Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 247: Classic gaming in Germany

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

We often talk about the U.S., Japan, and the U.K., but what about the rest of the world? Games journalist and historian Thomas Nickel takes time out of his Tokyo Game Show work to share some insights into the classic gaming experience in Germany.

This week on Retronauts, Octum, baby. at Tokyo Game Show 2019 in Chiba, Japan. And naturally, because I'm in Japan, I'm talking to a German colleague, obviously, of course. German colleague, introduce yourself. Hello, everybody. My name is Thomas Nicol. I am a journalist, and I'm a game lecturer from Germany,

and I'm happy to be here on Retronauts. Yeah, it's great to have you on the show. We've been, you know, we've corresponded for years, and you do great work, and I know you're a fan of Retronauts. So it's awesome to have you on the show, but even if it seems a little strange to be in Japan talking to someone from Europe instead of someone from Japan, this is just kind of, you know, like a place where people with common interests come together to look at classic games. And this year's TGS. I haven't been here in like four years. And it was getting kind of bleak for a while. It was all like social games and mobile games and lots of like Chinese companies were buying out Japanese public. years and putting up these big empty booths and it was like what's what's happening but this year there's a lot of good stuff on the show floor there's and you know relevant to our interests i like it i really

had fun yesterday walking across the show floor yeah yeah relevant to our interests there are a lot of classic uh p's being brought back um a lot of love for you know old franchises a lot of new stuff too lots of indies but i mean konami's booth had a pretty decent mobile castlevania game that's very much Decent, seriously. Yeah, I thought it was pretty, pretty playable. Okay, I have a look today. It's basically harmony of despair, you know. I like that one. But done up for a mobile game with more of like a mission structure. And I'm sure there are lots of hooks for gotcha and microtransactions. But, you know, from what little I played, it was pretty decent. And, you know, they got new Ayami Kojima art. So at least they were putting a little thought and effort into it.

But Contra's back. The PC Engine Mini. Did you have a chance? to play that. I started Gamescom, but I couldn't play it. I only saw the hardware. Okay. Well, they have playable demo units here. That's also nice. They've got a whole bunch set up, so you'll have to definitely jump in line and try that out, because it's really good. Okay. Like, the amount of love they put into it is crazy. It's just so good. Like, every time you start up a game, on screen, you see a, like, a Who card slide up into the system. Or if you start up a CD game, then you see, like, the system three card slide up.

That sounds really good. disk spinning up. Okay. And when you switch systems from, like, PC engine to turbographics, you get like a static screen, and it kind of goes to pinpoint, like you're turning off a TV and then switching over the system. So you'd say even, there's even a game, a turbo express frame with a screen filter that looks just like the PC or the, like, the, uh, the, like the turbo express frame or PC

engine GT, if you're doing the Japanese region stuff, it's awful, but I love that they did it. It's just like, oh, they put so much love into this. I'm just really glad I pre-ordered it in France because as the original one, it didn't come out in Germany. Did the turbographic or PC engine even make it to Europe at all?

There are rumors that it made it somehow to certain regions, but it was never really released in Germany, I'm sure of that. Yeah, it was... But it was a big import thing back at the day. Right. Yeah, and that's actually what I want to talk to you about today is just to get a sense of what it was like growing up playing video games, what the retro gaming scene is now and what gaming was like growing up in Germany. Because, you know, Retronauts is obviously

being an American podcast produced from, you know, framed in an American perspective. And I think most of us on the show are big fans of Japanese games. So we have a pretty strong understanding just through research and secondhand experience about how things were in Japan. But Europe is fuzzier. to us, and especially continental Europe, because most information about classic gaming that makes it to the U.S. from Europe is from the U.K., you know, since it's English language, it's a natural fit for us. But the U.K. perspective on gaming is very different, I know, from continental Europe, but, you know, we don't get a lot of information in German or France or Spanish in the U.S. So it's all kind of like a big, fuzzy blur for us. So that's what I'd

love to hear from you is. Yeah, let's try and change that. Like, all we know is that you guys had to have robots in Contra. That's it. Oh, I love the robots. No, the robots are fun, but, you know, like, that is kind of the, like, when people talk about classic games in Germany and America, like, I think that's what they tend to think about is like, oh, there's censorship. But, you know, there's so much more. Yeah. So that's what I want to talk to you about. Maybe just to start with the censorship thing. That's maybe just one thing. We could just notice. The thing is Germany, of course, we are really strict in terms of violence. I mean, just like the USA is rather strict in terms of nudity. Germany is quite relaxed in that

regard. Dead or Life Extreme was released for 12-year-olds. Violence is a big problem, and for many years, games were censored, and usually they swapped out the human characters for robots, as in Contra, which became pro-protector in Germany, and by that all the rest of Europe, of course. or the Command and Conquer, for example they just took the same game they removed the blood stains when you shoot a soldier and they changed the voiceovers

to robot voiceovers things like I'm losing oil and that stuff it was hilarious of course we all knew what was happening but yeah that was just what it was like I mean yeah we have some state state agencies about

not sensitive but about regulation of these things but they have become a lot more relaxed in the recent years things like God of War or things like other recent violent games. Martle comedy 11 just came out uncensored and free to buy for everybody. So this has definitely changed.

Meanwhile, America still hasn't become more lax about nudity in games. So, you know, I guess liberalism only happens in some directions. But, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, Germany's just because it's such a significant country, has such a large population, I know it exerted a lot of influence over gaming throughout Europe and so a lot of things that were made

like changes that were made to games for Germany or decisions made to fit the German market just kind of were you know they trickled into the rest of Europe yeah but I'm afraid we didn't have a good influence for the most part because we gave Europe all the censorship but we didn't give many good games back on the other hand so if you're looking for European developed games you look for example in France they happened a lot

to look at the UK even Spain often had more but Germany we think the Germans are rather conservative in these things playing is a childish thing and nobody wants to find

the company fund a company making play stuff and even today German game developers don't have it easy because at the moment there's a huge debate

about sponsorship by the state like for example that Canada does and yeah it's a difficult thing and of course also German gaming tastes at least games only met with the German market are also German-specific.

So a huge thing, for example, is the farming simulator. One of the hugest things in the German-speaking area, but of course I think pointers for the rest of the world. I know, I think there are a few other European countries that really like the farming simulator games. But, yeah, it definitely isn't something that ever really caught on in the US. And I know when those first started showing up in the US market, we were all like, is this really a thing? But yeah, I know, it's a huge... It's so German. It's a working simulator.

That's funny. Yeah, but, you know, just kind of going back to your own personal experiences. As a kid, you know, what kind of systems did you play? What kind of games did you like? And were those typical of your peers, your fellow students? Well, just to start with that, I think the first things I played on was the Commodore 64 at Friend's House. This was back then the big thing in Germany. I think the Commodore 64 is the same thing.

that the Famicom is for Japan and the NASS is for America, for the USA. And this was pretty much a system everybody had because it was easy to explain to your parents. Yeah, I need this computer to work for school. Of course, nobody ever did. Everybody had this huge wreck of Pirate games. And this is where I made my first experiences. I played, for example, things like Caveman Olympics at a friend,

which is a bit of like track and field, but with Caveman was hilarious. I played things like G.I. Joe. I liked really that multiplayer aspect. But it didn't really hook me. Later on, at a cousin's house, I played games on the Amiga, which was also a big thing in Germany. And I think this is where my taste started to develop, because the game I really loved was Bubble Bobble.

Okay. That was a really great part. And I can't say what it was that took a hook me. But it's just this is a game I really loved that game. Yeah, that's not really a game I think of when I think of, you know, the Amiga. You think of things like Shadow of the Beast or like really the graphical showcase games that you saw from, like Cognosis. and that sort of thing.

But I think it's also... It's kind of simplistic looking. Yeah, but I was young at that time, so I think that was just good to get inside. I think Head of the Beast would have just overwhelmed me with this difficulty and the freedom and everything. But yeah, of course, these were the big things, Head of the Beast.

And of course, the big thing was also Tarikin. I think Tariken? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. I mean, this is a German series, and pretty much this is a typical thing for the day. Tarican just takes elements from Metroid, from Mario, and from Contra, and just puts him in a blender

and makes a new game out of them so it's not original but it was really well crafted and really well made because these German guys a guy called Manfred Trentz with long hair and moustache back in the 80s

was a great programmer and then the guy from Factor 5 you might know them from Star Wars games later on Rogue's watching and so on put it on Amiga and really they made the game sing so this was the showcase

and I think this was also pretty much console quality gaming in Germany yeah I mean definitely the Torrican games made their way to the consoles, Super Turrican and Megaturiken, et cetera. But I know that those did start on computers, and they never really were big in the U.S. But there's no Amiga in the U.S.

Or no big Amiga. But there's still kind of that legacy to it. So, you know, when Analog released the Super Inte, they put a, like the director's cut of Super Turin on there. So, you know, it definitely does have a little bit of mindshare. But yeah, I know that it was definitely big in Europe and I can see where that would be. And generally the second game on Amiga is considered the high point of the series. This is where everything came together. They had this shooter levels in the middle, for example, with great music. It looked awesome, and this was really the one that really everything fell in place.

The ones afterwards were good, but you could see that in Super Terricon, for example, they had to do with the lower memory, and Mega Terricon was very different in terms of speed, in terms of pacing, so Terrican 2 is a big thing. And of course, what's sad about it, this game was parted to console as Universal Soldier, and it was hideous. I didn't realize that was where Universal Soldier came from. It's pretty much a rom hack of Tarragon 2 with many of the good elements just removed and looking a lot worse. Okay, that seems to kind of miss the point.

Absolutely. So you played a lot of C-64, you played a lot of Amiga. Not a lot. I played it at Friends. Oh, you played some. Yeah. But consoles were where I really found my gaming home in a way. So I think a friend of mine had an NES, which I found interesting.

But then the Game Boy did it. I think generally also the Game Boy was the big breakthrough for console gaming, for that sort of gaming in Europe, because Nintendo didn't put too much effort into the NAS before. Sega was somehow present, but also not too big, but the gamer really hit it big in Germany. Yeah, I know Nintendo had kind of a poor reputation for not optimizing their games for PAL from TSC.

They all had borders and upper and lower part of the screen, and they ran about 17% slower than they should have. And that affected the audio, too. It was like all out of tune, right? Yeah, it was slower. If you compare Mario Brothers, America and Europe, it was just a slow-paced underwater version. Yeah, and, you know, I also have been doing a lot of chronicling the NES. So when I'm putting together lists of release dates, like the European release date, sometimes is three years behind the American release, which was already a year behind the Japanese release.

Yeah, we got that stuff really, really late often. Yeah, I mean, you had like the Mega Drive by the time that some of these, you know, kind of early NES games in America were coming out in Europe. Yeah. It's just a missed opportunity. But Game Boy, yeah, like I feel one of the great things that people tend to overlook about handheld systems is they're sort of, you know, back in the days of analog displays, they were independent of display standards. Like sometimes I see people refer to European releases of Game Boy games as PAL. And I'm like, but no. Technically, absolutely incorrect.

It was just the same hardware. Like, you know, you didn't have to worry about the kind of electricity that was, you know, 240 versus 120. You just put batteries in. You didn't have to worry about the screen refresh rate because it was always the same. It was just, you know, and there wasn't even a region lock out. No, it was compatible. The NES first region locked, for example, so we couldn't even import game from America.

There were ways to modify it, but even if you did that, you had a problem getting them to run on your TV in color at this point. And of course, the Game Boy, I remember back in the day, I walked into one of the big stores, the media market, which is pretty much like, what's the American chain? Like Walmart or? No, not Walmart. Only for me. It's a Best Buy, right.

It's Best Buy in Germany. And suddenly I saw Japanese games in the Game Boy display, things like Nintendo World Cup, for example. So suddenly, okay, there's Japanese games now. Interesting. Was Game Boy big among your friends, or was it just something that you were into? Oh, it was really a thing with my friends.

Usually thing One guy bought a Game Boy We all saw Tetris Was for Mario Land And so we all had to have one So we were of course A bit skeptical It's in black and white

And I mean I played on the Amiga before But as Mario really looks nice So I got one maybe a few months later And yeah I was pretty much hooked Games like as I said Mario and Tetris

And later one Bura Fighter or Gagall's Quest This was really stuff That shaped my taste until today Okay So you know It kind of was a different route than the hosts of Retronauts took,

but it seems like we all kind of ended up in the same place ultimately. Somehow, yes. Yeah. So what was it about these games that you found so enticing? I think on the one hand, the accessibility is one important thing

because on the Amiga, for example, you have these choices, you have the keyboard, but they're all still, there is more of a wall between the player and the game because they don't feel as responsive usually. For example, Interrican is a nice game,

but you jump with pressing the joystick up and that just doesn't feel good. And these things, you could just see that is a different level of polish to them. And, of course, it was weird, it was exotic, it was something new, and we never saw something like that before. So I know 16-bit consoles were more successful in Europe than they were, than the 8-bit consoles were. Would you say Game Boy helped kind of pave the way for that?

It certainly did for me anyway, because when I got the Game Boy, I started reading magazines. I read about the Mega Drive, and this looked all pretty interesting. I mean, it was, again, it was a wild country. There's no Mario. There is no Castlevania. But the Sonic looked interesting. So I just decided to wish for a Mega Drive on Christmas.

Just jump to the cold water and get this thing. And suddenly turning it on for the first time, seeing Sonic for the first time. This was, again, mind-blown. It was mind-blown, mind-blowing experience. And this is where I started seriously getting into games. And I think many people felt like that. because I also know many went from the Amiga to the Mega Drive

because it was quite similar they have a similar architecture they both have the 60,000 chip inside for example so this was a logical step and of course the Super Nintendo was coming out much later it wasn't out until 1990 I think okay yeah that sounds right yeah like late 92 or mid to late

something like that yeah so Sega definitely had the jump. It was expensive was it? The games were really expensive back then it was 140 Deutsche Mark Wow so what is that equivalent to, you know, the exchange rate to dollars, do you know? It should be something among, like, I think similar to, um, I gave the Corona Trigger in the US.

Okay, so like $90? Yeah. Okay. It was very expensive and Mega Drive was a lot cheaper. Excuse me? Like, for every game was, was that expensive? Nintendo was a bit better themselves, their own games, but Konami, for example, Castlevania, foreign, things like that, you had really had to pay for them.

Hmm. Okay. I know that Europe did get some, like, kind of highly coveted, unique versions of Super Famicom games, Super NES games, with the, like, the RPGs and the big box. That's an interesting thing, because we didn't get any RPGs before on Nintendo systems. There was no Dragon Quest, Dragon Warrior, there was no Final Fantasy. We got Zelda, but we didn't get any turn-based RPG.

So these were the first tries by Nintendo to get them to a market. And the big boxes are because they put in a huge hint book in with every one of them. So people could really get through them with these games. So that's actually really similar to the initiative they took in the U.S. On EniS, where they brought over Dragon Quest as Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, Fizanadoo they brought over. And all these games, they packed in with huge manuals. They weren't big boxes, but like the manuals were super thick. And, you know, basically two-thirds of them were just walkthroughs for the first 10 hours of the game or so to say, like, here's how you play this.

So they, yeah, and they did, Nintendo did bring over a couple of RPGs. It was, for example. It was Mystic Quest, where they removed the name Final Fantasy. It wasn't on there. Only Mystic Quest, they brought Secret of Manor, was the next one afterward. And this was a big one in Germany. Many people still have memories, and this is one of the big nostalgia titles in Germany. Secret of Mata?

Yeah. This is a really big thing. They also brought later on illusion of Gaia as an illusion of time. And I remember seeing that when I was somewhere in Europe. But it was either Prague or maybe it was maybe it was Berlin in like 1996

and I saw illusion of time and thought wow is that a sequel to illusion of Gaia and then I looked at the more closely I was like oh that that is illusion of Gaia no idea what they changed the name but they did anyway and of course the big one we got in the end

was Terranigma which America didn't get this was of course really late the PlayStation was out already and my friends were playing Legacy of Kane still I got me a Terranigma and I loved every of it. So you said turn-based RPGs hadn't come over on consoles. Were there computer

RPGs at that point? These were big, yeah. We had the SSI games. We had German productions called the Schwarzse Auger. I think they came to America as well. It's a big German pen and paper role-playing system. They were rather dry, but the pen-and-paper fans loved them because they put in every

rule of the pen-paper game. So we had some of these, yeah. Yeah, okay. So it just hadn't made the jump to consoles and Hondo pushed it. What kind of games were big on Mega Drive over there?

On Mega Drive we had, of course, Sonic was a big thing. The sports games were big and I personally got into importing quite early with the Mega Drive because it was easy to do. You just need an adapter.

So the cartridge fits. And the funny thing is back then imports were cheaper than officially released games. So I remember, for example, I got Quackshot, the Donald Duck game with Indiana Jones hat and I paid, I think,

about a quarter less than I would have paid for the the German version a few months later. Were there compatibility issues in terms of PAL and TSC with Mega Drive games through the adapter? Well, this is why it gets interesting because there were, of course,

the games were slower, the sound was slower, but we found out pretty fast that you could mod your consoles, so you could get this nice 60-harts speed out of it. And this is what many people did then. They modded their SNAs, they modded their megadrives. It cost about maybe a little less than

buying one game and suddenly you had a switch on the system, you could just say, let's go up to 60 hertz, and it was all running in original speed. And of course, also nice. Germany and Europe is, of course, we have RGB even in the 80s, and so we had the speed and we had the great picture quality. Right. So you basically had the best of every possible world. If we were willing to jump to them hoops. But I mean, you know, I think that was kind of the era where people started to look at their games more critically and say, you know, how can I get the best experience out of this? You know, in America, I was buying an S-video adapter or, you know, getting like a console adapter to play Japanese games. So, yeah. And once you see the difference, of course, between

RGB and a SCART cable, or you see the difference between 1560 hertz, you can't go back anymore. This is why, for example, the N64 never clicked with me. Because I couldn't switch up to 60 hertz. I didn't have any RGB quality. It was just a blurry mess. And that was the N64 for me. Yeah. I mean, the N64 kind of was a blurry mess because of some of the internal limitations of the system. But it's interesting that you couldn't do the switch.

I guess because of 3D it would like... I think it was just a much more complex hardware at this point. For example, also about importing on the PlayStation, of course you also couldn't do a switch there. But if you bought a PlayStation game in the U.S. or Japan, it would run in 60 Hertz on the German system if you had modeled it. which is

makes it extra strange that when they put together the PlayStation Mini they're like let's put the 50 Hertz versions out in all regions That was really that was a bad thing

It was a weird choice Yeah Actually, one thing I've always been a little fuzzy on is, you know, the PAL standard, the system, like the television refreshes at 50 hertz. So if you're running the game at 60 hertz and the TV is refreshing at 50, that doesn't cause any problems, any incompatibilities? No, it didn't because usually TVs could just display 60 hertz as well. The only thing as important is you have to get the picture in with the RGB cord. because LGBC doesn't seem to care about that, so the TV just goes to 60 hertz, and that's it.

Okay, interesting. So kind of just the nature and logistics of console gaming at the time sort of created this savvy audience, I guess you could say. And I think many people, especially in Germany, they like just to fiddle around with the hardware because Germany also was, of course, a big PC country, because people like to open up their kids and put in new stuff to improve their thing,

and they do the same with consoles. So it fell on a fatal ground. Right. So, you know, kind of jumping ahead to the present day, what's the retro gaming scene like in Germany? Like, what is, you know, when, yeah, I mean, like, what are people into, I guess? You know, in America, I think you have different kind of communities of retro gamers, PC and console. You have the Sega versus Nintendo camps. I'm curious if it's divided up sort of like that in Germany or if it's, you know, just,

if it breaks up differently? It used to be divided, of course. Sega vs. Tender was a big thing in the 90s. But nowadays, it's rather relaxed. It's more maybe a bit of a computer versus console thing. Because a huge group of retro enthusiasts are matched into home computers. We have a huge homebrew scene for the C64, for example. We have museums in Berlin, for example,

which show original hardware and games and rare artifacts. And on the other hand, the next generation, would be the Nintendo guys, a Nintendo kit back in the day. And they are, of course, all into collecting for Super Nintendo. A little bit NAS, but Super Nintendo is still the big nostalgia factor. At the moment, there is, we have many retrofares in Germany. Pretty much every two or three weeks, there is one in another city,

where we have traders offering their goods. And you can usually see that Nintendo stuff goes for a lot more than, for example, Sega stuff. That's the case here in the U.S. also. And I don't know what it is about, I don't think it's anything to do with the systems themselves or the games. I think it's just the audience. Like the Nintendo fans tend to be more, I don't know, covetous, more determined to create, you know, complete sets and that sort of thing.

And, of course, there's a thing about the... Genesis games that are like super expensive, like Hagané or something. But for the most part, it's... You mean, you mean S.NES games like Haganah. Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. Mousia Aleste is the Genesis one. Yeah. Or Glaylanta, of course. Holy Grail.

in a way. Right, but I mean, those are kind of few and far between compared to the Super NES games. Like, you go to a retrogaming convention and it's, you know, there's dozens of games that command hundreds of dollars. I mean, this is also kind of Nintendo tech simply because the traders know people want them, so they just make them 10 or 20 euros more expensive. And of course, if you have a box and an instruction manual, it goes even higher up because these things often were thrown away back in the day. And of course, Sega games, usually you get them complete with everything. Right, because of the plastic cram shell, which was, I think you were more likely, more inclined to keep something that was made of plastic. It just seemed more... Yeah, but just the game would just fit in. It could put it in your cup or something like that. Yeah, I mean, what I've personally found is that handheld games are almost impossible. Like, there's some games that are just impossible to find the packaging for because those were getting smaller and, you know, who wants to keep all this stuff around and you've got such a tiny cartridge. And I think like the U.S., these things were later considered kiddie games.

And, of course, the kids get a game, remove the cartridge, and just throw the packaging away. The bane of the retro collector. Yeah. But would you say it's a pretty vibrant scene over there? Absolutely. I mean, we have these fairs. We have three, two, three or four various retro magazines. Many of the print magazines have their retro experts and retro articles.

So, yeah, it's quite present. Yeah, actually, do you want to talk about the magazine that you write for? Yeah, sure. It's not one that is very, I would say, very well known in the U.S., but it's a great magazine, really high quality. Thank you. Very, very dense every issue is like, yeah, it looks like this one's about 100 pages, and it's just a ton of content. Yeah, it's called M Games, and it's around since 1994. It's the only one that survived from these days because I think, maybe much like the U.S., we had a big magazine purged in the early 2000s, another one a few years later.

and this is one of the survivors and I think one of the reasons is we try to put in every game there is we don't just concentrate on a few AAA titles and we try to put in more stuff apart from reviews and previews and these things so more feature articles and things like that

that's what we try to do and of course also a thing is we try not to be too expensive when producing that thing it's a small team doing that it's a dedicated team and of course it's not a big thing anymore

we used to sell much much more in the early 2000s, but everybody did. Yeah, I mean, people just don't buy print as much, and that's why there's basically there are no gaming magazines outside of Game Informer in the U.S. anymore. I remember back about my gaming. I imported GameFan magazine from the U.S. back then, back through relatives. Yeah, back in the late 90s, there were probably a dozen games magazines. Yeah, especially game fan was for me as out of a holy Bible because you could just feel

that enthusiasm seeping through the pages. And of course, these guys were really, really. into it and sometimes maybe a bit too much. I mean, I remember I bought Tale of the Sun because I loved so much and okay, it's interesting but I'm not sure what they were going for. Yeah, I mean, I

did really admire the fact that game fan would stand up for these games that like, you know, only, they're super niche, super esoteric, but they still really seem to believe in them and that's great. I remember last time over here in Japan, I saw a copy of Hermie Hopper for the PlayStation and just

game fan to my mind, okay, I have to buy this. It's not expensive. Let's get this. But I mean, I'm looking at, you know, M here, M magazine, or M games. Used to be called Maniac before, but we had to change the name. Now, we didn't have to, we want to change the name because people didn't know where to place it in the stores. Okay. But, I mean, you've got bloodstained on the cover. That's not, you know, a huge AAA game. So that really does kind of tie into your ethos there. It interests our readers. But of course, this is the cover for subscribers.

normal cover for the newsstands. Ah, okay. So what was the cover equivalent? Open, open it. You can see it on the first page. It's just a bit of a collage. I think control is the big thing on the cover. Okay, okay. So that's not a huge game, but definitely much more mainstream. Yeah. And I don't know, that's actually, I've heard a lot of good things about that. It's one I want to check out. It's kind of like artsy for the AAA space.

Yeah. So that's cool. I'm still fighting to get golden eggs on the cover sometimes, but so far I didn't have any luck. That says that wonderful old cover with the barbarian And the dragon in the background from the Mega Drive We have it in a high quality But so far We couldn't agree to do that Was that like a Boris Vallejo cover

It looked like it But I don't think it It might have been I'm not sure now I know he did some Sega art It didn't like It's a Japanese cover Okay

With his old barbarian With the 80s hair And everything Yeah of course A glorious Maine Yeah Yeah Beautiful

You know When you're over here in in Japan like what kind of stuff do you look for? I'm assuming, you know, just the kind of stuff that you enjoyed as a kid and the things you missed out on. Well, the thing is the last time I was here, I looked out for many virtual boy things. Because on the one hand, of course, it was also your virtual boy work that inspired me to look out a bit more for that. And on the other hand, I'm doing a bit of development myself and with a few colleagues. And we were thinking about doing something for a virtual boy, still in the back of our heads, but pushed to the back at the moment.

And I just got a lot of games for research purposes. and usually when I look for games I like to buy Mega Drive stuff because I love the Japanese covers I love the cartridges and I'm trying to get a bit of a collection on that but I'm not a huge collector in the end I gathered a lot of stuff over the years

but most of them just job related but yeah Mega Drive is the thing I guess. Yeah I'm kind of the same way like I am always on the hunt for a complete inbox Game Boy or Super 80s or whatever games but it really is just to document them and put together videos

and books. And for the most part, I don't keep stuff. It's, it's a, my actual collection is like a few things that are very important to me personally. Yeah. What I, what I bought, actually, is I bought some switch games, shooter collections and things like that. I bought the Zipcchio collections, for example. Okay. I bought, um.

Is that coming out in the, in Europe? I know it's coming out in the US. It's coming in a year, but I didn't want to wait and the price would be the same anyway. And I visited M2 a couple of days ago, and this really got me back into this whole shooter. business and I'm really looking forward to playing this. I think that's pretty much all the time we have. That's also, you know, I just kind of wanted to

get a kind of a, you know, from the perspective of someone who is there, a better sense of what it was like growing up playing video games in Germany. Maybe I can give one more interesting info because in Germany before Nintendo made these big box games which were rather late in the lifetime of the Super Nintendo,

the Mega Drive was the console for RPGs. Because they were none on the NAS, they were none on the SNAS. We had Shining Force. We had Fantasy Star 2 and 3. We had Shining the Darkness. And back then, the Mega Drive was where you went, if you want to play RPGs and console. So I think that's quite a weird thing for an American audience. Yeah, I mean, definitely all those games did come to the U.S. But the NES and Super NES were, you know, Nintendo really pushed those franchises harder, Nintendo Power magazine. I was really an interest. Yeah. So, you know, it wasn't that we didn't have the Sega games. It was just that. they didn't have as much visibility.

You had more alternatives to them. You weren't stuck on grinding through fantasy stature, too. I mean, I love that game, but it's such a grind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so it's always great to get these kind of alternate perspectives and a better sense of how things were. And it sounds like in a lot of ways, you know,

the kind of the German retro gaming experience was more similar to the American retrogaming experience than the UK retro experience. I think so, too. like that was you know that was kind of its own little galapagos of video gaming yeah in germany we were really import friendly that's one important thing i guess we had many many small stores selling import games from japan from america so i just could go into the store and get 57 u.s version before the german one with the botch translation came out i could just go into a store and buy musha al lester the japanese version for uh what would be today maybe 30 euros or 30 dollars these were really

great times for importing and this is i think what also shaped the take of many German gamers even today. Okay, awesome. So just a wrap, where can people find you online and follow your work? Well, if you want to find me online, you look at maniac.de, which is the website of M-Games. You could look at Twitter at Bimbo Fortuna, which also has a story behind it, but that's too much to get behind now. And if you're interested, I'm making a game myself now on the Game Boy, which is called Coria and the Sunken City. And if you want to check that out, go to Twitter.

at Coria Game Boy. It's C-O-R-I-A Game Boy. Okay. Awesome. And of course, by the way, if you want to see me in person, go to a university at D-Walk, where I hold lectures in game design and game history. Okay, so you're a lecturer. Yeah. Awesome. I did not know that about you. That's great. I've mentioned that. All right. So, yeah, and of course you can find Retronauts at Retronauts.com on iTunes and other services and that sort of thing. You can find and support us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Redron. Retronauts get episodes early and in a higher bitrate quality than on the public feeds. It's great and we appreciate it. And for myself, you can find me on Twitter as GameSpite and around the Internet. I'm there.

You'll find me. Just look for me. Anyway, Thomas, thanks so much for coming in and sharing some knowledge. And, yeah, I hope to catch you around while I'm shopping out in Nakihabra or Nakano or whatever. Maybe I might be there on Sunday. Okay. I might see. Thank you.