Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 330: No More Heroes

Episode Date: October 12, 2020

After more than a decade in game development, enigmatic creator Suda 51 had his American debut with Killer 7, but 2007 would bring about his first mainstream splash with No More Heroes. This series launched on the Wii when it was still white hot, and managed to distill the off-the-wall and often alienating ideas of Suda into a personality-driven action game. Nearly 13 years after we first met Travis Touchdown, just where has the series been, and where is it headed with its upcoming third game? On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Maddie Copp, and Matt McMuscles as the crew delves deep into the Garden of Madness to discover what makes this offbeat series so compelling. Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon.

This week on Retronauts, Punk's Not Dead. Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie, in today's topic is the No More Heroes series. Yes, we're doing a podcast about a franchise that started on the Wii. I think it's the first time we've done that so far. But again, the Wii is 14 years old this year. And we're going to be talking about the game that didn't,

I don't think it put Suda 1, Suda 51 on the map, but it made the map available to more people. That is my kind of phrase I'm going with here. Before I continue any further, who is with us here today? Matt, I'll have you go first. Who are you exactly? I am Matt McMuzzles.

You might remember me from the internet. I've been making content on said device information superhighway for the better part of 10 years. Specifically for No More Heroes, I was actually a tester on the original version of it on the Wii. Oh. The company I was working for is contracted by Ubisoft. And I quote, no one at Ubisoft wanted to test the game. It was surprising to me to go back and see, oh, Ubisoft published this. It's a game that they would never publish today and probably didn't want to publish back then.

They definitely wouldn't publish it today, but I mean, we'll talk about it. I think at the time, yeah, it was still within their kind of targeting reticle, that type of game. But yeah, and I've been a fan of the franchise ever since then. I've followed it very, very closely. Probably too closely, because I've met Suda 51, two or three times now. And I think by the third time, he, like, kind of rolled his eyes when he saw me. So, yeah, that speaks a lot about my encounters with him. But, yeah, I'm really excited to be on the show today.

And this is your debut on Retronauts, Matt. So welcome. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Like, again, pleasure to be here. I've been kind of Squidward looking down at everyone having fun on Retronauts podcast. We were all frolicking in the sand. in front of your stone house there.

Who is our returning guest to the show? You last heard her on the Super Mario RPG podcast almost 10 months ago. Who is our returning guest? Hi, I'm Maddie Kopp. I'm a freelance artist. I've done a lot of art for some of the Talking Simpsons mini-series. And I am here, I guess I'm like number one Travis Touchdown fan. Oh, wow.

Yeah, I remember, Maddie, I didn't know you were. were a huge fan of the series until you were staying at my place because you were in town and we had come back from having dinner and you made me sit down to watch the new No More Heroes 3 trailer and I had no idea you were that into the series but you're like no we need to watch it now I you know and it's it's one of those things where there's just something about the aesthetic and there's something about like characters that are like supposed to be really cool but they're total losers that just pull me in and what is your history with the series. Does it go back to

the first game? Did you find it late? Yeah, I'm trying to, honestly, I don't super remember. I'm pretty sure I got it fairly recent, or like, fairly soon after it came out. And I was trying to think, like, what, how did I even find this like, you know, stupid, weird wee game? And honestly, I'm kind of thinking I probably saw it on

like X play or something, because I would have been like just going into high school at the time. And I think I remember just, jokes about how you the Wii mode is you have to charge up your beam katana like you're jacking off and like I think I was like wow this game looks amazing yeah my that one motion is like did half the marketing for that game because as silly and as immature as it was um like that's what everyone would kind of talk about just because the we you know that we had that kid like a toy sort of stature around it. Myasma. And it was like this and Mad World and any games that kind of like

did really over the top like stuff like that would actually, you know, like stand out. And I kind of, I think I think I that stuff wasn't revealed. I just saw that original original trailer that was just Travis fighting the one assassin and had a slightly different art style. And I remember seeing that. And all I remembered hearing was that it's from the creator of Killer 7. And while I didn't understand Killer Seven at the time and could barely beat it, I was like, that's all I needed. I was like, oh, oh, geez, the Killer 7 guy, I'll play whatever this will turn out to be. And yeah, there's a jacking off motion in the game. And I was like, ooh, bonus. Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about that, uh, the game in, uh, great detail later. But I, my theory is they thought of the jack off motion first and then they

worked backward to justify it by building an entire game around it. My history with the series was like everybody else in America, I found out about two to 51 by playing Killer 7. And like you, Matt, I could barely finish it. But it was such a unique and original game that was very off-putting to most of the press. But I really loved it. And I was like, what's you going to do next? And it was this game. And it was just a sleepy summer in between the semesters at grad school. I had no job. I was freelancing for a one-up. I think it was like the summer of 08. And I played this over the course of like a weekend and I just really loved it. And I never thought about it again until just recently and when there's talk of reviving the series. So yeah, I'm really interested in getting back into it. And I did replay the entire game for this podcast. It's a good eight hours. It doesn't overstay. It's welcome. And there might be a switch version of this by the time you're listening to this podcast. But I'm not sure at this point where you're now in early August. You're hearing this in early October. So you're in the future. We don't know in the future yet. So, before we talk about No more heroes, I want to talk for a bit about Suda 51, I recommend there's a very good video on YouTube that's made by GameSpot.

it is essentially him going over his entire career and it includes lots of visual aids him drawing on the screen uh it doesn't visit everything in great detail but it shows you like where he was in his life and uh his different experiences in his career and it gave me a lot more respect for him um i did respect him before this but it feels like uh he's a real underdog in the games uh industry even though he owns his own company would you both of you agree with me on that um i i i would say so but definitely less so than it's kind of weird I've been recently replaying

some Grasshopper stuff like Killer is Dead just a few days ago and I would say midway to the end of that generation on the 360 and the PS3 like Grasshopper were pumping out some pretty you know

I wouldn't say AAA games but like you know a B and a half games like Lollipop Chainsaw the aforementioned killer is dead and shadows of the damned and i know shadows of the damn didn't do well i mean you know commercially is certainly but um i think around that era and then not too long after that um god uh what's the name let it die which i was really concerned that was going to like torpedo grasshopper i it just sounds so like risky like oh it's a free to play game but you

you know and then thankfully that was a success so I think around that time period I was like huh grasshopper really is making some you know smart decisions that have paid off actually so I'm happy for them in that way and let it die I think it even still has a player base but like when no more heroes was out and even a few years after that um yeah I would say very very underdog and you know like I think you're you are you're correct and that a suit of anyone like owns the company and he's a little bit more hands off than than it used to be but uh i i think it's weird i think like their their whole um like punk band aesthetic like they're still kind of there where they still haven't really burst through with

like you know a multi-million dollar selling game but i don't think that's what they even really want per se like i don't think they want to have that pressure and you know crunch maybe affecting the company i think they're happy doing their own thing and it seems like they're continuing to do so. And I was just going to say, Sue to 51, he's one of those guys that doesn't have as many fans, but he has, like, the most passionate fans. Yeah, I...

So that bolsters him up a bit. I've kind of been hot and cold on him throughout his entire career where I'd be really into him, but then he would let me down, and then there'd be a game where I really like it, and then he'd let me down again. So I've been really hot and cold, and now it's running hot for me.

Like, I've just played a lot of Travis Strikes Back recently. I'm like, no, he still got it. And, I mean, I do like the punk rock aesthetic, but you can only be so punk rock when you're like 53 years old and in the industry for 30 years with a family. So in a way, it is like the dad at the club or the dad at the rock show, you know, in the front row. Like, what's he doing here? Hello, fellow kids. I feel there's something about, like, I don't know, you kind of expect that. Like, when it's someone making these kind of off-the-wall titles, you expect there to be a lot of misses.

Like, it would be weird if they hit every time. You kind of expect them to be kind of janky and not great all the time. But then like when you're blown away, you're just like, oh, man, this is the greatest ever. Yeah. What are some misses for you? I honestly don't know a lot about his other stuff outside of No More Heroes. I'm just very passionate No More Heroes fans. And I haven't really had the chance to explore his other stuff.

What about you, Bob? I've only played one of his adventure games. And actually, in the recent Steam sale, I bought a. Killer 7, both Silver Case games, and Killer is Dead for PC. So I'm going to do a lot of Grasshopper catching up, but I played Flower Sun and Rain, the DS port of that. And I just thought it was a really cool style, but just one of the most tedious adventure games I'd ever played in my life and just wasn't really into it. I would agree with that, because he was really happy to get that port out there, that Steam port or Silvercase, I want to say. And those particular two games, I'm kind of like, yeah, these are.

stylish. I'm sure he loves his stuff. But yeah, this is not for me, these games, these pre-Killer seven titles. So let's talk about his entire career. So born in 1968, he is one of the handful of Gen X developers from Japan that have a real like enigmatic style all their own, a real ature style. Like I consider him in the same league with, not like quality wise, but in the same sort of personality league as people like Hideo Kojima, Swery, uh, Kazutaka, Kodaka, he's a dog and rompa guy there are so many like gen x japanese games creators with like a very very strong a distinct style and he is definitely one of them and uh for this little history on him we're only going to go up to 2007 but we'll talk about a few of the things that he did after that of course

so um he has an interesting life in that uh before he became a game developer he was working a lot of odd jobs and he was considering pursuing a career in the mortician industry uh reports on this said he was like oh was he an undertaker was he a mortician and he was really just involved in like the supply aspect of a what's the word I'm looking for funeral home there you go he was like in charge of like ordering flowers and arranging them and he thought like well maybe this is what my life is going to be and he credits his wife a lot in these histories with like no my wife is like do you really want to do this for the rest of your life like his wife saw this creative spark in him that wasn't being fulfilled he pursued some work at

Sega and his first work there was not even designing games but actually um working on advertisements for the then new virtual racing. And before he was able to make the ads, Yu Suzuki, the director of the game, was like, no, I want the designer of the ads to play the game first. And that is the first time he got to look at like what game development is. And he's like, oh, all these guys are my age. They're all like listening to music on headphones.

They're all like young, cool guys. I thought they'd be just a bunch of like old professors working at computers. But no, like game development is for me. And that is what gave him the idea, like, I could probably do this. I never actually heard that that bit of his, is the start of his career before. I didn't even know about the Sega connection at all. Very interesting.

Yeah, he didn't end up working at Sega at all. He just got like an insider look, but he would apply at a bunch of places, one of them being human entertainment. And the story went, again, he credits his wife, which is very nice, where he applied, he didn't hear anything. And then his wife was like,

you got to call them and find out, like if there's an opening. So he calls them, and he finds out the director of FirePro Wrestling 3 just left the company, and they needed someone there who knew how to, to write about wrestling.

So he joined that game as a scenario writer. And of course, Fire Pro Wrestling, the series, was basically a Japan-only thing until very, very recently in the States. There was a newer version of FirePro here. But before that, it was a very popular and very well-made wrestling series for the Super Famicom. And he essentially made his name with this game in that the bad ending for the story mode of this game ends with the main character committing suicide. And that is something not done in Super Famicom Games at the time.

There are videos of this online. It's not like a graphic scene, but if the wrestler you're playing as, you know, loses the final bouts, you see, like, the text three days later, and it fades to a shot of the wrestler's house, and you just hear a gunshot. And he said that got him and the company a lot of hate mail, but I guess they respected his spunk at the company because he would go on to direct and write forth. the next game, which was called Super Fire Per Wrestling Special. And yeah, that is where he started writing for wrestling games for human entertainment. It's pretty funny because not only is that kind of like, you know, very shocking for a Super Nintendo, Super Famicom game, but, you know, pretty true to life, given the wrestling industry, like that's something they, you know, don't talk about too often, how the sport of professional

wrestling can often lead to early deaths of various. causes, suicide being one of them. So when I first heard about that, I was just like, whoa, because I knew a fire pro, but I don't think that particular fire pro was available in Western parts of the world. But I had heard about that pretty early on. Like maybe I would say, like, around No More Heroes' release date. And I was just like, wow, just the balls on this guy. And big ups to human entertainment for being like, well, why don't you do some more?

see what you can do with it yeah and then from there his career like no more heroes is like nothing he made before uh that so like he went from writing wrestling games to uh directing these uh this adventure game series called twilight syndrome these have never even been fan translated and uh the director for that uh left the project so he was put on to guide it and uh these are basically unknown in the states except if you played donganrumpa two one of the cases is based on a twilight syndrome game which is a very weird poll, but that's how I was made aware of this Suda series that, again, not even fan-translated.

So, yeah, he took over the two Twilight Syndrome games, and then he ended up directing a follow-up to those where he was more involved in the creative process called Moonlight Syndrome, I believe it's called, something like that. And I watch videos of these, and if you looked at the Clock Tower game for the Super Famicom, it looks a lot like that. It's like an adventure game viewed from a side perspective,

and it's like horror, horror and supernatural elements are part of it. It looks really cool, but no translation at all for these games. So you have to know Japanese to play them. They look neat, though. So, yeah, after this, he would go on to leave human entertainment. Things were bad for human. They were, you know, on the verge of going bankrupt.

They eventually would. But this is when Suda decided, I want to make my own company. And that's when Grasshopper manufacturer was born in 1998. Grasshopper being named after a, I believe, a song by a, British rock band. Like he is way, everything he does is either references to British rock or wrestling. That's everything he does, suit of 51. And those are two worlds I know nothing about.

So, yeah, we could talk about grasshopper stuff. They do a ton of stuff, like you said, Matt. They did, like, license games. They have a lot of output, a lot of different people making games there. I only want to talk about the suit of 51 director games for now. So their first game was called the Silver Case. It's a visual, novel, style, adventure game for PlayStation. Again, this just got a remand.

in 2016, and in Japan there was a follow-up for cell phones and that got a remake in 2018. Those are both on Steam. I do want to push my way through those, but they are not like my style of adventure game, but they are very interesting to look at.

And this is where Masafumi Takata would enter the picture, a fantastic musician, and he would collaborate a lot with Suda on his projects, and he is also the composer of the Dangan Rampa series. Dangan Rampa does feel very Suda-inspired. as well, even though he had nothing to do with those games.

And then other Suda stuff, 2001 is Flower Sun and Rain. This is a PS2 adventure game. That's a DS port in 2008 by the time everyone knew who Suda was. And like I said earlier, I tried to get into this. But it's a really weird and really tedious and talky adventure game. And all of the puzzles are kind of like Professor Layton puzzles, except all of the answers are four-digit codes. And how you find those codes is different every time,

but it's just not very fun. I don't know, I forget earlier, did either of you say you played this one? No, I was actually thinking of the silver case. Okay. I never actually played flower, sun, rain. I was really close to, but then I was like, nah, you know,

because I've heard it's really obtuse as well and tedious. So, you know, you chalk that up to, like, you know, your favorite creators or creators you admire. And, you know, sometimes they have stuff that they've made, that you're just, like, you just pass them by. You're like, yeah, no, I respect that they cut their teeth, making these things. But, yeah, they're not for me. So, you know, I'll gravitate towards the things that they make that, you know,

you do take a passionate, like, sort of liking to. And No More Heroes is definitely one of those and a couple other grasshopper games. But all of his point-click text adventure stuff, yeah, I never really dived into them too much. Yeah, I think the problem is we're missing a lot of. of the context for these games and that it's a style of adventure game that we didn't get and by the time we got these kind of games they were all Phoenix Wright games

which is I think is like the best version of the Japanese adventure game is whatever is ripping off Phoenix Wright is fine like just keep doing that forever but these are a lot slower they are a lot less interactive there are a lot more about atmosphere than actually player action and you could be into those and that's fine

but that is basically where he came from is making this kind of adventure game but 2005 was a big year Prusa. This is when everybody found out who he was and we were like who is this guy? Where did he come from? And there are all these games he made in the past that never came to America.

So yeah, Killer 7, that was his debut in America. It was one of the famous Capcom 5, all intended to be GameCube exclusives. They all left except PNO3 I believe is still forever stuck on the GameCube. Nobody wanted it.

It's okay. Resident Evil 4 has had enough ports to make up for everything. that's true it's uh it's been ported to helen back and uh piano three i wanted to try but i think it's mainly uh the game involves just looking at a butt and there are several games we knew which you can do that and the butts are far more accurately rendered these days anyhow i know that there is a small very small group of people that are like no piano 9 oh all the time um and i think for that game specifically well obviously you won't not gonna spend too much time on it because you didn't have anything specifically to do with it but i just heard people say say like you have to play it like it's supposed to be a third person game but it's like galaga or space invaders or you know it's it's it's meant to be like that it's an arcade score attack game but people thought it was going to be you know devil may cry or you know a third person shooter of that ilk uh with like you know some sort of melee elements but it just didn't really wasn't appealing to actually play it's very clunky and stuff but uh i'm sure that that that main

character Vanessa Z. Schneider will show up in a Capcom versus Fighter one day. She's got to be one of the strategy games we never get over here. Yeah. Yeah, so like this is part of the Capcom 5, Killer 7. These games are all like executive produced by Shinji Makami, the creator of Resident Evil. And because of that, I

honestly feel like Killer 7 is the one game that he made that had like both the time and the money to come into being as intended. And it helped that this game was worked on by McCami. He is the co-writer of the game and a big producer on it. And I feel like he is a guy who gave Suda a lot of power and kind of pushed him to the level that he is now in the industry. Without Killer 7, I don't think he would be as known as he is today.

Yeah, absolutely agree with that. And we will be doing an episode on this in the future. I really want to replay it because there is a PC version that is very under advertised and it actually makes the gameplay a lot easier because you can play with the mouse. And it's very, very easy that way. And the point of the game is not to be, you know, set against this challenging action. The point is to absorb the story. So I feel like that is the best way to play it, and we'll be talking about that at some point in the future. So after that, a few years pass, and he directs No More Heroes in 2007, and we'll talk about that very soon,

but I'll just go over a few other things he's done. Things like, so things he directed include samurai shampoo sidetracked, and an odd one, something he co-directed was the Wii exclusive Fatal Frame game that never came to America that was developed by Grasshopper, looks really cool, but that was at a time when just so many Wii things were just staying in Japan because the Wii was functionally dead. Yeah, I've played that. That's like one of the best fatal frame games in terms of atmosphere, it's scares and stuff.

Its controls are not optimal. I believe there was some sort of dispute between Techmo. Tecmo, I guess, held the rights, but Nintendo also co-published it. The whole Fatal Frame situation that Nintendo has sometimes. type of pull with the series. Like they technically, or they own a part of it or techma. And both companies constantly blame each other. They're like, oh, Nintendo doesn't want to bring this game over to America.

Then Nintendo goes, no, it's Techmo. That's the problem. Anyway, that's actually a really, really scary game. And it's just the controls that kind of hold it back a little bit. But it's actually one of my favorite games in the entire series. I really wish it would get a port. I even dug through and found like a trans. translated ROM ISO that like someone had put together and it was mostly translated.

It made it far easier to play. But yeah, really, really underrated game there. It looked really cool. Yeah, it was one of those late weed gems. And so, yeah, those are the games he's directed. And I believe he's like co-director on Travis Strikes Back. And that was his first like seat, at least sharing the director's chair for a long time. But other grasshopper stuff I wanted to go over.

Just the highlights, Michigan Report from Hell, unreleased in America. janky as hell, but a... I love it. It's so cool. Like, look up a YouTube of it, possibly the worst voice acting ever recorded, but an idea that should be revisited. It is a horror-themed Pokemon Snap, and it seems like you have some experience with this, Matt.

Yeah, I've played through it. Now, I've played through it. I've played as much as I can several times, all booted up every so often until I can't take it anymore. It is, it is performance art levels of bad, like everything about it is is so clunky but it's

so entertaining. It reminds me of that dreamcast horror game. Illbleed. Yeah. It's like that. It's yeah, you're right. Some of the worst voice acting will ever hear and it's got a little bit of

the got you said a horror theme Pokemon staff which is a pretty good descriptor but it's also the picture taking mechanic from Dead Rising where you'll you'll you'll you need to shoot horrific things that are happening but not help the people and uh you can also shoot perverted things that are happening like upskirt shots very very mid 2000s very japanese that came yeah i mean we i mean i talked about earlier like a killer seven got

the money it needed this didn't it's such a cool idea but it just so it barely it barely works for what it is like it just it's such a cool thing but it just doesn't function as it should So yeah, Michigan Report from Hell. Really cool import game. Shadows of the Dam, something that I hold dear to my heart because it's one of the first games I got to play as a full-time member of the press in 2011. And it's not like very unique or, you know, particularly amazing.

But I feel like it's a respectable Resident Evil 4-ish game. And I did enjoy more like Evil Dead take on Resident Evil, like a more horror comedy take on that kind of genre. Yeah, I plan to make a video about that game specifically because it was supposed to be very, very different. I think there's a quote somewhere where either Shinji Makami or Suda 51 had said, EA just told us, stop it, just make RE4 again. Yeah, actually, in that video of his career, the GameSpot video, Suda is like, I don't know if I should say this, but if I ever work with the EA again,

I wish they would just approve things and let us work on them instead of having to reapprove everything over and over again. So I do want to check out your video. that's probably going to be part of the What Hapa series, am I correct? Yeah, yeah. It's probably going to be maybe in an October-ish video. So, you know, future people, just because it's, you know, relatively spooky themed. But I've heard, Lon that that was game, that game was going to be like Lovecraft-esque. And it was supposed to be, like, really dark and brooding.

And it kind of got turned into like this Evil Dead style RE4, which is not bad in of itself, that idea. But, you know, it's not the most. memorable grasshopper game by any stretch of the imagination. And then the following year was Lollipop Chainsaw. A game I want to replay, I reviewed it for one-up at the time, and it just felt like an undercooked Devil May Cry style game that didn't feel like it was where it needed to be when it came out. Do either of you have any experience with that game, Ollip Chainsaw?

Do you, Maddie? Nope. Yes, this is another one that I've sunk multiple play-throughs into. try to unlock all all the costumes um and famously a james gun uh did he write the game uh james gunn apparently translated like a base script and like added his own um james gunnish to it um but yeah like you had to rewrite a lot of dialogue remember a quote from saying like the weird thing about video games you have to like write the same lines over and over and over again like the same zombies have to say different things and you kind of run out of gas.

But I think Lollipop Chainsaw, I think it's charm, it gets away with its charm. Not all the jokes hit. Gameplay-wise, there are definitely some problems. It's something that it was like, from what I remember, it was like the first big grasshopper success. Like, multi-million, like a million copies sold plus. and I remember reading because this is a Warner Brothers published game. Right, yeah.

And I remember hearing how it was a success. Like there was an interview, press release, whatever, saying this did really well. And it was always really kind of like, oh, I wish they could have made this a sequel and reiterate on it, polish it. Because the base wackiness and, you know,

the inherent fun of just killing zombies and stuff and this very pulpy, you know, sort of what I want to say? a grindhouse setting like i think was really well done for the most part and it just needed you know maybe another three months of just you know polishing up uh animations and maybe like making some levels a little bit shorter it does kind of go on and on and on um but still a really fun game and it's it's probably one of i was i was disappointed that they didn't well i mean warner brothers probably own the rights to it and wasn't really uh letting grasshopper play with it again

because we'll get to that when we'll talk about Travis Strikes again. Yeah, I'd love to see a PC port of Shadows the Dam and Lollipop Chainsaw just because Grasshoppers putting out a lot of their old games on the PC and they look better than ever before, including Killer is Dead, a game I haven't played, everyone trashed it, but I bought it for $6 in the steam sale in the summer of 2020. I'm like it's at least worth $6 and Matt, it sounds like you played this one as well, Killer is Dead? Yeah, when it was new, I did a full let's play of it, but I went back to it with the Steam version that you're talking about because I did not play the Steam version. The Steam version is called like the Nightmare Edition and it puts all the little bits of DLC, like they didn't have a DLC campaign, but they had little extra levels and missions tacked on. That is, it's weird. it's probably the best combat that grasshopper has ever done but in terms of its story it's one of the more like head scratchers like i'm playing this thing and my head is raw and bloody i'm scratching it so much that does sound like killer seven story wise at least it's it's weird because killer seven makes sense in its own universe whereas like killer is dead barely makes sense

but it's like setting and its characters are more contemporary and easy it's it's it's very conflicting game because some things you're like okay i know what i'm doing here and then other times you're like i i don't understand um but gameplay wise it's it's quite good i think the thing that kind of holds it holds it back it's because the original japanese publisher katakawa I think they demanded that the sexy time sections were put in where your main hero Mando Zappa has to kind of, I think the way, they're called jigolo missions, of course. So you have to kind of talk to women in a bar

and you have x-ray glasses, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And it's something that I think Sudo is pretty vocal about saying, yeah, we didn't want to put these in the game, but they said you need to have some sexy bits. And they're like, okay, here you go. Like, they're harmless when you play them nowadays, but, I mean, it doesn't make the game any better, honestly. And there's enough. There's, there's, there's, there's like, you know, women characters on your team because you're a team of assassins.

And there's women characters on their team that, you know, they're, they're fairly sexy, just like any normal hero's female boss or whatever. I think it was fine the way it was. But it is definitely a game worth, worth trying out because, especially the Steam, version art style wise graphic graphically it's gorgeous it's it's no more heroes one on the we like but turned up to 11 uh just visually it's worth a play through that's cool yeah i mean i love the art style and uh you know no more heroes is a wee game it's uh 480p but for this podcast i was looking at a lot of videos of it of you know playthroughs and whatnot and people have been emulating it in 4k and if there is a a port coming it's going to look gorgeous because this art

style ages very well when you upscale it. And before you move on to No More Heroes, the last game I want to talk about in the Grasshopper Notable Games is Let It Die. I'm only bringing this up because, like, I never play free-to-play games because I have so many other games and free-to-play games become like a part of your lifestyle, like you need to check in every day, you need to play it every week, you need to make sure you're actively being part of it or else you're wasting your time and your money. This is the only one of these games where I played it for over 100 hours and I probably

spent like $50 or $60 on it. I think it's like one of the most well-made free-to-play games although it is grindy as hell. But in a way that I found very soothing. That was like the first time I met Sudo was at Pax East and that game made its playable

debut and when you're playing it in demo form like a I think the whole thing was like survive until the end, survive until the boss and very dark souls ish. And I liked it but I was like you know, I'll have to see

when it comes out. And I did play it for like a few hours, but it still wasn't really for me, but I still respected it because it had that grasshopper charm. God, what's his name? Uncle Skeleton? He's great. Is his name Uncle Skeleton?

I think Rich Uncle Skeleton. I think you're thinking of Rich Uncle Skeleton. No. Uncle death is a cool, like a rad as hell character, like a skateboarding skeleton with like rad sunglasses. Yeah. He's my PSN avatar for like the last four years or whatever. When the game came out, I was just like, yeah, he's fun.

So the game has lots of charm, but like I was still kind of like, yeah, it's not exactly for me. But I'm super glad that was a hit for Grasshopper because I was like, oh, I mentioned it before, but I was like, this might sink the company if this doesn't do well. Oh, God, I hope it does well. It's very happy for them. It seems like it's still doing well because I still follow the Facebook page and though I haven't played it in two years. and there are still updates all the time like, oh, this event is happening and oh, log in today to get to get this. So that thing that's sustaining them for the most part.

But yeah, that is a brief history on Grasshopper and Suda 51. And when we come back, we'll talk all about the No More Heroes series. Hello, my name is Jonathan Dunn, and I'm inviting you to listen to Our Three Sense, a weekly podcast where myself and two of my very best gaming chums are counting down our top 100,000. favorite video games of all time. For all the episodes and information, check out our website, www.org.com.com. I'm thirsty, but water just won't cut it right now.

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Only on the Greenlit Podcast Network. So we are back to talk about no more heroes, starting with the first game, of course. And I want to talk a bit about the development of the game. Unfortunately, there is not a lot online. because I don't think people really care too much about Suda at the time to want to talk to him and there's only like two or three interviews that I could dig up oh sorry Matt

I don't care about you I don't want to talk to you I feel like all of the the interviews that happened were just like I've had these interviews before in the press are like talk to that guy it's like oh what do he's making this game go talk to him and that's like you don't know who he is

you don't know the context for it and I feel like a lot of his interviews were just like how many levels will the game have like There was no real deep insight into like, no, you're talking to Suda 51. Talk about movies and music and wrestling and stuff. Like, it was just like your beat reporter in the games press being shoved into a room with Suda to talk about this game. They had no idea what it was. But, yeah, so what I could find out is that it was working, it was running under the working title of Project Heroes.

It was going to be a 360 game. And the producer on it, Yaso Hiro Wada, who was also the creator of Harbos Moon, he suggested that's like, let's make this a Wii game. The Wii is kind of cool. And even Suda was like, well, yeah, the Wii is not out yet, but it's going to be more of a family-oriented system. And this could be like a mature game for it to show that's like, oh, that audience will want something as well, something to play as well. But yeah, that was the kind of narrative at the time that the Wii was the baby system. I have a ton of affection for the Wii. And there's a ton of great hardcore games for it.

But in the press, it was not taken seriously at all. Yeah, like I feel very much the same way. Like I look back on the Wii very, very fondly. Yes, there's tons of family fodder, but there's lots of gems in there that, like, wouldn't have been possible, like, without the Wii being what it was. And No More Heroes, when that was, like, I mentioned that, like, really early trailer when it was called Project Heroes. I've always heard this, but I don't know about, like, how true it is. But the only reason it changed names was because they ran into, like, you know, problematic issues trying to get that name because heroes the NBC show was like at the time like still going on but then when I actually tried to

look that up I couldn't really find anything there's like one article that stated as a rumor on like IGN insider board so it's it's I didn't really trust it it could be that could be more reputable I guess but but his the title of the the game does rip something else off like everything he does it is the the title of a song by the stranglers called no more heroes you're going to hear it in this podcast. It's a band I've never heard of. It's a song I've never heard of, but Suda loves British rock so much. And there was

a one-up panel with him, or sorry, a one-up post-panel interview with him at some GDC after the game came out. And he talked about, like, everything that influenced the game. This is where all the information comes from, this panel he did after the game came out. So a big inspiration for this game was El Topo.

Just the idea of like an assassin battle. Like somebody has to take out a number of assassins. And the movie it's like three or four and the game it's 10 and I think like it's seemingly all of his games involved in assassins in some way yeah I think I think there's he like you know the cornetto trilogy you know Sean of the Dead and and hot fuzz like a suita has a name for this like anything that involves assassins swords whatever he calls it something but I always forget what exactly yeah he said this is a part of a trilogy with two other games I think maybe

samurai champlain and blood like they're their they're video game version of blood the anime series where it's just like they all use swords and yeah it's like an evolution of playing with a sword in a video game something like that i think even killer is dead was like added later or you know he threw that around because that was another game he did not direct but i mean produced or you know over sought or whatever but uh yeah like um in in general when it was it was uh normal heroes was well no more heroes i forget when that that name actually they started using it but I was just like oh okay cool it's called no more heroes now and then when I was working at my my job doing QA like everyone's lazily sitting around in a meeting they're like oh okay I was a team

lead at this time they're like okay so we have another game called uh what is it and a guy like looks at a piece of paper and goes no more heroes uh for the we and everyone else groans and I raise my hand and go, I'll take it, all, I'll give it to me. And yeah, I found myself like working with Ubisoft and Ubisoft really, really didn't. Well, the main producer kind of like cared, but he was saying like his boss is like nobody and Ed Ubisoft wanted to test. They have like a huge QA department. They were like, no, just give it to somebody else. And we're based in Montreal as well as with Ubisoft and I was I was I was clicking my heels just pinching myself going oh my god I get to test no we're heroes yeah at the time yeah Ubisoft was not quite like when this game released

Assassin's Creed 1 had come out and it was not quite the you know uh I mean people thought it was cool but two is the one that put the series on the map and two is the reason why we still have games today like people were kind of iffy on one so it felt like Ubisoft was trying a lot of different things including getting on getting in bed with grass Hopper and doing very Japanese-style games. They published a bunch of Naruto games. Oh, that's right. Damn.

It's so weird. Like, you compare just like 10 years ago to now. They put out a Hooters game. I kind of missed that era of Ubisoft where it's like they weren't just making three versions of the same game every year. Just like, just try everything. You have lots of money. Thankfully, that guy that does that at Ubisoft is like, you know, got kicked out of the

company. That's true. That might change their culture in more ways than one. I guess we'll see. Other things that inspired the game include Jackass, the movie, and presumably the TV series. When I was sitting down to play the game, I'm like, making notes in my head.

I'm like, Travis touched on obviously. He's a bit of Johnny Knoxville, a bit of Brad Pitt from Fight Club, and then I was reading about this. It's like, no, he is just Johnny Knoxville. Like, Suda 51 loves Jackass, and when pitching this game to his team, like he is showing them clips of Jackass, and his team is not laughing.

They're like, why are you showing this this? Why do you think it's funny? But like, this essentially is coming as close to just stealing Johnny Knoxville as he can without being sued. Like, this is the Johnny Knoxville jackass game. And I have no full disclosure. I don't like jackass. Yeah, no, that's funny because I'm the exact same way. I can't stand it, but I love Travis touchdown.

So I don't know. I mean, like, maybe Matt can. I think it must be the like the otaku part. that they shoved into him that just made him so much more special. Yeah. I think Travis has a lot of things in him and I think all those things

like if you just, if he was just jackass, then I don't think you'd have all that much appeal or very limited appeal because you put attack his stuff because you put wrestling, that's what makes him like a character that that is very appealing at the end of the day.

Yeah, like I kind of have a grudge against jackass because it turned all of my indoor friend my indoor kid friends and two outdoor teens who wanted to like hurt themselves and I was like I just want to play Mario Kirk guys and they were all like no let's break this TV and get shards of glass in our legs and I was not on board with that

and I blame Johnny Knoxville but I've gotten over it but yeah this is yeah Travis touchdown Johnny Knoxville to a T and he still is all these years later and a funny thing about this game is like obviously

there are Star Wars references in the game because you have a fucking lightsaber you're swinging it around and makes the same noises but Suda is very, very cagey about this. And in the video on GameSpot, he's just like, oh, you know, just to be safe, we're going to say it's from spaceballs, not Star Wars. Actually, he doesn't even say Star Wars. It's like, oh, it's a reference to Spaceball's or this Japanese series called Space Sheriff Gavan.

But I'm thinking like, it's plausible that this could be a Spaceball's reference because in spaceballs, the light swords were a metaphor for your penis. And it's very much the same thing in No More Heroes. You know, Beam Catana is legally distinct, which is the best type of distinct. I was going to say it's also like a million times cooler. It is, yeah. These are way cooler than lightsaber. You can just buy them online, I guess, according to the game story. As an aside, while testing the game, like, they just straight up had slightly blurred posters of Revenge of the Sith in the video store.

Oh, wow. Like, they're different now in the final game, but we were like, don't, like, you write a bug and they're like, legal issue. Do not show Star Wars things. Oh, I'm sure George Lucas isn't litigious, right? I've never heard of such a thing, but he's got a sense of humor. I think there's an enemy that appears later on in the game that's just basically a dark trooper, a Thai fighter pilot, rather. And we were like, eh, eh, like we made a bug, like maybe change just the helmet, just a different color or something. And they never did, thankfully, nothing came of it.

But there were a lot of, there were a lot of more overt Star Wars references in background textures and stuff that they, that they smartly changed. Wow, I had no idea. That's, I guess they were skirting closer to possible lawsuits in an earlier version of the game. Yeah. And the, the location of the game in this, in this panel that suited. it did. He said it was based on Dirty Harry. But Dirty Harry took place and was filmed in

San Francisco. And then he said, we went to San Diego for research and San Diego is a very, very different looking town than San Francisco. As someone who lives near San Francisco, I can tell you that. And this town, Santa Destroy, the town of the game, is such a Southern Californian flat

flat town. It is not San Francisco at all. Yeah, I don't know. I could get like a San Jose vibe from it maybe. Like that part of northern California. It could be. Yeah, it's definitely not San Francisco. No, it's not San Francisco.

No, there's no hills. There's like one hilly area in Santa Destroyed. It's not even that hilly. But yeah, it is very, like, to me, it is a very flat Southern California town. You can just feel like the heat. Big roads and palm trees and buildings and, like, no grass. And broken dreams. The, the sidewalks are scattered with them.

But, yeah, Matt, you were talking. talking about earlier, there was an earlier trailer that was more violent. And in some early interviews, it seemed that this game was going to be a much more violent, less cartoonish game. And Suda was even saying pre-release, like, I want this game to be as violent as Hitman 2. And I guess in a way it is because you're seeing like a head get chopped off every three seconds. But to me, like, weirdly enough, it doesn't feel like a violent game because when you cut a head off, coins fly out of the neck stump along with blood. Yeah, I was going to say, like, how could you make it more violent?

make it more realistic looking? I guess more like grizzly and more more realistic. Yeah, because there's so, I mean, there's lots of just like spurting blood, but like you said, it's, it's cartoony and it's stylized. So it's just kind of like, oh. The cell shading also like just in general makes things look less realistic that way as well. Yeah, I guess this was censored in Japan though,

because they are a little more touchy about violence in the past like 20 years. and the blood is now just like black clouds but in America we have the full the full geysers in our version in Europe too

is also it also had the black clouds in Europe and I remember at the time I remember reading because yeah I'm gonna admit it I was on the IGN

insider forums I paid oh I was there in like 2002 sorry Matt yeah no no problem I remember Europeans being really pissed

like Australians as well just like oh god we get this why why like and i think there was like a big hullabaloo about that even with the the the later 360 and ps3 versions how the three there's a 360 version i've never played because i don't think it ever actually came out in the west i think it was yeah that's so weird yeah japanese version of the 360 game is japan only that is bizarre that came up in my notes and i was like how was there like an original 360 game in japan I don't understand that. I want to also bring up the character designer for this game.

Oh, please do. Yeah, Yuske Kozaki, his main job is as a manga artist, but none of his titles are known over here. But he's been the character designer on all four of the No More Heroes games. And I think one of the reasons these games are so cool is that the character designs are really incredible. And his, I think his first credit as a character designer was on Oestatake Oendon, which is the Japanese cheerleader dancing game on the DS that, like, they made elite beat agents over in the U.S. That was kind of like the spiritual sequel to it.

Yeah, I forgot that designer worked. I can definitely see similarities in just the very strong and striking character design between both games. Yeah, yeah, and that game is super stylized and has those really like. these like straight bold lines and then yeah and then he brought all his just these really cool designs to all for the no more hero games and he's also done stuff uh fire emblem awakening and fates and he also did the designs for Pokemon Go so yeah it's kind of like a varied career but if you look at all those things you can see you know kind of his style on these kind of cool spiky characters that he creates yeah he's got to design a lot of unique

characters for these games because they're all designed around fighting a bunch of cool looking bosses. But yeah, let's talk about No More Heroes. The game released in December of 2007 in Japan and just a month later in the US and January of 08. So available for the Wii and in the States there was a PS3 version that was Move compatible. Hey, remember Move? I kind of do. And I reviewed this 4-1-up and when I sat down to play it, I'm like, you know what, I like the Wii game. It ran at about 24 frames per second on a good day. So it's going to be fun to see this with the power of the PS3 and you know what I kind of think it ran worse those are my memories of the game and Matt I think you have experience with this one the PS3 port of No More

Heroes yeah it absolutely runs worse and maybe not in all areas but it's it's very consistent with the Wii performance and I think in some areas it's like worse in general uh that being said I was always like really dismissive of the port before I played it because you know it's like 2008, 2009, whenever it came out. So I was like, uh, the Wii's the best. Yeah, shut up. PSR. Nobody likes you, you know.

Um, so as you do. And it was mostly because pseudo was really, really dismissive of the port because it was not done by grasshopper. It was done by, I want to say, uh, feel plus, uh, makers of bullet witch. And, um, yeah, uh, I was kind of like, oh, this isn't like the director's vision. And at that time, I was,

really on board the pseudatrain where I was like, no, he's an author, he knows what he wants, and it isn't, you know, and it was really weird that Konami somehow were the ones that published this port. Like, how does that happen? Like, Atakao Marvelous had the rights in Japan, then Ubisoft had it in North America, but then Konami got it for some reason. Yeah, it was a year after the sequel, the Wii sequel, this came out in 2011. So maybe Ubisoft was like, we don't want no more heroes anymore you can you can put this port out yourself or find somebody else to do it there's something else that's weird about the port is that they also added a japanese dub to it okay because Travis has always like been in english and he's voiced um his you know his english voice

is really good and it's very uh true to his character he's voiced by a british actor actually which is weird but his name is robert act and downs and he does like this really good job and but then in into the japanese dub he's voiced by kazi and akai who's the voice the voice of Zorro in One Piece. Whoa. It's really bizarre. Like, it doesn't fit him at all. And I don't know why they decided to do a Japanese dub of it.

I mean, I guess that's star power, but not a fitting voice at all for Travis Touchdown. It's super weird. It's weird hearing Zoro say Moe. I need a clip of that. It's not a really deep voice, doesn't he? Yeah, yeah. And it just, like, doesn't work for a loser nerd. It's just, it's so strange.

But because this game came out in the first, like, 18 months of that console, the Wii, it uses, like, all of the Wii stuff. But I'm actually surprised by how reserved it is, where you could have easily made this into a Twilight Princess-style experience where you're just, like, swinging the Wii mode back and forth to do the sword swings. But no, you attack with the A&B buttons, and then the swings of the Wii mode are done very selectively when you're doing the finishing moves on the enemies, and it does feel very satisfying.

So you wear it on an enemy's health, and then, like, a little prompt will appear on the screen, and that's when you move the controller in a certain direction to lop off their head or cut them in half or so on. So I was... It's still brilliantly designed the way that they... Especially early on in the Wii's life cycle to make that smart decision, like, because a lot of companies did not.

Yeah, I definitely remember I introduced it to one of my friends and she like kept trying to swing it, like to use the sword. I'm like, no, no, no, you don't do that. Just be patient. You do it when you do the wrestling moves. Yeah, I think, like, every game developer thought of a sword when they first saw the Wemo, but then they realized, like, oh, this can't really work the way we wanted to, and only until the Wemo Plus came out. Could you actually have your one-to-one sword game, and that was Skyward Sword. Like, it wasn't happening for the Wii in the first four or five years.

And also, like, it made me remember all the things the Wemoat could do. And it has what I call Flintstone Phone Technology in which, yeah-a-de-a-do, Sylvia's talking to you. Before every boss fights, you get a little call on your Wii Mote. This is like one of my favorite things about this game. I remember like my first time playing it and like the Wii remote starts like ringing and vibrating and I'm like, what? And you like lift it up to your ear and you're like, hello? It's so, it's so cheesy and like only, I mean, I'm sure more games supported, but I can think of like two or three others that use this. It's like Zach and Wiki, Silent Hill Shattered memories and fragile dreams and a few other ones.

But like it's such a cheesy trick, but I do like it playing with the controller like that. And then I remember like, oh, yeah, my PS4 controller could do this too, but absolutely nobody is making any games that do this for the PS4. No. Complete waste of technology. It's weird because I'm not sure if he designed that because the remote could do that, or that was always going to be in the game. Those long conversations with Sylvia before a boss fight where, like,

that's the only time someone really calls you on the phone other than when, like, you're in a static cut scene. And that's a fact I've never seen Suna specifically talk about. Maybe it's in there in an interview somewhere. But like you said, most interviews were like, what do you do in No More Heroes? Travis Touchdown, eh? I was going to say that I do love how it breaks up the gameplay, though. So whether it was, you know, there from the start or not, because it's like you have,

you fight your way through all the assassins. And then you have this, like, really calm moment where you're just like talking on your Wii remote phone before you go into the final battle so I think it kind of creates this really smooth gameplay it does feel a bit like in killer seven uh before you fight the boss you're in this area with no combat and like the coolest music ever so it feels like a similar like an echo of that like a nice like a little rest before a big boss fight that lets you chill out a bit The plot, I do like the plot of all these games because they make a big joke about how, like, you are dumb to care about the plot and the characters are aware they're in a game. And the games are kind of written like wrestling or soap opera stories and that everybody's got like an evil twin or like a secret sister or like all of these weird plot twists that are not, you know,

know, earned at all. But the plot is summed up in the beginning very quickly, and what feels like in any other game, it would be a longer cutscene or an interactive sequence, and like, Travis essentially suckered into entering this assassin's contest by killing someone for money, unaware that when he kills this person, he is killing the 11th ranked assassin, and now he's part of that list, and he's got to work his way up to the top. And essentially, he's doing it all because he's extremely horny for the woman who is succoring him into doing all of this and this just giant extortion scheme that he is gladly taking part in. So like with every new assassin, you have to buy your way into the contest and you're paying

off this woman named Sylvia who is promising Travis sexual favors that never come, ultimately. In this game. In this game, right. I didn't play a lot of two. So maybe it pays off for Travis in the end. But, I mean, like, now we have the words for this. I didn't have in 2007. Travis is, I think the kids would call him a fuckboy.

And he's, quote, unquote, simping. Is that, am I correct? Yeah, that sounds right. I'm learning. I'm keeping up. I'm keeping up with the slang. But yeah, so Sylvia is essentially tricking Travis into this just giant extortion scheme and doing all of her bidding.

And there's no, like, coherent plot or whatever. Don't expect one. In fact, when you fight the last boss, she's like, well, I have this bombshell to drop. But if I told you, this information, the game will get a higher rating. So they fast forward past her important exposition. And then when it cuts back to the action, Travis is like dumbstruck. Like, oh, my God, I can't believe it.

So, like, they withhold information for anyone who actually cares about the plots. If you do, like, record and you can slow down what she says and it's actual written dialogue. That's actually quite messed up. Yeah, I'm glad they fast forward to pass that. There's a video you can just watch online that's like the slowed down version. So I did watch, I'd like, what is she saying? But yeah, there's a reason why Travis is reacting the way he is during all of that. But yeah, how the game plays is the main point of the game is you fighting these 10 ranked battles.

And they amount to a small level before a unique boss fight at the end. And again, you have to pay your way into every battle you do in order to do this. You have to either do these like weird, like community service style mini games on the map or... Like collecting coconuts and mowing lawns. like killing scorpions, cleaning up graffiti, pumping gas, things like that.

Playing with cats. Playing with cats. That would pay off in the second game. This is like one of the few games where you can pet cats and you can pet cats a lot. And that's like one of the greatest qualities of it.

They really... Like one of the earliest games that did that too. Even now it's usually like, oh, you can pet the dog in this game. But I'm like, what about the cats? And this one, like Travis has this cat named Gene. And it's like every... between every mission, like, Gene's always doing something different in his apartment,

and you can, like, always interact with her, and it's, it's just a blessing. The best one is when she's attached to, like, the little chew toy that's attached to Travis's overhead fan. Sealing fan. Mew, beo, meo, meo. Yeah, the second game would amp up the cat petting to become, like, make your cat lose weight mini game, which is kind of fun. I did like that.

But, yeah, like, so it takes place in this open world called Santa Destroy. And I remember, like, the games press was getting a lot more thinking around this time. Like, Bioshock came out and people are like, wow, this game is so smart. And I think every game has something to say. And I think a lot of people at the time were thinking, oh, this game is a commentary on open world game. That's why the quest are these mundane tasks. And that's why the open world is so empty. And my own theory is just like, well, no, this is the best open world game that can make with their budget and the platform.

And I think Suda just likes the comedy of This guy is lopping off heads And fighting these superpowered assassins But also he is pumping gas And killing scorpions and picking up garbage Like he likes that comedy juxtaposition Between those two activities Digging T-shirts out of dumpsters

And Yeah, I think You should never think too hard about what he does He just puts some things that he thinks are cool And that's about it Like bollocks to the people that are like oh, this is a commentary on open, absolutely, you are, you hit the nail on the head. It's like, this is the best they could have done.

That being said, weirdly, because I spent, like, I don't know, 500 hours playing through the open world because of my job at the time, I, you know, had a night shift and I'm playing through the game. I'm looking for bugs in the open world because that's where you're going to find the most. just because of the physics driving with your Akira motorcycle bike and I was like oh there's got to be something here and like surprisingly like there wasn't that many issues

like you could drive through like a building and a certain angle is really really hard to do but I actually really like the open world and it's because I don't know like I guess the Stockholm syndrome thing I was stuck in that open world for so long I like collecting the dodge balls that you redeem for new moves.

And I like getting all the t-shirts and the dumpsters. There's something kind of soothing about that open world. But like if someone says, man, I hate that open world. Like, what am I supposed to say to you? No, it's amazing. It absolutely isn't. But when they change that up for the sequel, I'm sure we'll talk about it a bit later,

I was kind of let down. But at the same time, I was like, well, no, I'm not going to tell you, no, the open world needs to be. be part of the no more heroes experience but because we're not 100% sure but i'm pretty sure suita did confirm it no more heroes three will have the open world back i'm like yes like yeah i mean i i just love and i love how like janky the motorcycle driving is because it's like you want to like go be cool and drive around your motorcycle but then you just like crash instantly and like fly off it definitely you can you can get you can get

good at it though I'm not sure if the game ever actually tells you but if you swing the re-remote and press break you do like a hairpin turn and you can get good at it but I don't think the game actually tells you you can do it I don't think it tells you at all most people put the effort into getting good at it yeah I mean this came out like right before

GTA 4 but GTA was huge I mean it's huge now but like all the things you'd expect in an open world game or not here like the MPCs don't have dialogue there aren't that many funny signs there's no radio there aren't too many things to find in the open world I'm kind of with you Matt I mean I didn't test the game but I found it kind of like a soothing experience sort of like I just came off of playing deadly premonition and it's more dense than that game world but I kind of just like tooling around in it just kind of soothing and you know there's no enemies to fight no one's after you just like I'll just drive around in this world at 20 frames per

second yeah I mean again like what I said with like the the cell phone part it's like you're the main part of the game is like you're fighting you know 30 guys at once and it's just hack and slash and coins and blood flying everywhere so I think to have these very quiet moments in between that is is actually quite nice it is and like when you when you complete the game once you have that a bunch of new cards and collectibles get spawned in the open world when you do new game plus and you need your radar upgrade to find them they're buried in the in various pieces of grass and i remember thinking that was so cool it's like oh wow you get to go through the open world again but now there's collectibles that are like i think it's the trading cards was like 150 something like a crazy high number of trading cards it gives you additional information on the bosses yeah yeah there's like a like a metal detector kind of game where it's like you can walk around and feel a little rumble and then you can dig with your katana yeah yeah i thought that was so cool and i when i realized that

once they because we received very little documentation on the game again was Ubisoft that needed to provide information in English for us to test and our games are getting our sorry our bugs were getting sent to Grasshopper but we needed someone that could speak and translate English to Japanese so we actually had a Japanese tester there on site with us that every time we might write a bug in English you're translate it and so Grasshopper could could fix it And we received a lot of, I would say, incomplete information about the game. I'm sure to talk about in a second just because I'm on this train of thought now.

When you're killing people in No More Heroes and you're lopping people's heads off, there's a slot machine that runs on the bottom of the screen. And most times nothing happens. But if you get the right collection of symbols, you get a special power, like strawberry on the shortcake, whatever silly thing Travis says. and you get a special power for like, you know, 15 seconds. If you get triple sevens, you get an ultimate move called Anarchy in the Galaxy

that wipes out all enemies in the room that you're in. During the entirety of testing, we had no idea this move was in the game. Because it's a specific button combo. Unlike all the special moves you get, I'm sure you guys probably know this, but unlike for viewers, when you ever get the slot machine to give you a special move,

it instantly activates and you just get it. It's like Travis throwing fireballs or he goes like Super Saiyan, Travis Super Saiyan and his hair becomes gold and he can kill everybody really, really easily. This one move, Enterke in the Galaxy, you need to trigger by holding like B and press A at the same time while holding like minus or something. I forget what it is. we had no idea that game that move was in the game

so that could have broken the game that could have crashed it we had no clue because Ubisoft didn't know does that move still exist in the game yeah yeah it's it's in there it's just that it's so rare because you need to roll a triple seven

once you get that triple seven it's like a move that's stocked on your screen and you have to activate it to activate it we had no idea it was in there the entire game So when I actually got my own copy of the game, and it says that in the instruction booklet, didn't say anywhere in the localization or any of the files that we got. So I was like, what?

There's like some screen clearing move, and I did it, and I fell off my chair. I was like, oh, my God, this could have, like, wiped your wee hard drive or not hard drive, but wiped all your wee memory or your game say is we never would have known. I need to find a video of this now, I think. I think it's a move that happens more regularly and No More Heroes 2, I think. Anarchy in the Galaxy it's called, but like, yeah, in the first game, it's very, very rare. Like, in an entire play-through, you might get it once. And even then, you need to read the instruction bullet. It tells you nowhere in-game that this move is even available.

That's a me. That's punk. That's the ultimate punk rock, risking, breaking your Wii for one powerful move. but yeah let's talk more about the combat so you mentioned there's this little slot machine that pops whenever you kill an enemy and then give you various powers but yeah I'm sorry I wanted to expand on that too because like he said he says all these weird stuff he says like strawberry and the short cake or he'll say blueberry cheese brownie or things like that and you're like what and it's all because like in the world there's this like anime that Travis loves called pure white lover bizarre jelly and it's what he wears on his main shirt and he has like the poster of it in his room it's about these like magical girls that turn into mechas. So whenever he's like yelling this nonsense, it's just him referencing like his favorite anime. Oh, I didn't know that. And you can also, Maddie, you can also play the, um, the like the retro game version of that like on his TV, right? Is that based on the anime that he likes? Yeah. Yeah. And then in the, and like it also has the theme song is like related to

it as well. It's a really cool song that plays through the game sometimes called Heavenly star by Ganky Rockets. Yeah. And it plays sometimes during his special attack modes, and it's like a really fantastic, just like kind of J. Poppy's on. But yeah, more about the combat system. We talked a bit about it earlier, but it's very, very simple. It's very straightforward.

It's just as complex as it needs to be, and I think it involves just as much waggle as is tolerable. And it's very easy. Like, I found the combat not too difficult and very satisfying to do those finishing moves, and especially if, like, lots of enemies are around you and you do you can just fill the screen with like gushing geysers of blood that will send your frame rate skyrocketing downward to like single digits but it's still very cool and also this involves wrestling moves as well like Travis can learn a bunch of wrestling moves that aren't quite as effective as the beam katana

moves but they're still very cool and take a bit of more work with your waggle to pull off yeah they look cool and they feel really satisfying because you get like these prompts for like directions to to tilt your your wee mode and nunchuk and then when you do it it it activates and you're like ah that was great they almost never work the first time you do the motion they almost never work but it's so lenient it gives you like like like six seconds to like do the motion again and you'll you'll you'll never not get them but sometimes it just it just takes a few times it's something that they cleaned up and no more heroes too like i don't think it ever i think at the end of the day they're like fuck it any motion it doesn't matter

follow the screen. Don't follow the screen. Do whatever you want. The move will trigger. Yeah, you know, this isn't a game about being like super challenging and being this really difficult. It's about a game that's really satisfying to go around and slice up a bunch of people and do some, you know, pile drivers on them. It's not that difficult. Difficulty comes in with the bosses in that these range in difficulty from like, you know, passable to very annoying.

But I got through the game okay on the regular difficulty. and all these bosses feel like a riff on Metal Gear in that they're all these like very enigmatic cartoonish bosses all with their own unique gimmicks and backstories and life philosophies you hear all of them up front before the battle and they all have really cool goofy pseudonyms like Dr. Peace and Speedbuster and Destroy Man like he is...

Harvey Moseyich for Dolarski That too The little like electric voice that says the name of each assassin when you enter the level is like one of my favorite things in the world. And I think that comes up in other. There's an entire time on the internet where people would use that every so often. Like anyone that knew No More Heroes, I kind of found like. There's like a Chuckie Cheese one.

I think someone did not that long ago. Like Charles Entertainment Cheese. And it was like the dung. And it has like the silhouette. It was so good. Yeah, I love that voice. It's a voice that's using Killer 7 as well. It's not something.

exact same pitch but you can tell it's it's it's really really close it's like it's whenever the character in killer seven called Travis speaks to you the little ghost guy that that that always wears a funny t-shirt um which i find is a a neat connection but whenever he talks to you in killer seven he has almost the exact same voice as those little boss uh announcements yeah he did carry the robot voice over from that it's a bit different but it's definitely the same kind of effect too and um the bosses are a lot of fun. I feel like the combat system does not work too well against them because often, I mean, they're

fun to fight, they're fun to look at, their arenas are neat, but ultimately a lot of these boss fights boil down to waiting for your small window in which you can attack and then attacking, and that small window almost always comes like right after they launch a big attack on you. You're super not

wrong at all. That being said, the boss fight against Shinobu Jacobs is like absolutely one of favorite boss fights like in all of video games because the lead up to it, the cutscene leading up to it, the music, how cool Shinobu Jacobs. And you play that fight on Bitter, like you can't mess up. Bitter is the hardest difficulty mode in the game for anyone that hasn't played. You play that on bitter. And because of testing, you do need to assign people to play the games on different

difficulties to make sure that there's, you know, nothing like egregious or, you know, the game desert crash, blah, blah, blah, but fighting Shinobu on that stage with that music, and she's super, super tough. And not every boss has this. I'm pretty sure not every boss, but certain bosses have an ultimate attack that can, I think, can almost always kill you, unless maybe you're at full health, maybe you can survive it. And you've leveled up your health to the max that you can up to that point. Shinobu has like a super cool, like, ultimate killing move that can wipe you out.

out in like one shot and you and you have to be on like some of the boss fights later after her are not as demanding as her fight is but it's it's actually like like I said like one of my favorites of video gamedom in general I love that fight yeah I do like it too I like the arena and you're right there are some weird difficulty spikes like I was having a good time with this game and I was like you know what I'm pretty good at no more heroes and then I got to the the Holly Summers fight that's a boss that takes place on a beach and there are all these holes that she's dug. If you fall in the hole, you have to wag your controller. And she's always constantly firing homing missiles at you. And I think I had to fight that boss like six

or seven times and watch a video to be like, what am I getting wrong? And I think it's one of those boss fights where the lack of an analog stick, a second analog stick rather, is kind of what fails the game sometimes because you don't have that precise camera control that you need to see everything you need to see. So it's often a lot of guesswork like, oh, God, is a missile about to hit me? Or is something coming at me I can't see? Like, hitting the, hitting the cross pad is not as effective as moving and right analog stick around. It's not. And that boss fight in general,

there's a good percentage of just luck based on how you're, like if you know the map really well, you can kind of avoid the holes on the floor, but like in the sand rather. But yeah, it's one of the more like you can you know, as a speed runner would say, am I going to get a good holly fight today?

Or we're going to get a bad one? is she just going to decide to be mean to me? It's Holly Summer's very cool boss, but yeah, not one of the more frustrating fights in the game. It makes me feel better to know that speed runners hate her too. It's not just me. I mean, so we went over all the main points. We can go over to like the minor stuff. Like one thing I forgot to mention, it came up a little bit.

But like Travis is a man who enjoys a good t-shirt and I'm there with him. I love graphic teas. And a lot of this game is optionally, of course, you can dress them up any way you want to with a number of different t-shirts. and in the newest version of the game you can actually wear t-shirts based on existing indie games but I love that aspect of the game the dress-up element

his main clothes can't change too much but you can just go wild with all these cool and lewd t-shirt designs that he has and I think the first game has the best selection of shirts the second one they're good

but there's not nearly as many because there's no open world so you don't particularly collect them they're just in a store waiting to be bought which I was kind of like eh but yeah the first game's the first game style factor for shirts is certainly better um but shirts and jackets too that's true that's true jackets it's yeah it's like character customization is always a plus for me in any game and so if there's something like collect all these shirts and

all these jackets then I'm like yes I will do that and one thing I really wanted to mention too is that these games what I like about them as a guy who likes retro games obviously is like so much of this game like the iconography is steeped in just the language of retro video games like your health power up is a giant floating pixel pizza slice there are like old school video like high score lists and sound effects like so much of it yeah we didn't even mention the save points oh yes yeah please mattie he's saved by going to the bathroom exactly and it's it's clearly number two the pants are coming down and you're sitting down oh yeah oh yeah but it does it does retain the the fun censorship of like

unrolling the toilet paper in front of his crotch as he goes to pull his pants down. In every game it's the same. It's perfect. It's yeah, I don't know. It's just like one of those little things that just adds so much to it. You're very right. And the fact that each boss has a

unique bathroom that you could go into right before the boss fight. Like it's always like, and so type of porta potty or like in a mall or whatever it is. It's always like this uniquely model bathroom that's made for that cross. Yeah, I thought about that upon this

replay. I'm like, somebody had to sit down and model this port-a-potty and put the graffiti on it. Like Sylvie is always like, oh, make sure you go to the bathroom before you fight him. It's very important, both in the game and in real life. But anything else with No More Heroes One, I do want to move on to talk

about the other two games in the series that exist currently, but anything I'm missing about this game. The only other thing, I was going to mention, like, to you know, I keep kind of coming back to this whole idea about like the slow parts between the battles and like one thing is between so like between every um assassin you you know you return to your apartment and then you can kind of do your part-time jobs or whatever you feel like doing but you also you always get

a phone call from from sylvie about your next assassin but before that you always have a voicemail from like the the like adult video store that's like telling Travis like oh you know your your how to have sex one-on-one video is late please return it and like then there's also this one where it's like you gave us this video but it was just this man like humping a body pillow why did you just like god he's like he's such a loser and yeah it just make i think that's why he's so charming because he's like supposed to be really cool but he's not at all i do like that dichotomy because like again in the overly thinking discussion about this game people are like oh is uh is travis a parody of the gamer and no no that's not true like again i think it's like the mix of like these two sides of

him where he's like he is like a legit he's a legit cool fighter he can like murder anybody all these powerful enemies but he's also like a complete schmuck loser who no woman would ever be with he's perfect man i was gonna say like in terms of just leaving off on on this particular game For anyone that hasn't played it, it's, you know, we're talking about a lot of silly stuff. We're talking about a lot of violence, but there's something to be said about because Suda is such a film fan, you'll find a lot of parallels with Metal Gear Solid with No More Heroes One and two, to a degree. Well, pretty much the same is that A, the voice, the voice acting direction is by the exact same

person directed all the voice actors and I think all the Metal Gear Solid games, maybe not five but that's a chris zimmerman salter and you'll find a lot of metal gear voice actors also appear in this like uh as manny said uh Travis is uh voiced by robin atkins downs who also does uh casahira miller and you'll find the actor always forget his name though that uh that does the voice for colonel campbell and melgear solid also has recurring roles as a lot of no more heroes characters as well and all the cutscenes are they demand your attention they're always shot so well it's super cinematic it like you'll see crazy camera angles you you'll you very rarely see in a video game so when you're doing all this minutia to get enough money to fight the boss go to the boss's

you know dungeon like for lack of a better term you'll want to see the next bit of story because while there's like silly stuff that's like ha haf like you know Travis being a dork fluffy stuff that when you ever get to a boss you're always excited to see like you know what that boss does much like metal gear sol I think there's a lot of weird parallels between them just like um how Bob said they're they're very metal gear and their backstories and their life philosophies and it's one of those things that you know amongst all the jerking off jokes and body pillows and stuff and that stuff is all fun, but I remember playing this for the first time just going like, oh, like, what's this boss's deal or what's Sylvie you're going to tell Travis next? Because as you're going

through the game, the stakes are being raised every time you go up the ranks. And it's the thing that again, Middle Gear kind of does with how its bosses raise in like, you know, the threat that they pose. And it's a thing that No More Heroes does as well, one and two. And not so much Travis strikes again, but that's a different game. But it's one of those aspects of this entire franchise that, you know, I don't think people talk about too much. They just kind of say, oh, it's fun to slice up things. And it is.

But it's one of those, if this component wasn't there, this dramatic sort of, again, because Suda 51 is a film fan, I think that gets thrown into the game a lot. And it's one of those things that goes, you know, it's like at the end of a really good TV show, like, oh, I want to see what happens next. I want to see what happens in the next episode. It has that sort of quality to it where you feel like every boss is its own episode. And it's all kind of linking up in the background stuff with Sylvia, stuff with Travis, stuff with the Assassins Association, and what this is ultimately leading to. It's that thing in the background that you kind of maybe don't realize as you're playing it with all the dick jokes and T-shirts or whatever. But it's, I think it's what actually gives the franchise, like, you know, it makes it more than in some of its parts, this weird assassin's story that's being built in the background amongst all the, you know, funny, fluffy stuff.

Yeah, I was going to say, I think, like, Suda 51 is one of those people who I'm like, he knows what, like, coolness is. Like, he can make, he can be like, I'm going to make something cool and then he does. and it's like the coolest thing you've ever seen. Yeah. And I think probably like part of the reason these really cool assassin moments stand out is because there is all this really funny padding in between. And so it's like you kind of, it like heightens the level of like the really cool action scenes even more because you're just kind of going through this funny stuff.

And then all of a sudden there's this really badass moment. You're like, whoa, wait. I thought this was just like silly game. But yeah, it's, and again, a lot of it too leads to the character designs. Like, they're just so fantastic. Every assassin is so unique. And just, yeah, the voice acting, the cinematic cut scenes, it all, like, really just, like, comes together in such a nice little package.

Yeah, it is, it is really bizarre to play a Wii game in the cold light of 2020. It's a weird experience. And, yes, my Wii sensor bar was always on my TV. I don't know why. I just, it's a tradition. It just goes up there. But, yeah, like, I played it, like, over a decade ago. But I was still like, oh, man, I love playing this game because there's always something

new around the corner and it's like something you won't see in any other game and I feel like that is what made this game kind of timeless despite being tied to the Wii in its control scheme it does feel like they could easily port this and it could be super playable again and maybe by the time you're listening to this they have done that already

yeah and again those great cell shaded graphics it's such a good technique and same thing with like wind waker like it's going to look good forever like because of the way that that those graphics work they just They just look good always.

So the next game, we'll talk about really briefly here because we've been talking for a while already. No More Heroes 2 Desperate Struggle released three years later in January of 2010 for the U.S. And much later in Japan, in October, so like 10 months later, 2010 was like arguably the last year that we truly mattered. But I guess No More Heroes 1 was big enough to make a sequel happen. And it's 2010, nobody has time for waggle. So they're just like, okay, you can just play the entire game with the classic controller. It's fine. It's terrible.

Playing it with a class controller is like one of the clunkyest things I've ever like if people want to play with a controller it's fine I guess but you can tell that they're like it was not designed for this like I tried to I was like why this feels so foreign

I honestly didn't have problems with it but I can see why you might prefer the original it just admirable that they were able to do that to begin with but I'm glad that they did it though you're right there in my experience with this game was So, like, I beat No More Heroes 1, and I was like, all right, I'm into No More Heroes again.

Oh, there's a sequel I haven't played. Okay, I can finally play it. I'm into this game. You know, I'm pretty good at No More Heroes. I'm ready for this. So I play the game a little bit of it. I'm like, oh, wow. So it's just like the first game directed by a different guy.

And, you know, it's a little more polished. So, okay, I'm on board. And then I get to the second boss, and he just destroys me. And I just get very frustrated. And I keep playing. I lower the difficulty. Nathan Copeland, the rapper? Yes, yes.

It is one of the most frustrating early boss fights. Again, it's if you can kill him really fast, it's not that bad. But if you're playing for the first time, like, there's so many gimmicks to his stage that make it really, really frustrating. It feels like so advanced for like essentially the first real non-titorial boss fight in the game. And I pushed my way past that. And I was like, all right, let's see more of this game. But like everything about this game was irritating me. and maybe it's just the state of the world right now

or just how I was feeling but like No More Heroes 1 was just soothing and satisfying and just a real fun carefree experience this game just felt like again just irritating in every way in a way that's that I find hard to describe I don't know if either of you had the same experience as me

but I appreciate there's more polished there but there's just something about this game that feels more punishing and unfriendly I definitely think it's I there's certain aspects of No More Heroes 2 that I prefer over the first one like The combat is more polished. You can switch your weapons out on the fly, and the weapons are actually vastly different.

You have a really long beam that's incredibly powerful but slow, and that can actually make short work of several bosses. Some of the bosses are just as good. Some are better than no more heroes won, while some are worse than no more heroes one. It's a game that kind of always pushes and pulls. I like this aspect better, and this one isn't as good. there's no open world I can't collect as many t-shirts the actual story

is it's it's slightly more obtuse than No More Heroes 1 there's some references to like movies that are going over my head it is more unfriendly it's a little bit more edgy

not like a cringe way but it's more revenge story which is not as interesting because No More Heroes 1, it was kind of like all over the place. You didn't know what was going to happen next. And it has one of the most disappointing final boss fights of anything, really, unfortunately, because the game is all about the bosses, right? You have multiple playable characters,

but it's kind of like a shit move where you get denied playing some boss fights because of this inclusion. There's all these little things that, are weird and not as good, but at the same time, there's bits that I think are better. Ultimately, I'm really, really glad it exists. I never thought No More Heroes 1 would get a sequel. I think it's a game that I really wish Suda could go back to and maybe make some fixes to. I don't know what exactly, but it's the type of thing that if No More Heroes 1 remaster is in the cards, I would love it if there was a No More Hero New Heroes to remaster that, I don't know, fixes things, does something because it's a game that I played through it not even that long ago.

I played through it like a year and a half ago, like from start to finish. And every time I finish it, I'm like, oh, this is not bad, but I just like it less than the first one. And Maddie, did you ever play this game? Yeah, I did. It's definitely, I haven't revisited it for. a while. I definitely go back to the first game more often. But yeah, I think that maybe there's something about trying to polish this kind of weird game that ended up making it lose some of its charm. But I think, I don't know, I think going on to Travis Strikes again, it went more wacky.

And I think that was actually a more successful sequel in its own right. But yeah, I really, like, I really hope we get like a double port of one and two because especially with the switch control, controllers it's like so perfect for you know this game and you know Travis strikes again was successful and you know we're getting no more heroes three so I think you know it's we're really ripe to get a port because those games do not deserve to be stuck on the Wii they need they need to be replayed and easier to access I totally agree and to wrap up real quick I do want to mention Travis strikes again right Travis strikes again oh sorry strikes back is it back or again It strikes again.

It strikes back sounds like it should be, but it strikes again. So, yeah, like when this was announced, so I interviewed Suda like in 2017 or 2016 for a website I hated and I just did the interview because it got me out of the office. I never transcribed it because they wouldn't have cared about it. And that was after he announced like Travis is coming back. And when I talked to him about it, I'm like, oh, so knew no more heroes. He's like, I never said new no more heroes. I said Travis was coming back.

So. I remember this quote from something. I remember seeing this and he's like, yeah, this isn't No More Heroes. Yeah, something like that. He was like, this is something going to be slightly different. Yeah, it's like it's a spin-off. It's like No More Heroes 2.5. And because of that, I was like, oh, so you're going to cheap out.

You're not going to give me the No More Heroes game I want. And then when this was announced and like they showed off gameplay, I was like, oh, it's just a cheap, a twin stick shooter, who cares, snore, snore, moving on. And then it was on stale on Steam. And I was like, you know what, I'll give this a chance. And I have to say, this game rules. It's only a year old. And again, it's like, part of it just lends it to the aesthetic.

Like, it's so satisfying to, like, look at. And it's like this, you know, it's like this whole kind of weird story about, it's like almost like this like weird dragon ball story about this kind of like arcade console of legend. And it's not like supposed to exist. It almost like reminds me of like, what is it, Polybius? Like that, like, urban legend about the arcade game. Yeah. And it's like you have to collect these like six death balls and make a wish.

And it's like, and then there's these weird. like visual novel sequences that tell you the story and it's just so it's so special and i think it's you know these are the kind of things that that suita 51 excels at is making these really unique satisfying experiences that are like nothing else you've ever played yeah it is so cool and again it's it's a game from last year so i don't know if it's right to talk about it here but if you're a retro gamer uh you're listening to this it has so much like classic gaming stuff in it and again so many cool suita touches like you're waiting for those really cool cuts scenes. I haven't played through the entire game, but like the second, uh, the cutscene for the

second level is like live action. There's like, it's just so weird and neat. And again, new things around every corner. Yeah. And yeah, and like when you boot up the console, just like the like the boot up screen is like it's, yeah, it just hits on all the, all these really satisfying things. I played through it when it, when it just come out because I was obviously really, really excited. And like No More Heroes 2, there's, there's parts of it. I really, really like Travis strikes again, and there's parts I was like, eh, is I think a bit of it is because if you're playing in co-op, this game does have two-player co-op. I'm sure it's really, really a blast, but I did find a lot of the combat sequences to drag on in certain levels. I'd say like,

30% of the time, I'm kind of like, yeah, I just, yeah, I've killed all these waves and waves of enemies. Not that it's not interesting. I just kind of, it's almost like there is, sections of No More Heroes 2, especially, where the combat drags on and on, especially a parking lot sequence. I'm not sure if you got there, Bob, but there's a parking lot fight No More Heroes 2 that's literally, I want to say 15 minutes of stuck in this one parking lot. That's far too much. Oh, no. And I mean, definitely in Travis Strikes again, the second game, which is like this kind of puzzle thing where you have to like flip these tiles to get around this neighborhood. And there's these giant like Dr. Manhattan heads that like slowly chase you and it's like the most

frustrating thing. Yeah, I'm on that level now and I'm like this is getting kind of long like it's super frustrating. But again, you know, I think where no more heroes succeeds is in the aesthetics. And even when the gameplay is kind of clunky, you can really appreciate the other part of it. You definitely can because it's all the story stuff that was still so weird. The visual novel stuff. I was saying how I'm like, you know, not a fan of the silver case or like a flower, sun, and rain. But I love

the visual novel sections of this game. Some of the dialogue made me laugh out loud. Like Gene, Jean just cracks me up in those sections. Oh my God. And the art. Talk to you in this game. And the art in those sections is so cool. It's made in the style of like, you know, ancient

PC games, like pre-color PC games. It's, yeah, it's just like, I, I, I don't know, like, how to promote this game more, but just the aesthetics of it are just so pleasing. Yeah, I think it translates the gameplay perfectly to that this different genre. And just like every No More Heroes game, it's like flawed in some way. It's like not perfect, but I do like the jank. But that also kind of lends to its charm.

Yeah, like I do. The jank is why a big part of why I like these games. Like, it does feel like a human being made this. It's not just like glossy corporate product. Right, right. The only other thing, I'm not sure how you guys feel about this, but the original, I'm not sure if you saw this, but the original idea that Suda had was this was going to actually, Travis was going to go to Hotline Miami and go to Shovel Night. And that was the original plan. And I think in an interview, like much, much later, like when the game had released, they're like, he's like, yeah, there was, there was no, there's going to be no way that I was going to get all the approvals from the company.

about how the game actually played in that style. Like there's going to be a 2D shovel night section. He's just like there's no way it would take forever to coordinate with all these different companies around the world and get that done. But that was what I was planning. But at the end of the day, I was like, well, okay, let me do something like that I can do, which for any creative, you need to be able to take a step back and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, this isn't going to actually.

work out. Therefore, that's why I defaulted to just it being shirts, like shovel night and hall out of all their shirts. And I, while that's absolutely the game I would have loved to have played, I have to respect because I've had a project or two like this year myself from a creative way where I was like, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's slow down. Like, let's tackle this from a different angle because we're not going to be able to do this because that takes a lot of guts.

And so I do really respect that he made that decision. What did I have loved, like an actual Travis, little pixelized Travis in a hotline, Miami like world. They do, because you can see that in the game. They do have those top-down sections where you're clearing out rooms after rooms in certain levels of the game. And I think with that plan kind of like not really, you know, sort of failing, like, oh, I'm not going to be able to do this.

He did do an excellent job of trying to. replicate different styles of games in Travis Strikes again. So I'm glad it worked out. And because this game was a success, we're like, like directly responsible because Travis Strikes again, sorry, I was about to say Strikes back, because it sold whatever Grasshopper needed to sell. It's why we're getting Nomor Heroes 3. So I'm super happy it exists. Yeah. And on that subject, to wrap up, please, both of you, I want to know like what your hopes are for Nomor Hero 3 right now. I don't believe there is a gameplay trailer out of this moment. But Maddie, you go first. Like, what are your hopes for No More Heroes 3? Oh, man. I just like, this, this is literally

my favorite video game trailer that has ever existed. It rules. It's like this weird, like, it's like Jibli meets ET weird, like animated video. That's just like this like weird movie trailer. Then it's like, oh, it's no more heroes. It's like, what if ET grew up and he was a jerk? Yeah. And it's like, here. we're going to make this alien and his name is going to literally be FU and we're going to call him Foo and like I watch that trailer so many times I don't even know what to expect from the game but like all the alien designs are really cool it's the same character designer it's Travis fighting aliens in space it's going to be ridiculous and I'm just like super hyped for it and supposedly still coming in 2020 although that could change in the two months between us this recording and when the podcast goes locked yeah who knows most likely um i i with that confirmation because i i saw that one screenshot that one screenshot at the end of devolver digital's um like i boom e3 stand in presentation where so it is not standing in front of the fucking game screen you can actually see it i was like ooh

that looks that looks like what i want because there's a mini map and the bottom in the bottom uh left that kind of shows Sand to Destroy because he's standing in front of the motel. And I'm like, ooh, a return to the open world, that's kind of all I want. Like, I don't, it should be slightly better than the overworld and No More Heroes won, but not too much better.

So that was kind of like the thing that I really, really wanted to be in there, just to revisit that a little bit. And while I think the alien aspect is really cool for like a final boss fight or like the overarching plot, I still hope peppered throughout there are more like traditional like assassin type enemies. It doesn't have like I don't want all traditional assassin type enemies and I don't want all aliens.

If they are, I'm so fine with it. But I just hope that there's like a like a mix, a variety of different boss types. And that's kind of it. Aside from that, much like Maddie, I'm like, I don't know what to expect. And that's a good thing. Yeah, I'm excited. Hopefully COVID did not derail this game. But if it's delayed, maybe it'll be for the best.

But yeah, I'm looking forward to it too. And to wrap up here, I also wanted to thank Mark Youngquist, a listener. Because these games are very hard to find and a little pricey on eBay, he actually mailed me these games to play for the podcast. So without him, it'd be much harder to do this. So thank you to Mark for mailing those out to me. But yeah, as for us, we are Retronauts. You can find us on Twitter at Retronauts,

and we are supported by Patreon, by the way. If you want to support the show and get some cool stuff, please go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. If you sign up for three bucks a month, you'll get all the episodes one week ahead of time and at free. Sign up for five bucks a month. You'll get that and also two bonus episodes every month that are unavailable on the free feed. And we've been doing this since the beginning of the year.

So there are quite a few exclusive episodes that you have not heard if you are not on the $5 level because we've been doing a lot since the beginning of the year. So please check it out either the $3 or $5 level and we have more tiers after that at patreon. At patreon.com slash retronauts. Maddie, where can we find you and what are you up to these days? Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at the letter. Oh, that's Raspberry. I'm always posting art stuff.

I don't know what I will have by the time this goes up. I'm working on some Dragon Quest sponsor stickers right now, so those might be available. I also recently did some artwork for some vinals that are being released by Ship to Shore Media who do these really cool video game vinyl releases. They haven't been announced, so I can't say what games are for,

but definitely check them out. They're ShiptoShoreMedia.com. they've put out soundtracks for Celeste and Mother and things like that so they're a super cool company I'm really grateful to have the opportunity to work with them

awesome congrats on that thank you and Matt you've got a lot of cool stuff going on including videos as of this recording Henry and I made a bit of a cameo in one yeah there would be in my episode of Talking Simpsons

I mean Simpsons reference I'm currently playing through by the time people hear this it should be all over with but doing a play-through of a Simpsons hit and run. So I have Henry and Bob make a little guest appearance. I've had some ex-radical employees talk about

I'll be having some guest spots on that. I'm on Twitter at Matt and Muscles. My YouTube channel is also Matt Matt My Muscles. And anyone is a fan of retro arcade brawlers like your final fights or shoots of rage. I also helped produce a video game that recently got released on the source. Switch, and maybe by the time you hear this on the PS4 called The Takeover,

you know, spent a good amount of time building that, and there also will be a physical edition that should be out by the end of this year as well. Oh, congrats. That's awesome. So as for me, I've been your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo, and I have other podcasts outside of Retronauts, by the way. Those are Talking Simpsons, a chronological exploration of The Simpsons.

And what a cartoon where we look at a different cartoon from a different series every week, week. You can find those wherever you find podcasts, or go to patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Sign up there for all sorts of stuff, including exclusive mini-series, interviews, and so many bonus podcasts behind that paywall at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. So thank you to Matt and Maddie for being on the show, and thanks to everyone out there for listening. We will see you again very soon for another podcast. Whatever happen to the heroes? No more heroes anymore.

No more heroes anymore. No more heroes anymore. No more heroes anymore. Thank you.