Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 293: Alex Kidd and Shadowgate

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

Jeremy Parish chats with Retronauts contributor Stuart Gipp about the mysterious appeal of Sega's Alex Kidd franchise, then talks to Shadowgate creator Dave Marsh about the history of the game and the inspiration behind its modern-day remake.

You're listening to Retronauts, a part of the Greenlit Podcast Network, a collective of creator-owned and fully independent podcasts, focused on pop culture and video gaming. To learn more and to catch up on all the other network shows, check out Greenlitpodcasts.com. This week in Retronauts, a 38-year-old lust and a three-year-old dinky. Hi, everyone, welcome to Retronauts. This is a pandemic protocol segment episode, which means because I'm not able to record with people in real life,

instead I'm having just, you know, a one-on-one conversation with a friend or a regular or someone who knows a lot about video games. or all the above, and it's going to be an episode stitched together from multiple little parts. And this part in particular is on a Sega franchise that has only been mentioned really in passing on Retronauts before, and really only so that we could slag it. I believe that because it was popular in the UK, we do say slag here, yes. So I am Jeremy Parrish, and with me on the line from the UK talking about how much he loves this benighted franchise. It's Stuart Gip. And yes, I

do love Alex Kidd. It was my first video game ever. Oh, wow. I did not realize that. That's... Okay, so there's a lot of, a lot going on here, like primal primal associations. Yeah, that was slightly unfair that. It was my first console game ever.

It was my first non-microcomputer game ever, so it kind of counts. But in a way that kind of helped me to make the jump, because Alex Kidd is a really weird, esoteric series with bizarre mechanics. And for someone who grew up on the spectrum, I'm just like, are we got to play rock paper scissors and it's completely random? Fine, let's go.

Yeah, I can kind of see that. Like, this does have that sort of like, eh, I don't know, whatever, just throw it in kind of mindset that you do see in a lot of old spectrum and Amstrad games. So, yeah, I totally, like that totally follows. It scans. But we are talking this episode about Alex Kidd, the character whose name is Kidd and for some reason they decided canonically that means he never ages, which is a point of frustration to him in Sega Gaga. So now you know. But yes, I don't actually dislike Alex Kid. I just don't

really enjoy playing his games. I would love to see them, I would love to see them bring the character back and do a game that feels just a little more, like they can keep the weird stuff. I just want the play controls and the like the combat elements to feel a little less like you got to be pixel perfect or you're going to die and you got three chances. I just get through this like 17 stage adventure. I feel like it wouldn't be Alex Kidd if there wasn't something massively off-putting between you and having as much fun as you could be having. And that's why you love it, right? Well, I mean, you got to love that really. There's no reason not to it.

It's really just charming to me that they made these. games at all. I mean, I suppose the closest thing to what you're asking for would be Alex Kid in Shinobi World, which is just a fairly straightforward platform. But I guess we'll get to that eventually. So you mentioned that Alex Kid was the first console game you played. About how old were you at the time? I was probably about four or five. It was built into the Master System second model, the Master System 2. I'm not sure if that was worldwide or just in Europe or whatever. But It was, when you boot it up, basically, like some of the NES models you'd get over here, if there was no game inserted, you would get the built-in game.

And in this case, it was Alex Kid a Miracle World. So no snail maze for me, sadly. Oh, you missed out. I did miss out until I got a Master System one later in life, and I finally felt like a complete person. Yeah, I don't know that we had the built-in games like that over here. Definitely not with NES. I used to rent an NES that had Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt built into it. it, which was pretty sweet.

Really? Sorry, Super Mario Bros. I must have made that distinction. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, that's interesting. I did not realize that they had that as a feature in the UK. The more you know. But we're not talking about Super Mario Brothers.

We are talking about Alex Kidd, which I think is often unfairly compared to Super Mario Brothers, because it was kind of like, hey, here's the mascot platformer game for Sega Master System. And what was that competing against Super Mario Brothers? or the NES, which, you know, its tent pole early release was Super Mario Brothers. But they're just, yeah, they're really different kind of games. And I think most people who grew up with NES in America, which was, you know, 90% of us, came over to Alex Kidd, you know, when we went to the friend's house or, you know,

like a rental store or something where they had a Sega Master System and played this expecting it to be Super Mario Brothers Redux. And it's really not. It's a different kind of game. It's like almost avowedly not like Mario Brothers. It's not accessible. It's not, it's just not the same thing at all. It's not, it's barely even an arcade style sort of a game.

It's more of an inventory management, trying to decode things kind of a game. It's very bizarre. Yeah, so just to kind of go back in time, the original Alex Kid in Miracle World or Alex Kid the Lost Stars, I'm not sure which one came out first. They both apparently debuted in late 1986. Miracle World on the Master System and Alex Kidd, The Lost Stars in the arcade. But in any case, it was basically a year after Super Mario Brothers debuted and a year after Ghosts and Goblins debuted in the arcades.

And both of those games really went a long way to kind of define what a 2D platformer should be. You know, Super Mario Brothers is not so much about combat. You have the fireballs, but they're very limited and, you know, they're temporary. But it's about platforming and athleticism. precision jumping and kind of using your intuition to find secrets that are hidden within the environment. Ghost and Goblins is about, you know, like the, basically the combat shooter. Like from Ghost and Goblins, you would get Mega Man and Contra and things like that, metal slug. Like you are a guy running around jumping. You can take one hit. You're very fragile before you

lose your armor and, you know, become basically enter the near-death state. But you're, you have the ability to throw projectiles infinitely at things and um this isn't that how how would you describe alex kid you said inventory management game in a way yes there is some truth to that it's it's it's a really interesting game to me it really it fascinates me it's there is so much in it and so little of it is necessary but it's it's just it's unusual just from the off when you start the game and you're descending you're not it's not left to right scrolling you're just dropping down, you move through this kind of cliff area and then you go into the water

so then you're swimming around. It's like a showcase like this is all the stuff you can do it in this game basically. But as you're going, you're gathering money which you can then spend in shops so you've got that sort of semi- RPG-ish kind of thing going on as well. You're talking to people

as you make your way around. They're telling you where to go next on this big kind of map. So there is more of a sense of adventure than well I say a sense of kind of distance traveled, I suppose, because in Super Mario, it's all very abstract, of course. Right. Well, Ghost and Goblins had that, had the sense of a destination of a journey with the interstitial maps that you saw, you know, when you finally made it past a stage and got to go on to the next one where you would get stuck for a few weeks. So this definitely

has, yeah, that element to it. I would kind of more compare this in some senses to Wonderboy or Adventure Island, if you're a Nintendo Kid. Not so much in the mechanics. I mean, it doesn't have like the timed countdown, the panic to find food, but just in the sense of like it is a very tense and stressful kind of platformer, and you're very fragile.

And occasionally you can find vehicles that you can ride around on that will disappear after a single hit. And, yeah, Wonder Boy, too, you know, went into that inventory manager, element and kind of became a semi-R-P-G, and then that would expand even more into a proper Metroidvania game with Wonder Boy 3. And both of those, you know, Wonder Boy debuted sometime in 1986. I don't know the exact month, but it was also a Sega published game developed by Westone.

And, you know, so I don't know if they were drinking, you know, water from the same well, or if there was some sort of back-and-forth influence between these two disparate studios, internal, external. but in any case there is definitely kind of a commonality between these games there is a similarity and Wonderboy

felt like kind of a tempo master system thing to me as well with Alex Kidd it's just it's, to me it's more about the

it's such a strange candidate for a big popular kind of this is our big game because it's just full of strange bizarre diversions

like to finish the game rather like the sort of spectrum games I mentioned earlier, you will have to find certain items that are missable. You can get to the end of the game, not have the code that you need and just not be able to win, which is always delightful. Oh, that's very Sierra online adventure-ish.

But the best thing about that, even, is when you find the Rosetta Stone, in order to get the Rosetta Stone, you've got to have another item, a letter that you find in another castle stage is quite well hidden. But when you get it, the code is actually on there and right to left, which as a child, I had no idea. what that that was even a thing so i mean you're saying that entering this code from from left to right sort of script and you're just like why isn't this working right so it's just very obtuse on every level it is it is obtuse yeah uh the uh rock paper scissors boss battles are just they're just something else because unless you already know how to win the first couple you it's completely it's just luck that they are defined uh that they have got defined responses

But if you make a mistake, those responses will change. So you have to either know it or find the telepathy ball item which lets you read the minds of the opponent, but they will still change their mind at the last possible microsecond and screw you over. So it's basically you can get as good as you like at those games, and you'll still struggle with the luck-based elements every time. Yeah, and we can talk about that a little bit. But yeah, that is definitely kind of, to me, the sticking point. in these games is there's always just this kind of arbitrary thing that shows up and it's like

it doesn't matter how good you are like this game is going to dick you over like you are destined to be frustrated it's it's absolutely true So a little bit of history, there's not too much history to Alex Kidd because, yeah, the series wasn't around that long and never really made it beyond Sega Genesis and, you know, the very beginning nebulous early years of the Sega Genesis at that. But the character was created in part by Kotaro Hayashida, who was a guy at Sega, and I'm not really familiar with his work. He's not a popular, you know, well-known name. But a bit more well-known, a bit better known, is the illustrator and artist who is responsible for a lot of the imagery in the game and the character key illustrations and cover art and stuff. And that's Rieko Kodama, who would go on to work on things like Sonic the Hedgehog

and basically be the designer and director for some of the Fantasy Star games and Skies of Arcadia. So she's pretty cool. We've had her on Retronauts, actually. And she did play a part in this. She mentioned in the interview episode that she's always surprised when people tell her about how, you know, the games that she worked on had an impact on their life. And there was, she met someone who named their child Alex, because of Alex's kid. So, you know, there are fans out there. And so that's why we're putting this episode together, not just for Stewart's sake, but also for everyone's sake.

Because this is a misunderstood series, I don't enjoy playing it. but I do recognize there is something ineffable about it that appeals to people. And, you know, had I grown up with a Sega Master System, yeah, I'd probably be like, no, screw you stupid Nintendo Retronauts fans. You guys suck. You need to know more about Alex Kidd because he's the bomb. So tell me, Stuart, why is Alex Kidd the bomb? It's the bomb because I had it when I was a child, and therefore I had to defend it with every fiber of my being.

Yeah, and really, I mean, that's how fandom works. Most of us have Super Mario Brothers, so, you know, as kids, so that's what we love. And as I have discovered when I have dared to proclaim any Mario game that is not Super Mario Bros. 3 as amazing, everyone who was nine years old when Super Mario Brothers 3 came out flips me their middle fingers and throws rocks at me. So, you know, it's just we get imprinted on at a young age, and that's totally fair. I mean, when I revisit the game, I may, you know, I do so through the lens of nostalgia and also the lens of, okay, I can recognize there are some serious flaws at work here.

I think the moment to moment level design is pretty good. I think it plays better than a lot. It's very smooth compared to a lot of mass system platformers. Yeah, in terms of the gameplay, my, like the control mechanics, my only frustration is that Alex's primary form of attack is a punch, and it has this weirdly limited range. It feels like he's not really punching so much as just kind of like pushing his arm out a little bit like he's in a crowd or something and he's trying to shove someone sort of gently without

fully extending his arm he's just like kind of you know doing like a half push-up and the range on it is very tiny and it's very difficult to hit things without also being hit by things in return and it's a one-hit kind of death game so you don't want to do that there's a fairly common item I can't remember the name of it annoyingly it's a ring or no bracelet a power bracelet that's it and it does let you fire projectiles they're they're common enough but of course if you you lose a life, you lose the item if you had it equipped. So it can't, it's not that helpful. I suppose you mitigate those situations. Coincidentally, this game came out around the same time in the US as Gradius, where you have the same issue. So it was just something in the air.

It's, uh, I think it's worth playing if you know how to solve the Jankin puzzles. If you just have the guide, the switch version that came out relatively recently, the default border just prints the solutions to those puzzles across the top. They're just right there. So you never have to worry about it. Yeah, that's the way to do it. You basically turn the screen into the Rosetta Stone. Yeah. But we're specifically talking about Alex Kid and Miracle World here, right?

That's the only one that has the Junkin, right? The Mega Drive one, Enchanted Castle, also has the Junkin, and it's arguably worse than that. Okay, yeah, they do kind of blend together in my head. Yeah, Enchanted Castle, well, we can talk about that a little bit. Yeah, for sure. That one's super frustrating to me, but, you know, I did gain some appreciation. for Alex Kid in Miracle World back when I was in college, and because I'm old, a girl that I was dating was like, oh, I love this game as a kid. We, you know, this is around the time

emulators were starting to hit. So I had an emulator on my computer and she was like, you can play video games on your computer like this. That's cool. I want to play Alex Kid. I love that game. I had a master system. So I watched her play and she just cruised right through it. And I was like, huh, maybe there's something to this. And I just really suck at video games. So that was kind of my first view into Alex Kidd as something that people enjoyed. I mean, even I had friends who had master systems in Genesis and they did not like Alex Kid. So it was it was kind of eye-opening to see like, oh, someone does enjoy this game.

Maybe there's something more to it than I realized. And yeah, like the world design is fun. The levels are much less straightforward than in, you know, Super Mario Brothers or Adventure Island compared to its contemporary platformers. there is more going along, more variety in the stage scrolling and the stage themes. Like, you get to, this is the one that has the castle where it's like screen by screen scrolling. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, you know, it's kind of more like along the lines of Kid Icarus or something. So, so some ambitious design here. And it made good use of the Sega Master System's color palette.

I mean, I think sometimes people get into kind of religious debates. It's like, you know, Genesis versus Super NES sound, which do like better. Master System had a wider color palette than the NES, but they tended to be darker colors. But this managed to kind of create very sort of eye-catching color palettes that seemed very bright and colorful and cartoonish, despite the limitations or the specific orientation, I guess, of the Master System's color palettes. I think it's still a very attractive game. There are very few elements where you look at it and you just think this just looks weird. like a lot of eight-big games kind of come across sometimes. The problem for me with Master's Tim is so often that the games looked great,

but they ran very choppy and very poorly. But Alex Kid does not have that problem. It's beautifully smooth. It's like butter. It would be great. And it sounds pretty good, too. The music is repetitive. There aren't that many tunes.

But it is good stuff. You can lobby the same criticism at Super Mario Brothers. It's true. It's true. I think that's just to be expected from that era. At the time, the idea of, hey, there's music playing in my video game as I play it. That was pretty novel. Just the fact that there was sound, and it wasn't just, you know, like the sound of Atari bleeps.

That was remarkable. So I'm willing to give it a pass. Yeah, that's fair. So the point of Alex Kid in Miracle World is that your family has been kidnapped, right? You're Alex Kid, the Prince of Ratataxus or something. Redaxian. Raxisorian. No, that's Dr. Who.

Something like that. And so you've got to go and play rock paper scissors in order to rescue them. There's a warlord or something called Jankan the Great. He's a big fanged, demon-looking chap. And he's got some henchmen who are called, I think, Parpin, Chokina, and Gusica. I don't know if that's a reference or anything like that. But they are basically paperhead, scissors head, and stonehead. They're the most hideous.

their heads are exactly what they sound like one of them has the shape of a big hand with the outstretched palm like paper you've got one that's a closed fist which is just a nightmare to think about really and scissors head who has an eye on each extended index forefinger once you go through them and you have to go through them

a second time at Janken and then they'll start doing various normal sort of more typical boss battles basically you've got to make your way to the end talk to a bunch of people on the way ride a bunch of vehicles and eventually get to the final swimming section on the last stage and die because it's impossible. Yeah, the whole, you know, junk and the great sounds very much like something you would have

seen in Dr. Slump or Dragon Ball, like in a curatorialama manga around this time. He has that kind of look. It's just very like, yeah, not just the look, but also just the theme and the whimsy and the fact that, oh, this is, you know, you kind of expect the action to unfold in a certain way. and then you get to the villain and they change the rules on you. And I don't know that it necessarily works in this case because it is so arbitrary and so final if you make a mistake against, not even a mistake, just don't randomly guess, you know, something that you have a 33% odds to choose correctly. But, you know, in a manga or anime, like, this would have been really fun. This would have been like, oh, wow, you know, I have to use my childlike deduction skills to figure out what the, the,

villain is going to do. So, yeah, like, I appreciate the, the spirit of the thing. It feels very sort of fun in an effervescent adventure comics kind of way. So around the same time, Sega released Alex Kid the Lost Stars, and I don't really know this one that well, especially not the arcade version. All I know is it has that really weird forced three-quarters perspective that's very. awkward to play in. But can you tell me a little more about this one? Like, how does the lost stars differ from Miracle World? It's a much more straightforward left to right side scroller. It's a lot closer to Ghost and Goblins, actually, in terms of being kind of fairly single-minded in how you play it. But it loses all of the sort of adventure elements from Miracle

World X. They were probably developed at the same sort of time, so that kind of makes sense. basically if you're playing as Alex and he's got oh gosh there's a female character whose name has just completely escaped to me but I'll come to that you go in you make your way left to right through looking for these

basically these zodiac signs that are called miracle balls there's a lot of sampled speech in the game which sounds hilarious instantly because when Alex takes a hit he screams it's genuinely quite unsettling but you're making your way through

these worlds that aren't really, there's no real explanation, there's no relation to the previous game, there's no redaxian, there's no sort of side characters, apart from, yeah, Stella, that's it, his sister, who doesn't ever appear again as far as I can tell. But it's like, for example, the first stage is made out of, like, toys or, like, children's, like, building blocks. There's, like, a monorail, they're playing cards. It's all very much, like, throw it in, kind of thing. It's not particularly good, but it's not horrible, basically. There's not a lot of interesting things to say about the Lost Stars, because it doesn't do much that's worth remarking on, unfortunately. Yeah, I know Sega had different teams to work on arcade games versus home games,

especially, you know, in the later years. I don't know if that was the case here, but I think it probably was. So probably they had, you know, like a kind of character concept, you know, a general scheme for Alex Kidd and basically they said okay home team you go make a game and they made the kind of adventure-tinged game that would work better on a console and the arcade team said okay let's make a straightforward platformer where it's you know there's not a lot of ambiguity a lot of ways to get lost and it's just more like pump some quarters into it play for a little while have fun kid yeah it's it's an issue with with Alex Kidd that basically almost every single game is different in terms of cast and setting, and almost the way Alex looks, it's a problem that Sega

seem to have with their mascot franchises in general, because Sonic is a bit like this as well. I mean, over the many, many years of bludgeoning people with the franchise, they've managed to get some method of consistency going, but not with Alex. He's totally different in every game, basically. I see, I see. Well, the next game in Alex's lineage definitely lives up to that description. That's Alex Kid BMX trial, which I've heard of. But I've never played, and when I was researching for this, I discovered why I'd never played it. And it's because, one, it never came out in the U.S. It was only for the Sega Mark 3, the Japanese master system.

And also, it requires the use of a Japan-only analog paddle controller. So, yes, not really available for easy consumption, even with emulation, I think, to get that paddle controller. It does not play correctly on emulation. To be honest with you, I get the impression that even if it did, I don't feel like I'm missing too much here. Yeah, it's a weird game. It's a top-down racing game, and the structure of it, from what I can tell, it kind of plays like World 8-4 of Super Mario Brothers, where you have kind of the maze and you have to choose the right path to go through, and if you don't, it just keeps looping and looping.

So it's a very short game if you know the way through it. You can beat it in a few minutes, but I think the game is designed around you not knowing which way to go and just getting lost or running out of time, which you know, okay, sure, it's video games in the 80s, what do you expect? And I'm looking at the box hot here and I'm getting the impression that once again none of these characters

have anything to do with any of the other games in the series. So goodness knows. Yeah, I think they just went straight for it with the sort of Jumpman Mr. Game and Watch kind of thing. Like, hey, Nintendo's doing this thing where they have a mascot that they just throw into like the weird ass game and watch

games. Let's do that too, but you've got to build on it first. You got to earn that sort of multifaceted character distinction. And I don't think Alex did the legwork to get there before they started just shoving him into everything. It doesn't help that the games can't be beaten without extensive notes, I suppose. Yeah, not really my idea of a great racing game. But, you know, admittedly, I don't have an analog controller for Master System, although now I kind of want to pick one up just to experience it. But, yeah, I see that. Not having played this, it could be amazing, but I just feel like, no, it's probably not. I mean, it's, yeah, it's almost certainly not amazing. I mean, you know, now, so we're going to get someone get in touch who's going to be

outraged. But they're going to be like, no, Alex Kid BMX12 is my favorite game of all time. Yeah, because I had the analog controller when I was six years old, and so I have to defend it to death, yes. I mean, the main thing I think, when I see the analog controller, all I think is I wish that had existed in the UK and they deported like Kaboom from the Atari to, but that's all. Right, but yeah, people just didn't want to make too many video games around

specialty controllers, like, you know, Taito made the Arkenoid Vowse controller for not just NES, but several systems and the only thing that ever worked with it was Arkenoid. Like, come on, that would have been great for anything else, but no. The master systems, the master systems, a joystick. It's official joystick. Have you used one of those? It's an enormous cube. I've seen it, but I haven't used it. And it's on the right-hand side and the buttons are

on the left, which is really unusual to me. But I don't know what's going on there. I mean, the mass system had all sorts of peripherals, like 3D glasses, all that sort of thing. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, it was a reasonably successful system. So yeah, Sega was just like, let's throw some ideas at it and see what sticks. But no BMX file. Yeah, I guess the, yeah, I guess the analog controller didn't stick enough to to warrant international release. But could it, do you think it could have turned things around in the States for the Moss system? It might have.

We do love our BMX, although I think we prefer BMX triple X. Oh, yeah. Because we're, we're an edgy society. Yeah. Maybe that might have improved this Alex Kid, Alex Kid, Triple X. Let's not go, let's not get into that way. You know, you know, you mentioned that they shoved Alex into lots of different things. You know, different experiences in video games.

And his fourth game is extremely emblematic. that because it's not actually an Alex Kid game. It's Alex Kid in high-tech world. High-tech world is actually feudal Japan, which is very contradictory. And there is a reason for this, and that's because this was actually in Japan, a game based on a very, very old, like from the 1940s manga series called On Mitsuhime. And it's about a princess in feudal Japan. So that explains the setting. It does not explain why they said this should be where Alex Kid lives. And it turns out high-tech world was the name of Sega's arcade chain back in the 80s, so he's running through feudal Japan, trying to get to a Sega arcade in order to play Sega games. So basically

Shenmoo more than a decade early. That's how I'm guessing. Yeah, this one makes me, I don't understand what happened here. I don't understand who looked at this game and when we should localise this. It's a very, very strange game, even by Alex Kidd's standards. The first, kind of, the first section of the game is this, you have to get hold of all of

the pieces, which are the map for the arcade or something. It's like, I need to go to this arcade in town, but I have a map, it's been torn into pieces I've got to get all of them, basically, and you have a reasonably strict time limit. I'm not sure exactly how long it is in game, but it's

like the arcade closes at five, which, seems counterintuitive. So you've got to get it. There are laws. There were blue laws back then. Oh, I see. To keep kids from loitering and skipping school and stuff. To keep Alex's kids from loitering. Yes, exactly.

You don't want him to grow up to a life of crime. It's a little tiny bit like a Sierra game, as you mentioned earlier, actually, because you can completely irrevocably destroy yourself by doing the wrong things in a wrong order. Like, you have to go to certain areas at certain times on the course. clock to get one of these pieces of the map basically you there is a staircase that's broken i believe if it doesn't look broken but if you go down it you just immediately fall and die it's that kind of wow it's a really just truly dreadful game but in addition to the sierra style adventure like the first person adventure type stuff that was sort of popular around

in you know at this time in japan you saw it in things like obviously you know um the protopo be a serial murder case was for Famicom and computers before that was kind of what started it. But you saw it in stuff like Dr. Chaos and the Goonies 2 on NES, even Golgo 13, about a famous sniper. He had to do his adventure stuff. But it does combine that with some action sequences, which, you know, I feel like that's kind of how this happened. You know, they, Sega looked at this game that they created. They either didn't want to pay the license to localize on Mitsuhime. Or they just said, like, why would we localize this and pay money for a franchise, you know, a series that American kids would have never heard of and would have no meaning for them? So let's just retool it.

Hmm, who do we know that is in a game that we, you know, we own the character and his game has adventure elements and action elements. Oh, Alex Kidd. So I think that's probably probably the thinking behind this. The real question is, why did they localize it in the first place? We'll never know. Yeah, it's really bizarre. It does make a certain sort of sense for this to have been localized into an Alex Kid game. Yeah, it sort of does, I suppose, and there is the cross-promotion thing with the different Sega games.

I think that the ending is quite literally Alex sitting down and going like, wow, these Sega games are amazing. There's a similar sort of thing in the Wonderboy in Monsterland. There's a boss that quizzes you about Sega games as well. So they are trying to build a little community there, I think, which is nice. That wasn't uncommon. I mean, Capcom had quite a few games that quizzed you about Capcom games, and I think Konami had something like that too in Japan. So, you know, it's everyone kind of building their little empires.

Yeah, I understand. I always thought it would be quite good if the game ended with Alex making his way through this forest full of ninjas to get to the arcade, and then all they've got is like Teddy Boy or something. Right, or Alex Kid. Yeah, or Alex Kid, the lost stars, and he's just like, oh, no. Not this again. I just did this. Yeah, yeah.

So going on to the next generation, the Sega Genesis, we had Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, which is probably the most common and the most reproduced game in the series. I don't think it's the best game in the series by any means, but because it is Genesis and Sega is so prone to reproducing Genesis games in emulation on virtual console and compilations, you do see Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle a lot, which I think also accounts for kind of the character's poor reputation because this game does not make a good first impression

it starts out in a town that's fine and you're like on a street in the city and that's fine and there's cars moving around and that's fine but instead of being background elements that are just there for you know scenery these cars will hit you and kill you instantly so if you don't like immediately jump out of the way

of these cars that are coming on as soon as you start the game then you're dead and you've lost a life so it's kind of you know like not a great first impression No, it's Alex's attack in that game is even more useless than it is in Miracle World as well. Yeah, they've got more pixels to work with, and yet somehow his attack has fewer hit pixels. You have a jumping kick attack as well, but it seems to be arbitrary whether or not it actually works, I found.

You have to get the right angle, so you actually are hitting the enemy with your foot, I think. But then sometimes you kind of don't. So, I don't know. A lot of the times you'll be jumping towards an enemy thinking, this is going to work. and then you'll just turn into an angel and die. So I know it's not a great game. It is very much the sequel to Miracle World in terms of its sort of mechanics. You are basically doing the same things, going through these stages, collecting money,

playing Jankan to win items, make your way to the end, get the little rice ball and escape, basically. Unfortunately, somehow in the translation from 8 to 16 bit, they completely lost their minds because the levels are, so scattershot and uninteresting. They're basically just flat surfaces with a bunch of enemies on them, and then in the sky you'll get

like basically blue floating marbles, the actors, all the other landscape. And basically the game challenges you to get these items that you don't really need. So most of the game is essentially you're ignoring the lion's share of the content because you'll just lose lives if you try and get them. It's not a very well-designed game, I would argue.

Yeah, I don't know what happened with this one. I always expect better from Sega than this. And I think maybe this was just where they kind of had to come to terms of the fact that we don't really get mascot platform games. Like, that's not our strength. Our strength is stuff like Afterburner, Thunderblade, Altered Beast, like cool, beefy, energetic, sort of aggressive games that are in your face. Not so much the little cutesy pastel games with twiddly music. That's just not the Sega thing. When they finally did land it big with a mascot platformer, Sonic was much more in,

in the vein like he's a cute character yeah but it was still much more aggressive and sort of cool and high energy than um you know that's something like alex kid and i think that's just that was Sega's real strength was just like create exciting games you know like Sonic is the outrun of mascot platformers just go with that Alex kid is not the outrun of mascot platformers I don't know I don't know what I would compare Alex kid to the art run 2019 of mascot platformers maybe. Yes, there you go. Alex Kidd is just, basically the Sonic comparison really is just

if you put a controller in someone's hand, they will be able to play Sonic. Anyone can play that. It's so easy to play. And with Alex Kidd, it's like, okay, here's the controller, okay, here's your attack. Now you're going to need to pause to activate these items that you need to use. Okay, also you've got to play rock papers.

Yes, it's random, et cetera, et cetera. It is not accessible at all. They really should have gone for something more, just straightforward like Super Mario, you know, but it's not like that. I think they just, they wanted to be an alternative to that, but they were unfortunately an alternative to being very good. Oh, well, I think they meant well, but yeah, this was just kind of Sega's sort of feeling its way on the Sega Genesis and not always succeeding.

Some of those early games were a little on the rough side, but, you know, they found their footing pretty quickly and pretty much abandoned Alex Kidd pretty much. quickly. He only had one more game, and instead of making that on Master System, they went back in time and put it on Master. Instead of putting that on Genesis, they went back in time and put it on Master System. And that is arguably, as you said earlier, the best game in the series, and that's Alex Kid in Shinobi World. Of course, combine Alex Kid with one of Sega's best franchises of the era. Of course. Brilliant. So it's not really that much like Shinobi, but at least the spirit's there. It is interesting because Shinobi had an excellent port to the master system anyway, really, really playable, really well done.

They changed it up so that you could take more than one hit, but balance the whole game around it, basically. Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is one of the earlier examples I can think of playing that is a straight-up parody game. In the original Shinobi, for example, there's a boss called The Lobster, who's like a samurai or or something. I'm not too familiar, unfortunately, with what he exactly is. but of course in this game he is literally a lobster and when you defeat him he's like sort of see he gets like fried he turns into food basically in the sort of pre-reeper before it came out though

this game was originally even more of a parody because the first boss was Mario the original Shinobi the first boss is I think called Ken O a big armoured chap but in Shinobi world it was Mari O as in M-A-R-I-O-H big mask chap and when you knock his mask off it's just clearly Super Mario's face and I guess someone at Sega kind of went nah we can't get away with this so he got replaced with something more generic yeah Sega had a I mean that that's also kind of true to Shinobi because

Sega had this habit of infringing on copyrights with their bosses in Shinobi hence the the sort of rare version of Shinobi for Genesis with Spider-Man as a boss master system shinobi the second level and the arcade as well the second level you have Marilyn Monroe right there in the background and then Spider-Man drops down to say hi so they really just did not care but I guess they drew a line at making front of Mario yeah it was the Wild West back then but yeah I can see where you know they said that's probably not good politics right there yeah let's not do that um you know that was the Japanese side the American side of course you know they would kind of make their mark

with the Genesis by directly attacking Nintendo and saying, oh yeah, they're boring and sucky and dull and we're exciting and cool. Come on, kids, play with us. Oh, I never get tired of it.

I really, really don't. I love that whole antagonism thing. It really does make me laugh. Right, but that was, you know, kind of the big schism between a part of it, you know, from the, at least, you know, from chronicles we've heard from folks like Tom Kalinsky.

Like, Japan was very, oh, no, you know, you don't want to go after them directly. You don't want to stir the waters. That's just not how we do things here in Japan. And the American side was like, no, let's just go after them. Let's, you know, we see blood in the water. Let's do it. And that was a great success for them.

And that caused some real frision within the company. But yeah, anyway, I don't want to get too bogged down in that. But it does kind of show the spirit here. And you mentioned in your notes that there's parody elements here. I would say this is kind of like Sega's equivalent of parodias. Konami shooter franchise where you're playing basically parodies of

Gradius and Twinby and so forth and it's very lighthearted and goofy and kind of poking fun at themselves not just at Mario it definitely has that feel to it and I think that's one of the reasons it's so fun because it's finally like they're not taking this too seriously

this is not meant to be a real adventure it's just like having a little bit of fun you know Konami Wi-Wi World was also kind of the same thing. It's good stuff. It has the smooth play control of a miracle world, but you don't slide all over the place. Your attack, the sword, it's still fairly short range, but you can upgrade it quickly, so it's got kind of a shockwave that gives you a lot more space to work with. Alex looks cooler. He's a bit squashed up, and he's got all these new moves. You can climb poles and ropes and then spin around them so fast that you turn into a fireball launch off across the level.

It's a lot of fun. You can wall jump. It's the first game I can remember playing where you can and wall jump as well, which always feels fun to do. It's short, so it doesn't outstay its welcome. Every level is different. It is challenging, but it's never sort of unfair, like the early Alex Kid games. So, yeah, I would, it's not my favorite. My favorite's always going to be Miracle World, but it's pretty much definitely the best one in the series is Shinobi World, I'd say.

And this one hasn't been reproduced that often. I think it showed up on Wii Virtual Console, and that's pretty much it. That's really kind of it for Shinobi World. And that's a shame because, you know, compared to Enchanted Castle, this game really deserves much wider propagation. It really does. I'd love to see M2 tackle this as part of their Sega Ages series for Switch. Like this one, I feel, like, is substantial enough that they could do that, but that's not the one that they decided to focus on, which is a bummer. I think the only problem with them putting it on Switch is it's so easy that they would have to make the special mode harder, which is the opposite of what they normally do.

So goodness knows. you know they could always do some sort of jazzy bonus feature you know they like they created an arcade version of fantasy zone two whole cloth just to say like oh here's the game that didn't exist but should have like they could do an arcade edition of this or something i don't know i thought it would have been neat when they released shinobi on sega ages if they'd thrown this in as a bonus to be honest but uh i don't think it's going to happen unfortunately And that's a shame, and that's a shame. And that's just kind of really how it's been for Alex.

Alex, that was it for him. He's basically been written out. Yeah. He has shown up a few times as a character cameo. I mentioned Sega Gaga, which was even more self-parodying work that Sega created for Dreamcast in around 2000, where you're basically playing the role of a Sega executive trying to save the company. And there's all kinds of references and cameos and stuff. and Alex Kidd is a character here, and he is 38, and still looks like he's, you know, seven years old, and he's very frustrated about that.

I remember when I saw this, because I didn't have Sega Gaga because you couldn't, I couldn't get it, obviously, but. Sure, it never was, it never was localized in English. I remember seeing this and almost feeling affronted by it, because it's just like, no, Alex is good, it's not, he shouldn't be miserable. He should be fine. Don't do this to poor Alex. It's almost, it's just insulted in. not only did he get cancelled but then they have to actually portray him as having basically become washed up I always thought that was you know now it's funny but at the time it was just kind of like you it's too cruel it's too cruel to poor Alex he deserves better than this he did his best poor Alex well he does he does appear in other games

and like a playable cameo role kind of you know the the all-star type game Sega superstars tennis I think you wrote and Sega and Sonic all-stars racing on in 3D unfortunately he does look like a hideous goblin boy I mean his character design was never good he's kind of I think it's supposed to be like a monkey king thing where he's sort of a boy and sort of a monkey so he's like son wukong but yeah it doesn't translate well he's currently appearing in the intro sequences

to all of the switch Sega ages games though he's like the presenter he's the compare oh that's true so there is a little bit of you know at least he's on the payroll you know right but he does not appear in new games dedicated entirely to Alex Kid he is written out

I don't foresee a future in which we have a new Alex Kid adventure although anything is possible maybe that's going to be the next Lizard Cube game they're like well we did Dragons Trap we did Streets of Rage 4 now it's time for Alex Kid returns oh man

it would just be one of those there are dozens of us moments if that happened I think I'm I would love that to happen but I'm currently just prepared to go and visit his grave once a year, you know? Well, as long as he's rumored by someone. Well, actually, you mentioned in your notes, kind of the final thing here,

that there is a fan-made sequel. There is. In America World 2. Is that any good? The Sega 8-bit community put that one together. Because they made a full game for free, I don't want to be mean to them. But, no, it's not very good, unfortunately.

It's basically fine. But the level design is very much, Like, basically, you know Alex's whole thing is that he can break blocks. Like Mario hits him with his head. Alex just hits him with his fist because he hasn't got time for that. Basically, there's a lot of precision platforming, but they put those breakable blocks on every platform, so you have to jump up, break them, fall down,

jump back up again before you can land on them. And it's the sort of thing where I just kind of wanted to reach into the screen and change the levels, you know? So it's a very impressive piece of fan work, but unfortunately I'm far too critical to enjoy it on that level. So yeah, it's okay. It's fine. They did a great job. There's like new music, new enemies, all sorts of things. But it's not as good as the original. On the plus side, they did remove all the Jenkins. So in that respect, it's probably better. So final question for you, if you did see a new Alex Kid game, what would you want? Like if you, if Sega came to you and said, Stuart Jip, you are the greatest Alex Kid fan in the universe. And we think you are the only one who, you're the only one. who could be the steward of this character's future,

create your dream game. What would that be? Oh, my gosh. I thought you wanted this to be short. I think that it would have to be... Lizard Cube would be a good shot because they do those very attractive cartoon kind of graphics. I think that would work really well for Alex

if they could capture the look of him from the official art rather than from the actual games. But I think if you bring in almost kind of... His whole thing is punching stuff. So I guess get a robust kind of almost Game Boy kind of combat kind of thing going on. That would be nice. But then I'd want it to essentially just be Miracle World,

but without the rubbish parts, I suppose. So I guess just remake Miracle World and change the Jankin to actual boss fights and change the fighting to something of actual quality. That would be nice. I think I'd like that. Oh, okay. That's pretty straightforward.

You made it sound like it was going to be, you know, like here's my basically like the ring cycle of video games. Oh, we just haven't the time for that, unfortunately. If you ever want to do a dedicated me pitching in your Alex Kid game, then, you know, set some time aside. Set some time aside. I know some folks at Sega, so let me hook you on. That would be amazing, but also horrible for everyone, because it would be a game designed entirely by me, dedicated to my tastes. So nobody wants that. The modern day Alfred Chicken. All right, Stuart, thanks for your time. Where can we find you on the internet? I'm sure that wherever we look, you'll be talking

With great fondness about Alex Kidd, wherever you go. The main place is Retronauts.com where I do post things about three times a week. That may be slightly more erratic at the moment on account of the old situation, but about three times a week. And everything else is on, I'm going to have to give the URL out, linktr.e, late link tree, but there's a dot in the middle. Dot com slash Stuart Gip. And all my stuff is there. I do all sorts of things. but mostly Retronauts because it is the best thing that exists

Do you still do Video World? I don't think I've seen one of those in a little while. I've stopped doing Video World, but I started doing something called Stuart Jam, which is exactly the same as Video World, thus destroying my branding. I don't know anything about that. A new episode went up on just the other week, actually.

It's basically me talking about all the dumb video games that I like. Like, for example, Big Nose the Caveman, big nose freaks out. um bubsy all that sort of thing you know all the things beginning with me the code masters fan huh oh who isn't they're wonderful aren't they i mean they're made dizzy how can you not i will i will add because it's relevant feel free to cut it out um myself and artist leanne hamilton who i think did might be doing the art for this episode actually we did a Alex kid comic for sonnet the comic which is hopefully going to be online soon as a continuation of an old british um UK Sega comic um hopefully that will go up

soon. I feel like I should mention it. It's STConline.com.com. Okay. Awesome. Yeah. So that's all the Sega you can handle. Sega fandom you can handle. So check out Stewart's work. And that wraps it up for this segment, but we'll be back in another segment that has nothing whatsoever to do with Alex Kidd.

Hey there. This is Jeremy Parrish, and if you're a fan of classic video game soundtracks, or if you just love 20-minute rock epics about war-ready armadillas that battle Catholicism, you should listen to Alexander's Racktime band. Join the power trio of myself, Elliot Long, and James Eldred, each month as we talk about the most pretentious music of all progressive rock right here on the Greenlit Podcast Network.

On Apocrypals, we talk about the parts of the Bible that a lot of people skip over. Like the wizard battles. The angel jacuzis. A goat full of sins. 500 drunk elephants. And a man named Porky Party. And yes, that's all really in there.

All this and more on Apocrypals, every other week on the Great Lit Podcast Network. Welcome to Casual Magic, the show where we explore the fun side of Magic the Gathering. I'm your host Shivamput, and each week we delve into everything from casual format to explorations of creatures and card types to interviews with designers of the game. At Casual Magic, we believe that it just isn't magic without the Gathering. Come along and play! All right. So for this second segment for the podcast, I've got, uh, on the line for the

Dave Marsh, one of the original creators of the game Shadowgate, among other games. You were with ICOM simulations, is that correct? Yeah, hey, yeah, it was with ICOM, I think, from 1985 through maybe 93 after it got purchased right in early 90s by Viacom and then shut down, I think, 1993. Okay. 97. Maybe it's 97, yeah. All right. And you've stayed pretty involved with the games of ICOM ever since and have recently worked on the Shadowgate remaster, which we're publishing through my day job, limited run games.

Right, right. And so, right, I have. And basically about, I don't know, 2011, I reacquired the rights to DejaVoo, Shadowgate, DejaVu 2, uninvited, the Sherlock Holmes consulting detective murderment. Mysteries and the video mystery Dracula unleashed. So, but yeah, I've, I've been working on Shadowgate. I don't know. I think it's up to maybe 15 ports since 1987. Yeah, and I had a chance to play some of the, the Switch version that came out last year,

which I know is based on Xbox 1, PS4, like all kind of built around a PC game that came out like five years ago and really enjoyed what I played of it. I want to spend some more time with it and definitely will be doing that in the future. But it's, it's, you know, from what I've played of it, you know, an hour or so, it's, it's very faithful yet also takes, I wouldn't say liberties, but doesn't just, you know, take the original game and give it nicer graphics. There's a lot more going on there. Right. Yeah. I mean, we really, of course, I worked on it with my partner, Carl Rulhoffs, which we've been working on games since, since 85, and designing all the games and doing the art. And we just decided that, you know, with this game, we were going to do some stuff. which was definitely very familiar to players that have played everything from the Mac and, you know, Apple II versions to, you know, the NES versions to whatever. And, you know, we wanted many rooms to be very iconic.

We wanted the basic story for the most part to be it, but we wanted to really do some things that we couldn't do that wouldn't fit in a floppy or on a cartridge, right? So we had unlimited amount of space. And so we did a lot of stuff that was going to make folks happy. That was real throwbacks, you know, worked with coach. to pick up the old chip tunes and then do just some fun stuff there, some throwbacks, and then redesign puzzles that just were not very good in the original games and do some things with effects and, you know, with the artwork from Chris and Chris Cold and other things.

It was just, it was a blast to make. It was the highlight. It was wonderful. Yeah. So one of the things that really kind of stood out to me about the remake is, you know, is that there's sort of a built-in help system in the form of a talking skull. Can you talk about that? That seems like in a lot of ways, sort of the biggest, like most fundamental change

because it does, you know, make things a lot less punishing for the player. It gives people guidance where the original games were very much about sort of, you know, find your way and, yeah, you die a lot, see the Grim Reaper, try again. Right. So I think one of the things that we didn't know, people really loved all the deaths. sequences. They thought they were great. They thought were funny. We kind of did a tongue and cheek. And certainly in those old McVenture games, you could die in a lot of ways, and it was whatever way you wanted to do it. And so if back in 85 or 87 or 89, whenever we put out

a new game, you know, the only way to go ahead and get hints was to mail in, call or mail in for, you know, help, a help guide. Or else maybe something came out, right, Nintendo Power. or something. And so we just decided that we would put in this skull named York. You could pick up right at the beginning of the game. You have to pick him up. But you can punch him, hit him, and he will never talk to you, or you can go ahead and get hints from him. And so it was just kind of something that we just thought would be good. You know, if the player wanted it, they can get it. They don't want it. If they want it, you know, to be a little harder, they could do that. And then I think part of that also, know, went into our thoughts of, hey, let's, let's have multiple difficulty levels. So we have

three difficulty levels and then an Ironman mode, which is no saves. And so I guess four and down in a way. But so, yeah, we just know that, you know, there's some things that people like that are old school. And then things that people are saying, you know, I'd like to, I'd like to have some things that are more convenient in today's gaming, which is a better hand system. So, The Ironman element is interesting because you typically see that in games like, you know, something like XCOM or Diablo, where the game mechanics have more randomness. They're not as prescripted. Right. Right. Whereas this is an adventure game and kind of falls more into that format. So how do you, how do you kind of balance it out between the fact that, you know, once you know the solution, you pretty much know the solution and you're not going to have that sort of dynamism that you do in a totally randomized game like Diablo? Yeah, I think, you know, it was one of those things at the end.

that we kind of said, you know, let's put this in. It was a couple things from it. One is we knew that players may play the standard, you know, the average difficulty level or the smaller difficulty level and then say, well, you know, I can, you know, they might skip the hardest one and maybe just try the Iron Man month for fun. But it really kind of came as a bit of a, I don't know, a lark or whatever, but I was talking to my son and we were hanging out.

And he was watching one of these charity speed run, you know, things on TV. And somebody, you know, I've seen speed runs of Shadowgate many times. And I know that I know where the biggest thing is that they can get through to go ahead and get pretty much to the end of the game relatively quickly. And we just, we just thought, you know, it would be fun to put it into Iron Man mode. We're just talking about different things. And would it be cool to put in something that would make it really, really, really, really difficult, especially if somebody was doing some sort of, I don't know, speed run or something, but it was just kind of a thing where we thought, why not? And that was kind of

our thought when we were working on, because it was kickstarted, you know that, right? And so part of it was, what other things can we continue to add to go ahead? The game was late, as many kickstaters are. And we were saying, you know, what other things could we add to the player that would give them more options. And then we started looking at the old 8-bit tunes and then ruin transitions and kind of a graphic mode. And so we just started throwing some other options at it. So it was kind of between those things that we threw the Iron Man mode in there.

So I have no idea if people play it, but I'm glad it's there. Well, we've talked a bit about the remake, but I would like to talk to you just a bit about the original game. And beyond that, just kind of how you got involved. in game development. I mean, how did you get involved specifically in Macintosh development? That was very, I would say, pretty much a niche market at the time, 1985. The system had only launched a year ahead of that and was not really seen, I think, deliberately on Apple's part, as a gaming system. You know, Steve Jobs reportedly really pushed back against the idea of making

the Mac a toy. It had to be a serious business application. So gaming, you know, there were some really cool games like Alice in Wonderland and a few others that really took advantage of the mouse and the graphics, but you didn't see a lot of them. So, you know, so the McVenture games really stood out. So, yeah, like, how did you get kind of to the point where you were developing games and then specifically developing for Mac? Well, you know, it's kind of, I mean, as many things happen, a bit of serendipity, right? And so I bought a computer. I don't know, it may have been a tainty computer. I can't remember exactly what it was. but I'd been an artist, you know, growing up as an artist.

And it had a paint program, and the paint program maybe had, there may have been eight colors at the bottom of the screen. And you used the joystick and grabbed yellow. And then you moved it up, ding, ding, ding, ding, up to, you know, the area that you painted and you drop the yellow pixel. And maybe the screen was, I don't know, 15 by 10 or something, 15 by 15. and as far as pixels go. And then you couldn't place another yellow pixel. You had to go back down to the bottom again and select yellow. I mean, this is how bad it was, right?

And so I started doing stuff like that and started learning how to go ahead and shade things and do different things with pixels that were kind of cool. And I was working in youth ministry at the time at a church and a programmer, a guy named Terry Schulenberg, came there to also work in there. And he had told me that he was a programmer. And they had been working on, well, what I found out later was the first deja vu, A Nightmare Comes True. And they had mostly been doing Apple II ports of arcade games. And so, you know, we started talking, he started talking about how he was programming this game.

And they were using, it was Windows driven. So I didn't completely understand what that was yet, right? And that the whole game was to allow you to go ahead and have this first person adventure. move objects and around into different windows and then into the main game. And so went over to his house,

he showed me that. I said, geez, this is stuff I've been doing except, of course, on the MacPain, it was black and white,

right? And I thought, this is pretty cool. And so actually my first project was, it was an arcade game called Wizards of War. And it was kind of a test. So I did that for the Apple 2.

And at the same, and then around the same time I met the guys at the office. It wasn't very big. And they were finishing up working on uninvited as well, the Haunted House game. And so I grabbed Carl and just sat around in my parents' house and designed some rooms. And they gave me a Mac with no external drive. So it was pushing those floppies in and out, right, between McPaint and system disks.

Right. That was another kind of oddball limitation of the system at the time, because supposedly Steve jobs didn't want it to have an internal fan and didn't want to have internal parts so yeah everything had to be external so that's uh that sounds like a pretty challenging work environment it was uh it was pretty awful until the you know external floppy drive came out every time because you had to save constantly because you were you know we were freaked out that the stuff that we put in for the last you know hour or whatever so we was just constantly um switching up floppy disc. So, yeah, so then they gave us jobs and eventually. And I actually finished Uninvited,

the artwork for the rest of Uninvited. And then we met with the director at the time. And we started cutting rooms to be able to go ahead and fit Shadowgate on a disc. And that was it. So that was the first, that was the black and white Mac. And from there, I think we went to PCCGA, which was black, white, cyan, the magenta, and then EGA, VGA, Cometre, Cometre, Cometre, 64, and then onward. Yeah, the Amiga port, I feel, must have been, must have felt very liberating, given, you know, the graphical capabilities of that system. I mean, it was basically running kind of on the same hardware as a Mac, but, you know, instead of being black and white, it was infamous for, not infamous, it was, it was well loved for its expansive color capabilities and just the incredible graphical demos and

features that could run. Sure. And I mean, we love that. And deluxe paint was one of the, you know, was a great program. In fact, when we did the Atari ST version, which they had DeGos as their paint program, we didn't even bother using it. You know, we just ended up continuing these deluxe paint because it's so well done. The problem, the problem that still existed was the number of floppies that the company would allow us to, to, to use.

So while LucasArts and, you know, all those old cinemaware games and things were coming out and things were being developed, especially in Europe or whatever, for the Amiga, you know, that we're shipping on multiple disks, we were still, you know, either on one or two floppy. So no parallax scrolling for us. That was, you know, that was the big thing back in the day. But, you know, the interesting thing that still carries over into my work today, and as we look at different platforms and different things, that we're developing on is the fact that we're always working up against boundaries, it just, it just, it still helps today. I still, whenever we get on something and then we hit, you know, hey, it has to stay in this boundary or whatever, it's always something that I go, I'm used to this.

And so I problem think a lot of that stuff through. So it's pretty good. Yeah, you mentioned that you had to cut rooms in Shadowgate to get it to fit onto a discette. How did you, how did you kind of decide what content goes? Was there anything that you really hated to let go of but were vetoed on? Not really. I think Carl and I were talking about this a couple days ago because I would mention to him I was going to be talking with you. And there were rooms that were not, most of them just weren't great designs.

I remember there was a giant spider in room two of the game and it was a chandelier over it. And you can see where that one was going. You know, they were just, they were very simple kind of, because I was a D&D. player. And so, and back in, you know, AD&D days back then, it was pretty straightforward kind of designs that we played with our DM. And so there was a room that was off of near the end of the game that we just locked the door. We did that a number of times, locked doors, instead of redoing the artwork, because we were trying to get things out. There was a basilisk that ended up turning you to stone. There was an altar. You know, there were just, there were

are a number of things that are just kind of vague now in my head, right? I guess how many years later, 30 years later? But I don't think, I think most of the stuff that got cut was just not great. I think the NES version, there's a, there's a goblin room. And once you get into Shadowgate, and on every other version, it's in there, except for the NES, and that ended up, I think, getting cut just because of cartridge space. But I don't think, I don't think we're crying over anything. we're too busy playing dark tower and in wizardry and stuff so to cry about it. Yeah, so you mentioned your D&D influence. Were you, did you have any kind of like particular modules that you loved, you know, any particular styles?

Because you had, you had different kinds of D&D, you know, adventures back in the day that, like, the ones that were much more about puzzle solving, the ones that were more about combat, the ones that were about looting and finding treasure. So, you know, kind of, kind of, where did you come into game design from in terms of your D&D love? Well, you know, I think it really was, the dungeon master we had was, he was always super secretive. And so everything that we did with the rooms, we were presented with a room, and then there was a, there were things in there. And then we had to solve what those things were. And what we were going to touch and what we weren't. I mean, it was in some ways, it's a bit, do you remember playing Dragon's Slayer? Do you ever play that?

The Laserdisc game? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember when there's one room. in there that he comes in and there's this thing that says, drink me. You know, this little vial says drink me. We always used to laugh. I can't remember it was before or after we worked

on Shadowgate when we would play that and stuff because that's really kind of what our our D&D experience was as we were walking into a room and there were all these things and how were we going to solve, how we're going to get our way out. So it was more of that and less of just mindless

combat. Okay. So definitely on the puzzle solving. I mean, it definitely comes through, especially in Shadowgate. You mentioned that, you know, the constant deaths in the game, you know, the many ways to die. Yeah. It sounds like you tried to have fun with it and, you know, kind of be a little cheeky with it. Can you talk about kind of the, like, the tonal influences of the work that you wrote? Like, it's a, you know, kind of a gothic fantasy adventure.

It's serious. There's an evil wizard. But also it doesn't take itself too seriously. Well, and, you know, I think the thing is we, I mean, we were, what, 20? I think when I started working on it, maybe 22, 23. And because of the color palette, because we had what we had to work with, and we were kind of following up on deja vu and uninvited. The game, the way the graphics are, it feels a little, it doesn't feel very scary, right?

You know, everything is bright, and almost every room is white with, you know, with black pixels back then, you know. and we were trying to do compression was always a tough thing because our compression worked with like patterns. And so we couldn't get too, like everything was very simplistic. And of course, when it got over the NES, right, working with Kempco and the NES, it was very simplistic. And so it kind of had a little bit of a light thing, a light feel to the artwork.

And so doing anything, even when I was working on uninvited, you know, I never sense that this manner is really, you know, ominous or whatever because of the way that the art was. So I think that kind of drove it a bit. The other thing is, and this is going to sound a little crazy, but we were always kind of besides ourselves

that we were kind of, you know, two guys just making this game. And we would just laugh at things. And so I remember early on when we had done some of the early rooms and we were describing the deaths, the programmers would laugh at it and, you know, what is this,

you know, and everything. And we just thought that was funny. So I wish there was maybe a better answer for you on it other than the fact that the art was kind of dictating a bit of the, you know, the level of seriousness in it. And I know that they wanted us to make kind of a rescue the maiden type thing or, you know, stop the evil or whatever, which was very simplistic and we just wanted to have a little bit more fun with it. Yeah. That's interesting. So you mentioned working with... Interesting bad or good. Oh, no, just interesting.

Like, you know, sometimes people say, oh, yeah, I was a huge fan of this sort of thing, you know, like maybe this game was funny because I loved Faulty Towers or Douglas Adams. But it sounds like in this case like it's more, it just kind of evolved out of circumstances and was just sort of, you know, natural tendencies by the creators. So that's interesting. Yeah. And, you know, and also, if you take it, both deja vu and uninvited were very serious in the ways that they presented themselves. I mean, listen, an uninvited, your little brother is being possessed by a demon, right? And deja vu, you know, you're in trouble and you can't remember who you are and, you know, both the cops and possibly other bad guys are after you. And so this was a bit of a diversion for that.

So by the way, deja vu is still my favorite McVenture. I just, I love that game. So in Shadowgate, do you have any particular favorite rooms, any particular favorite deaths, things that you look back on and you're still like, yeah, we really knocked it out of the park with that one? And I think spoilers are okay. You know, the game is fairly old at this point. Yeah, you know, I've done so many times. I would say probably the rooms that ended up in the remake in 2014, the Dragon Room, which was really fun because in this one, you know, on the Mac and, of course, on the NES and stuff, you know,

it took forever for the Dragon to breathe fire on you. And I never really felt like I was blocking it with my shield, which is, something we did, you know, in the 2014 version, which was much more fun. Probably that room. There isn't anything that I look at and I just go, wow, that really, that really stands out. You know, I guess anything that we kind of put in was there was a chasm with two bridges. And I know it's like, don't take that bridge, take this bridge. And I get that.

But when we redid it, we added some new puzzles to it and it was just much more fun. And so I guess those things, and then there were other rooms that we just said, there was a troll bridge that we just went, I don't know why a troll is there. Let's not put that in. So there were definitely rooms like that where we said, let's not do that. So you really treated the remake as an opportunity to sort of refine things and take out the stuff that works or didn't work and improve on the things that did work. Right. And also, the story in Shadowgate, the early Shadowgate was, you know, a wizard drops you off and says, good luck, basically, right? And then not much more is given to you other than occasionally you'll come across him or there'll be a scroll or something. And so we really expanded that storyline. And we just said, what are some characters in the game that could go ahead and do that? And what is this Wizard-Lakmere doing during all this time while you're doing all your stuff?

You know, why isn't he helping and stuff? And so we really just fleshed that out a lot more. And so that was the other big push, right? which was, let's just build on the narrative because there just wasn't enough narrative there originally. So going back to the older versions, you said you mentioned that you have worked on, you know, the various ports to it,

but you also mentioned working with Kimco on the NES port. I'd always assume that was, you know, just a Japanese production where they interpreted your game and just kind of did it themselves. Were you involved with that? Well, it's kind of a fun. I mean, we were involved to a certain, degree, right? They first came to us and said, we think we would like to put this out in the

NES. And we just said, you know, it's just, you just can't do it. You can't move windows around. You can't do any of that. It's going to be a pain to use the UI, to use the controller. And they said, no, no, no, no, we really, we really want to try. We're going to go ahead and send you some screenshots and then eventually sent us a ROM, right? And we were really, really impressed. I mean, especially at that time when, you know, it came out fairly early in the development of, of games for the NES and there really wasn't anything out like it. Almost everything was side-scolers or things like that at that point. And so it was more of a, I guess in some ways it was more of a licensor approval.

We spent a ton of time on the text. And so I think of anything, Carl and I, we would get a new, you know, a new facts with text. And we would be, you know, you had a certain character limit. And our friends at Kempco, they ended up translating it, from English or Japanese, and then when they were giving it back to us, they would translate it from Japanese back to English. And it was, it needed some work.

I don't say that. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, that's, I didn't realize you had worked on the localization and the text yourself, but that does explain why the text in that game was so much, it was just so much better. It read so much better than other NES games at the time. It was not just grammatically correct, which was hard to come by, but actually funny, it was witty and interesting.

And, you know, some of the things were just, we would have to ask the questions. I remember one, you know, specific thing, you know, which was, I think, maybe. So there were a couple things, and we had a couple text strings in Shadowgate if you did something that, or if you couldn't do something, use an arrow on a skull. I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right? And so we had generic responses like, hey, you can't do that. or that's a mistake or whatever it was. And they would, you know, they translated that in Japanese and they translated back to us with, you pulled a boner.

And that was their big thing. And we would just, we would laugh at that. And we understood the context because that certainly is an English phrase, right? So I made a mistake. And so we would just be going back and back and forth on that. And they were really cool about it. And loved working with Kempco on all those, all those. games. Yeah, and the interview we did by email about the remake, you had high praise for the

music that they added to the game. Right. So that, all that, all that music was done by Hirouki Masuno. And some of those chip tunes, I've been told by many fans, many people, that those are some of their favorite pieces of music. And they are lovely. They're really wonderful. And so I remember contacting him and asking if, when I first started, working on 2014, the 2014 game, to see if I could get those chip tunes. And he remembered me, which was very cool, very nice. And then he said, well, you know, I just worked for Chemco. You have to contact them. And, of course, I contacted them. And none of the folks that I knew ended up working there,

you know, are still there. But, but, you know, then they were gracious to let me use them. But the music is just so important. And I remember, obviously, I wanted to include the chip tunes in the game, but then I wanted to take it to another level. And I remember being, maybe I mentioned this in my email, but I was at Virginia Beach with my family, and they were all frolicking in the water, and I'm just sitting under an umbrella,

and I'm on YouTube, and I just went in and typed in, you know, Shadowgate to see, you know, this is the best place I figured I could find a musician. And I found a guy named Rich Douglas, who was a huge Shadowgate fan, had done this epic score, taking, you know, Heriuki's music, you know, chip tunes and converting it. And, um, and I was hooked. And then, I remember that day, we worked out a contract that day, which was great for

the new game and stuff. So, um, I just think that those particular tunes, um, you know, I've always loved them. I think they're great. Dejaveau ones, uninvited ones are all great. So were you involved with any of the other projects, uh, Kimco made that were kind of shadow gate like? In addition to the McVenture games, they also had a game called, sort of hope, which I don't know if you've ever played, but it feels, it feels very much like they took the Shadowgate, you know, the McVenture interface, and then kind of turned it into a more traditional Japanese role-playing game. Like I discovered it for the first time a few years ago and instantly was like, whoa, this is, this is like the Shadowgate spinoff I never played

before. It was produced internally by Kimco. Yeah, you should check it out sometime. It's really interesting. It's a different take on the concept, but it really seems like, you know, they took that the work, the work they had done on the McVenture games and said, what if we, what if we took this in a different direction? Joe, APG? Yeah, no, I've never played it. You know, I know that we continue to work with them, you know, when we put out the, the color game boy versions of Shadowgate, and then we were working on a game called Shadowgate

Rising for the N64, and oh, then we worked on, very loosely worked on their Shadowgate 64 game. And so, you know, we had kept in touch with them for quite. quite a long time, but no, I never played that. That is something I definitely would like to do. I know that there are games out there now. There's some 8-bit game type-generating tools, and I've seen another game out there that's very much, very much like that. We've actually talked internally about creating some games that are just specifically

based on these properties that have that 8-bit feel. I mean, the exact same interface and stuff. It's just another thing to do. So, yeah, so to kind of wrap this up, I don't want to take up too much of your time. You mentioned earlier that you had bought the rights, not just to Shadowgate, but several of the other McVenture games, the Icom games. Right. So given that DejaVu is your favorite, do you see yourself doing something in the vein of the Shadowgate remake with those properties sometime? You know, I do, I just don't know where it fits and that things.

Uninvited, people have asked me a lot, a ton about uninvited. And, you know, we actually did a new design for it, which was kind of interesting. But I just feel like there's so many good horror haunted house games out there. And horror really isn't my thing as much. Deja Vu, we actually did another prototype for that as well, which was completely in 3D. This was right before we had started working on this Greek God game Argonus that we put out last year. And it's something that I am definitely interested in. You know, I just don't know.

It doesn't have quite the audience that Shadowgate does. I mean, I would say that the number of emails I get about Shadowgate or things about Shadowgate compared to the other two is significantly higher. But I definitely want to do something with them. I feel like, you know, it would be maybe a big anniversary type thing, you know, with that. So right now I'm still kind of concentrating on Shadowgate. We've got a couple things this year we're working on. One is a board game that we're going to be kickstarting, which is going to be really good this summer. And then another project that I can't talk about yet, but it has to do with Shadowgate.

So I'm hoping to get to that, you know, at least Asia Vu. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that would be. And it was nice to put them out again. With abstraction, we put those, and that's in limited run right now, right? I mean, but that's just for Shadowgate, correct, in limited run. But not Deja Boone Univited. Well, there was a compilation for PlayStation 4, and Limited Run did publish that a few years ago.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And so it's great getting those games back out and stuff. But, yeah, I would like to do with it. I think right now it's just a matter of resources and priorities. So. All right. Well, Dave, thanks very much for your time.

Yeah, I was blessed. I'm going to wrap here. But it was great kind of getting your perspective and hearing from someone who, you know, worked on Mac games and NES games that I've. remember from playing back when I was a kid. So if people would like to find the work that you're doing now and just look you up online, where would you recommend they go? Like social media or do you have a website?

Yeah, so you can go to zojoi.com, which is zojoi.com. Of course, if you type in shadowgate.com, it'll just go over there. So you can see what we're working on or what we have worked on. And again, you know, over the next couple months we'll be announcing some new things, especially having to do a shadowgate. So that'll be great. Yeah. All right.

Well, Dave, thanks again for your time. and looking forward to seeing what you have cooking with Shadowgate. Cool. Thanks so much. Thank you. Two team Luce This ring Tso

I'm a man and a man I don't know. I'm trying to Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.