Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 235: Mailbag—New Super Mario, FF Tactics, Gaming Holy Grails

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

The Retronauts East crew (Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Ben Elgin, and Chris Sims) responds to YOUR letters about episode topics that may or may not have already been published, including New Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Hey friends, do you like listening to us talk? Well, good news. You have two opportunities to come hear us talk live and in person this summer. On August 10th and 11th, I'll be teaming up with cool people from the Video Game History Foundation, My Life in Gaming and Hardcore Gaming 101 to present a couple panels at Long Island Retro Gaming Expo in Garden City, New York. And if that's the wrong side of the country for you, well, I have good news. At the end of the month, both Bob and I will be putting in multiple appearances at Pax West. Bob will be presenting a live Talking Simpsons panel, while I'll be gaming up with U.S. Gamer to contemplate the Metal Gear timeline. After that, Retronauts will be closing out the show with back-to-back Monday afternoon presentations, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Sega Dreamcast and debating Metroid mania supremacy by weighing the merits of Super Metroid against Castlevania Symphony the Night. It's a whole lot of us, live and in your face. Come see us. Or you can stay safely at home with the idea of having to deal with podcast personalities and real time sounds unreasonably annoying. Either way, there's no stopping the fact that we're going to be spouting a whole lot of words about the video game history.

out of our faces. Awesome. This week in Retronauts, we get to be angry about your opinions. Everyone, welcome to a quick and exciting episode of Retronauts. I'm lying about the exciting part, but it is going to be quick. Fingers crossed. I am Jeremy Parrish, and this week with me here is the Retronauts East Crew, and we are going to finally read a bunch of letters that you guys have been writing to us over the past several months, and we've missed including those in some of our episodes where they belonged. So here we are in a catch-up micro episode, no, pocket episode.

No, I was actually just called Retronauts. Okay. So anyway, it's an episode about your letters. Guys, introduce yourselves quickly so we can make the rounds. I'm Ben Elgin. Ben Edwards. Chris Sims. And I still am Jeremy Parrish.

Amazing. So, yeah, we've had several topics where I've written or posted a call for letterbag submissions. And people have heated the call. And then when it came time to actually record the episode, we went on so long. which seems to be something we do a lot, that we did not have time to include the letters before we had to move along and continue recording because we are on a strict timetable with everything we do.

It's terrible. So here is a dumping ground for your opinions. And it's not because we think your opinions belong in a dump. It's just because that's how it works. So anyway. What we are going to start with here is a Final Fantasy Tactics mailbag. Actually, at the time of this recording, we have not published the Final Fantasy Tactics episode. So this might serve as a preview for something that's coming up.

But in any case, we're going to begin with Robin Van Gilder, who writes, I really loved developing generic units in this game. They had just enough personality to be engaging, and you could send them off to do jobs on their own. It made it feel like the world existed outside of the main characters. Did you guys play much Final Fantasy tactics? This is the way. We got a good feeling. Ben knows what I'm talking about.

My brother played it a lot, a lot, a lot, and I watched him play it. I was impressed by the animations when they attacked people at the time. Yeah, the little sprite animations and that were great. But I kind of agree with Robin. I really enjoyed developing generic characters. I also liked, you know, having some of the main characters, even if they didn't necessarily belong in my party. I was like, I like Agrius so much. I can't get rid of her.

Yeah. I like the weird twins who cast random magic and can either win or lose a battle for you. Yeah. No control over it. I definitely had the same. I agree that bringing up the randoms was fun. And I definitely had a mix of, you know, some of the coolest pre-gen characters and some of my own. Although your own tend to, just because you've been developing the whole way along, will often end up being the powerhouses because you just put everything into them.

Oh, it's Alyssa the Monk. And she can destroy everything even better than TG. Sid can. Yep. All right. So, Ian, we're just going to go with first names. Ian says, the ability to break and bend tactics job system made up for its most prominent flaws, and it's the reason why I start a new save file every couple of years. Every playthru is a new opportunity to experiment. I wonder if there's any hope for a switchport of the high resolution, slowdown-free iOS version of War of the Lions.

I would play that. That would be intriguing, yeah. Chris, you have not played Final Fantasy Tactics. would you play it if it came to Switch? No. Why is that? I don't care for tactics games. It's just not a...

This one's good. You fight a monster that, like, is a garbage demon, and it has this weird mouth in its belly, and it opens up the mouth on its belly with its hands, and it belches, like, poison fumes at your party and poisons everyone. I feel like... It's like, Oscar the Grouch. No, that looks... It's so much worse. Look, that sounds great, but am I going to enjoy it as much as my fourth playthrough of Star-Dive Valley?

I don't know. Stardew Valley is kind of like a strategy game. Your units are carrots and cabbage. I actually played a lot of tactics games, but I did, you know, I played the heck out of Final Fantasy Tactics when it was new. And part of, you know, I mean, I got drawn in because of the Final Fantasy connection. But then also it's got that Matsuno touch to it, which is always great. I do remember quite liking the art for all the classes back then. I remember like pulling those for use in D&D campaigns.

The art in tactics is just beautiful. Yeah, but that's gorgeous. But the only tactics game I've ever really played is Shining Force, maybe, or Shining Force, too. I really got into those for some reason. Yeah, that's more in the Fire Emblem vein, as opposed to, like, those are, you know, your side moves, you know, turn by turn. Your armies move side by side. So it's like one army moves and then the other army moves, whereas tactics is each character has their own kind of dynamic speed. and that determines the order in which they take their actions.

And it totally changes the feel of the game. I think it's cool. It has a snowball fight at the beginning. That's Tactics Advance, yeah, the Game Boy one. Game Boy Advance one. I played that one a little bit. But yeah, I never got a chance to check out War of the Lions. It looked really, really pretty.

Yeah, it had some slowdown. Yeah. But if that came to Switch, I would be tempted. Joe says, Tactics is secretly the best final fantasy and is a wonderful celebration of the series traditions, like the iconic job. and monsters. It also gave us Ivalise, which led to the other secret best final fantasy,

12. Hitoshi Sakimoto's soundtrack is an absolute masterpiece, and his sounds really define the evilese games. The most fun part of tactics is when Sid joins your party, and you just rip through the last few battles in the game, and even the final boss is a complete cakewalk. I'll always prefer the PS1 version of the PSP because of the latter's dreadful low times, and I've come to love the original's spotty translation. I can't get behind that there, but... do have a soft spot for the completely janky translation.

I'd still rather play something. Yeah, I mostly agree with Tommy. Yeah, no, I mean, functional translations are good. I would certainly take that for a new game, but it's got that nostalgia going for it, which was really fun when a couple of times they referenced it in 12.

They pulled a couple of the janky lines. Yeah, just in the background, which was great. Because I also agree with Tommy that 12 is. Oh, that was Joe, that last one. Oh, that was Joe. Sorry. You're looking ahead in the syllables. My mistake. Sorry, Joe. I agree with Joe. But yeah, both on that. And, yeah, the music and art is just phenomenal. So moving on. This one is from Tommy. Tommy says, hi, Jeremy and Retronauts. I don't really have a whole lot to say about Final Fantasy tactics, except that I'm very excited you guys are finally doing an episode about my favorite game of all time. I first played this game when I was about 10 years old. I'm now 30. And it's been my favorite game ever since. The mature plot, incredible soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto, the character design, and the incredible battle system all still hold up.

up incredibly well today. That's all I really wanted to say. Thank you for finally doing an episode on such an amazing game. So yeah. You're welcome. It was cool. That's fantastic. I hope you enjoy the episode when I finally publish it. Yep. But yeah, and yeah, the Sakamoto soundtracks are always fantastic, both in this and 12. I'm sure the other things he's done, but yeah. So moving on, we have Lucas, who is still on Final Fantasy Tactics, says one of the only RPGs, I've played through twice. I love how you can break it. By the end of my second playthrough, I was 9-9-9-9ing the final boss with my army of high-level black mages calculators. There you go. Those are defensive generics.

Yep, yep. Everyone who spent too much time with the game has blown everyone away with calculators, I think, because that class is pretty totally broken if you put the time into it to unlock all the things it can do. You seem skeptical binge. I was looking at Chris, like, what the heck are they talking about everything? So a calculator is a special class that has no innate skills of their own, all they can do is calculations. But as you learn more calculations, you can basically say,

I want to use this skill from another class that I've learned and apply it to characters whose level is a multiple of three. And so your spell will hit every single character on the battlefield that has an experience level that is a multiple of three. That did not clarify anything. so you end up doing ridiculous things like so you've got this like 3D grid map right and so everyone's on a certain square on this map that has a certain elevation yeah and so you can end up doing things like saying everyone who's on elevation zero is suddenly going to be hit by holy from like no cost that sounds complicated you can actually yeah it is complicated but if you figure out the the you know like the proper formula for something you can actually sometimes end a battle in a single move with this character it actually it almost turns it in into a puzzle game where you're like, how can I set things up so that some number of some stat comes out right so that my calculator can just obliterate everything, which is not really

the main thrust of the game, but it's a really interesting sort of endgame puzzle you can set for yourself if you delve into this class. That's neat. So, yeah. All right. Still on Final Fantasy Tactics from Adam says, Finalty Tactics could be the most underrated musical score in the series, the difficulty waxes and wanes in such a way that one minute you're a king.

ship one attack killing an enemy mage. This game is great and the next you're getting one shot at yourself. This game is too hard. I may sound like a sociopath here, but is there anything more satisfying sound in video game history than the character death sounds? But yeah, definitely like... I enjoyed the music for that.

Oh yeah. I heard it, you know, secondhand a lot. Yeah, yeah, music's fantastic. Yeah, Hitoshi Sakimoto is a great composer. Has done, you know, stuff outside of the RPG genre like Radiant Silver Gun and Gradius 5 I think I remember it

doesn't they go da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da that's the generic final fantasy battle theme that's the victory theme that's the victory theme that's in almost all the final fantasy games anyways

I'm not a big final fantasy guy clearly but but yeah I mean it's so like like we were just talking about with the calculator but even with other classes there's so many things that can be affecting, like, how much damage you're doing and how much damage you're taking, that

it's, it's become, balance becomes a difficult issue in that kind of situation. So you definitely get, like, there's some battles that are just infamous in terms of being a stumbling block just because of where you are in the game at that point. I just wanted to thank you for finally featuring one of my top three games in the Final Fantasy franchise. Oh, this is from Justin, by the way. The original localization for FFT is generally accepted to be a mess. The War of the Lions re-release on PSP about 10 years later is generally accepted to be the version to play. primarily due to the much improved localization.

I share this sentiment. However, I was very disappointed to find out that one of my favorite lines in the original game didn't make the jump. The scene in the beginning where Delita... Delita... ...kidnaps Ovelia and tells Agrius... That's a random character...

They're all real names. Swear to God. Delita kidnaps Ovelia and tells Agrius, tough. Don't blame us. Blame yourself or God. Oh, they took that out? What an edge lord. No, in the new one, he says something like,

it's your faith or your or something that is to blame. Okay, I actually am a little disappointed that they took out blame yourself for God. That's a great line. Yeah, that's like taking out a miserable pile of secrets, right? I mean, just classic. Here's, and keep up the good work. Okay, Brian, FFT comment. I first learned of FFT from the ad.

in the back of Final Fantasy Seven's manual? Yeah. And I assume that it played similarly to Seven's Fort Condor minigame, which I hated. A few weeks later, I was at the store. Yeah, actually, I'm kind of in the same space.

Yeah, that's, I had forgotten about that. I guess that was tactical. A few weeks later, I was at the store to spend some Christmas money and saw a box full of copies of Final Fantasy tactics waiting to be stocked. Boy, that would be worth a lot of money now, right? They just, he bought all of them. I was still riding high on playing through the Final Fantasies of six, seven, and even five through emulation, all through 1997, so I went ahead and bought a copy.

I think it was seeing the artwork of various job classes on the back, which reminded me of Final Fantasy Five that convinced me. I loved it, and to me, no other strategy game has come close to matching it. The combination of Final Fantasy elements with excellent gameplay and beautiful design and music put it far above the crowd, While I do think that Final Fantasy TA 2 What is that? Tactics Advance 2 for DS

Is underrated The world needs a proper FFT follow-up I'll just enjoy the Final Fantasy 11 12 re-releases I'm so bad with Roman numerals

You really are Yeah 14 It's like a dyslexia thing And 14's Evolus Evilus F-L-L-Eval-Ease.

You shouldn't have got me to read any Final Fantasy ones. Evalise content from my tactics fix in the meantime. Anyway, keep up to good work, Brian. All right, yeah, maybe you should have passed us to Chris. We'll come back to you after it's not Final Fantasy anymore. Show me something else. We've got Strider and Newsomerator, it'll be good. All righty.

This one comes from Ben, who says, Woo-hoo! Final Fantasy Tactics Time. I constantly refer back to the one-on-one duel against Weigriff. Wegriff, yes. As a great example of an unfair difficulty spike. If it makes you feel any better in the retranslation, he's Wigliff. There you go. Such statements are often combined with expletives when talking with friends who have also played through the game.

For friends who haven't played it, I don't give spoilers, but I do encourage them to alternate the slots they saved you. By the way, for those who look to play the PSP version, The War of the Lions, there are a live patch for hacked PSPs and IPS-I-S-O patch options that fix the animation slowdowns that plague the original PSP release of the game. There are also numerous ROM hacks for new challenges and such available at, uh, F-FSAXO. is that with a cK or just a ct that is with a ck okay hacktics not to be missing for haptics now this is a letter from john who writes in to say hey there like a lot of people i kind of took a break from video games in late high school through early college basically after i finished final fantasy seven though not because of it i think my parents convinced me to bring my ps1 in genesis with me anyway and i bonded with people in the dorms over the games after grabbing a ps2 close after launch i still stuck with your tech

and Metal Gear solids until my girlfriend at the time bought me Final Fantasy 10 for Christmas. Enjoying it much more than I thought I would, remembering the many RPGs I had skipped over the years, I began to rifle through Friends' collections to catch up with renewed interest. I still kept in touch with my best friend growing up, and after recalling that he never gave up on RPGs, practically

begged me to get Final Fantasy 7 and tactics out of his house because he hated them so much. He has four beautiful kids, a great marriage, and has made a good life for himself, and I always thought that strange for a man with such horrendous taste. I don't think you have the patience to read everything I want to say about tactics, but I agree with everyone

that has great things to say about it. It's given me hundreds of hours of enjoyment as a game and wonderful opportunities for work as a freelance writer over the years. So I'll always be thankful that it exists and that people still talk about it. Thanks, John. P.S. If you guys ever want to talk about the Street Fighter three games for an app, I would reenact planes, trains, and automobiles to be on that conversation. I would rather see him reenact

throw mama from the train. That'd be much more interesting. We're going to do... John's wife if he's going to reenact planes trains and automobiles. All right. We'll do just a couple more tactics letters and then move along. Gary, our friend at Watchup for Fireballs, says, I'm certain you're going to cover the faux Game of Thrones politicking and the church corrupted by Eldritch Monstrosity's appeal of Final Fantasy Tactics, so I want to show support

for the idea of tactics as an A-plus Desert Island game. Though the challenges you face remain unchanged from play-through to play-through, I can think of few games that allow for the same diversity of build. Putting together a team of characters using the best implementation of the FF job system concept allows you to bring you to bring an effectively infinite combination of verb sets to the challenges the game gives you, such as using a calculator. Add, subtract, multiply it. Yeah, there you go. You can do your best to make the most effective, synergistic team possible

and end up with a handful of speedy calculators that can melt their opponents before they can move. Or you can impose in challenges on yourself, such as an oops, all mediators run. God. And if this Desert Island has unusually good Wi-Fi and you're playing on an emulator, there is a world of clever mods providing additional challenge, characters rebalancing and more. Tactics is an unconventional entry in the series, but it is my favorite by quite a margin, not least because of its quality. It will always be left crafty and monstrosities until I eventually fight Final Fantasy Jesus in an airship

void, but Tactics let me make the journey, but Tactics lets me make the journey my own better than any other Final Fantasy. Yeah, I think like most Final Fantasy have a variety of ways to like break the game and do different things, but Tactics is definitely way up there for the variety of builds that you can do. I agree. ahead to, let's do video game Holy Grails. I feel like it's a nice open topic. Alex says, Hi, Retronauts.

As a handheld collector, my Holy Grail would be the PC Engine LT. At five times the price of a Turbo Express up to $1,500 US. And has a same as issue with capacitors, it's just not worth the risk of ending up with a $1,500 paperweight. I feel like you are a video game, hardware specialist. How do you feel about the PC engine LT? Is that the one with the LCD screen that folds? Yes, it is a laptop.

That's what the LT stands for. Well, it's cool, but I've never had one because it's so exotic for American collector. Yeah. One thing I like to explain to people is that I started collecting video games just through thrift stores and secondhand yard sales and stuff. So I wasn't exposed to a lot of foreign consoles and computers, and so I don't have a lot of those in my collection because I was like I was buying things for $10 and stuff. I didn't start in the eBay generation where you pay hundreds of dollars to get the best quality stuff.

Anyway, but it's a cool thing. I'd love to have one. Yeah, I mean, we did an episode in San Francisco on our Holy Grails, and the PC Engine LT was one that I listed as something that I would absolutely love to have that in like an RGB outmoded Wonder Swan or NeoGeo Pocket Color. Man, I would punch some people from one of those. PC Engine LT works coming in 2050. Oh, man. I mean, it's just, it's a PC engine. Well, yeah.

It's a portable, it's a portable turbo graphics. Yeah, yeah. But it has, like, you can dock it with a CD-ROM system. You can plug it into a TV. Neat. You can plug in a controller. It's an amazing little piece of kid. I have a GT, basically, the Turbo Express, so, which is like a huge, clunky black

Game Boy that eats batteries for breakfast. Mm-hmm. That's neat. Batteries are delicious. Corey Schwant says, Corey says, my personal Holy Grill that I open is the, the out-of-box chrono-trigger cart I bought on eBay back when it was at the mid-2000s. I was still young enough not to have my own credit card to buy things on my own,

so I had to convince my parents to help me buy this video game on eBay, video game on eBay that I couldn't just buy at the store on my own. I've carried it with me through multiple moves and have had multiple super eneas consoles die before the card did. It's not a box copy, and I don't have all the manuals, but it definitely is important to me, and I'm glad to have a copy for myself. that's also of a holy grail and more of like a

personal curio I saved up my allowance for Chrono Trigger buying new and that was expensive yeah I was 80 bucks or something

Yeah it was 90 bucks with tax And that was in you know early 1990 That was a lot of money It's like 120 now or something Jonathan says Every time I wander into a game stop I'm trying to recapture

The brief but magical period in 2009 when all the PS1 and PS2 games were on sale buy two, get one free. I hadn't had a PS2 before, so I was inundated with classic games I had never touched, most wonderfully unique and interesting. These days, though, I find myself realizing that the games I don't have are a matter of choices

rather than availability, for the most part, if you want to play a game, you can somehow. Instead, what I miss most is my personal childhood NES and cartridges, which were given away without my consent through an unfortunate communication. I can play Crystalis, Sartropics, dark-winged duck, and Kirby's Adventure easily enough today, but I do wish I still have the cartridges and system that I spent so much time with

all those years ago. I wish I could share the tactile reality of my childhood NES with my children. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to actually purchase an NES or try to acquire the cartridges, knowing that I would almost never actually hook it up to an SD television. And that is why everyone needs an SD television. My experience similar to his with the going back to PS1 and PS2 games was when I got my DS, because I hadn't had a... proper Game Boy or Game Boy Advance. And so I went back to the GameStop used Game Boy Advance section, which was a thing for quite a while.

And that was a really good resource for a while. So moving on, this is from Bastion. It says, Hello, Retronuts. I got back into Retro collecting a couple of years ago after a friend mentioned on Twitter that he was selling his Mega Drive. The only 16-bit Sega game I still had was the first Mega Drive game I own Strider. Well, I've managed to get most of the games I've wanted for it legally and on the cheaper side, such as through ransacking the AT games. game's clone console to have a legit copy of Alien Soldier. Wow.

I have not managed to get a cheap copy of Snatcher for the Sega Mega CD, having passed on expensive copies a couple years ago. Prices have since doubled. My local retro shop told me to just burn it and to play it, and the copy for the collection would eventually come. Knowing that the developer is unlikely to ever republish this game, I would tend to agree, rather than letting it die with less copies in circulation as time passes. Yeah, Snatcher.

Snatcher, you know, the folks that Tara Onion just announced and are some, selling a SD card-based Sega CD plug-and-play solution that you can plug into a Genesis and load Sega CD games off the... Off the card. Yeah, off an SD card. It's just like their PC engine CD-ROM thing,

and that works great, so I'm very excited about that because I have a Sega CD, but actually burning CDs with, like, the CDs that are available now, is actually pretty difficult. It's really hard to get a working burn. Yeah, the quality went way down with the CDRs, didn't they?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'd love to have that cartridge, but it's a little expensive. It's worth it every now. It is, yeah. Like, it's not cheap, but it's also, yeah, not a rip-off. Yeah, it's not a rip-off whatsoever. So this next Holy Grail story is from Byte. That name sounds familiar.

Not sure if I can still qualify for mailbags, but here's my story. In 1999, I bought a NeoGeo on eBay. I loved it, and it became the console I played the most that year, by far, because even though new games were still enormously expensive, earlier titles were easy to find for dirt cheap. At launch, NeoGeo cartridges were $200 a piece. By 99, stores wanted them gone. I think I paid $5 for my copy of Fatal Fury.

But the flip side was the new games were not only costly, they were hard to find. When Mark of the Wolves debuted in arcades in 99, my friends and I were hooked. We wanted it, but when the Neo Geo home version debuted, the quantities were so limited that stores were asking $500. We balked, but the cost only rose over time. I think we eventually imported a Japanese copy for a little less,

but we kept trying to find an English copy that wouldn't break us. We never did. Here's the kicker, though. Because Mark of the Wolves was so expensive and the price went up, I was convinced that that would be the norm for Neo Geo Games going forward. So I invested a gigantic sum in six copies

of King of Fighters 2000 when it came out. Only for no one to notice or care, and the price sank immediately. Don't ask what happened to all those K-O-F-2K cartridges because I can't even remember. That's heartbreaking. A sad tale. Oh, look at the wolves that.

That's why I don't know Playing games Collecting as an investment game is really tricky And I don't recommend it It's a crapshoot, yeah I mean I've done it by accident Just by the virtue of having been Lived through a whole bunch of stuff

That's now really popular and I have it You know because I bought it in and whatever And it was cheap at the time It is here's a short one from Rotator 54 Who says I've got to go with Marvel Madness 2 A.K.A. Marble Man My sister and I would go mad playing each other in the first one, so we'd love to play a new take on it

with three player capabilities, no less. Only a few are known to exist since it never released. Yeah, I have not been fortunate enough to see that. That one is, like, beyond Holy Grill status. That one is, like, not existent? Yeah, it's like Yet. It's like, it was never published. It's like, no lockness monster

status. Man, I would love to see that because, like, yeah, I have a soft spot for Marvel Madness. I had that on NAS. All right. Moving out. NES? I don't know. Is that the way to play Marvel Madness? That, that was designed around a trackball. It was.

You know, they've got the little diagram in the instruction book. You hold your NES controller at a 45 degree angle. How is this any of this Atari Games rollerball cabinet over here? How does it not include Marble Madness? I'm actually very offended by this. Yeah. It's just past the cutoff date, I think, because that's a, you know, this would be like Atari Corp versus Atari games.

Exactly. Ken writes, My Holy Grail is a simple one Except for having the money Harvest Moon on Super Nintendo I remember reading about it In Nintendo Power I'm wanting it so much

But my family was a little poor And had just got Super NES as the 64 came out So I rarely got new games Finally played the series on PSX But always wanted the original On Cart, which I happen to have Is it worth something?

Probably Super NES releases, if you have those complete in box, they're... I don't think I own that one, but I know I played it. I had an Earthbound in the box, and I sold it about five years ago, and I probably shouldn't have. But, hey, whatever. Should I have kept it? I mean, I need some money. So...

I know I played it on NES, but I think I have borrowed someone's copy. Which direction are we going here? Up this way. Yep, that's correct. Okay. This is from Grant. Hello, Retronauts team. My personal Holy Grail is Panzer Dragoon, Saga.

For Sega Saturn, the cheapest I've ever seen a copy go for is around 250 bucks, and even then the quality of the copy was dubious at best. The game always shows up on best JRP's of all-time lists and was worked on by the same team who later did Skies of Arcadia, my favorite game of all time. Sort of some of the same people. I like Skies of Arcadia. I do too. It's not totally the same team, though. Okay, so I desperately want to play it. Sega apparently says it lost the source code

so it will likely never get a re-release and the Saturn can't be properly emulated because of its weird hardware. That's not really true these days. So it's not an impossible dream. Well, man, yeah, I was about to say, like, since we just got the HD remake of the first Panzer Dragoon announced,

maybe someone will do something with it. But the source code being missing is a bummer. Yeah, the emulators are better now than they've ever been. Also, there's hardware that I forgot what it's called that will let you play, you know, games off. It replaces like the optical drive and a Saturn and you can stick an SD card in there and play games off of that. So go for that Grant. Hey, if you're going to do an H-D remake, you can always just rewrite it.

I, you know, I don't have any problems. Like, people get worried about piracy and stuff. But, you know, when you want to play a cultural work that's very important and it's not available, I don't see any problem with, you know, finding it. Yeah, if they're not selling it, you're not basically stealing from people. So I just feel, anyway. Here's another one. Eric, from Eric. Okay. For me, the Holy Grail games are the games I would love to play again

are missed out on the first time. Recently, I've been lucky enough to grab a few of those. Rondo of Blood, Mark of the Ninja, Duck Tales 2, and other NES Disney games, and a re-release of Yoshi's Island. I know it's hip to complain, but honestly, it's been a good few years. I guess my Grail now is Bionic Commando, which I somehow never played as a kid. can't find now.

That's tragic. It's not really easily available, no. Really? I mean, you can get the original NES card, but it hasn't been reissued. Oh, okay. It's not on any of the original consoles? There's Bionic Commando rearmed, which I think is backward compatible on Xbox 1, but it's still different.

It's not the same. Bionicamando is a great game. I got it for 20 bucks, Toys R Us, for my birthday. So the original actually isn't on any of the console stars. Huh. That's kind of weird. That are maybe Castellania Bloodlines, which is a great. game or Aladdin for Genesis, which

is a good game. I don't have a this, I was adding the good game stuff by the way. Okay, I don't have a good retro hookup and don't use PC emulation so I am stuck waiting until someone decides to republish those on current consoles. Well, Bloodlines is on Switch now and PS4

and Xbox 1 in the Castlevania collection. So we're out of date already, this mailback. Okay, let's see. You know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Well, being out of our day is we're going out of our day just means we have new solutions for people. Yeah, actually, why don't you scroll up to new Super Mario Brothers?

Super Mario Bros. See a lot of console launch lineup. Yeah, you'll have to scroll up. Ah, here we go. This one is from Furquin, who says, Jeremy. Ah. No, no,

no other salutations, just Jeremy. In my opinion, I think the New Super Mario Brothers series was great and has some staying power, especially since it's all featured on the upcoming Mario Maker 2. The re-release of New Super Mario Brothers U for Switch fixed the fatal flaw from the original version of not including playable Princess

Peach. That was all caps. I mean, yeah, it's really toad and not The Princess Page, but it was all done in good faith, and it launched a ship of a thousand memes in Bouset at all. That original excuse that it was too hard... So suffering from the ramifications of that. That original excuse that it was too hard to animate Peach's skirt is still ridiculous. Anyway, I played them all, and they're all fun little platforming ROMs. It'd be nice to the original DS and 3DS installments were released in HD for Switch, or perhaps

those levels could be added on as DLC for the current New Super Mario Brothers U Switch version. Except for certain power-ups, the mechanics are all the same, right? I still patiently await a sequel to Super Princess Peach. Same. Super Princess Peach was not a bad game. It wasn't. It was actually good. It did feature quite a bit of crying.

It did. But it was not a bad game. Correct. Yeah. I enjoyed the first new Super Mario Brothers games. And again, it was because I hadn't, I'd missed a bunch of the Nintendo console once. So my first new Mario's in a while. This one comes from Ryan, who says, hi, Jeremy.

Hi. Love your stuff. I mean, that was a direct message to you, so I thought I would give you time to this one. So New Super Mario Brothers on DS is the only one of the series that I actually like a lot. The rest aren't bad, per se, but they definitely don't recreate the fun I have with the one on DS. I loved hunting the star coins long after I finished the story, and it gave me a familiarity like Super Mario World had. The others had solid designs, but I didn't really feel inclined to actually finish them immediately because I got so bored, especially with the switchboard.

I also thought the multiplayer on Wii you had some comedic opportunities but nine out of ten the game pad person nine times out of ten the gamepad person just acted like a dick and spam blocks fun for them, not for everyone else. Yeah, I have a couple comments on that which is that I love the DS version of New Super Mario Brothers.

In fact, it's really great to play on the Wii U backward compatible virtual console or whatever. Really neat. And the Wii version of New Super Mario Brothers was my favorite probably because of the four-player option. Anyway, that's my comment. This one comes from Schwartzfielder, who says,

New Super Mario Brothers, both as a game on its own and a series of the whole, is proof that you don't need really great visuals to make a great game. And yet, each entry has some of the smoothest, cleanest graphics you'll ever find, so clean, in fact, as to be nearly sterile with a lot of blocky

and block-filled layouts. In spite of this, the gameplay is tight and responsive with a snappiness on par with Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Odyssey. Everything just feels right, and when you screw up, it's clear that the player deserved it. This would remain thoroughly consistent, perhaps to a fault, because there's little to distinguish the games from each other. While they're never boring, the sort of radical shifts one typically expects from Mario don't really happen here. And this is especially evident in the first title, which plays a lot like Game Boy Donkey Kong meets Super Mario Bros. 1.

News of Mario Brothers is like a boxed meal. Easy to pick up and get into, fairly tasty, but not something you want to live on exclusively. The Kraft Dinner of Games. Isn't new Super Mario Brothers you the best Mario game of all time? Uh, it is. That's what I've, that's what I've heard. Yeah. Heard that someone.

From a source that I don't know if I trust. Well, Nate says, I played through New Super Mario Brothers again just a few months ago, and all I really remember about it is how much I hate having to play through levels as mini Mario to unlock bonus levels. And also, Bowser melting in lava. That is really gruesome. You guys remember that? Yeah, yeah. Bouser, like, freaking died.

He loves and the lava comes back as a sketch. He the hell died. I do remember that. The game sure was exciting in 2006, though. I couldn't wait to play a new side-scrolling Mario game. It's a shame. It's so forgettable. Kevin says, when the original new Sporey Brothers was released, I had a very difficult

time getting into it due to the presentation, not because of the choice to use 3D models over hand-d-spites, sprites, but because so many of the enemies were clearly lifted directly from the previous released Super Mario 64-D-S. I had very high hopes for the first 2D Mario in nearly 15 years and found it disappointing that such an obvious budget-saving method was used. By the way, some of the character models and power-ups in the original DS New Super Mario Bros. are sprites. They aren't 3D models. They're like pre-rendered, you know. Yep. You see that in emulation.

Examples include Unagi the Giant Eel, Skeeters, Moneybags, amps, even the Scuttlebug, whose only other claim to fame is as a subject of a legendary half a press I don't know that one That's the getting through the entire game Only pressing A down once And never using the button again the entire game And it has something to do with a skull bug

And clipping through walls And I don't even know And ridiculous nonsense How do you get through the game without jumping? It takes a lot of ridiculousness Tool assisted thing? I think so If I turn on summer games done quick right now

Will I see this happen? Probably I think it is tool-assisted, but yeah, it's completely ridiculous, like, Clivity Controls making, like, enemies and items substitute for themselves by, like, manipulating memory in certain ways. It's completely nuts. All right. But, yeah. All right. Most of these guys had appeared only in a single Mario game and were remarkable only for the availability of an existing model. Even Dory, the friendly C monster, shows up because the assets are there, so why not?

This really explains why so much of the game, I revisited it before we recorded that episode. And I was like, man, there's a lot of Mario. 64 stuff here. And now, now I know. Ultimately, now that we're 13 years removed, it doesn't bother me anymore. And new Super Mario Brothers games would continue to disappoint me aesthetically for entirely different reasons. What a heartwarming message.

Ben says, I realize there's a lot of Ben's and they're not you. I realize that New Super Mario Brothers was somewhat underwhelming even at the time. However, for me, it will always be the game that cemented my love for the DS. I had recently been hired as a brand new EMT, and working inless field internship hours on the night shift was pretty demoralizing and stressful. However, I had my new DS light to keep me company in the dark hours of the night. The cheery, bit bloopy boings, and choir hits were a delightful change from the grunge and grit of work, and the mini-games were exactly the bite-sized distractions I needed while finding my feet in the world of emergency medical services. By the time I had moved on to better games to fill in the gaps between calls,

and S&B had earned its far superior successors a fair shake in the years to come because it had been a cheerful, undemanding distraction when I needed it most. Well, thanks to other Ben, now the soundtracks in my head. Bah, bah. Anyways. Yeah. Moving along from Stephen. Stephen says, hello, Jeremy, hope all as well.

It's great. Awesome. Newsome for Mario Brothers. This series felt like an unanswered prayer for me. With Mario 64 DS a launch title, I thought the chances of us getting a 2D Mario were between Slim the Cowboy and a Catholic nun. I don't know if I should capitalize none or not. Well, he did. Anyways, but we did get one.

They put everything into this game. I remember playing through the first level, and it felt like coming back to a game and enjoying it in a way I didn't think was possible. Maybe it was because it felt like at the time 2D side scrollers seemed so out of fashion for what developers were doing. Who knows, maybe it was just me or how I perceived gaming at the time. New Super Mario Bros. DS was one of only a few games I bought twice, though I thought I lost my copy in a GameStop. Had the game I thought in my pocket, but when I got home, I couldn't find it. Later on, it turned up, but only after I bought another copy at the same GameStop.

So, yeah. I almost bought two copies of Mario Kart 7 because of that. I lost one for a while. Very tragic. Chris, you've been very quiet, this mailbag. Do you not have Mario opinions? I don't, I don't have a lot of opinions about the new Super Mario Brothers series, to be honest. Like, yeah.

Like, I've, I mean, I got New Super Mario Brothers U remix special edition, EX plus Alpha. Based on high praise on the internet. Based on high praise that I read on the internet. Uh, and it's, it is perfectly acceptable, but none of the new Super Mario Brothers games have given me the feeling that I got from three or Super Mario Bros. world, but I don't know if that's because of the games or because I'm 36. You were nine at the time. Yeah.

It makes a difference. Yeah. But I still think that like three holds up especially well as with like secrets that aren't necessary, like secrets that are just there for secrets sake, whereas Newsman Mario Brothers has a lot of these secrets that are, if not mandatory, they're certainly encouraged. Like there's a subscreen that tells you what you need to get. See, it's all a lot more codified now.

It's not just like exploring for cool stuff. Yeah. And when you know it's all there, like that thrill of discovery isn't there, I don't think. But I mean, that's just the way that I think Mario games have gone. And of course, also we didn't have, you know, everything on Game Packs when we were playing Super Mario 3. Exactly. So, again, like, I think they're very enjoyable. But I also, like, I agree with the letter about using the 3D rendered Mario's instead of, I would love to see a full-on,

2D Mario again. I think that would be amazing. That would be incredible. In fact, that's what I was saying. When they re-released the mini-super N-E-S and the mini-N-EAS, they should have made a whole new Mario platformer for it from 2D. Wouldn't that be cool? I think that would have been really cool.

But again, like, my favorite Mario game of the past decade is Mario Maker, because as I have always said, Mario Maker contains a theoretically infinite number of New Super Mario Brother 3 levels. And you've got lots of your 2D assets in there and all kinds. And it's sadly finite number of new levels that are fun. They're actually playable, yeah. But they're in there somewhere. So are we continuing with this or are we're moving to a new topic?

I think we're going to wrap up after Mario. Okay. So Chris wrote a really long letter on New Super Mario. Let's see. See, you do have opinions. That's my name, but it's not. Chris Charling says, Hi, Jeremy.

It's my first time writing in, but I've been listening to you guys for four years now, and I'm proud to say I love everything you guys are doing. Keep up the astounding work. Thank you, Chris. This is my favorite podcast. by a mile. Now, thoughts on new Super Mario Brothers. Initial release for DS was incredibly exciting for me. The first game in the series came out when I was a broke 24-year-old college student and caused some tension with my similarly broke

wife and over my burning desire to buy a DS for this game. The allure of a new side-scrolling Mario game was inescapable and irresistible in an age where we hadn't played a new side-scrolling Mario since Mario World. I've played all of them since. Does he not count Super Mario Land 2, six golden coins? Apparently he doesn't. It's a good game. It's a good It is a good game. Yeah. Well, I've grown fatied with much of the series aesthetics and music.

I can't argue with what it's done for Mario Nintendo and for me as someone who loves these games. Without New Super Mario Brothers, we never would have had things like 2D Mario being able to wall jump or butt stump or four player co-op-editive. That's a lovely word.

Four-player co-op-editive Mario games. With over 30 million sales under its belt, the impact of New Super Mario Brothers game had on the sales of the original DS was arguably a key factor in the success of Nintendo's third pillar. One could also argue this game heralded the arrival of the indie game revolution.

2006 was a time when gamers were immersed in a sea of gritty brown first-person shooters. Disruptive arrival of a plucky, colorful, platformer showed there was still a place for size-rolling action once thought to be a relic of history. That's fair. It all coincided. I mean, yeah. I did. Yeah, absolutely.

Neesir from Myer Brothers reignited a passion for gameplay of the glory days of the NES with some much-needed refinements. The series arguably pulled a large amount of lapsed gamers back into the fold with each successor released in the coin collecting guilty pressure of New Super Mario Brothers 2 to the passing of controllers around a TV, it's easy to understand the impact this series had. While we may all be tired of the wah-waz and somewhat uninspired art direction, what would have taken this, what would have taken the series place had it not happened?

With the upcoming release of Super Mario Maker 2 on the horizon, I think it's safe to say New Super Mario Brothers series was an essential cornerstone for Nintendo Mario and gaming's future as a whole. That was like three letters equivalent. Yeah, I do quite like the Flying Squirrel costume. Yeah. All right. New Super Mario 2 was weird. Like, the gimmick was weird, but it kind of...

I liked it. Yeah, I actually enjoyed it. Like, I'm not sure. I was playing it. I'm like, I'm not sure why I'm enjoying this, but I am. It's just very Pavlovian. It's funny about New Super Mario Bros. too, is I go back to it on my 3DS. I say, I never played that game.

And they looked through it, and I practically beat the whole thing. I just don't remember the experience. Yeah, I feel the same way. I'm sure I've played it, but I definitely did it. I am surprised to hear the praise because I cannot bring anything about it to mind. Completely unmemorable. So many coins. Many, many, many, coins.

Many coins. Many coins everywhere. Ian writes, hello, Jeremy, and the gang. What up? You guys can actually leave out the cell you, no, that's the fun part. Okay, okay. I feel that with so many Super Mario games

getting released in years following 2006, people tend to overlook how big of a deal the original new Super Mario Brothers was when it was actually new. It was the first time in one and a half decades, that this is I'm reading this this is the first time in one and a half decades

they made a new game in that familiar 2D Mario style in 2006 when retro throwbacks and indie games were not that common yet this was cool and to me surprising after all everyone was focused on the successor to Mario Sunshine and Nintendo released no original

Super Mario platformers on the GBC or GBA It's true they didn't I still think the game has really fun level design, that we and we use sequels are great in their own right and physics-wise form the basis of the excellent

Mario Maker. I will say of all the, like, you know, retro indie games that I've played, and I've played quite a few. Like, I, there isn't one that really feels like Mario, whereas the New Super Mario Weather series

does feel like Mario, even if sometimes it's boring Mario. I always felt like the Wii, the New Super Mario, There's Wii is a reaction to Little Big Planet with its four-player co-op platforming, which is the first time I think that ever... No, New Spider-Brothers, Wii had four-player co-op. Yeah, that's what I meant.

That was before Little Big Planet, wasn't it? No, I don't think so. Um, I'm not sure. Little Big Planet came out first. It was 2008, maybe. Yeah, it was pretty far back. Yep. Anyway, so John says, when New Super Mario Brothers was announced, I was torn because I didn't

want a portable system, but I had to get a side-scrolling 2D Mario game. On launch day, I swung by Walmart after work and bought a DS-Light Mario and an impulse purchase of Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow. Man, that must have been one of the best days of his life. The best day of his life, yeah.

I'm really glad that I bought Castlevania because I was so disappointed in New Super Mario Brothers that I ended up playing Castlevania significantly more. Tell them. Something just seemed off about Mario. Perhaps it was the cool-looking but unwield blue shell that was so hard to use that I actively avoid picking it up.

Like you could actually actively avoid picking it up. That thing shows up so rarely that it's like, whoa, where did this come from when you actually see it? Yeah. Maybe it was the fact that two of the eight worlds were only accessible by beating the previous stage's boss with a mini mushroom. Yeah. And don't get me started on how the mega mushroom shows up in World One One and then almost never again, although that may be a pro rather than a con considering how gimmicky it was. We went over this in the actual episode that we recorded, but there are like mega mushroom houses that show up on the map and they replenish. You don't find a lot of mega mushrooms within the game levels,

but you can grab one and carry it with you places and you can do all kinds of weird stuff. Like if you buttstop Bowser while you are powered up with a mega mushroom, you will kill him in one hit. Nice. The mega mushroom is bad, actually. It's mostly bad, but it's fun to like, Once you've beaten the game to go back and goof around and see what you can do with the mega mushroom in places that it probably wasn't intended to be used. I think it's fun.

It's gimmicky. It's neat. They could scale the model up and down. I mean, it was entirely like, oh, hey, Mario's a polygon now. Let's do that. Eventually, the disappointment faded and I was able to appreciate the game for what it was. Nintendo re-learning how to make a proper 2D Mario game. Nintendo has seemed to learn from its mistakes, and each entry in the new Mario series has improved on the last.

I'll even go to bat for Jeremy's controversial view that New Super Mario Bros. You is the best 2D Mario game today. I think you misread that. He's said correct, not controversial. Yeah, he said controversial. They look a lot alike. They look a lot of like. I can understand.

It's very confusing when you read it. Should I read one more? Yeah, one more. Alan, this is New Super Mario Brothers. Hello, gang. Just kidding. I added that. I love New Super Mario Brothers when it came out.

My only real bit of disappointment was that the game lacked a power-up equivalent to the raccoon tail or the cape. I kind of felt disappointment for that, too, but I like to throwback that it was sort of going back to Super Bowl with the flagpole and stuff. Anyway, that's me. However, in retrospect, I really appreciate what the game tried to do with its new power-ups. All of them came with at least one substantial downside. The mini-mushroom gave you these really unique floaty jumps and let you run on water, but your jumps were nirfed and you could die in a single hit. The Mega Mushroom made you into a moustachio tornado,

but it's a great power also meant that you could... But its great power also meant that you could bulldoze warp pipes potentially cutting you off from secret areas and star coins. The Blue Shell gave you great speed and opened up paths, but it was a nightmare to control. It was a better idea in theory than it was in practice, particularly in regards to that awful blue shell. But it's something I'd like to see a future Mario game

or indie platformer, try it again. It added an occasional layer of strategy and tension to an otherwise easy game. Chris, bring it on home. Let's wrap up here. I guess three last Mario letters, and that's it. We're done. All right, this is from Michael who says,

Hey, Jeremy, at all. That's us. That's all you. Hey, guys. I loved a new Super Mario Wii when it came out. Admittedly, I haven't played it since that time, but my biggest takeaway, co-op should be required pre-marriage counseling material.

I played through and beat the game with my wife, a non-gamer, early in our marriage, and man, there were some tough conversations that we had to work through, but our ability to communicate in tricky situations dramatically improved. I have thought about using it as a team-building exercise at the school I teach. Instead, I make them play Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, another game that created a set of tense marital conversations. Other thoughts about Mario. I enjoyed revisiting the old Mario levels with the new co-op aspect.

Growing up with Mario 3 and then getting to play them in an updated way, it was a lot of fun. Another couple, and we played it together as a party game, and it was a blast. I don't remember going through it as a single player. That wasn't really its appeal to me. Great show. Keep up the good work. So that's good thinking.

Wait, there's some Super Mario 3 levels in one of this? Is that much he just said? He did say that. I don't remember that part, but it's been a while. Or maybe just, like, inspired by it? I don't know. I haven't played through it. Scott says, hi, Jeremy.

Yo! In 2006, I completed my sister's copy of the game in two settings. I could not put it down. Nowadays, I don't think I have the interest to complete just one world in a single sitting, and I think the change in attitude has entirely to do with the original being released at the exact right time. It was the first 2D Mario games since Super Mario World, and the first Mario game since World used the big small health mechanic. I think five years of Mario ports on GBA and DS also helped.

Nowadays, I don't have as much use for the series, with New Super Mario Brothers 2 being my favorite entry. The Wii U entry is now as old as Mario 3 was when Mario 64 debuted, yet I don't feel the need to replay it as much as I replayed Mario 3 in the mid-to-late 90s. Still, the series is a whole really paved the way for more retrocentric investments from developers. I don't think we would have Link Between Worlds or Yoshi Woolley World without the new series. Give up the solar work. As a 12-year listener, I can now only wonder when there will be a Retronauts. About Retronauts. We did that in 2016.

If indeed New Super Mario Brothers paved the way for Link Between Worlds, then it was worth it because that was my second favorite Zelda game. Yes, Link Between Worlds is fantastic. I couldn't finish it for some reason. I love that game. I think it's, really smart, I think. It is. The one part I remember is the platform jumping in the mine pit that was very tricky and challenging, but that's what I always think of when I think of that game. But anyway, one last letter, and we're going to call it a day. This is from John who says, hi, Richeronauts. That's all of us. That's a good one.

Hi, John. Maybe adopt that one, everybody. I remember buying New Super Mario Brothers when it first came out, and I fell in love with it. But it is not a unique game. Its gameplay is so tight, so perfectly fit for the Nintendo DS, but I still consider it one of the console's best games. I personally didn't enjoy any of the sequels thanks to admission returns and because I'm more of a 3D Mario person. I still think New Super Mario Brothers should be

considered one of the best Mario side-scrollers. I was thinking, just when I revisited it on the Wii, I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed playing it again. When it first came out, I did feel kind of underwhelmed, but it is a good game. It was solid. You know, some of the stuff was a little gimmicky, but it was a solid set of 2D Mario.

Well, I think what we've all really learned here from all these letters is that it's not as good as Castlevania, a ton of sorrow, which that's very, that's a fact. That's a hard fact to argue with that. Anyway, thanks everyone for writing in. We got through half the letters or half the topics that we were had queued up. So I guess we'll have to do another one of these sometime. So please look forward to that. And I'll keep soliciting letters so that we'll never catch up. It's going to be great. Anyway, thanks guys for taking part in this letter reading session. And that's it for this episode. So we're done. Anyway, I am Jeremy Parrish.

I continue to be a guy who solicit letters. Solicits letters sometime. So be sure to watch for that. You can follow me on Twitter as GameSpite. And that is where you will probably see announcements that I am looking for letters. So keep your eyes open on that there Twitter account. gentlemen introduce yourselves i'm ben elgin uh you can find me on twitter as k i r i n where you can see what beer i'm drinking most of the time because it gets cross-posted there although right now

i'm finishing negroni so that's not going to get checked in it was not a beer no not a beer at all but it might be indistinguishable from a grapefruit IPA it was delicious it was good it was navy strength and i was ben jedwards and you can find me on twitter at ben jedwards and you watch me build joysticks and like castellvania yeah I'm Chris Sims. You can find all of my stuff at T-H-E-S-B.com. And this whole conversation has made me want a game where Mario was like a cool teen, who then discovered that he was actually the reincarnation of Bowser.

Interesting. All right. So anyway, that wraps it up. And finally, yes, the thing I forgot to mention is that Retronauts is a podcast that you're listening to right now. And if you want to listen to it all the time, maybe not all the time, but like once a week, You can go to iTunes or Retronauts.com or wherever places that have podcasts. Retronauts is there. And if you're really impatient, you can go to patreon.com slash Retronauts and subscribe to Retronauts for $3 a month.

And you will get all of our episodes a week early in a high bit rate quality, higher than you find in the public feed. A week early, I think I mentioned that. Yes, no advertisements. It's great. It's an amazing deal. It's less than a coffee. and it fills your ears with happiness. So I think that's all any of us really want from our lives.

And you probably will need extra happiness after your brain has been stuck thinking of wow, wow. We're going to be able to be.