2019, we did an episode of What a Cartoon movie about Aladdin. It was four hours long, and there was more Aladdin info in there that you can shake a lamp at, I'll say. That's really lame. I'm sorry.

But if you want to listen to that whole thing, you have to go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up at the $10 level. That will also give you access to a bunch of other movie podcasts that we've done. They're all upwards of three hours long or more, and there's about six or seven of them at this point. Yes, yeah. And if you just want to have a preview of that, you can go to the What a Cartoon, free feed, and you'll find the 20-minute version preview of it there. But if you just want to try a little of column A before all of column B. It's not just for the purposes of cynical cross-promotion that I'm doing this, by the way. I have Aladdin on the brain. I'm going to see that movie when I go to Vancouver. We're going to podcast about it at some point, Henry. But I can't stop thinking about Aladdin. So it's a great time to return to the 16-bit Aladdin games and also the few games they made, on Aladdin after that. So there are lots of licensed games in the history of mankind, and they're mostly bad. Quite, quite, quite.

But Aladdin is a very, very important license game. Maybe one of the most important up there with, like, Golden Eye. You might forget about how big it was, especially for the Genesis, but it was an important moment in the 16-bit console wars, because it was one year before the Super Nintendo

won by fooling us all with Donkey Kong Country. Yeah, it was an interesting time, at least for an American experiencing the console wars, you know, to set the stage of the 16-bit era in Japan, Super NES was killing it in Europe. Those foolish fools were enjoying their mega drive far more. But then meanwhile, in America, we're kind of between the two, though Genesis was a bit in the lead.

And I mean, this also came in the shadow of Mortal Kombat being way better on the Genesis than on the Super NES, too. Yeah, it was quite a time. to be alive. And Aladdin for the Genesis is, according to my research, the third best-selling Genesis game with around 4 million copies because it arrived at a very important time. Sega had something to prove, and this game sort of proved it just like Donkey Kong Country by faking higher technology. It's very interesting that Aladdin basically digitized the drawings for the Genesis and for the Super Nintendo, Donkey Kong Country digitized CGI models. So they're each using their

own different form of fakery, but it worked on our small brains. it really did. As a kid, I love this one. And yeah, you were seeing all these, you know, headlines about polygons or you'd go to the arcade and see stuff like virtual racing or virtual fighter. And so you want more than what pixels can give you in 1993, but you couldn't really get a taste of that until they started doing little fakeouts like this. That was always the most popular stuff. So these games, the two will be talking about mostly for this podcast. They launched roughly a year after the movie, which was fairly common at the time. When there were still video games based on movies right before that ended, they would often be before the movie

and contain lots of spoilers for that movie. Back then, and I saw this in my research, it seems like a lot of these games came out one year or like 18 months after the movie to coincide with the VHS release. So it's like, you forgot about this movie, but now it's out of VHS and you want to watch it on video and play the game. And Aladdin was just the same way in that these two games came out in November of 1993 just after the VHS release of the movie. Yeah, Disney at the time, like their Disney vault strategy of home media was incredibly powerful. Like, it was a really great marketing tool for them, the way they would withhold so many things. So they could even withhold, you know, now it's like, if something is now on Blu-ray or Digital within three months of it being in theaters, I think that's taking forever.

But back then, 18 months and also, you know, selling VHS's only to say blockbuster. Right, right. Like even a retail release video, it took a long time. But it felt like, I would bet for parents it just felt like it's such an investment. Like, my child will watch this 800 times, so I have to buy this now at Christmas time. It's in a durable clamshell case too, so your kid can throw it all around the room. But yeah, you're right, Henry. Go back to our rental stores episode we did.

We recorded in Japan with James Eldred. And one of the facts that a lot of people didn't know I found is that in rental stores, VHS tapes would be available to the rental market first for like $150 or $130 or $80, not available to consumers. Only later would there be a consumer version. Disney was sort of ahead of the curve by giving everyone the video on the same day for like $30. So, yeah, that way everyone can own their own copy and not have to wait or possibly rent it and then not want to buy it. and now the idea of playing a movie game 18 months after the movie came out when there is absolutely no synergy

that seems crazy but I think that at least gave both of these games a chance to better capture what is popular about the film instead of guessing what people are gonna like about Spider-Man 3 when you're making the Spider-Man 3 game like that's why I'm so happy

licensed games have just given up on that and they're like look it's we there's a new Turtles movie coming out. We'll just do Ninja Turtles as a concept. It'll be our own video game world of them. Or I think Disney, what they do now is if there's a new movie, they work those new characters or existing characters into an existing mobile game.

So they don't have to make a new game based around live action Aladdin. I'm sure Will Smith is in whatever gotcha Disney game you can play right now. Same with Battlefront DLC for Star Wars when the next Star Wars movie comes out. But let's get started. So the two games on our agenda, today are the Genesis and the Super Nintendo version of Aladdin. And let's start with the Genesis because it won the battle, but not the war. So this game was released on November 11, 1993, and like I said earlier, it is the third

best-selling Genesis game, according to Wikipedia and whatever source they use. That is still so crazy to me. I cannot believe that. Four million copies. A lot of kids played this game. So it was developed by Virgin Interactive. And by the way, I think we should call all video games Virgin Interactives. That's my zinger for all you games.

out there, directed by Doug Perry, who would later go on to form shiny entertainment. So Doug Perry, if that name sounds familiar and if shiny sounds familiar, it's because all of his platforms of this vintage have a distinct feel and basically the same sense of design, even though the main characters have very different abilities. So if you play the Genesis version of Aladdin, it might make you remember things like Cool Spot in the Earthworm Gym games, and also other games made by Virgin after Doug left, like the Lion King and the Jungle book. These games all feel exactly the same way. The levels are designed exactly the same way. It's about collecting a lot of things. They're kind of aimless in a way. We can take

apart the gameplay later, but it is a very specific type of platformer that is informed by the European like Amiga style of microcomputer platformers. I want to put this up front. I hate them. I absolutely hate them. But Doug Perry, I'm surprised, is not British based on how British is games play. He's Irish. Oh, okay. Then it all makes sense. But yeah, no, I didn't know this until I got into the games press and

started researching things. But yeah, it all it did all click because I'll be more critical later. But the feel of the first stage of Aladdin is so much like the feel of playing the first stage of Cool Spot or Earthworm Gym. Like they all

have a certain pastiche to the first stage that also has a kind of growing excitement that then just completely dissipates every level after that, too. Yeah, I mean, you might like this kind of game. I definitely don't. And I think it's because I grew up with Japan-made platformers who conditioned me to certain rules and certain ideas. And I don't know if one is objectively better, but I honestly feel Japanese platformers are. Yeah, you're not going to get both sides of the coin on this one listener. I'm sorry for all of our European listeners. We saved your ass in World War II.

I do find the aimlessness of game of platformer layout like this kind of annoying. I think that the layout of a more traditional Japanese style in the formula set by Super Mario Brothers, I prefer that kind of directedness while still giving you room to experiment and play around in. As instead this, and especially when you come at it from being trained by those Japanese games to view platforming as like that, that when you go to a game, it's like,

well, now collect the blibbitty blues, get all of those, and then eventually it will end. It's not, and when I first played Aladdin, I treated the stages like, well, I have to run to the end of it. This is what my stage is, right? And I don't think the game does a great job of telling you otherwise either. So I do want to talk about the big hook for the version. So the art itself within the game was designed by Disney Animators, a big get for Sega and Virgin Interactive. Gorgeous looking.

It really is. And what they did basically was something called the what they called the Digi Cell process, which sounds like bullshit to me. Last processing kind of word, yes. It's just like they found a way to basically create Sprite animations and background art and scan it in so you can basically

compress it down to be inside of a Genesis game. Yeah, I mean, they scanning drawings to create Sprite artwork, I doubt, was a new thing when they were making the game. No, in fact, Nintendo did a similar thing for a punchout in the arcade about a decade before that, where they hired people from an animation studio to create the sprite work, to create the artwork, which they would turn into Sprite work. Yeah. Sorry, I peaked ahead in your notes, and you'll make this comparison with the other game,

but the animation and movements also remind me of, like, what Prince of Persia original was doing, like, just all the ways it looked for the animation style of him, like, falling or landing on his feet and all that. Yeah, that sort of rotoscoping is not very different than what they're doing in this game. And you know what? These animations look very nice. There's like basically a ton of very well-made animated

gifts moving around the screen. The backgrounds look very good. The Genesis was not a graphical powerhouse but they got every ounce of basically horsepower that they could out of this. And it's pretty astounding and I can see why on the surface level this game sold so well because graphics were the most important thing

back then. Yeah, and well And that animation comes through not just in, you know, your lead character, but also in Jeannie, like, they, the one of the most clever things is that Jeannie, like, is at the Sega start screen, like, to let you know, like, yeah, I'm here. I'm breaking the fourth wall, be the genie. Murdering Iago up front. So, yeah, the downside of this very nice art is that a lot of stuff is not visually communicated in the way a game needs to. Like, the backgrounds are incredibly busy. the animations, it's hard to read like, am I attacking? Can I get attacked? Can I get hit? Again, lots of things

get lost in the backgrounds, especially very small enemies and projectiles. It's pretty rough when you're trying to play this game. You're appreciating how it looks on an aesthetic level, but you're also like, I need to see things. I need this to communicate certain information to me, and it's not happening on the screen. Yeah, the coloring makes it hard sometimes for Aladdin to really stand out

from it. And you also, in the first stage, you're reminded of all like, oh, they're they're making a platform out of a joke from the first song in the movie and that's funny but you kind of they it's sometimes hard to tell like well is this snake charmer in the background

or foreground? What can I bump into them? Yeah and what part of this very detailed ledge is the edge and I that confounded me a lot so yeah the graphics have an odd effect they give the game both like a lavish and a cheap feel because while the art is very nice up front there's no real sense of

physicality in the world like everything is very flat and floaty and just sort of, I don't know, it just feels kind of weightless and it's hard to, it's hard to describe unless you see it in action and play it, but it just plays very cheaply. Yeah, it's like, it's a disservice to the great artwork that was made for the sprites that they're not spotlit better by the backgrounds that they're all adventuring through. And I mean, it's, it's dull coloring to back up like just a kind of sprawling design to it too, because a lot of the stages are about collecting things in a place instead of

going to a set goal, which probably pads out the time better for, like, resources, but doesn't make for great stages. And another thing that feels cheap about this game is that when I was playing through it for this podcast, I noticed that stages just end unceremoniously. It's like, I're at the end, fade out, or you beat in the boss fade out, especially in the carpet escape sequence, where it just ends after you've done enough carpet stuff. There's no crescendo it ends on or no Danumon or anything like that. Just like, oh, no, the stage is over.

We just fade out immediately. So it's just like a lot of stuff they didn't think about because they just expected to wow people up front. But, again, a lot of these things I feel are sort of tropes of the European sense of platform design, where with the Japanese platform design, you expect the stage to end with like a big moment and fanfare and like the score ticking down and stuff like that. You did it kind of feeling, yes. Yeah. It doesn't give you a chance to celebrate your accomplishment.

so it feels cheaper, too. And I mean, yeah, I could shit on European platformers all day, but I'll stop there. So, yeah, this game is all about platforming eventually. After about the third stage, it becomes about making a lot of tough jumps, often jumping off the screen onto what you hope will be a platform. I hate that. And the jumps are bad. And like I said earlier in the podcast, it's often very hard to tell, like, what is the

edge of this platform? Because a lot of the platforms are very spindly. They're all very well drawn. but it's like, I don't know what part I'm jumping on, or like what part is in the background. Well, when the backgrounds are so flat, it makes it even harder to tell that. Plus, your fail state is often not even death. It's crueler than death. It's a giant reset or falling to the beginning of a stage or something.

And also, I didn't write this down, but the health meter is hard to read. The health meter is like a trail of smoke from the genies lamp. And once you're down to the bottom, it's easy to tell. But between that, the stages are not very unique. unique from each other. Yeah, but, I mean, they sure felt clever drawing it as the genie Smoke. Like, that was cute of them. But, yeah, it just, it always confused me as a kid, too.

And another thing about this game, that was a big point of contention and why people said it was a superior version, not just for the graphics, but Aladdin had a damn sword. This was all I needed as an 11-year-old. It really was, like, when I could see. So I didn't own either of these, but we rented both in my first. family and when I definitely felt like

Aladdin carrying a sword made him cool and Aladdin carrying apples made him a loser and kill so many people with that sword in the movie. Yeah. Oh yes. Yeah. But the sword, well also that moment where he carries a sword in the film I thought was really

cool. My favorite like I love team man because he had a sword my favorite Ninja Turtle is the guy with swords. Swords are my favorite weapon. I like swords. So I approved of it. I feel like Virgin Interactive had an out where it's like Aladdin has a sword for about five seconds in the movie. It's not even his sword. It's a sword that Jafar summons. And he uses it to stab Jafar once as a giant snake. Well, he does, I can't tell

if there's contact, but he does like slash at the camera and Jafar goes back. So two, two uses of those. Two sword slashes. But I will say like actually using this sword is not a lot of fun in the game because again it's the problem with like am I close enough to the enemy to attack them and also you just hammer on the attack button when you get close to an enemy and that's it there's no sort of finesse or technique to it yeah well it also feels like a very western design on that too of just like our main character has to attack and but aladdin doesn't like punch anybody ever in the movie so they probably couldn't convince disney like well can he just punch guys like or kick him because Aladdin

doesn't do that but they could find two frames where he used a sword so they used it but again it felt so cool to me that he had a sword and I liked his animation of how he looked holding the sword but yeah the actually using it well and you could never

you never felt empowered using it either like you just feel so weak compared to them which as a street rat of meager means like you should feel kind of weak to a palace guard and one more thing I want to note about the level design of Aladdin for the Genesis is that again earlier in the podcast I said there's no real theme to the levels it's all like really the same type of level and they just get more difficult and I feel with

games like earthworm gym uh Doug pair we starting to realize like oh yeah a lot of these levels are the same so I'm going to make the game play differently like every two levels like here now you're going to be doing a bunchy jump or now you're going to be using a submarine like I think that was a solution I mean those were not good ideas but that was a solution to be like oh yeah we only have one real kind of level that we like to build and I'm kind of sick of building those and I'm sure gamers are stick of playing them. But yeah, in Aladdin, it's just like, oh, yeah, these are all the same kind of levels. It just gets harder and harder.

With the other game we'll talk about today, I feel like a real sense of, like, here is the general gameplay theme of this level. There's, like, a lot more intent put into the design of the levels in the Super Nintendo version. Developers have different strengths, and I think Perry's is much more on, you know, style and even a combat focus, like Earthworm Gym, Jim, that hell level, for example, drove me crazy even as a kid. but it always felt cool to attack things. I love that he could shoot in 360 degrees

and that his head could be whipped at stuff. They made it fun to be the person just not to be the protagonist exploring. Exploring wasn't fun, but it's fun to be the protagonist at times. You mentioned the hell level. That reminds me of how there's not really a boss in the level. Yeah.

Jim just eats the goldfish. That's a much better idea than having you fight bosses in Aladdin because all of the bosses are just boring and bad. When I played the game, it's like, oh, I just stand in this one spot and keep throwing apples until the boss is over and the level fades away. Like, there's no, like, design idea for the bosses. It's just like, okay, find the one place to stand and then keep you in the attack button or keep it in the Apple button. And it was just so boring. Like, have some design to the bosses.

And the Jafar boss is also very annoying and boring too. So for both of these games, I do want to go over in a fun way. We spent a lot time complaining, so here's some fun times, how the story and the game difference from the movie. And this game is actually not very faithful to the movie Because obviously You can only make so many levels out of the Aladdin movie And you have to improvise and change a few things around To give Aladdin more things to do in a game

So here are some of the differences Of the Genesis version of Aladdin compared to the movie So number one, in the very beginning of the game Jafar disguises a beggar Enlists Aladdin to get both halves of the scarab And you actually kill Qasim as a minib To get one of them Harsh! Damn! So in the beginning of the movie

Jafar has both halves of the scarab and that's not even an issue. Like, Kassim brings him the other half. Yeah, I can understand why they change that for gameplay purposes because collecting things is the main point of this damn game. So, of course, you have to grab scarabs. Like, it's two more mcuffins for Aladdin to pick up throughout a stage. So more changes to the story of the Genesis version.

Aladdin is thrown into prison by Jafar's guards after getting him the two scarab pieces. And then in prison, he meets Jafar again in disguise, and he says, I'll free you, Aladdin, if you go to the Cave of Wonders with me. So he meets Jafar twice as the beggar in this version of the game. This is an even more theatrical Jafar than he was in the movie. He gets to play dress-up a lot. So in this version also, Jafar never traps Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders. The mouth just closes before he can escape.

That's boring. There's not that betrayal. Like in this version of the game, he never actually meets Jafar Jafar, until he kills him. You need to see Jafar's anger at losing him. Like that it's an emotional moment for it. And to lose that, it's just kind of, it deflates the story you're telling, for sure. So Aladdin never becomes Prince Ali, and he storves a slave. I know.

Like, that's a stage. Like, that, I think they only have the energy in them to fully recreate a song for the opening stage. Yeah. And you would need different gameplay for Prince Ali. Like, no one is trying to attack you in that segment. Yeah. But that asks for a little more. creativity than I think, well, also they are, I don't want to be too mean to Doug Perry, they are also making a license game with a very set deadline. Yeah, about three-fourths of the time that they were normally given. Yeah, yeah, and you have to do it through Disney approval. So something as ambitious is recreating that. But I could just see it as you mentioned, the Lion King game. I also didn't beat that game because they all were just too aimless and tough. And difficult. But the I just can't wait to be King stage. They could have done that with Ali, like just, yeah.

I think with more time, like you saw with Lion King and then Doug Perry with the reformed gym games, they're willing to do new gameplay concepts. But really, we have one concept and one type of level. Make as many of that as you can. Go get it out the door. Make it look very good. So, yeah, Aladdin never becomes Prince Ali. Instead, he storms the Sultan's palace, killing hundreds of guards.

And that's where he fights Iago, where he gets his lamp stolen. I just imagine him in the end of the game, covered in blood, dropping his sword, like, I love you, Jasmine. Oh, my God. I knew so many of those men. They raised me. In the end, Jafar gets the lamp and becomes the world's most powerful sorcerer, but it's then that he's killed by Aladdin, not by his own hubris. So Aladdin kills him in snake form, and the game is over.

So Jafar does not end up defeating himself for the hubris of his third wish. He's just killed by Aladdin's sword as a snake. I think it's lame, actually, in both games, that even in the second one, you just see in the ending he becomes the genie. You never fight Jeannie Jafar, which I guess you don't. do in the movie either, but I don't know, like, you could dodge him. It could be like survive him or escape or whatever, but instead, like, this one just completely sidesteps Jeannie Jafar. And a very, very lame final boss fight, like Snake Jafar is the same size as Aladdin Sprite.

It's compared to the Super Nintendo version as a giant snake at the end, even though there's a lot of slowdown, I love that fight. Yeah, it felt like with the tiny snake Jafar, which is not, I mean, that, I would have suffered so much through this game. or at the very least, bought a guidebook that had passwords in it. But to finally get to the end, and I've been waiting to see this big-ass snake that I'm going to stab with my cool Aladdin sword, this whole game, and then it's just like a snake the size of me

at the top of a stupid giant stage that was frustrating. Boo! This is the 20-minute's hate for Aladdin for the Genesis. But, yeah, so this game was ported to a lot of things. In fact, it was ported to Nintendo systems like the Game Boy. I had no clue. That's crazy. Very not great port. Eventually, it was ported to the Game Boy Color in the year 2000

and had versions for Amiga, DOS, and had a PAL-only NES released by Virgin Interactive. Watch that on YouTube. It's like it's playing in slow motion. Oh, Jesus, man. They don't know no better over there in the PAL region. I'm sorry. It's okay.

We love our European listeners, even though we dislike Aladdin. But yeah, we're going to move on to the SNES Aladdin soon, but I hate to be too mean to this game, but I feel I don't know I feel bad that the other version was slandered so heavily and this game has a lot of problems

that were never really talked about it's only through it's only in retrospect really that you can see like ooh this is not a terrible game but it is sort of like a flimsy mediocre game

that just looks very good it's just all flash like so much flash to it that all really impressed you when you were a kid and you didn't know what good games were like that's I think that's why

I'm extra mean to it even though there are many worse games than Genesis Aladdin but I think I mean to it because I strongly proclaimed that this was the better Aladdin as a kid it was an opinion I held into my career in the games press like when I first started

in the games press and we had office conversations about things and Aladdin came up I would say like Genesis is way better you get a sword combat's cooler all that stuff I was talking out of my ass It wasn't just you, Henry. I mean, it wasn't me, of course, but it was conventional wisdom for everybody in gaming that, yes, this is the superior game.

What is that other game? You throw apples who gives a shit. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, we were all just talking about it on surface level. So then, you know, five years ago when I finally played it again, I was just miserable. Like, I was like, wow, I even doing the level skip, I just, I would keep dying until I just got so frustrated. So there's like, F it, level skip, next password.

And each, but then that's when I was playing stages I never touched as a kid. And I could only, you know, grouse at how betrayed I felt. This game really rankles me, Henry. But yeah, so I played through all of the S&ES game again for this podcast. I made it through about 60% of the Genesis game before I hit stop and just watched a let's play of the rest. Because I was like, I cannot do this. Even with the quick saving and quick loading, it is just a miserable, grueling. experience designed to not let you beat it in a rental I'm guessing oh yeah I think that's part of

the punishment I think Doug Perry you know he's really defined as a creator by like these these flashy curiosities that are not meant to be engaged with too deeply same with like enter the matrix is a very interesting thing to me I never ever want to play it again but I have a lot of interesting memories about it same like every earthworm gym and and And, yeah, no, that one I didn't even touch, like, yeah. Yeah, there are all these weird curiosities that are interesting and have interesting ideas, but they don't hold up to scrutiny, and especially 20 plus years later, they definitely are hard to go back to.

Yeah, he needs to be partnered with, I think he just has too much power. He needs to be partnered with, like, somebody with a clearer level design focus to match his, you know, flash and shininess, shiny entertainment. perfect name for them. That's true. That really is true. You're just like, well, this is a shiny thing. Oh, it's all just gold plating on a turd.

All sizzle entertainment. So we'll take a brief break and then come back to talk about the S-NES version of Aladdin. The I'm notherna, ...you know, ... ... ...

... ... ... So we're back, and now it's time to talk about the superior Aladdin game. The S&ES version released a bit later than the Genesis version, November 21st, 1993. and it was directed by one Shinji Makami. There are four planners listed, which are sort of directors. That's what a director was at the time.

But I believe he was the lead on the game. And here he's credited as salary man. SM. Yes. Oh. Though maybe that's... I just realized that now. I'm sorry.

Though maybe that's also just shows what his feelings were on the project. I'm getting a paycheck. I'm punching my time card on this one. I didn't know he was the director on it until an interview a few years ago when he He was doing the rounds for Evil Within, and so, you know, they've like, well, while I've got you here, what do you think of the Aladdin debate? Which is the better Aladdin? You were the director. And he very graciously said, I always felt the Genesis one was better, or he said, like, you know, our game, I only see the flaws, so the Genesis one's better.

But I think he was just being nice. I think so, too, because it is a better game in my estimation. And in case you need a refresher on Ushinji Makami is, we just had a Resident Evil 4 podcast, go back and listen to that. because that will just show you a brief look at his brilliance. He directed things like this and the Goof Troop SNES game and also the first Resident Evil and Dino Crisis and Resident Evil and Resident Evil 4 and Peno 3 and Evil Within 1 and he's just a great game creator.

Oh, Shadows the Damned is one of my favorites. I think he's just executive producer on that one. Yeah, I know. I mean, there's like 43 directors on that game. I think no one wanted to take full credit, even though it's an okay third-person shooter. I think it's one of, as far as gameplay goes, one of Grasshopper's best.

Yeah, it's like an RE4 light that's not super challenging, but I have fun just blazing through it. And that was like one of the... It's kind of one of the first games I kind of played at one-up when I moved out here eight years ago, so I have some affinity for it. Yeah, yeah. It was one of my earliest reviewed games, too, so it has a special place for me nostalgically, for sure.

So upon playing this game again, and I love this game as a kid, and I, uh, spoilers, I only really played the Genesis version as an adult or as a team when I finally had a computer with emulation and said, you know, let's check out what this Genesis Aladdin was all about because I didn't grow up with a Genesis. So through my adult, 37-year-old eyes right now, this game definitely feels like a Japanese take on Prince of Persia, one that gets rid of the finicky nature of that game and the fairly realistic sort of heavy physics where you drop like a rock and, you know, you jump like a normal person would. It's funny that Disney animators worked on the other one because the effervescence of the coloring and world design and

everything feels much more like Disney like and we just did we just watched Aladdin so hard we watched it so hard I super watched it that the colors the colors children the colors of it really shine through to me as one of its best qualities which just are not there in the Genesis partially because Genesis kind of can't do those kind of colors but the SNS can't and the one major difference between this game and the Genesis game is that Aladdin is fun to control like he is a very very fun character to control and it's a slower game than the Genesis version, but only because there's much more

intentionality to everything Aladdin is doing and can do. Aladdin can jump, swing, bounce, float with a hang glider, and most importantly, hang from ledges, which is very important for a tricky platforming game.

Well, and I think they... So Doug Perry and his team, they see Aladdin, and they focus on the four seconds where he holds a sword. While, meanwhile, the Shinjima and his team, they see Aladdin, and they're like,

this guy jumps around a lot, has a bunch of inventive ways of jumping around. Yeah, and that way it's much more faithful to the movie because Aladdin is a very parkour-driven character before we knew what that meant. And all of his attacks and enemies in the movie are slapsticky. Like, he cartwheels off of people, he bounces off of things. He's always, like, floating around like a little tarp. It's all very, like, slapsticky, parkour action, which is what the SNES game does a very

good job of capturing. And this is a game I rented a lot. It feels like it was designed for kids of the time in that it's only moderately difficult today. It's pretty fair and forgiving in a way that would not be the norm for a while. Like, you can conceivably sit down and beat this in a rental in 1994, sorry, 1993.

There are passwords after every stage. It is, there are some, like, tricky and frustrating moments, but they're all doable. Like, I feel like this was Capcom kind of turning the corner in terms of, we're going to make our games very hard so you can't beat them in a rental to let's make kids feel empowered. Like, let's

let kids beat this game. They're a little more removed from Mega Man, or Maybe, you know, working on the Mega Man X series internally made them realize like they could stratify the difficulty of these things. You know, not everything needs to be ghouls and goblins to punish you extensively and make it, make a 20-minute thing last six hours. So we talked about how Aladdin basically parkours around these stages. And what I like about this game is that, again, there's a lot of intentionality. There's a lot of more design sense coming through and that enemies are part of the platforming. the parkour action you bounce off of enemies you use enemies as platforms and you bounce off of enemies

like you bounce off of a cupa and mario so a lot of the stages are like chaining like swings to jumps to bounces in a very very fun and rewarding way if you can do them right like it eventually ramps up to that stage and it's all built around this skill set that aladdin has and i'm not seeing that in the genesis version the genesis version is like you're a guy you jump on things and you slash things and they're there for a reason you figure it out one i remember just feeling in Genesis, like, jumping on somebody and going like, oh, that just hurts. Ow, I'm knocked back and I fell down five stages. You don't get knocked back when you get hits.

Oh, okay. That's right. It feels super cheap and annoying because, like, oh, I'm on the hot coals. Ow, ow, ow, now, ow. I guess I'll just keep getting hurt. Yeah. Actually, no, in my memories, I created better balance than I had. Yeah, something that would knock you away from the danger if you get hit.

Well, and all is apple throwing, too, you know, that in the movie, he, you know, tosses apples at people at least three times, three or four times. Yeah, and actually in the Genesis version, the Apple is just another attack. It's like a gun basically. In this version, there's more nuance to it. The Apple will stun an enemy. So the apples are worked into a greater

like attack scheme or strategy than just like, oh, I have bullets now. I'll throw these bullets at you. Well, and you see these apples in here too, and it makes me think that like, Shiny got away with something or Virgin Interactive got away with something because I'm shocked at the 93

that Disney approved a character who can slash a sword at somebody until they die. Like, they would never allow that kind of violence you would think in their games. So the graphics aren't quite as faithful to the movie designs, but I like them in a different way and that they feel like a very Japanese interpretation of these characters, sort of that we saw in, you know, the Simpsons arcade game or the Tiny Tunes games. I kind of like the manga slash anime take on these Disney designs. We are we. Yes, we are very weepy and again, using all the colors of the rainbow on the Super Nintendo to make this a very, very colorful and very vibrant game.

Yeah, I think that Capcom, I don't know what the behind the scenes stories are in this game, but they did have an American producer on this game as a lot of their Disney games had. And I think maybe he knew, oh, you got to see what Virgin is doing. You got to make this game look as good as possible because this game looks even above par for Capcom games. There's a lot of little details in the background, a lot of fun little Abu animations that don't know. need to be in the game but are. So I feel like they probably had, you know, a short development time too, but they might have gotten wind of the Virgin version and said, okay, we got a, we are now competing with this version of the game. We are now trying to sell this company consoles at Christmas. So we need to make this look very good. Yeah, I do wonder how involved the platform

holders of Sega and Nintendo were in these creations. Like how, you know, did they get extra push marketing-wise from either side. Like, I think definitely Sega was marketing the crap out of this Aladdin game, but, you know, Nintendo may be less so. That's a lesser style. Oh, and Sega, I mean, I already had such a long history with Disney. Like, their Mickey games, Mickey was one of their pre-Sonic superstars on the Genesis. That's right.

Both Capcom and Sega had very long existing relationships with Disney going back to the 80s. So it's weird to see them both competing with each other for Disney's love. so another thing about this game there's a lot of nice touches again I feel like each level has a different theme to it a different design theme like here is the swinging level here is the more advanced platforming level

here is the level where fire rises from the bottom and then sinks back down you've got to work around that and one of the nicest levels that I like in this game that I thought was cool as a kid was they managed to work via a whole new world sequence in there as a bonus stage where you're basically just flying on a carpet through a lot

of the set pieces of that song in the movie collecting gems. And it's just a very quiet, like a very quiet moment in the game before the final stages. It's really cool how they were able to do that. Just like, let's have a non-combat stage in this game. Yeah, that was really smart and different for its time to, also to embrace the music of it. Like, I feel the Genesis game didn't have really any time for romance. Like, I don't think they, which if they thought 11-year-olds don't want a romance stage, they'd probably be right. That's not what most boys wanted in 93. I guess that was. was maybe forethinking of Capcom to be like, no, you're going to make a, we're going to make a level out of this mushy song. And it's going to be you as Prince Ali and Jasmine on the carpet having a moment together. Well, and then at the time, too, Capcom already had discovered the fun of adding the variety of bonus stages to titles like Final Fight or Street Fighter. And this game has the bigger, better final boss, even though there's a lot of slowdown for this boss. It's a very fun boss to fight. So first you fight Jafar is a small.

sorcerer and then you fight him in snake mode and basically you are running along his body that's sort of gyrating or fluctuating or whatever you want to call it and trying to land a hit on his head and it's very very fun it's a very fun boss fight very visually impressive i think this is them trying to make up for all the uh disney animation they couldn't get into the game with this amazing looking but uh technologically challenged set piece yeah it's it's far more ambitious it's using modes one through seven so hard or dish not all the modes yeah it looks really and the fire is good too and also like the the timing and challenge on it definitely is is hard like the wave just goes up and you're like you have to be used to the rhythm and just like i gotta jump down and just hope that i timed it right for the snake to get back above the fire in time so we talked about mostly everything about this game i do want to talk about how the story differs in the movie and this version of the latin is very very faithful to the movie going back and looking at all the cutscenes for these games i was surprised how close they stuck to everything. So in this version of the story, I only noticed two changes. One of them is that when Aladdin is thrown into prison, there's no prison level, number one, which is good. Number two, Abu doesn't free him as he does in the movie. The beggar, who is really Jafar, offers to free him if he'll go to the cave of wonders for him. So that's one, just tiny change they didn't even need to make, but it's there. Yeah, well, in the film, it almost feels unneeded. Like, Abu frees him, but then he's also told like, well,

You're not really free. I mean, your arms are free, but you're still in the tension. There's digging out of there. Technically not out of the dungeon yet. That was more about connecting Abu and Aladdin together before they go to the cave of wonders. And the one other change is basically Capcom saying, what if when you escape from the cave of wonders, a boo falls off and goes into a pyramid and you've got to find Abu?

It's just a way for them to have another sort of Middle Eastern theme level using the tropes of like, now you're in a pyramid. I mean, by this time they knew how to make a themed, Like, that stage felt very Mega Man to me. It does. Watching through, I mean, especially the ending. It has a very fun boss, a very fun non-boss, actually, beating Earth from Jim to the Punch by a year where you get to the end of the level and you see a sarcophagus head

sort of lower from the screen, like, oh, no, it's a mummy fight. You jump on it once and Abu is under there, and then it's just over. And Abu just knocks himself in the head because he was, like, hypnotized by some mummy treasure. Yeah, and the area layout is so a Mega Man level, too. You think you're, Aladdin is positioned on the left side of the screen and you're waiting for the boss to appear and maybe even have his health bar fill up. And then it's just, it's a, it's a boo in a head. Yeah. In a way, it's a way for them to not design a boss, but it's a fun joke.

There's a sort of a cop out of the way, yeah, sure. There's a kind of playfulness to the design that I see in things like duct tales. Like, let's make a joke into like a game element. Well, and I do recall the friend like me stage is a lot of fun, too. Yeah, yeah. It's more fun than the Genesis version, but a lot of things about this game are more fun than that. I think the, I mean, the only

thing most people shit on for this game is the escaping the lava segment. Like, they have very battle toads. It is actually the Genesis version is more speeder-biky battle-todes, where it shows you like, oh, there'll be a thing approaching

on this side. In this version, it's just like, here's a 30-second level memorize when things will happen to beat it. That's basically the only cheap part of this game and luckily unlike battle toads it ends eventually it's uh it's not quite as bad and it's easy to memorize but that's the one kind of cheap moment in this game okay that i didn't like as a kid but i eventually did beat it as a kid and you got passwords anyway so yeah so once you beat that you never need to touch it again so there are uh this is a fairly short game a fairly

compact game to make it a bit a longer more to sink your teeth into there are 70 red gems in the game 10 in each stage and if you get 50 or more you get a slightly better ending and if you get 70 or more you get the best ending and all that does is basically give you new things to look at during the credit role and they're all existing assets so the best ending is like here's a scene from each stage next to the credits it's not anything

to write on about I would call that best I watched that this morning on YouTube and saw like it that almost felt like the standard one because it just reminded me of like a million games like every like Super Mario World had that ending I'm just showing you where you've been before

here are all the friends you made along the way I was hoping for a genie joke at the end. But I think they, you know, genie's definitely in the game. But this is post-pissing off Robin Williams' world. So I don't know, maybe they were like touchy on genie assets. Definitely they're not going to use Robin Williams' voice stuff in it at all. Yeah, Jeannie is on the cover of both versions of the game. But so if you go back to our What a Cartoon movie on Alad and you'll learn that Robin Williams only wanted to appear in 25% of promotional materials,

the genie character to appear in 25% and he basically takes up 25% of each box so they're sticking to that rule they're so close to that rule like the genie has to appear and he will be in 25% of this box I mean he is a star of it kids love them they if they didn't see the genie on it they wouldn't buy it

they'd be less likely to buy it so I get it so this game was sort of inexplicably ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2004 I had no clue hey good it's a good game more people probably got to play it well the GBA is a small super Nias four fewer buttons.

I never got to play the GBA version. I don't know if it's compromised in any way, but I'm glad to see it got more life because the Genesis version never went anywhere else. It just lived and died and sold 4 million copies on the Genesis. And I'm sure they sold like a million copies.

Yeah. Well, Capcom is still around while Virgin Interactive is like feels lost to the sands of time. Yeah, I think they were purchased a bunch of times. And Doug Perry is doing his own thing now. But if you have not played this game and you were a Genesis Aladdin fanboy,

please play it. I feel like if you like Ducktails, it is a very, very polished platforming game by Capcom, but I think it's even more well done than Ducktails.

Like I have more nostalgia for Ducktails because of when I played it, but I think this is them with more time and technology and money, making a fun platformer with a lot of creative ideas

and very, very good graphics that stays faithful to the source material. Yeah, the color and creativity really outweighs for me of the boring, like the flash and pomp and circumstance, of the Aladdin one, like even

of Genesis. Now, I will say when I saw the Genesis end screen of like Aladdin and Jasmine kissing, like that really is well animated. It is well done. Yeah. I mean, if these were just assets released

as a video of good animation, I'd like it so much more. Well, now they live on as animated gifts on the internet. I'm sure they've all been gifted at this point. But yeah, please play the S&ES Aladdin in whatever way you can. Unfortunately, I feel like Disney could have re-released these in some form in some way after the early 2000s,

especially in tandem with the live action movie. But I think they don't want people to remember the cartoon for now. They're like, no, no, no, no. You have good memories of that. Go see the new one. Go see the new one. Yeah, you couldn't buy the cartoon. When we were doing this podcast about the cartoon,

I don't own it. And I had to find a Vimeo link, let's say, because I couldn't even pay $20 on Amazon to get it. It was bonkers. And wasn't the movie also unavailable, too? Yeah. Okay, yeah, I thought so. So the 1992 movie is in the vault currently, or what?

Vault-ish, yeah. Vault-ish, okay. The Blu-ray came out like years ago, so I think, yeah, it's kind of back into the vault. But obviously, nothing will be, few things will be in the vault soon once Disney Plus get started. Blast open that vault.

So before we go today, I want to talk about the few other Aladdin games by few, I mean, too. So the first one is, it came out in 2001 for PC. and PlayStation, it's called Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge. So this takes place between the second and third

movies and is about Jafar's sister. Yes, he had a sister. Forcing Aladdin to acquire the relics that will let her resurrect Jafar. And this basically is a continuation of the TV series slash direct-to-video continuity. The one interesting thing about this game is that you can play as

Aladdin, Abu and Jasmine in levels designed around them. But it's also a PS1 platformer from 2001, a licensed one at that. I'm guessing, not so good, not so good. Boy, yeah, that lowered my expectations right now. But the, I mean, at least they were shaking it up and letting you play is more than just Aladdin. And also sticking with the history of like, Jafar did die at the end of Return of Jafar

because his genie lamp, I believe, melted in the lava at the end. Something like that happened. I think Disney is much more reluctant to actually kill villains now. It's like, oh, we can market these further. You got to sell them more. I do love the naming convention, though. I love when games are blank in blank. Yeah.

Yeah, that your character, it's not just a big name title. It's a character's in a thing. But I have no memories of this game. I was 19 when it came out. I was not playing licensed platformers on my PlayStation. So if you have memories of this game, please chime in in the comments. I'd like to know if it's good or not.

So I watched a lot of the cutscenes for this game just to see what they look like and what the story was. And they're very poorly made cutscenes using PS1 assets, but it's all the voice actors you love like Dan Castaneta as the genie and Scott Winger as Ladin and Linda Larkin as Jasmine, just all the TV series people who mostly carried over from the movie. So if you have nostalgia for that, you could probably find this somewhere somewhere out there. In 2001, that was the big deal for legitimacy of a license property. Now obviously they still were going to make most license games good, but they at least

did spend the money on like, in a Simpsons game, you heard the real voices in this Aladdin game you hear the real voices like they often not always but in license titles they wanted to show their pedigree by and how much more they were like this isn't a video game this is multimedia content

as part of an overarching franchise it's part of the rich tapestry of Aladdin product so this game came out at a time when there was a weird Aladdin licensing resurgence where there was this game in 2001 a Game Boy Color Port of the Genesis game in 2000 and the Game Boy Advance port of the S&S game

2004 so something was happening with the license like it became uh cheaper or there was sudden more interest in it but this game is very much of the hand me down like oh you have a PS2 now you give your little brother your PlayStation he'll play these kiddie games and there were so many games between like 2000 2003 for the PlayStation 1 that were just made for kids yeah it's it's really odd timing it just feels like um maybe it was just Disney got just looser they're like you know what we haven't licensed these in a while but if you got to a pitch for almost anything we're listening. So our final game on this podcast is Disney MathQuest

with Aladdin for 1998. Notably, thank you to Matthew Jay, who allowed me to discover this fact on his cartoons 101 video about Robin Williams and the genie. This is Robin Williams' final performance as the genie for Disney. So it happened in this game. A weird entertainment game that I'm sure sold a million copies, but no one has fondness for. No one has any strong memories for. No, I mean, the use of it feels more like, Robin Williams' involvement feels more like it was pitched to him as video games are rotting kids' brains. We're making one where you teach them stuff. Like, I think this and his other last teeny appearances definitely feel more in the kind of like the more you know kind of spirit, which is not a bad spirit even if it's corny. So I don't want to go into the entire Robin Williams' Disney feud, but Disney went back on.

their agreement with Williams of how much they were going to use a genie in the marketing. So Williams refused to work with them until the third movie, the Prince of Thieves or the King of Thieves? King of Thieves. Yes. Or he voiced Jeannie for a million dollars. So I feel like after he voiced the genie again in 1996, Disney was like, yes, we'll get you on this is a genie for everything now. And he's like, I will only do educational products. Just to screw them even more.

It's like, I took your million dollars. I took your Picasso sketch and I'm only going to do educational things. So he did this in a series of PSAs called Great Minds Think for Themselves, which I believe aired on the one Saturday morning block on ABC, which don't feature a lot of animation, but is Williams as the genie going over great figures of history. Yeah, I mean, hey, if you got to learn about Jackie Robinson somewhere, why not from Jeannie?

Yes, I want him to teach me everything. But I got a brief clip of Jeannie talking to Iago from this game, because, of course, Gilbert Godfrey will do anything. And I now, by law, I have to mention Gilbert Godfrey at every podcast I do because he is like the touchstone for everything that I'm interested in. I don't know how this happened, but thank you, Gilbert, for being alive. Oh, my gosh. We're in some sort of chamber of horrors.

Chamber of Horace, it's right. We're in the palace dungeon. Hey, where's everybody else? The evil genie. Bizarro must have taken out, Jasmine, and Abu somewhere else. We have to find them. They could be in trouble. And how are we going to do that?

We're trapped in the dungeon. An old Agraba legend says that there is a secret passageway that leads in and out of here. All we have to do is find it. Yeah, right, like it's that easy. So that's Rob Williams and Gopoldberg-Goffrey. There's a voice. I skip through a long play of all of it. He's doing a lot of schick, a lot of voices, a lot of somewhat offensive voices for the kitties, but it was 1998.

But yeah, that is his last performance. as Jeannie in Math. Is it Math Quest? Yes, Math Quest with Aladdin. Well, at least he helped kids learn math. Not math. But math. That's right.

The right one. As we proved that Europeans are wrong about the pronunciation of math and also with platforming. So if you can learn anything from this podcast, know that we're chauvinistic American pigs. Hey, I'm sorry. Who prefer Japanese things.

You guys are right about a lot of stuff. Yeah, like socialize medicine. Yes. Platforming. get back to me later. Marginal tax rates, yes. Floody platformers, no. Isometric cameras, no.

Yes, so Europe, get your act together on some things. But yeah, this has been our Aladdin podcast. I know these games are talked about a lot, but I don't feel like the S&ES game is really talked about in high esteem. Again, it is mentioned in passing as, oh yeah, you throw apples, who gives a shit? That's normally what I hear,

and I think, again, people need to go back and give that game a chance, even though it was honestly probably played by millions of kids no one really remembers it now and I feel like it is sort of a lost platforming gem in that I can't think of another platforming game that controls quite like it and I'm surprised Capcom didn't iterate on it

for another platforming game it's just very interesting the parkour action is very fun and satisfying and I feel like it belongs in another game like it belongs in another game to be expanded upon well it was the wrong time for it to come like Capcom still made 2D platformers after this but not a ton

and they were basically a lot of them were just Mega Man's so that's those already had the Mega Man X and Mega Man games have their own

things so well that they can't really copy how Aladdin moves in this game and they were really wrapping up their Disney contract at the time

because I believe Disney Interactive would then take over for most Disney things I think Disney Interactive absorbed Virgin Interactive and that became

the Disney development house and Capcom's license would end in 1994 with the Bonkers game a good game. The bonkers game for SNES is a very good game that no one has played because

nobody cares about bonkers. You just saw that on the shelf. You're like, no, thank you. Well, I mean, business-wise, that was such a smart move by Disney. They see Aladdin on Genesis sells 4 million copies. You buy that developer right now. I mean, I've said this a million times about how licensed games worked, but all these companies, they, like Fox Interactive had a similar thing. They see how much money is being made by the people they license their stuff to that they then think, I want 100% of the profit by making it myself. And then after a few games, they're like, oh, this investment is a lot. I don't like making it. Yeah, I was looking at my research here, and it wasn't a complete absorption of Virgin Interactive, but Disney wanted to put more of

their stink on it. So it was like a combined Virgin Interactive Disney software production for the later games. But Capcom definitely lost the license or didn't want the license, and Disney definitely wanted more of the development money and the publishing money they would get for having a hand in the development of the games. But yeah, things were changing. Capcom was getting out of platformers, and this is one of their last best ones of that era for sure. So definitely check out the S&S version. You have to steal it because there's no way to get it anywhere else unless you have a cartridge. And I'm sure those are not expensive, but play it any way you can. It's really good. And if you want to play a Genesis version, please go ahead. It's fine. You could do it.

A let's play is even easier, though. Although that music, that's a good al. We didn't even talk about it. I don't know. I mean, hey, it's 1993 again. Can talk about Weezer, right? Yeah. Who cares? So, it's time to wrap up. I hope you enjoyed this little look at the Aladdin games. I think this is the last word I will have on these. I've been a big champion for the S&ES version of this game. So again, please play it. But as for Retronauts, if you enjoyed this podcast, I want to support it and get every episode a week ahead of time and at free. Please go to

patreon.com slash Retronauts. And for the low price of three bucks a month, you will get just that. And also, you will support everything the show does. terms of production and posting and flying Jeremy out here and flying us around the country to go to shows where you can see us live and in person. So please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and Henry can tell us what other stuff I do with him on the Talking Simpsons Network. Yes, hey thanks. I'm Henry Gilbert. You follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-A-Y-G. For main reason, you'll get to know when new podcasts go out that feature me and Bob. We, every week, do at least two podcasts, often far more than that.

And you can hear both Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon, both on your free podcast feeds or as part of the Patreon. Talking Simpsons, in case you don't know, is me and Bob going chronologically through every episode of the Simpsons. And we are on the edge of season nine. We're getting close to the end of it. And meanwhile, there's What a cartoon where me and Bob go through a different animated series once a week with a specific episode and going deep, deep, deep into the history. And of course, if you want to hear this Aladdin episode, our Aladdin movie podcast, What a Cartoon movie is only for our $10 and up patrons. If you go to $5, you get every podcast that we do weekly a week ahead of time and add free.

But at the $10 level, you get access to the What a Cartoon movie, which right now the most recent one was Aladdin. Three hours and 50 minutes of Aladdin talk, our longest podcast ever, well worth your patronage. And you'll get access to all of our previous. What a Cartoon movies as well as the next one we'll be doing in June. And if you want to hear a free sample of that Aladdin podcast, check out the What a Cartoon Free Feed.

Wherever you find podcasts, it'll be in there. And it's 20 minutes of that four-hour podcast that goes over a bit of the history of Aladdin. And boy, we really dug into it there. But yes, thanks for listening, folks. We'll see you next time for a brand new episode of Retronauts. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.