Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 434: Squaresoft on PS1 - Beyond RPGs

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

Noted ancients Nadia Oxford, Jeremy Parish, and Andrew Vestal recall the many non-RPG titles Square Enix (as the trimmer, bolder Squaresoft) piled onto the 32-bit PlayStation. Fighters! Racers! Bird stuff! God bless the podcast. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.com. This week on Retronauts, I just wanted the Final Fantasy 7 demo disc. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Retronauts. I'm her host for the week, Nadia Oxford of the Acts of the Blog God RPG podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm accompanied by two most excellent guests, my old friend Jeremy Parrish and my even older friend, Andrew Vestal. I want you both to say hello, so you start, Jeremy, say hello. I didn't realize we were that old, okay, but yes, hello.

Hello. I'm just kidding. I know we're old. Hello. This is the video game podcast. This is the video game podcast where we talk about video games, those electronic games. Okay. I think you mean older in terms of how long we've been friends, not in terms of how close we are to the grave.

At least that's how I'm able to charitably choose to interpret it. I honestly am bad with remembering ages, so I don't remember either of your ages. Take some comfort in that. I'm talking more about the fact that I think yours was the first page I ever visited on the internet. So that's still pretty ancient because that was 1995. And that was good old-fashioned Square Enix stuff. Actually, back then it was Squarespace.

And we are actually going to go back to Square Enix before it was Square Enix, going back to when it was Square. Square Soft, even. And we are going to talk about the 32-bit games that Square made that weren't RPGs. And this is actually a really interesting topic because the company actually has a very not-smart. number of non-RP Zenderts belt. This is actually very true of the kind of vanilla Squarespacehaft years before they blew their money on the whole movie thing and actually had the leverage to kind of experiment a bit and talk and do a little bit of like, you know,

a little bit of racing game, a little bit of shooters, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And yeah, I'm guessing that's something that you two gentlemen have some experience in as well. Yeah, I mean, you know, looking back at the ancient, ancient history of Square, it was never a given that they were going to be an RPG company. Right. Like, they started out just as a publisher of games, actually a lot like Enix, where they didn't make their own games.

They were just like, hey, let's just publish stuff. Because video games were blowing up in Japan in the early 80s. And any company that had like any kind of even tangential connection to electronics or even electricity as the case, maybe it was square, was like, oh, we should jump on that bandwagon.

So they jumped in by actually publishing RPG for, I think, the PC-88. PC-A-8, yeah. And Falcom. So they published, yeah, Falcom RPGs like Dragon Slayer, which is, you know, RPG-ish. It had its roots there. But then they did a bunch of other stuff, like murder mysteries and I think a few, like, kind of soft porn games, but not as many as Alex did.

That was certainly a genre. Yeah, that was certainly a genre on the PC-88. But, yeah, they were very just kind of all over the place for a long time. And they ultimately went into RPGs because Final Fantasy was successful. And that was something they hadn't really had before that much of. They had some modest successes, but nothing on the scale of Final Fantasy. So at that point, they were like, all right, we're all in. Let's just go with this.

And that's what they did. But I think, you know, they kind of kept their throw things at the wall and see what sticks origins intact. You know, they really focused on RPGs for the 16-bit era. about when it came to 32-bit games again, they were like, let's just try stuff. Let's just do things. They came up some interesting experiments. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's really interesting because one of the things, you know, as a game

publisher, you have to have, you want to have an identity. You want to have something that you're known for. And, you know, for Square, Annex, obviously nowadays, that's RPGs. But I think that after the success of Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation, that Square kind of said, our brand is. audio-visual magnificence. And I think that's kind of a common through line through all

the different genres that we're going to go through here. I mean, I was joking with somebody yesterday as I was looking over my notes for this episode. I'm like, we're just going to be saying the game looked great and had an amazing soundtrack, but it didn't meet sales expectations next game. Like, over and over and over.

That's just the story of Square's non-R-PG output. But even going back and looking at these games, they still look so great. They still sounds so good. And there is so much here that that's not just like a weird divergence, but actually some, in my opinion, of the top games in their genre on the PlayStation. And I think it's really worth taking a look at them again. There's some duds too. We'll get to those as well. Yeah, there are certainly some duds. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Final Fantasy 7 because, you know, even in Final Fantasy 7, you see their kind of multifaceted approach

taking shape, you have all those mini-games in Final Fantasy 7, some of which are, you know, I don't know what we think of, of Moghouse. It's not really much of a game. But on the other hand, you have, you know, you have like a pseudo-strategy game at Fort Condor. You have a submarine action game that's very confusing and just kind of throws you into things. You have like a downhill racing ski game to celebrate ERIS's death. Yeah, that was great. It's like, oh, she's dead. well. Time to snowboard. The Black Diamond and maybe we can join her.

You know, there's like the CPR game, which is like a little rhythm action game. There's all kinds of stuff in the Final Fantasy 7 that's just like, you know, the crazy motorcycle part. Oh, gosh. They were just throwing stuff at the wall. And, you know, I'm glad they had these other games as their outlets because they really, they really pulled back in future Final Fantasy games to get away from all that, like, you know, variety. action stuff. I think once they had their outlet and we're like, you know, we can just publish a bunch of these games on their own and really explore them, then they didn't have to turn the RPG into a sort of novelty

minigame package. Yeah. And I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to spend too much time talking about Final Fantasy 7 because that's an RPG and this is the non-RPG podcast. But I think, you know, it's where we're thinking about there was the whole cartridge versus CD thing where Square made a clean break with Nintendo and went over to Sony. And they dedicated themselves to that CD life. And part of what that meant was Red Book Soundtracks and fantastic CG videos and really going over the top in terms of we're going to show you something that you could not get in real time on your tiny Nintendo 64 cartridge. And so, you know, again, it didn't always work out, but I really think there was this, the unifying. Actually, are we getting started?

Like, I have something, I like a unified theory of Squares non-R-PG games. Oh, say anything you like, Andrew. Okay. Are you all familiar with the Y2K aesthetic, as it is referred to nowadays? I know what Y2K was, but as for, do you mean the time? I've heard that expression. The Y2K aesthetic is this, it kind of started with like Designers Republic and the Wipe Out games on PlayStation in 1995.

Okay. And then it's like, it's like, it's like, lowercase letters, rounded fonts, transparency. Bryce 3D backgrounds. I can see it in my head for sure. You know, all this sort of stuff. And I really feel like, you know, Squares, not RPEG stuff was really kind of like 98 to 2001, 2002 was really like the highlight of it. It was right on the cusp of that. And it feels, it feels, you know, I say audiovisual splendor, but I feel like a lot else of what was really trying to unify it was they were trying to be cool.

And they were trying to be cool. Yeah. They absolutely were. According to what society thought of as cool at the time. And so if you go back and look at all these games nowadays, even though they were made by a bunch of different developers and a bunch of different studios, they all kind of feel just like they feel like 1999. Like there's no other way. Absolutely.

There's no other way to describe it. And I mean that in the best possible way. But when you see one of these games, more than even a lot of other cultural artifacts, it's just like if you want to know what was rad, what people were getting jazzed about at 1999, it's, it's this, this aesthetic of the future that is not here yet that is so freaking cool. The future's so bright. We got to use lowercase letters for everything. It's going to be great, everyone.

I definitely, I can see we were going for there. I think Namco really ate their lunch when it came to that sort of interface design. They just, they were just, namco was just cooler than square in a more like, a more concrete way. I liked, you know, Squares RPGs and stuff and spent more time with Square games than I did Namco games on PS1. But, you know, you look at something like Ridge Racer Type 4 and compare that to the kind of background signage and stuff in Final Fantasy 8. And the FF8 stuff just seems kind of, I don't know. They were really trying, but it just, it's, it wasn't, it wasn't cool. But I would argue that's what makes it.

They were trying for it. That's what makes it a better representation of the aesthetic, because if you go back and you play Ridge Racer Type 4, yes, it has that aesthetic, but it also actually is cool, even nowadays, because it's so effortless and awesome. Whereas if you look at these square games, because you can see how hard they're trying, you can actually feel the aesthetic bleeding through. Fair enough, yes. The simulation breaks down.

I always figured that Square Enix, one of the reasons why they were just kind of throwing everything at the wall, is because by then they were really getting bitten by the movie bug. And they really had aspirations from a long time ago to make. things as cinematic as possible. Have both of you or either of you read the really excellent oral history of Final Fantasy 7 by Matt Leone? Yeah. Yeah. So Square Enix knew practically from day one of 32-bit era existing that Nintendo 64 was not

going to give them what they wanted, hence why they went to the PlayStation. And by that point, they obviously wanted, well, that cool look, as you gentlemen have called it, like whether or not they succeeded. That's another story. But they definitely wanted that music. They wanted that, those visuals. It's almost like the game wrapped around all of that and was kind of the showcase for it instead of the other way around. But it was certainly an interesting time.

Well, it's funny you say that too, because the movie bug, it's like, why did Square stop making all these games, you know, to jump to the end? The Spirits Within, you know, that killed. Spoiler alert to Spirits within killed it all. Yeah, you know, and the merger with Annex and the need to play it financially safer. But this era between the great. unbelievable success of Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8, and then everything coming crashing down with the spirits within, they had so much money and so much creativity, and they were just really setting it on fire to see what they could come up with. And there were some real hits

and some real misses. And the medium was still small enough at that point, and it was relatively inexpensive to make games at that point, so they could afford to do that. Whereas no company could really do that now to just to like say let's see what works they they know what works and they've got to stick with that and and you know till it and and play it safe because they got to make back that 200 million dollar budget yeah i would i would argue that like visually square games looked great you know in motion and their cg was really awesome but like the design aesthetic wasn't necessarily that great but then everything came together with the soundtracks and andrew you mentioned something about Red Book Audio, but I can't actually think of any square games that

had Red Book Audio. They used streaming audio, and that's because they wanted to sell you soundtracks. And if you could pop your PS1 game in a music player and listen to it, well, then they couldn't sell you the soundtrack. Yeah. So that was a technological divide that they were, I think, very scrupulous about, you know. It's funny. It's funny you mentioned that because my first exposure to, I'm going to really date myself with a very specific story, but my first exposure to Einhander was when ultra game players posted the soundtrack one day. Wow. Was it ultra game players or was it IGN?

It was ultra game players. I do remember that. It was just like, the headline was just like, Einhander, listen to this. Exactly. It was like, it was just audio files, which was, you know, this was 1997. 97, yeah. That's impressive. Yeah.

So like, you know, having audio hosted on a website was just something you didn't see that much of it was like oh wow these aren't middies that's crazy i think they ran out of band i was i was literally literally tape trading with people on usnet to get soundtracks before this and so for it to just be online where you could download it but it was it made such an impact on them that they were like copyright what's that we're going to give everybody the soundtrack right now uh but you know it sold a copy of on hinder so who can say if it was right or not yeah it's sold it sold more than one i promise you because i definitely picked it up after that too see when you said usnet and tapes then you dated yourself, Andrew, before then you were fine.

See, I only bought the square soundtracks that actually came to the U.S. such as Kefka's Domain. Yeah, see, I missed out on that one. Still have that somewhere. And then, you know, I'd pick them up occasionally online and be like, ever anime? What's that? So, I mean, Jeremy, I want to go back to what you're talking about for the soundtracks because I don't think, you may be joking, you may not be joking.

I'm not sure what your level of seriousness is, but I think it's really important to remember that, like, Square actually set up DigiCube in Japan at this time. Like, they was not joking. Yeah, you know, they were seeing themselves. I had so, I had so many Square soundtracks in the late 90s. Yeah, but they wanted to be a distribution label, not just a publisher. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

And so, and, you know, they wanted DigiCube to not just publish their soundtracks, but to publish other kinds of audio as well. And it was their effort to, you know, you know, this is, um, music in Japan was not just distributed did through, like, music stores and stuff, but, like, getting it into, like, um, Combeini, like convenience stores, like 7-Eleven and such. And so, DigiCube was Square's kind of last mile. Like, you know, when I bought the Final Fantasy Tactics advance in Japan, I got it at 7-Eleven. You know, you would buy your games. You would buy your music at the convenience stores. It is as, as awkward as that might sound. But, yeah, you know, Square is part of their aspirations during this era. They didn't just want to make cool games. They wanted, they wanted to

to corner the entire market in some ways in terms of being like the physical equivalent of steam for 1998. Yeah. Like getting, they're the ones who you talk to when you want to get your games into the hands of players by getting them into the hands of stores. Yeah. And even now, that's still true of Square. I mean, it's been a couple of years, obviously, since I've been Japan.

For some reason, they don't seem to want me over there. Oh, no. But the last time I was at Tokyo Game Show in 2019, you know, Square still has this massive catalog of CDs that they're more than happy to sell you at TGS. And, you know, there was a very beautiful period in my life, like 2012 through 2014 or so, where I was at Tokyo Game Show and I was looking over the DigiCube, you know, Square Soft, Square Inix music section of their cubicle or their booth. And a guy started talking to me and he turned out to be like the general manager of their music label.

And he was like, oh, you really like our music. Oh, you're in the press. Hey, we'll put you on our mailing list. And they just started sending me like every single thing that Square published for several years, including stuff like, this is the one that always kills me. Because at the time, I was like, records, who wants those? But they sent me like this Final Fantasy one through six soundtrack compilation on vinyl. Oh, my God. Which I had then when I had the opportunity to interview Nobu Oumatsu a couple of years later, I had him sign it.

And then I was like, well, this is super valuable. I can't keep this because I'm a games journalist. And so I gave it away in a contest at OneUp.com. Honestly, that is one place where I wish I had just said, you know what, I'm an unethical journalist. I think not calling it vinyl fantasy was a really missed opportunity. I agree. Vinyl fantasy is what they should have called it. But in any case, it was this massive set.

and I long for that. I pine for it. Anyway, the point is, music, big deal for Square. You know, the physical music medium is largely dead as a commercial enterprise to the point that vinyl is now selling CDs, but you would never know it to look at Square's business because they have great soundtracks, and they know it, and they want to sell you those soundtracks, and people will buy them because they are great soundtracks. Oh, yeah, God knows they have a whole thing going on with Spotify, where I'm just

like, give me the Final Fantasy 14 soundtracks. Please stop screwing me around. But no, they'll continue to screw you around. And, you know, the 32-bit era was where their soundtracks could be what their composers envisioned them to be. Right. As opposed to, like, opera singers gargling, which, you know, that has its charm. It has its charm, but, you know, actually having vocalists on there, it made a big difference. And, you know, like samples of Nobu Umatsu's.

Stratocaster, Fender, whatever. Like, you know, things like that really, you know, made a big difference. And they put a lot of love into those soundtracks. And for me, that's really, that's kind of the unifying element for me of their soundtracks is just, or their games from this era is just like, it doesn't matter if it's a piece of crap. Like, so Kaigi, apparently. I've never played it. But by all accounts, it is a terrible action RPG. But, God, that music, the music is so good.

It's a live orchestra. I mean, we'll talk about Sukhagi later, but they basically Square gave a ton of money to an unestablished development studio, and they made the game you would expect. But when it came to the audio recording, they were just like, have a 102-piece orchestra, like, just go to town, and it sounds unbelievable. I actually going to ask you guys if you, see, I never bought these non-R-PG square games because I was saving up for RPGs. And I was only had a part-time job then, and I was kind of low in funds. Did you buy the games because you were genuinely curious? Did you rent them or did you just want the demo discs? I bought them and I like them.

So I will say I bought Toll Ball number one for the demo disc. I mean, I'm not going to front on that. But I actually enjoy Toll Ball number one. And I actually really enjoyed Bouchido Blade and Einhander. A lot of their later stuff I did not pick up on until after I moved to Japan in 2001. But that was right at the end of this stuff. So it was still very cheaply available to find used. And so I really had a fun time.

going through a lot of this older stuff and discovering that it was better than I had anticipated. Something worth noting is that when Square first started publishing on PS1, at least in the U.S., I think maybe in Japan too, but definitely in the U.S., they published under the Sony label. Sony picked them up his first-party releases. And this was, you know, about a year, a year and a half after the PS1 launch in the U.S., when Sony was like, you know what, we can destroy Nintendo on price. So they started publishing a lot of games that were, you know, I think $40. Yes, $39.99. Unbelievable.

Which, you know, and this was the point where when the 32-bit generation first arrived, they were pricing games at $60, which was still cheaper than Nintendo was publishing anything at on cartridges, even on Super NES. But then they had kind of this budget label with games like Parapa the Rapper, but also games like, you know, all the square stuff, up to Final Fantasy 7, at which point they were like, we're going to get full price for this one. But Bushido Blade, I know, for certain. And I think Tobol number one, both of those were published, you know, that that's sort of distinctive Sony Square packaging where everything is kind of washed out.

It's a lot of white and a cool, like, sort of abstract imagery and a cool logo, but also $40. And that was, that right there was very compelling. I was like, well, it's the people who made Final Fantasy 3 and Chrono Trigger and Secret of manna. So I want to play their games. And hey, their games are way cheaper than Resident Evil, which I didn't even like. So this has to be a win. And, you know, Tobol is a very nice game, but also not really my jam. I just don't really like 3D fighters like that. But Bushido Blade, we've actually had an episode on, but we can still talk about it because I'm always up for

talking about Bushido Blade was just an amazing piece of work, very ambitious and daring. And really demonstrates the developers saying what is a fighting game and you know how can we reinterpret it Einhander one of the first kind of 2.5D shooters and really took advantage of that with its sweeping panoramic cameras and the dynamic you know

functions of your your ship and a great soundtrack just yeah there was just so much stuff that wasn't Final Fantasy that square published that was really worth playing Saga Frontier, but that's not RPG. Yeah, I mean, I know we're going to talk about it later, but it was never released in the U.S., but internal section is fantastic. It's like a proto-res.

I was going to say, yeah, I don't know anything about it. But when I looked it up, I said, wow, this is res. It looks kind of really cool. Yeah, it is. And yeah, I mean, it's a, it ran in high-res interlaced, but, you know, very crisp polygon graphics, flat-shaded, incredible. Soundtrack, like all these games. You could swap in your own music, like Vibbon, using a CD to generate your own levels. And just actually a lot of fun in a really experimental shooter sort of way. I wonder, Jeremy, you mentioned that about Sony. And I was thinking, you know, after they left Sony, they had was it Square EA, EA Square? Yep. Yeah. Electronic Arts. Yeah. And so I wonder if that's part of why a lot of these other games never got the push here in the U.S. that the larger ones did simply because, you know, Square was not in computer. control of their own destiny. They were kind of beholden to other publishers. And so, you know,

if Square were their own publisher, maybe they would be out here really banging the gong for some of these loudly to help fill a quarter, whereas in the case of Sony or EA, they don't feel the need to shove it as much. I don't know. I mean, looking back at the NES, Super NES era, Square was always pretty conservative about publishing in the U.S. Like, we didn't get so many of their NES and Super NES games, and they just kind of focused on things that were known quantities that were going to sell. I think actually having, you know, the Sony embrace, holding them close and, yes, tightly hugging them. Like, that was a really good thing for us, because Sony had, you know, FU dollars. They were just like, we have all the money in the world now, and we can

bring in these cool games and set the PlayStation apart from the competition by just, you know, kind of carpet bombing genres and doing whatever the hell we want. And I feel like when Square moved away from Sony to electronic arts, which was kind of, it wasn't just like electronics arts was publishing. It was a partnership and they were doing the reverse in Japan. Right. I feel like that was where we started to see fewer of these games come over. I think if they had stayed with Sony, we probably would have seen internal section. We would have seen maybe Chocobo collection or something. I don't know. Man, I can, I can absolutely see internal section as a Sony label game next to wipe out Excel. Yeah, and Intuo and stuff like that. Yeah. Like, that was very much the Sony aesthetic. And it's,

it's kind of wild that Sony didn't bring it over. But I can, you know, like say, hey, can we license this from you? But yeah, I feel like it was just kind of shot down by the EA partnership. And so, who knows what we lost out on by Square deciding to go out on its own. amount of fighting games. Number two, how they really tried to make fighting games, not exactly RPGs, but they really tried to bring those RPG elements into fighting games because the logic was good in that

you're not in Arcade anymore, you're not head to head with someone, but you are probably alone playing at home, and you probably want a quest to go through. So they had Tobol number one and I think Bushido Blade also had quests to go through, didn't they? Oh, Boshito Blade and Tobol 1 and especially number 2 had like

a crazy amount of kind of supplemental content that that was very, very much intersecting with the RPG, like, basically a rogue-like. Yeah, it's like a wizardry, you know, like a maze mechanic. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I was actually, I was looking at some screenshots like Tauball 2, you can level up each of your limbs and appendages independently, you know, like get a strength potion and apply it to your fists. So now your punches are stronger when you go to meet people. And the other thing about... And there's like a hundred characters you can...

200. 200. 200. There's 200, okay, including Chocobo and, like, random enemies and... A chicken man. I remember a chicken man. Any of the enemies that you meet in the dungeon you can play as. I mean, let's talk about Tobol for a bit. Like, Tobol, one of the things, so, you know, it's mostly known as, like, the Final Fantasy 7 demo disc game here, but, like...

Yes. Toll 2 is amazing. And, like, Tobol is... Tobol number one is a lot of ex-Virtio Fighter and Tekken people. So, like, it has, like, a real strong fighters pedigree. It is not just a bunch of, it's not a bunch of bozos. It's the opposite of a bunch of bozos. It's basically like if you were to travel back in time to 1996 and pick who you want to make

your 3D fighting game, you would hire these people to do it for you. And even though the character designs are kind of goofy, they're Torayama, you know, like here at Torayama, Dragon Ball. That's what he does. Like, when you kind of set Toriyama free, he gives you goofy. And that's what I think is so funny looking at it, because I know so much more now about Torayama than I did 25 years ago. And so when I, you know, 25 years ago, I was like, who is the stupid chicken man alien? He's so stupid.

And nowadays, I'm like, who is the stupid chicken man alien? I love him. Exactly. He's like, did I miss this Dragon Ball arc? Because I definitely see him, like, you know, being an enemy to Goku who eventually befriends him. Like, it's definitely got that vibe. Probably meets him in a tournament. Yeah.

Yeah, the character designs, they're the Akira Toriyama specials. You know, you got your old man, you got your cute girl, you got your weird alien, weird fat alien, weird chicken alien, weird bunny alien, et cetera, et cetera. But they, it makes her a fun fighting game roster. And I think it's such a shame that we'd never got Toeball 2 because the leap from Tobol number 1 to Tobol 2, it's, I was talking with somebody. I'm like, it's like Tobol 4. It's like the amount of improvements that they put into it. it graphically gameplay wise roster the quest mode everything like it does not feel like a fast follow sequel it feels like in i think that to ball two is actually famous for along with bloody war

two being one of the more difficult PlayStation games to emulate just because it uses like 95% of the PlayStation despite coming out uh play PlayStation's processing power despite coming out that early in the life cycle like they just hit the magic on that one in terms of making it look and play fantastic yeah and supposedly because it is such a high performance game. That's why it never came here. What I've read or heard is that there just wasn't enough

memory available for them to cram English localization into it. Yeah. Which I would be willing to believe. Like I can see like that game, you know, just the extra few kilobytes of text being held in memory at the time would have been enough to just, you know,

cause it to melt down. Like it really does just, it's an extraordinary, extraordinary piece of technology. And the first game was no slouch. I mean, it ran at 60 frames per second in high-res mode. It definitely has that virtual fighter early Tekken thing where it's kind of floaty and everyone has these kind of canned animations. And you're like, you kick someone and they kind of rise up a little bit and then float down to the ground. Like, you know, it's very much a mid-90s 3D fighter. But you compare it to something that came along a few years later, like Tekken 2 or Street Fighter.

what was it called, Street Fighter EX? Yes. Yeah, like, it has these kind of flat-shaded, you know, Virtua Fighter-esque graphics, but to me it still looks better and more interesting than some of the other games that came along later from competitors just because it's so smooth and so crisp, which you just didn't see at the time.

It's, you know, I feel like it was maybe aesthetically in terms of character design and in terms of gameplay, not the right game for the U.S. Which, you know, I'm sure that also factored into us not getting Tobol too. Yeah, I was thinking just how ascendant Mortal Kombat was in the U.S. at that point, where even something like Street Fighter was having trouble getting traction with audiences and was seen as the underdog because people wanted the MK. But Dragon Ball was, you know, really starting to get traction in the U.S. Dragon Ball Z. So, you know, the fact that there was this kind of recognizable style, like, oh, isn't that the Dragon Ball? guy. Yeah, it was getting there. Yeah, at that point. Yeah, it wasn't as big as it is now for sure,

but, but it, you know, it did at least have some cachet and people were watching it on whatever television station aired it before Cartoon Network and Tunami. I know White TV had it in Canada. But yeah, no, the Quest Mode 2, I think, is worth talking about, because in Toeball number one, it was literally just like random dungeons, basically almost like an arcade game type dungeon delver. But for Toll Ball 2, there's actually a town. There's actually quests and item stores. And there's, there's, you know, it's, it's 10 out, I mean, you can speed run it in like three hours and it's like five to 10 hours long to play through normally with the character. So, you know, it's not the second coming of final

fantasy, but it's certainly, especially as a roguelike that you know you can play through with any of these characters and get a somewhat different experience every time, um, a really compelling additional piece of, of content, um, on top of the, the main game. that that's even today fun to go play through. Did we ever get a three? We didn't, did we? No, I think they, um, a lot of the people who worked on Tobol ended up going to, uh, make Kakuto Chojin, um, and then Kabuki Warriors, was that a game?

I think they, they ended ignomiously, so. Sounds correct. Yeah. It didn't, it didn't go well for them. Kind of the same thing with Bushido Blade. Yeah, yeah. I was actually going to ask about the fate of Bichito Blake. I know that came to Gata, too, and there was another one after that, I think. But it also kind of fizzled out. No, there was a, a lot of the devs went on to create Kengo, which was not as compelling or interesting as Bishito Blade.

It was more of a traditional fighter. Life bars, boo hiss. Boo hiss. Let's talk about Bushita Blade a little bit. I love Bushita Blade. And one of the things that has been great about prepping for this episode is that I've learned that I am not as alone as I thought in really, really having not even just a soft spot in my heart for Bouchido Blade, but like a almost religious fervor of like this game is something cool. Like, is it good? hard to say, is it interesting and fascinating and unique and unlike anything before or since

and does it know exactly what it wants to do and execute on it? Yes. That is what makes it so compelling to me. I was thinking like Bouchito Blade is not, it's a not fighting game as opposed to a fighting game. It's a game which is based around standing around and staring at somebody for 45 seconds and playing mind games to figure out who makes the first move. But it makes a compelling game out of that. Yeah, and, you know, it wasn't the only game that ever tried to do that. You know, S&K was doing something similar with the last blade especially,

but Boshito Blade is just so much more interesting and more distinctive. It's interesting because I would say of all the square games on PS1, it's probably the one that is roughest and feels most like it's about to fall apart. at any moment. I love games like that. Like it just, it's so choppy, not not necessarily in terms of animation, but in terms of like the experience. It's so, you know, you'll, you'll have a fight.

And then it just kind of goes silent. And there's like this interruption that doesn't feel intended. It feels like a sandbox game almost. And then it starts up and there's no sound. In terms of, in terms of like there's weird systems interacting with each other. And yes, you can have a sword fight with them, but other weird things, may happen too, you know, like you can injure people's arms and legs so they're calling or they can't hold their weapon. You can have weird paris. There's the whole secret Bushido code

in there. Like there's where if you perform dishonorably during your fights, you're not going to be able to complete the game. And I think that's what makes it so compelling is because it doesn't, it doesn't give you any explanation or life bars or UI or anything. It just kind of, it doesn't explain the, it doesn't explain the Bushito code. It's just something. you discover on your own. It's something you discover when you violate the Bishito Code. Yeah, it's like if Saga were a fighting game, that would be Bishito Blade. That sounds exactly like what you want out of life.

But yeah, like even even the arenas, you know, it, it has these kind of large, open-ish stages. But even that, it doesn't really, it doesn't really make it obvious. You know, when it, when it fights, it kind of starts with two characters facing off against each other and it's in pretty close. But then you can start running around and you can. just keep going and going. And then there's like terrain. There's like a ravine and you can go under a bridge and you can get lost in a bamboo thicket.

And you have to fight, you know, and slash your way through the bamboo. And that'll affect how you're, you're battling someone in that space. It's funny because there's terrain advantages. I think of it, you know, like, I mean, Bushita Blade is obviously heavily influenced

by samurai movies and especially the duels at the end. It's not a samurai. movie, but you know, the end of the good of the bad, of the ugly with the trule where everyone's kind of standing there for like 45 seconds blinking at each other, determining who's going to shoot first, that's Bichita Blade. That's the feeling you get playing the game. But what you're saying, Jeremy, those stages, which are so large, the word I think of them is sound stages. Like, I think of them as like movie environments that you are exploring.

You know, it's not a stage in the traditional street fighter or Tekken sense of like there's a plane in 2D space that you're fighting on and there's people in the background cheering you on. It's like, you can go places. You can have strange things happen unexpectedly as a result of how much freedom this game has given you. These are not arenas that are boxing you in. These are places you can explore. Yeah. And it's really interesting because it seems like, oh, this is, you know, like medieval Japan. It's so traditional. But then you get to the end and you're fighting a guy with a handgun in a parking garage. It's like, Oh, wow. This is actually taking place right now. Interesting.

Yeah, that I'm fighting a time traveler. Yeah, no, the handgun guy kind of breaks the game. We won't talk about him. There's a lot of, and there's a lot of stuff about Bouchido Blade. I know I'm not the first to make the connection, but, you know, it reminds me a lot of like Nidhog in terms of its kind of back and forth one-hit KOs or potential one-hit KOs. But I think the other thing, which, you know, when I was talking to people who love Bushito Blade is everybody is like, Bushito Blade is such a fun game to, play with your friends because everybody can play it. It is not a fighting game like Melty Blood

where you pick up the controller and it's like, are you got to read, you know, these 80 pages on the wiki before you can understand how to throw a fireball. It's like high, medium, low, go. Right. And, you know, it does, it does behoove you to understand how stances are going to work with your character. Like different characters have different strength levels and different endurance levels and they use different weapons, you know, like, uh, the lady who fights with the naginata is obviously going to have much longer range than someone who fights with a dagger or an array. So, you know, these things all all factor in. But of course, the naginata is, you know, it's a huge long weapon. Uh, so she's going to take a while to swing it. Uh,

whereas, you know, someone who is fighting with a dagger or Nipe is going to be very quick and, you know, be able to get around her guard. It's funny. You mentioned that I never thought of it. It's like Bushido Blade is like, what if two Dark Souls protagonist? we're fighting each other. Or monster hunt or antagonist by the sounds of the weapons. Yeah, yeah. But it has that kind of slow methodicalness to it

and that kind of intent. Right. You cannot button match. You have to think about what you're doing before you do it. Yeah, and a good duel in Bushido Blade is very intimate. There are no life bars, as you mentioned.

There's no timer. There's no music in the game. It's all like there's introductory music, but that's pretty much it. It's all just like the sounds of the environment and your characters, you know, the crunch of your footsteps on snow or through the leaves or, you know, it's, it feels very much, again, part of that like samurai movie, you know, one with nature, fighting your way, surviving. And each character has their

own storyline. Some of them are, you know, trying to escape from the clan. I think, you know, the story is that the clan's master is basically a traitor. And so everyone has their own reaction to that. And there are, you know, Japanese characters. There are European characters. There's a lot of variety in the cast, you know, even though it's a samurai game. This on paper just sounds like the kind of thing where it would all fall apart. Like, sounds brilliant, but like maybe two seconds away from falling apart, like an old

shoe, because it's just so, so ambitious. Well, if you, you know, Bushido Blade 2, I think proves that that statement is correct because Bushido played 2. They made some small tweaks to the formula. and those small tweaks, in my opinion, at least, are enough to make the soul fall off the shoe and to turn it into a lumbering mess. Oh, that bad.

It looks better, but I was just never able to get into Bushido Blade, too. There's more characters, and you can customize how your characters, like what weapons they use. And it just kind of takes away the really, like, straightforward purity of the first game. I don't know. And, you know, another thing, I mentioned, you know, a one-on-one duel being very intimate.

it. But this is one of the weird games that made use at the PlayStation Link feature. And you can link two consoles together and fight each other in a first person mode, which is just a huge mess. But it's so cool. Even more than all the other broken systems inside Bouchito Blay, switching it to a first person camera is really, I mean, just imagine a first person game on the PlayStation in general, let alone one based around position. sort fighting. It doesn't work, but it's so amazing. No, but I mean, you really, you can really see that the developers lightweight, like, they had ideas, and they knew they wanted to do cool, different, interesting things, and they had the technology to do it, and their scientists didn't even stop to ask if they should. They just did it. And I'm so glad. And I'm so glad that it came to the U.S. Sony was like, you know what? Let's just do it. Let's, you know, we've got a game about a cartoon dog made of paper who wraps.

We can have a samurai sword fighting game with a first-person perspective option that's going to fall apart if you look at it funny. Let's just do it. It's funny. I mean, we've talked a lot about Bouchuda Blay, but like it's, I'm thinking of, like, eco here. Like, it's not the same genre at all, but I think it's the same sort of like stripped away design aesthetic in terms of just like what is the absolute minimum amount of stuff that we can put in our game and still have it be the game that we want to make. And I think that's why when Bushita Blade 2 started adding more stuff, it really, you know, like it's like it takes away from what was there because it's such a, a vibe as much as

anything else that you are signing up for when you sign up for Bushuda Blade. So as for fighting games, just maybe we should go directly into Urgeist, because that's also a fighting game, is it not? God bless the ring. God bless the ring. God bless that ring. God, they say that because AirGyte sounds like sneezing. Is that true? Is that true because that's actually hilarious?

No, it's not true. I wanted to be true. Damn it. So, yeah. So, I mean, AirGyce was, it's from a different developer than Bouchuda Blade one or two. Was it DIMS? Are I imagining that? Or who was it?

No, it was, it was co-developed by Namco. Oh, that's right. That's right, because it ran on the System 11 board when it went to the arcade. Namco saw What I read at the time was that Namco saw all those weirdo Final Fantasy 7 minigames and were like

these plucky kids at Square, they've got moxie. Let's make a fighting game with them. I like that. So they did. Yeah, and it used the, I remember Namco had that arcade board that was compatible with the PlayStation that they co, it was either 11 or 22. I think 11 was

an exact match in 22 was like PlayStation Plus but easily back compatible. So, but they they use that to put it together. And it's a, it's a very 3D, you know, God bless the ring. Like, it's, um, Air Geitz is, is, we're, we're approaching the failed experiment territory at this point. Entering the radioactive zone. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's in the same, uh, area of gameplay as like Powerstone or Destrega or Verses, but I don't think it works necessarily as well as, it definitely doesn't work as well as Powerstone.

Because Power Stone kind of does. does a Smash Brothers thing where it's like, yeah, you could, you know, fight, but we have a lot of fighting games here at Capcom. Let's just be over-the-top idiots. And Eric Guys doesn't really go in for that. It tries to be a little more buttoned down. But then it gives you, you know, like the original cast of characters that no one cares about. And also, you can play as Cloud Strife. Antifa. And I believe, can't you play as one of the, I want to say one of the Turks also? think Reno probably, it's always Reno, so. And Sephiroth, I think, was added to the home version.

You can definitely play at Sephora. I remember that. So, yeah, and Jeremy Parrish for $10,000, name an original cast Air Geist member. Um, isn't there a guy named Godhand in there? Maybe. I think that's, like, the main character and then, like, the main villain. I'll give you, I'll give you partial credit for getting his nickname. So, yeah, there's a yo-yo sukeban schoolgirl who uses yo-yo's to yo-yo people. Of course he does.

There you go. No, in my notes, I just basically wrote, like, a bunch of Final Fantasy 7 characters and some some Jibronies, because I don't remember anything about the other, the original guys. I don't think they popped up ever since. Maybe some obscure, Square E-Nex piece of trivia. I don't know. I don't think you would even reuse their names for a Final Fantasy 14 side quest, no matter how much writers block you're suffering from. No one would get the reference. It would be wasted.

All right. So I do get my, I do get my $10,000. Ken Godhand Mishima. Like the main character. Yeah. Okay, fine. All right. But that was a, it was definitely more of a traditional sort of fighter, wasn't it? It wasn't like all weird and experimental? Or was it? I mean, it was more traditional than Bouchido Blay, but it was less traditional than Toeball, too.

Like, they definitely were pushing, they definitely wanted to be like Power Stone, like the game Jeremy is talking about, like, less fight in 3D space. Like, I think, you know, in many ways it was more akin to like a wrestling game than a punching game. Right, yeah, more grappling. Yeah, more grappling and positional. It didn't really work, you know? Like, it just, and I think, you know, why it didn't work is because it didn't have a banger soundtrack. You know, it just had a mediocre soundtrack, and that really was required.

How do you get 32-bit square and Namco together and have a soundtrack that's not a banger? Like, that is one of the great mysteries. They were all busy working on Mr. Driller in the dev house next door, I guess. So doing something worthwhile with their time. I suppose. Yeah. So, no,

it's an interesting experiment, but that's really all it is, is interesting and an experiment. It is neither good nor a game. The thing that pisses me off about it, looking at it now is the cover art is the cheapest most

slap-together cover-out I can think of, like they're using the old render from cloud. And this is some bad cover art, by the way, like Tobol number one. It kind of tries to compromise between that really awful CG aesthetic and Kriotoriama

and it does not work at all for any buddy. It was awful. that Square made for PlayStation that starts with an E, that is really good. Internal section? E, no. E or internal section? Yeah, there you go. Einhander.

Einhander. Not a real word? No, it's Einhander. I once said aloud, Einhander, because I thought that's what the umlouts meant. When I was working in the IGN offices and Perr Schneider, who, as you may guess by his name, is German, said, no, actually the umlouts mean it's flat. So it's Einhander. I got the impression from the way he said it

that everyone does that and he was really tired of explaining it to his staff. Yeah, so all right. Well, thank you for, but yeah, Einhander, as we have been corrected. Perhaps my personal favorite of all of Squares' non-RPG output during this era. Oh, really? Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm hander. You know, what can you say about it? It's a side-scrolling sci-fi shooter 2.5D, and the only way to describe it is that it fucking rocks.

Back in the box, quote. So it is. Yeah, it's very much in sort of the lightning force, thunder force vein. It's that style of shooter. It's not focused around like progressive power-ups, like in Gradius. It's not focused around precision play, like our type. It's much more about, um, there's almost kind of a, free-willing spirit about it. It has a lot to do with the combat system, or the weapon

system, which is kind of hinted at by the name. Yeah, it's, so, you know, ein-hander is a kind of derivative of Weihander, meaning two-handed, and here it means one-handed. And your ship, your bird-like ship, has basically a single talon at the base of it that it uses to grab weapons from enemies as they're defeated and reappropriate them. as itself. And so you can wield one at a time. You can face it forward or backwards. You can, I think, host like three and swap between them. But they... Depends on the ship. That's right, because there's, there's type one, type two, type three. There's different Einhanders. But what the, what, you know, I've played a lot of Einhander. Like, I actually could

one credit clear it back in the day. I played so much Einhander. And what it really is, is, it's not just a game about memorizing the movements of the enemies and understanding what they're going to do next so that they don't catch you with their bullet patterns or their movement patterns, though there is a lot of that. What a lot of Einhander is knowing the drops that you're going to get from enemies and the levels and to understand when you should hang on to something that you have already

and when you should let it go to take something else, you know, when to take the spread shot because of the enemy pattern that's coming up right here, when to take the focused laser cannon because of the enemy core in the boss that's coming up that you can hit. And, you know, not only being good enough to grab the weapons that you want and to hang on to them because you don't get hit and lose them, but to understand strategically, okay, I know what's happening in the levels here, both on my side and on the enemy side. And so in that ways, it becomes almost kind of like a little dance back and forth where you grab some things and don't grab other things because you, having played this 40-minute game into the ground, know exactly what challenges await you and how to rock, paper, scissors your way past them with the available weaponry. Yeah, hearing you describe the way the weapon system works with the enemy drops makes me realize that there's a little bit of the same spirit in this game.

in Bushido Blade, which is to take away some of the abstraction of this genre and make it more concrete, make it more grounded in what you actually see on screen. You know, usually in a shooter like this, you know, like a Star Soldier game or Gratius or whatever, you defeat enemies and you defeat like, you know, the string of five red enemies and they're going to drop a, just like a glowing power up thing. And, you know, some games that's going to build up your power bar, some games that's going to be like, hey, this was a green power up. So now I have this gun. And now I'm going to get another green power up. And I've got the same gun, but there's twice as many shots. This is much more about like, here is kind of the sandbox that's available. It's

almost like really kind of, I would say, like a precursor to Halo almost. Where you have the ability to hold two guns. And you have limited. ammunition for each kind of gun, and you kind of need to know, like, you know, I'm going into this situation here, and this is going to be the best weapon combo for that. So I need to grab these and hang on to one of them for as long as possible. It really, you know, it's a much more compact game, obviously, and much more linear. But it does kind of give you that same sort of, like, here is, you know, what you have to work with. And it's going to be kind of specific and different in each situation, and you need to really kind of understand what's the best combination

of things for the situation that I'm going into. Now, Jeremy, did you just say that I can only use my weapons a set number of times before their uses are exhausted and they must be discarded? Isn't that correct? I thought you had limited ammo. No, I'm just saying that sounds like a saga game, you know, I really. It does. I was actually going to throw that out, but then as I started talking, I was like, oh, wait,

this isn't saga. Oh, wait. I went back to saga again. But yes, like there, no, I mean, there, there is that. Like, you know, it's kind of the way you approach an RPG, especially something like Saga that has, you know, weapon degradation, where you're like, this is a really great weapon. And I could use it against all the rabble,

but I really need it against the boss. So I'm going to hang on to it, you know, or I need like X number of spell charges. And I'm really, I'm just going to hope that my mutant doesn't mutate and I lose that spell before I get to the boss because I need those 20 spell charges against the box. I mean, I think it's worth pointing out too that there's very much the same concept. There's a real large

variety in the types of weapons you get. You know, you can get like a machine gun with like 400 bullets or you can get like a cannon with like 10 bullets or you can get a lightsaber that you can actually swing around your ship in an arc to try to hit things.

Using the force. Yeah, because you, one of the buttons changes the position of your talon. So it'll make it you know, the... From top to bottom. basically swing from the top, yeah, top position to bottom. And when it does that, it's kind of like a free swing of the sword, isn't it? Like, it doesn't count as a sword attack if I'm not. Exactly.

See, yeah, no, that's absolutely correct. And your engines actually can damage enemies too if you switch direction and such. And so if you are playing at the high level, like you get the sword and you are damaging enemies back and forth by basically doing a dance of swinging it around positionally on your ship rather than actually. swinging it and then kind of reversing the direction your ship is facing and putting the retro engines right into the back of their faces. Yeah, and the placement and tactics of the weapons is also very reminiscent of the classic Castlevania games, where, you know, the enemies are going to drop, or, you know, the candelabras

are going to drop specific weapons. And you know you need this one, but if you pick up the other one, then, oh, all of a sudden you're facing death with a dagger, and that sucks. That sucks a lot. So you really have to kind of be careful and, you know, manage your gear and equipment and really take care of not to lose it. So, yeah, like this game just, it intersects with the same sort of mechanical concepts of a lot of other games that I really enjoy. And it's, you know, on top of that, on top of the fact that the gameplay, just the game design is so good. It's also so cinematic and interesting.

It's just presented in such a bold. and, you know, at the time, a really kind of unprecedented way, making use of, you know, like, it would, it wasn't just that the camera was swinging around between scenes or things like that, but, you know, sometimes the camera would shift in the middle of a stage and all of a sudden, instead of it being just like a straight side scroller, it's kind of like you're firing into the distance and there's sort of a three-quarters perspective. Like an over-the-shoulder thing, like in Resident Evil or something. Yeah, like you're rethinking a little bit about. how you're approaching it. It forces you to change up just how you interact with the game. And then on top of that, there's a pretty cool story that unfolds as you play. And it's a little abstract, but, you know, kind of once you figure out what's going on, you're like, oh, okay, interesting. Yeah, I mean, you talk about how... Not where I saw this going.

You talk about how cinematic it is. I mean, I think it's worth pointing out, like, you are basically a suicide bomber ship from the moon sent down to the earth to defend the moon against intrusion. And Earth, for some unknown reason, everyone speaks German. just because it's really cool in terms of the aesthetics. But, like, all the bosses, like, shout stuff at you in German when they show up for the first time, like, stop immediately, discharge your weaponry or be, and do not resist or something. And the whole – and everyone on the moon speaks English, and aesthetically, everything on Earth is kind of grimy and industrial, and everything on the moon is kind of shiny and futuristic.

And I think, you know, kind of going back to this, the Y2K aesthetic, that we're talking about at the beginning. Like, it cannot be, like, the soundtrack is so good. It's just unbelievable techno. I was listening to it before we recorded. It's pretty insane. Yeah, and it's frenetic in a way that even upbeat or fast game music is not always done that. Like, Einhander is, it's fast techno, but it's also lurching.

and aggressive in a way, you know, it is not background music for the club. Like, it is music that is there to get in your face and make sure that you are hearing every damn note as it lies. Yeah, I mean, it really feels like it's kind of a, like the next step above what Yuzo Koshiro was doing, and Streets of Rage 2 and 3 especially. But it's not as like aggressively weird as Streets of Rage 3. but it definitely has that kind of like intensity and just kind of machine quality. But also, it's not, you know, being generated by the Sega Genesis sound chip. So there's less harshness to it.

It's much more, you know, like, Apex Twin or something. I don't know. What would be a good comparison? I didn't listen to a lot of like really fast technology. Neither did I. Like, yeah, yeah, prodigy. Okay, yeah, prodigy is a good one. Yeah, like, yeah, one of the things which was, because I watched a replay of it recently to

to re-familiarize myself with all the stages again. And one of the things I noticed about it, which I didn't notice at the time, which was so cool, is it uses a lot of sound effects and vocal samples and other things happening in the environments to mask the transitions between the streaming audio, almost like it's trying to create a club experience. You know, like I said, the game's like 40 minutes long. But like every second of the 40 minutes is like an album that's been tuned to hit certain emotional beats at certain times.

And they really, you can tell that they've gone back through with that OCD attention to detail to make sure that every second of this, it's not dropping that beat for even half a second of stopping one track and queuing up the boss track. Like there's going to be police sirens panning from right to left across the screen. Or just like a random opera singer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Just, you know, they're using these other audio cues to. create a cohesive experience throughout the whole game. It's so cool. Part of me is like, do I just think it was cool because I was 19 or whatever? I'm sure it helps. Yeah, of course there's some nostalgia there, but also just going back and looking at it even nowadays, it's just like every boss is cool with cool patterns,

the amount of variety in the, oh, I can't let it go without being said. Like, you know, the first boss and the boss theme is great that everybody, loves. But my favorite stage in Ein Hander is the one where you are stopping the ship from the rocket from taking off, like right as it takes off. And there's like a three-minute timer right in the corner of the screen. And the music is just absolutely insane. And you are basically firing your afterburners trying to catch up with this rocket in bid flight to take it out before it can actually get into orbit. It's nuts. It's crazy go nuts in like the greatest contra tradition. And like that whole game just has so many

set pieces that are really just like so over the top and so much fun. It's definitely one I would love to go back to because it's one I missed out and I didn't realize until much, much later in my life that I actually liked shooters quite a bit. So I should really give it a try. Yeah, both that and Art Type Delta, which came out the next year, I think, are like the peak of the peak of 2.5D shooter design on the PlayStation. Yeah, and this is one of those games, you know, you wouldn't see a major publisher putting out something like this at this point. But it's a game that I think takes advantage of the

limitations of the genre. You know, like Andrew keeps saying, it's a 40-minute game, but it manages to make every single instant of those 40 minutes intense. And, you know, because it is this like very on-rails, linear, guided experience, like they know exactly what's going to be happening at each moment. And you just, you're along for the ride and doing your best to survive through it. We're going to be able to be. You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network, sponsored by HyperX, maker of the acclaimed Quadcast and QuadcastS,

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The 80s and 90s were so rad. The movies, the music, the TV, the games? That's what I want to talk about. If you're cool enough, join us and listen to less than 2000, because that's all we talk about. Adam and Chad live less than 2000. Now part of the HyperX. Podcast Network. It's time to tap in with the HyperX Quadcast S microphone.

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Straighten up your hair once I'm gone. You got a style all over the ladies. La La La La La La La La are the words to his new hit single, Live Long, Love Long. And also, he woke up from a dream where he forgot to study for the test. Did he really say all those things? Yeah, yeah, these are all things that I discussed. That he discussed with me. That's magical.

Chat of the Wild. Breaking down Zelda and Zelda-like games, one dungeon at a time. on the HyperX Podcast Network. Live long, love long, baby. This might be a good time to segue into the game that Andrew has been dying to tell us about the game that starts with an I, but it sounds like starts with an E, so. No, internal section.

Yeah, we talked about it a lot previously, but it's a res-like shooter. You know, and if you say that, I mean, for better or for worse, I have pretty much described the game to you. It has, you can choose from 12 different weapons that are all kind of based around different zodiac signs. Oh, I always like that. Um, it's, uh, we say res, but it's also, it's really of the vein of like Tempest 2000 or Polybius or like the Jeff Minter style tube shooter games. Um, but it's, but it's, I mean, I honestly, you know, I, I can imagine that if Jeff Minter were to play internal section, he would be like, I respect this game. I understand what it's doing and I like it. Like it's, it's on that way. It's more llamas, but I like it. Yeah. Yeah. No game can be perfect. So, um, but yeah. And, uh, I mean, I think part of the reason it didn't come to the U.S.

is because it is so minimal in its aesthetic. You know, it is, it's not flat shaded. It's flat, you know, but it's like Cosmic Smash on the Dreamcast or something. It's just like there's like four colors and they fill up the whole screen in eight shapes. But it is so assured in what it does in its art direction and its game direction and its music direction has just like a killer drum and bass. soundtrack of the kind you would get in 1999 on the PlayStation. It and Einhander, I think, are the

two games here where I think that if you miss them and you were to go and play them nowadays, that you would have very little difficulty falling back into the groove of what these games are trying to accomplish and appreciating what these games are trying to do. And, you know, as with many things in the era, the super

minimalist high-res, no-shade aesthetic has aged a lot better than the Blocky Gex texture. of what other things we're pushing at the time. And so, you know, it still looks very visually distinct and still looks very, very cool. The problem with internal section, as you know, Einhander has 40 intense minutes. Like, internal section basically has like 20 loosely guided minutes,

and then please put your own CDs in to make the rest of the game. To really bring the experience together. Just do that for us. Yeah, it's kind of the Vib Ribbon approach to, you guys have CDs, don't you? Do I guess have CDs? So does internal section dynamically generate stages based on the music? You keep mentioning Vibrobin.

It does, yeah. If you put in your own CDs later, then it basically turns into a gigantic music visualizer and creates stages based on the music. And absolutely, that is the long tail of the game system where you are supposed to take your favorite albums and to use that to generate additional shooter content. And that's part of why there's 12 different guns.

that you can use in so many different kind of mechanics there is because it's a procedurally generated sort of shooter game rather than it is the opposite of Einhander's tightly formulated and bespoke experience. This is much more like we have created a vibe, we've created a bunch of tools to go with that vibe, we've created a cool soundtrack, but you can go ahead and bring your own

and just kind of vibe into space for a while. But definitely like Vibriven, it's still a game that you can enjoy on those merits. even today. And I think it holds up actually a lot better than Vib Ribbon, which has, you know, like, I love Vib Ribbon. Do not get me wrong. But Vib Ribbon has like four different buttons that you can push in various combinations and that's it, whereas this has a lot more enemies coming at you with different patterns, with different ways that you can approach them. And the vocabulary and grammar of how you can interact with the procedurally generated content makes for a much more engaging experience over the longer term. when I was younger I always wanted to try one of those games like that you would put your own CD in for like Monster Rancher was another one but yeah I always liked those games and just never really got deep into them because they always just seemed so weird it's like I don't have my show tunes in here let's see what a stage looks like after I insert Tommy's in there so so yeah it never came over here but as Jeremy said earlier like it would have really fit right in with the Sony aesthetic of that era and it's not exactly demanding for those of you who don't speak Japanese, which is to say it's import-friendly. Yes. Okay. But you know what's not import-friendly, Jeremy?

And I want to talk about for like... Is that racing lagoon? It's another mind, actually. Oh, okay. So... It says it's an awful visual novel. It is an awful visual novel. I don't want to spend too long talking about it because it is not good.

But basically, it was... It's a visual novel, which is designed where it has a lot of pictures and FM. of real people, basically like an NHK drama that you can play. But I do want to talk about it because it has the worst premise for a game I can't imagine, or at least least, which is basically a schoolgirl is in a car accident. And when she wakes up in the hospital, you, yes, you, Nadia, are inside her head. You are the another mind. And so the question here, you know, Uchikoshi is not, but how can we kind of break the fourth wall between the game player and the protagonist, and the idea is you, the player, are this voice inside the head of this schoolgirl who must,

you're not telling her what to do, you're actually having conversations with her and trying to convince her to do things and wheeling and dealing with her. But just the whole premise of a middle-aged man being inside the general schoolgirls mind trying to tell her what to do. It's not great. And also the game itself is just terrible on every other metric as well. So, you know, as usual, it does have a pretty good soundtrack, you know. Of course. That ties me.

Kind of jazzy. But, uh, you get to listen to jazz while creeping around in a woman's head. So it's kind of like, it's kind of like Pac-Man Tube, it's skevier. Pac-Man Tube is Skevier. Yeah. It's a, it's, I say it's fourth wall building, you know, I really want to put some space between myself and this school girl. Was Pac-Man II the one where you're kind of throwing things? things at Pac-Man to make him do things? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the one where you've got a slingshot and you're like,

okay, Pac-Man, I'm going to shoot an apple and it's going to fall from the tree and then you figure out something to do with it. And go, can you just shoot Pac-Man and the balls with the apple and see what happens? He gets mad, probably. He does. So I kind of feel like we should save racing lagoon for less because I feel like it's the culmination of a lot of different threads that we've been pulling on talking about this.

Fair enough. Well, we certainly have no shortage of weird stuff remaining to talk about just to kind of clean things up. Chocobos, there were a lot of chocobo related things on the PlayStation that were not quite RPGs, but were certainly chokobos. Yeah, there was a racing game. Yeah. It was a racing game.

It sure was. It was sure a mascot racing game, and yet I am looking forward to GP coming out later this year. Well, you know, that one has the white mage in it, so. I just love this. That's different. The story for chokobo racing is, as I understand it, Sid strapped like rocket skates onto a chokobo and, well, magic happened. That sounds like something he would do. That sounds like something he would do.

It really does. I like that they tried to re-bottle the lightning of Toeball number one's Final Fantasy demo through this game by making this game the first place anyone could play as the protagonist of Final Fantasy 8 Squall Leonhardt. I don't even remember that. He debuted in this game. Oh my gosh.

You know, it's a very appropriate place for Squall such a frivolous, lighthearted character to show up. I can just imagine him saying whatever and being completely deadpaned like, why am I in this mascot racing game? Well, but then he would drive anyway and he'd

you know, win. Exactly. It's just a job. me my seed bucks. Give me my seat bucks with my paycheck. What do you mean? Does this go toward my rank? Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't, I mean, there's no reason to be overly dismissive, but there's also no reason to talk about it excessively.

It is a mascot racing game from 1999, so. Yeah. And I guess it, you could ostensibly say that it came from Final Fantasy 7 because the Final Fantasy 7 Chocobo breeding and racing, uh, mini game was such a huge part of that, especially if you wanted to, uh, get summons that. last for 20 minutes. Well, they kind of split that into two parts here. You know, on the one hand, you have the chokobo racing, and on the other hand, you have chokobo

stallion. That's true. Which also has racing, but less active racing is, it's kind of a horse racing derivative. As you may know, Nadia, like betting on horse races is a popular pastime of the youth in Japan.

I'm sorry, I missed that youth. Is that what you just told me? Well, you know, the elderly people have to start at some time. It's Oh, okay. So it cuts across all parts of society in terms of way to waste away the hours. But yeah. Does it actually, like, are the kids who actually engage in horse gambling in Japan, or do they all have, like, you know, ducktail, uh, hairstyles, you know, like? Sadly, sadly, no.

I wish that. Bancho. The pompados. Absolutely true. But, but it's not. But, uh, it would be a better world, a kinder, gentler world. to dutail your hair in. They all just sit around, you know, doing the squat thing.

They do do that. The rock squat, yeah. That part is true. Okay. Okay, cool. All right, so I do kind of understand what's happening here. Yeah, it is, it is, they might not have the hair, but they're delinquents at heart. That's for sure.

I do know that I was obsessed with chocobo racing in, in seven and in 14. I have like a whole bunch of, I have like generations of chokobos. It's ridiculous. Oh, my goodness. I only did it because I had to. Oh, gosh. Is this being recorded? Like, I never actually got.

It is. I never actually got the Knights of the Round Materia, despite my dedication. So. You know what? I can tell you, it wasn't worth it. No, it really wasn't. I brought it out against Sephiroth and was like, and Sephroth has his own attack that takes five hours.

Yeah, he's got the solar system attack. Yeah. It's just such a boring fight. By the time I had the free time to go back and do it, the conventional wisdom, even in 1998, was it's not worth it. Don't. I just did it for the fun of breeding brother and sister Chocobo is like a deviant. Oh, my goodness.

Well, you know, whatever gets your ass right going. What the hell is Dice to Chocobo? Nadi, you sound like you'd enjoy another mind. So I probably would. Because I'm a sicko, I suppose. That's right. Dice to Chocobo is like an Iteraki Street clone, like a monopoly or what's that the Momotaro train game that has like 45?

You can call it by the American name, Fortune Street. It has come to the U.S. Yeah, because I played the Fortune. There is a point of reference for people. Okay. I actually liked it. It's one of those. Okay.

But with chokobos. But with chokobos. And again, you've completely summarized the design doc and the Finitsu cross review with that statement. We can all move on. What about What about? Sukagi is it called?

Sokaigi. You mentioned that parish? Yeah, it's been a long, long time since I've played it. And I just remember it really sucking. It's incredibly bad. A 3D action game where you're like fighting gods in ancient Japan or something or ancient China, maybe. I think you're in modern, I thought you were in modern Japan, but the gods were ancient. I don't know.

Maybe that's it. I don't know. Something's really old. Because I thought you're, I remember, I thought there was a high school in there somewhere. It's like, high school, something's old. It's like Sui Kodan meets persona meets not knowing how to make a 3D action game. Ouch. Yeah.

Like if those games were an extremely bad, you know, Dynasty Warriors precursor. That bad, huh? Like running at like 10 frames per second with a camera that's never pointing in the right direction with. But damn, that music. Yeah, really good sound like it's great. Look up Quake. You can play that as interstitl here too. I think that's the one with all the chanting that plays in the first area.

But, yeah, no, but I think, I mean, Sukhagi itself is not really worth talking about, but it's probably worth kind of talking about is just kind of, like, representative of the insane amount of money and freedom that Square was, like, Square was not giving people enough rope to hang themselves. Like, Square was giving them, like, fully operational battleships to go out and they were building, they were building the platform from which to hang themselves and building the town around the platform, you know, putting the clock tower behind the public square for the lynching. They were going all in. But, I mean, they made so much money on Final Fantasy 7, and they'd had successes before that. Yeah. They were a successful company, but that was on a different level. It's not like they were poor going into the PlayStation era.

So, but, but, but yeah, there were, there were no guardrails, like at all, you know, and there was no understanding. Again, I mean, this is, you know, I don't, I don't want, I hesitate to talk about modern games, but something that you've seen a lot in the end of 2021, in my opinion, is you've seen the constant refrain of indie developers who made a very successful 2D game making the jump to 3D somewhat less than successfully with their project. And it bites everyone no matter what year it is, no matter how good the tools are. It doesn't matter if you're using Unity or Unreal or if you're coding directly to the PlayStation SDK. No amount of making a game in 2D can

prepare you for making a game in 3D if you don't know what you're getting into. And boy, the Suu Kagi chaps did not know what they were getting into. Those chaps, those wretched chaps. It's worth looking up just to look at because it's really just endemic of you. You would never be able to publish a game like Sukeigi nowadays because it would be killed far before it ever actually was shown to the public. And because there would be milestone checks in place to. ensure that it did not get so far along and so expensive along before they threw their hands up

and said, we have to publish this thing. Yeah. Yeah, this is like Kickstarter pitch that's not going to get funded. Ouch. Yeah, it's really dire, dire shirts. As for Racing Lagoon, now that's one I definitely didn't get into. Was that, that came to America, right? It did not. No, but it just recently got a fan translator. Like within, like within a month ago. And that's why it might be, in your feed or in your mind as something that's available in English, because it was only very recently translated into English. And the reason I wanted to say it for last is because it combines all these things that we've been talking about, like highly experimental genre, incredibly high production values, unusual aesthetic choices, not very good.

So kind of the tagline for this episode. I mean, it's it's Rad Razor. three, right? Oh, okay. You could view it. It's, it is like, um, imagine initial D as made by Michael Mann. Wow. That sounds really appealing, actually. Yeah. It does. But then all the driving sections are Garfield cart. No, no. Not even Chocobo racing. Not even Chocobo racing. So, yeah. No, it's, I mean, that, that is really, um, on an, on an, on an, aesthetic level and major props, you know, as somebody who has dabbled in localization to the fan team that put this together. Like, racing lagoon is, is a racing RPG. But what is interesting

and unique about it is aesthetically, it's, you know, like initial D, Fast and the Furious, like, like Eurobeat, techno, 1999. Yes. In your face. But the writing is hycoon. Who? That's odd. It's like poetry. It doesn't, it's a word cloud dream journal. And in the Japanese version, like, every fifth word is English. Why? Because it's cool, Nadia. Okay. Because aesthetics. That must have been a nightmare to localize. So kudos to that team. Yeah. And they did a really good way using some weird things like unusual camel case and removing spaces between words to try to

like create like oh it's a revenge race one word lowercase R at the end uppercase R in the middle like like like like like just kind of doing some things to try to have this sort of weird aesthetic about it but yeah like it's

and then the racing itself is just not good but there's so much of it and it's because it has an actual RPG narrative with like story sections and branches and characters and betrayals. And it is a slog to get through, but it's an unusual slog. And I shouldn't be too down on it. Like if you kind of like set your brain to zero for the racing segments and just

understand that this is like the Final Fantasy 7 racing mini. That's really what it is. It's a game based around racing where the racing is as bad as the racing mini game in an RPG. Which I can deal with. I spent so many hours on that stupid motorcycle racing the gold saucer. Like I can deal with that. Exactly. But Ridge, Racer, this ain't, which, you know, the ideal form of racing lagoon is one where it has this weird aesthetic and this weird writing. And then the racing itself is also like on par with Ridge Racer or something and really holding up its end of the bargain as well. Did not happen. Not going to find it. No, no. So, but it's, but it's, it is, it is vapor wave, you know,

like proto vapor wave. Like I hesitate to call something vapor wave because that's, but it's, it's vapor wave adjacent, you know? Like, it's, it's, actually, it's more like hypnosis-based outlaw than it is vapor wave. Like, but it has that same sense of just like, it's weird for weirdness's sake. And even in the Japanese version, even in 1999, this was not normal, you know. This was not normal for Squarespaceoft. So that's how you know it's dire. Yeah.

And I think that's something you have to take a look at. But it's amazing that it's been. been translated. And if it sounds, if a weird, poetic, lyrical, racing, neon swearing RPG for the PlayStation sounds like something that you would find interesting, you will definitely find it interesting. Like, you should still go unplay it, even in 2021. You just have to, to set your expectations a little bit lower than lost treasure and a little bit higher than total disaster. You know, It is an unusual experiment of the kind that would not be made today for any number of reasons. And I think that's why I'm glad that there's people out there who are still translating these old games in bringing them over here because games nowadays are not games from 20 years ago.

And that's not for better or for worse. That's not a judgment. But there's still a game that you have not played from 20 years ago can still offer things to you today if it's new to you. And that's why I'm so happy that the fan translation community is filling in all these holes in the canon and quasi-canon from the 90s and early 2000s, because I think they're really kind of fundamental to understanding how our game industry got to where it is today. No, absolutely. It was certainly a very interesting time for games and for Square in particular. And worth remembering, I think this conversation has kind of zeroed on that fact that it's, we've had a great time just talking about these really weird quirks and a lot of failed experiments, but a lot of kind of half successful experiments do. I mean, if you have any final wrap up thoughts, by all means, let them fly.

Actually, before we move on from Racing Lagoon, I do want to ask Andrew, is there some meaning to the word Lagoon in Japanese that I'm not familiar with? Good question. There's Bahamette Lagoon. There's Laguna lore from Final Fantasy 8. What's funny is that? What was their thing with that word? So I learned that the poetical style of Racing Lagoon is actually referred to as Lagoon Go or Lagoon language by Japanese players. Lagoon Go.

I love it. To kind of define the aesthetic. I am far from a native Japanese speaker, so I cannot say precisely what it might be. But I think I would just say it sounds blue in the way that it sounds, well, I mean, or maybe it sounds blue, not in the Sega blue sky sense, but it sounds blue in the wide open sky sense. Right. The blue ocean. Yes, exactly. You know, like the lagoon is like.

But not like the Reggie Fizumais sense. Exactly. Neither that sense I've had it. It's a word that I think has a, has a, so I mean, again, you know, like, because it has the law there, even though it's not French, it would sound French to a Japanese speaker, because they do have a lot of katakama loanwords from French, Lagoon, as well, as well as from English. But I think, I think what it sounds like is like, like, Racing Lagoon, Bahamut Lagoon. It sounds like the idea of, like, here is a game where you can do what you want where there's not any real saga again it all comes back to saga um but no i maybe someone there was just a fan of the really bad ease clone for super nes lagoon oh god no that that game is constriction and terror not freedom at all but yeah no i think i think you're free to turn it off and go on with your life and play something else yeah no i think it just sounds like like like blue like like it's funny because i said michael man but like blue like the lighting and heat is blue.

Okay. Like that sort of cool, open blue of possibility. I think that's the blue of lagoon. That was going to be my guess, because Lagoon does sound very kind of free and open and tropical almost, like laid back almost. You get your vapor wave in there, too, with the palm trees and the ocean and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, like Lagoon is the blue of vapor wave. Like Lagoon is a word that describes the, I mean, again, we're looking at this.

20 plus years on, but I think that it is kind of lagoon is feeding into that sort of overall aesthetic that Sony, I call it Sony blue is, is the, the, the, the blue of like, there was the PS2, yeah, of the PS2 of their cameras and their other, that just beautiful, metallic, reflective blue. Like, like, that was so popular in the late 90s in the early 2000s and that Y2K aesthetic. Like, I really think it was, it was a positivity in the sense of like we want to have a calming feel for our aesthetic. Yeah. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks.

I mean, I know I'm not the only one who thinks of words in terms of colors. But yeah, I see we're coming from with the whole blue thing. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. And I think from that sense, despite as flaws, Racing Lagoon really fulfills that part of the aesthetic, that part of being an open-ended game with a lot of possibility for you to explore. And that's what makes it such an unusual and interesting experiment even now. And also what made it so difficult to translate

because, you know, it's a lot more than just a UI. It's a game and a game with possibility and branching. I'm glad that a God translation then. And I hope that, who knows, maybe it'll lead to something else in the future. You just never know these days. Yeah, anything. Like a Sokaii translation?

Let's... Yeah. Why not? And that is it for this 32-bit CD-powered episode of Retronauts. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you to Mr. Parrish and Andrew for joining me. me. If you think this episode is cool, we have tons more cotton just like it. Just visit the Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com for slash Retronauts for access to media that is both fun and educational.

Support us at the $3 level to receive early access to weekly episodes. Support us at $5 to get episodes a week early as well as two exclusive episodes a month. Support us at the magic number 64 for the opportunity to set the topic of a Repternodes episode once every six months. Wall Supplies last. Wall Supplies last. That's right. So it is a limited tier. There's only a few of those slots.

Okay. So wall supplies last. And I just did chunk of your promotion for you, Jeremy, but go ahead and say whatever else you want to say. Sure. You can find me in addition to talking on Returnout's podcasts a lot of the time. Also, talking about old video games on YouTube once a week at just look for my name, Jeremy Parrish. And you can find me on Twitter, sometimes talking about video games, sometimes just making bad jokes as GameSpite. they're good. And at limited run games, doing a lot of different things, actually. Sometimes you'll see my name pop up and it'll be exciting and you'll be like, I know that guy. So that's where I'm found. And how about you, Andrew? Yes. So you cannot find me on the modern internet. I have done a thorough job trying to scrub myself as much as possible. But if you really need to speak to me, reach out to Nadia or Jeremy and I'm sure they'd be happy to put you in touch. Yeah, we'll give you all the secret information. That's right. You can you can find me on a needy. to know basis, and frankly, you don't need to know. We keep Andrew Alder ourselves in this place. It's just me complaining about my daughter interrupting my Final Fantasy 14 raids at this point. Oh, you got to give her away. Sorry, that's the way it goes. Yeah, you know, well, unfortunately, she's market board prohibit it.

I mean, you could always train her to play along with you and, like, you know, be your gold, gold farmer. I already have a chocobo. Okay, never mind. I kid. My daughter and I actually have a lot of fun playing games together, so, you know. Oh, that's sweet. It is sweet. It is sweet when parents and kids play together. But I don't have a kid. I'm bitter and old. So I want you all to go ahead and enjoy your Final Fantasy 7 demo disc. And don't sleep on that Final Fantasy game on there. It looks pretty good, apparently. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.