Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 467: Boktai

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Jeremy Parish, Stuart Gipp, and Shane Bettenhausen emerge from their caves, blinking and frightened, to face the ferocious fury of the sun as they lift their GBA solar sensors skyward and discuss the Metal Gear offshoot that gave nerds suntans: Boktai. Edits by Greg Leahy. Art by John Pading. 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.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, Kojima knows you want the D, the vitamin D that is. Hi, everyone. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I'm Jeremy Parrish being extraordinarily vulgar in reference to a children's game, as one often is. And with me, this episode, which is safely locked behind a patron paywall so the police can't find me. We have, let's see who's hearing from California.

Oh, that would be me, Shane, Shane Watch, Sunny D. Bettenhausen. And happy to catch some rays and during the brief time when we can all beat the boss here while the sun's out. Oh, man, Ray's not on this one. That would have been perfect. Oh, well, instead we have Ray's substitute. I don't know if that's true. Yeah, I'm the backup Ray, I guess. I'm Stuart Jop and I hail from a land.

where the sun doesn't shine. Yeah, I was just thinking about that. Land of the ice and snow with the midnight sun and the hot springs blow. You know, when they say I'm going to stick this where the sun don't shine, they mean England. Fair enough. Just kidding. They mean, they mean asses, obviously. Oh, well, I mean, what's the difference, right?

Between friends. Oh, I know, I know. Just as good, what stuff we did that was bad. Listen, I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. This is a fantastic podcast so far. everybody enjoying it. Thank you. Stuart, thank you for joining us. You can talk about the hardships of playing this week's featured topic, which is Hiniu Kujima and Konami's

masterpiece tetralogy, Bokura no Taya, also known as Baktai, or Lunar Nights, if you must. So yes, because it is sunny and summary. It's summerier than ever, and people are dying because of it, which is bad. But, you know, with the sun being out and it being sometimes nice outside, it's a perfect time to go out with your video game portable device of choice except a steam deck because that's too big and also doesn't accept GBA carts and play some bacti. And it's a very unique game, one of which I have many memories,

mainly because it came out right around the time that I joined the video games press and I said, hey, this is a weird game that I can do something fun with. And I did. And no one read it because at that time, no one read OneUp.com because it was brand new. But still, it lives on in my heart. Does it live on in your hearts as well? Oh, 1.1.1.com. Well, no.

No, who cares about that? No, Boktai. Oh, I guess, yeah. Well, they're intertwined for me, Jeremy, because I think that's around the time I met you. I was working for Ziv Davis for EGM and one-up at that time. And it was an exciting time for a game like this, because GBA was on the Ascension. It was new and exciting and getting better.

And we wanted better games for it. And the fact that this was not just a cool-looking kind of AAA portable game, but an completely original new IP from Hideo Kojima for GBA. And that had weird stuff going on about it. But even without the weird stuff, it just kind of looked like a cool action-adventure game. So there was a lot of excitement. I was excited.

So the fact that we could play it early, you know, when there was like a preview ROM of this going around, it was very exciting. So you know what? I worked in that same office as you, and I can say for a fact that there was not a lot of excitement about that or any portable game whatsoever. Jeremy, this one because of who made it, there was 5% excitement and I was that 5%. That is 5% more than just about any other portable game. You make it sound like we hated, like sushi X hated all portable.

That's what you make it sound like. Sushi X is a fish who has been filleted. He does not exist. His persona did hate portable games, though. Yeah. I know. I had the original Sushi X especially. I remember actually bumping into him a few years back at Midwest Gaming Classic.

And I had just launched the first Game Boy Works book. And he was over there after we met just talking about how much he hated the Gameboy. And I had like the proofs for the second volume with me. just thought, you know what, I'd better not take out this folder and let him see what I'm doing. Sorry, but who hates the Game Boy? What kind of monster? Well, you would be surprised.

The original Game Boy was hateable. I hated it as a child. I went around telling people it was terrible in 1989. Because, you know, it had worse. It didn't have a back light. It wasn't color. Wouldn't you, of all people, Stuart, think the Links was better than the Game Boy in 1989? I don't know.

The Links, it only has one good game on it and it's chips. This is true, but the Game Gear is technically better than Game Boy and has some good titles, so it almost is Game Boy like in many ways, anyway. I mean, it's just all I'm saying is whenever I see a Game Boy, it's off topic, I know.

Whenever I see a Game Boy, I want to kiss it. It's not weird. It's normal to I want to kiss the Game Boy. But the problem with Sushi X's hatred, by year two of Game Boy, it was clear that it was winning the software battle, all the good games were coming to Game Boy despite its antiquated technology. So he, you know, at that point, the fact that he would do reviews and say, too bad it's on Game Boy and give it like a six.

If Susiex would come to me with that shirt, I'd batter him. So when I'm talking about EGM, I'm not talking about 1991 EGM. I was talking about 2003. It is true. When this game launched. GBA was a bit marginalized compared to the excitement of everything else at the time. There were some stalwart in the office, folks like, you know, filthier bald, a handful of others. But for the most part, all eyes were on consoles.

and by consoles, I mean, PlayStation 2 and somewhat to Xbox and definitely not GameCube. It was a rough time for Nintendo, but for those of us who were paying attention and, you know, bought the GBA SPN, could actually see the screen now, there was some cool stuff happening on Game Boy Advance,

and this game was one of the coolest. As you mentioned, Shane, it was headed up by Hideo Kojima. I would not necessarily call it a game created by him, because he's actually... He produced it. He came up with the concept of it and then said, children, please take this concept and run with it. And he has, in more recent years, said, yeah, that team didn't really have what it took to, you know, make a new IP on a handheld system a hit.

I should have been more heavily involved. What are, that's so mean? These are good games. They are good games. It probably sounded less mean than Japanese. They weren't, right, right. Well, they weren't successful, is what he meant. They weren't, you know, financially hits, which is.

why they don't make Boktai games anymore. They made four of them to increasingly diminishing returns and finally said, all right, the Cogam name is not going to sell any and everything. Let's just make more Metal Gear's and they did. And those were pretty good. So it all turned out okay, but I do miss Boktai. I think the approach to it at the time from my perspective who was excited was like, oh, it's a bit of Metal Gear and it's a bit of Zelda and they kind of fit this. Oh, no, you're missing something important there. There is a lot of Castlevania in there, Shane Bettnowson, Mr. Castlevania fan. Yes, and the gothic.

This is what if Castlevania played as a Metal Gear game. Right. And that's so good. But yeah, the aesthetic is very Castlevania, which I love. There's also... You're fighting vampires. Stuart, please.

I'm sorry, that it's just like, well, I've got to say it, because it's true. There's a little bit of spectrum in there, too. There's a little bit of spectrum with some is is asymmetric. It is asymmetric and colorful. There's a bit of night, Laura. And also, there's only like three colors on screen. When they clash with one another, yes, I agree.

And there's also a stage called Firetop Mountain, which is a reference to the fighting fantasy books of the 1980s by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone. I'm telling you, there's some Britishness in there. That's why I'm here. I could sense it. All right, yes. You saw us mentioning a game with isometric visuals,

and you were like, well, I'm like, hello. Do I have some things to tell you? I mean, can I briefly talk about my initial perception of Buktite when it dropped, so to speak. Well, the thing with the Game Boy advances, and you feel free to disagree with me on this, it's sort of perceived in a way as having a very small library and that's kind of true-ish

it had like a four-year lifespan I think which is not that long but the thing is every other game is an absolute banger like it's just an embarrassment of riches on that console where it's like all those Metroid Vainers and all these isometric or top-down games

or platform games that are just awesome and Bogtai for me I was like oh that looks cool but also this other game that's coming out the same week looks cool, and this other game that's coming out the same week also looks cool. So it's sort of fun by the wayside for me a little bit, and until I got to play it. Well, it didn't come out in Europe for almost nine or ten months. It took a long time. Which positioned it better than it was positioned in America, I will say. In a sense, but also

I'm, I think I'm not off the mark in saying that everyone in Europe was playing this game on Visual Boy Advance, because everyone was playing every Game Boy Advance game on Visual Boy Advance at that time. And that's difficult because it took years for them to come up with a patch for the sun meter, which is, of course, is the main gimmick for this game. But that's how I initially played it. And I don't remember it being

that long after launch that they patched it in, hold L and press left and right to gain sun. Who needs to go outside? Nobody, not me. Well, I would disagree. I would disagree that I don't feel the GBA has a small library. I feel like it has a large library in that I remember I had a lot of games for it. And there were tons of license and kiddie games that I never played. I mean,

It might not be quite as vast as the original Game Boy Color Library or the DS library, but it's a vast library. You better believe I played those kid against my friends. You better believe I play them. The thing with GBA is that it had a really large library, but the ones people remember, the games people remember, were mostly ports or sequels to existing properties. And that's Boktai's big weakness is that it was an audacious, completely, you know, largely original, news. IP on Game Boy Advance. And even with Kojima's name on it, it was the wrong platform, I think, for Kojima's name to really sell the way it would have on PlayStation 2 or even PSP. And so you have this game that is kind of the unicorn. It's a great original creation, no license attached for

GBA with a really interesting gimmick that could only be done at that point in history on that system. And it just, the market just wasn't right for it. Well, I think the title and that's why it did nothing. I think the title and the key art, even though I like it, doesn't work super well for an older audience in the West. I think it's confusing, you know, confusing title and the art seems young, maybe. Yeah, there is that. People, people were really indignant about kitty-looking things at that time. Oh, my God. Did you even see the Wind Waker? What the hell are they doing to Zelda? Oh my God, Nintendo. I don't know how much you know about Japan, but I'm a bit of an expert, and Nintendo just shot themselves in the foot. Anyway, we're talking

about Boktai. I mean, Lunar Nights is kind of a better title for the West than Boktai. It is, but it came too little too late to save this series. But okay, so here's the thing. Boktai is a completely new game in a sense. It's a new property, a new premise, But really, it's effectively the sequel to Metal Gear Solid for Game Boy Color, another completely kick-ass game on a portable system that pretty much everyone in the West looked at and said, why would I want to play a demake of Metal Gear Solid for Game Boy? That's the worst idea. Ghost, Ghost, Beowles.

It was pretty big in Europe. I remember having, or in the UK, I remember having, like, big magazine features, like big full maps guides. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there were lots of features because it's Metal Gear, which was the biggest thing in the world at that point besides Zelda. Yeah. So the magazines, the media, were like, all in on it, and then no one really bought it. It just kind of slid past, and now that's why it's like $500 because no one bought it. That was towards the tail end of the Game Boy Color's life,

when things were getting really expensive and crazy, and you were getting stuff like perfect dark and cannon fodder, like really impressive ports or adaptations. The Ghost Babel, I recently won on eBay for about 25 or 26 pounds. So I've got that in a bucket ready to play at some point. The bucket of rarities. Everyone loves that. Anyway, yes.

So the main designer of Ghost Babel, we'll call it that for convenience, even though that wasn't the localized title in the U.S. The main designer, Ashinta Nogiri, was also the lead designer on Baktai. and it carries over a lot of his design concepts. But the thing about Baktai, the thing that really is, you know, kind of the unique standout selling feature of this game or the feature you hate, depending on your perspective, is that this kind of is the first game that really let Kogama do that thing he loves to do.

He's always tried to do since the beginning where he breaks the boundaries between video game and player and like the real world and the artificial world. And you know, you look back at all of his games to that point. You have Snatcher, where there's this part where the volume keeps getting quieter and quieter. And then all of a sudden, something like, you know, just explodes at you really loudly and to create a jump scare because you're like straining to hear what's happening and turning up the volume and then all of a sudden it blasts you out. There's, you know, in the original Metal Gear where Big Boss called you and says, turn off the console snake, trying to like deter the game, in-game games. character from completing the game by, like, telling him to take an action as the player. There's the whole thing with Psycho Mantis, you know, reading your memory cards and telling you

how much you like Sweikiden or Castlevania. The coolest thing ever, I love it. And then, you know, Naomi gives you a dual shock massage after you've been tortured. You know, you have obviously the most immediate precedent was Riden's freak out where everything starts to break down. The simulation starts to collapse at the end of Metal Gear Salo, too. immediately after this, Kojima would go on to work on Middle Gear Solid 3, where you can literally kill a boss with the real-time clock on the PlayStation 2.

You just, you save the game, you wait a week, and the boss is dead from old age. So, you know, he loves this. He loves this so much, but I would say nothing he's done to this point really reaches the same level as Boktai's ultraviolet sensor. And in fact, he gave a speech last year where he talked about one. to create games that, you know, are dynamic and change with the player and change, you know, with the circumstances of the player. And he's cited Boktai, you know, this game that he's no longer attached to. He's no longer with Konami. But he still looks back at this and is like, this is it.

This is a great thing that I did, you know, that I helped work on. And I, you know, he still holds that as kind of an ideal for what he wants to do. So, you know, this is the most Kojima, a Kojima game ever in a lot of ways and this sense of like breaking the boundary between meat space and virtual space. And it's it's really cool for that, even though it can be very frustrating. All right. That's my rant. But I agree. I think the gimmick is part of what push it over the edge for me to make it super exciting because it wasn't just, oh, Kojima kind of making a Castlevania Metal Gear. It's him making one that has a unique, weird, cool thing. And in the previous, whenever someone would do something weird with

Game Boy, Kirby Tilt and Tumble, the Warrior Wear Twisted, like, whenever someone would do something different with the Game Boy, it was always fun. It was always original and, like, surprising. So I expected that from this as well. There was quite a lot of additional, I think a bit more as a Game Boy Color thing, but there was quite a lot of games

where they were adding, like, a little something, something to it. Like even Pokemon Training Card Game would use the IRSense that they do Card Pop to get a free card if you could do it like once a day, I think. And, of course, you mentioned Tilt and Tumbled. There was also Pokemon Pimble, which had the built-in rumble, I believe. Yeah, and also on GBA, there's Drill Dozer as well. Oh, of course, yeah, drill-dozer.

And, of course, that horrible Yoshi game that is a complete crap. But it uses the Tilt Sensor. Oh, it's so bad. What was it called? What was that one called? Yoshi's Universal Gravitation. That was the Japanese title, wasn't it? Yose is Topsy Turvy.

Yeah, that's it. I bought it recently. It's a piece of shit. Don't play it. Yeah, I mean, I was stoked about that back in the day. I was like, whoa, it's, you know, it's kind of like Wario Ware twisted, but with Yoshi, and then it's just, it's garbage. It's shockingly terrible. Jeremy, you know how I like every game. I hate that game. I know. Wow. That's really saying something. Amazing. It's such a bad game. I mean, I want to say real quick about

the solar sensor. Like, I played this game on, well, visual by advance, like I said. And I didn't have the solar sensor access. And the fact of the matter is, though it does obviously enhance the game, the game is still really well put together and fun, even if you're not doing that. It's a really well-designed, challenging,

game. But how did, so how, could you hack or cheat to beat the bosses? Could you just fill up your solar sensor? Yeah, you could just, you hold the L button and press left and right, it would just turn up for some. So, Stuart, you never really played Boktai. No, I, no, I never really played Boktai.

I just, I never had the cartridge. Yeah, if you've never had to turn off your system in the middle of the night because you can't defeat a boss until the next day. Are you going to explain the mechanics more, or should we talk about our own personal trauma? Yeah, let's talk about the mechanics first. So we need to explain what the UV sensor does.

So in the back of the cartridge, This is one of those uniquely shaped GBA carts. It's transparent for a reason. It has to let light through. And it's got like a little hump on the top instead of a flat kind of, you know, gently sloping top surface to the cartridge. It's extended and sticks out of the system a little bit. And embedded in that hump, you have this little black square.

And when the sun or solar radiation hits that square, the game detects it. And it feeds that as dead. data into the game saying, hey, there's X amount of sun right now. You have to get under like desert sun to fill up the meter that it generates. Like, you have to really get under some hot-ass sun. Yeah, not like overcast, like intense sunlight. Do you think that anyone ever injured themselves or died trying to play this game? I played this a few weeks ago in South Italy. And I still, like in the middle of the day, it was, you know, sweltering hot, just the sun blaring down. You know, they paint all the buildings white there to really just magnify, like to keep

things cool, but also to blind you and to create the sense that you were surrounded by like the heart of the sun. And I could not fill out the last two meters on the sun, like the last two points on the sun meter. It takes, it takes some wild heat. But the idea is that you are fighting the undead. You are fighting vampires. And your son or your gun that you use, the Gundel soul fires solar radiation at enemies. And that is translated from actual sunlight, actual solar radiation. And so you are taking this real world element and turning it into kind of a virtual space within the game. And in a way that this is, you know, Kojima kind of getting ahead of AR gaming in a way that you didn't really see at this point. It was very sort of revolutionary.

I think, you know, like a year or two later, you had that, uh, that terrible. what was it called? It was like the gangs, the street gangs game for the, was it for the Engage or for the, no, the Gizmondo. It was for the Gizmondo, yes. Was Gizmondo? Question, was Gizmondo really, I mean, I know I went to the launch party, but I'm not really sure if it came out. Yeah, I don't, I don't think I ever actually got to do much with a Gizmondo. My main, my main takeaway from that system is that it provided us with a launch party where Scott Sharky, uh, immediately looked at the free bar and said, give me that stuff on the top shelf. I remember, like Johnny Walker Green label. Yeah, was John Walker Blue or Green. And like, I think, yeah, that party was a grift of some sort. I think

that whole console was, yeah, I mean, it was, it was basically like a crime front. And so it's totally and wholly appropriate that he probably racked up a $300 bar tab that night, because they didn't care. They were just laundering money. I'm sad that the, title, Mama, can I mow the lawn, never came out, because I've always wanted to play a lawn mowing console game. I know, right? It sounds so enticing. You guys haven't, okay, we'll get a spectrum and there's plenty of... Of course, the spectrum had a whole... Of course. ...an array of lawn mowing titles, I'm sure it did. Yeah. But back to Boktai. The idea is that it would drive kids outside to play their game instead of just, you know, hunkering down in the

the cold artificial light of a house or a, you know, office building or whatever, they would have to go outside to be able to play this. And, you know, there was kind of a great bit of synergy here because we all remember the Game Boy Advance's original model and the terrible screen that had in the Penny Arcade cartoon where they like, you know, basically strap the GBA to the sun itself. Well, here was a game where you did that. You had to go out into the sun. And all of a sudden, you were like, wow, look at all these cool graphics that this GBA can do. I thought everything was kind of a shade of gray. But no, it's colorful.

The colors would really pop in directs on that. You'd like, wow, I never noticed the game looks so good. I'm glad I'm outside. This game looks really great on an original model GBA that has not been modded to have a backlight. Like, no one wants one of those. But if you play this game outdoors, it looks really great. They really tuned it for that. And it still looks good on an SP also, probably the later models as well.

You know, you can play this on basically everything up to DSI. Can you play your Game Boy player outside? Can you, like, reel it to the backyard? No, but I have done a live stream of Boktai with a Game Boy player, and I used a UV lamp. Like a grow lamp. Basically, yes. The UV sensor is sensitive to black light. So this was the hack that I actually discovered way back in the day.

and I, like, blogged about it, and people said, hey, you're cheating. Yeah, so if you are a vampire, you can, in fact, play Bogdai with a black light in your house. You can play with a black light. It's hard to find actual incandescent black lights now. Now they're all, like, LED. Wait, can you just go to Spencer Gifts from like 1988 and black light bulbs? Yes, if you can time travel, it's easy. But otherwise, you have to really look to find one that's not just an LED painted with translucent purple.

But anyway, so that's the premise. is that Boktai makes you go outside and play video games. To fill up your meter and also to defeat bosses. Right. So, yeah, there are two facets to the sun meter, really. First of all, there is the Gundel Sol, and it has a battery attached to it, and you, you know, store up, you store up a charge of sunlight, which you can do by standing in a space in game where the sun is shining, which, of course, is determined by whether or not the sun

is shining on your UV sensor. So if you're outdoors anywhere, or if you're indoors and there's a window or something, if you stand in the sunbeam, you can hold up your gun and shout, Tayo, which means sun, and you'll charge up the battery on it. You're not shouting that yourself into a mic, right? You are absolutely welcome to do that. However, the GBA did not have a mic. Oh, yeah.

That's a shame. It's Django, the main character, who says, Tayo. another spaghetti western thing yeah yes the more the more sunlight is hitting the UV sensor the faster your gun will charge and then when you attack enemies with your gun it depletes the battery and so you have to refill it but the second facet is that in order to defeat bosses like there are there are ways to fill your gun or to stun enemies without expending solar energy but in order to defeat a boss you have to drag it from you you destroy the boss and put it in its coffee And then you drag the coffin across the dungeon, avoiding enemies along the way, and bring it to a thing called the pile driver, which is basically just like this big solar funnel. And you have to be in sunlight to power this because as you're blasting the boss's coffin with the pile driver, the solar beams from that, it's pushing beams of darkness back to deactivate the pile driver. So the more sun you're getting and firing into the pile driver, the more effectively you're overwhelming the dark beams from the boss. So if you try to defeat a boss and there is no source of sunlight, you're going to expend

all your energy really quickly and then the boss will come back to life. Well, the coffin slowly makes its way back to the boss's layer. And this is kind of a, you know, it's frustrating when you get to the boss and it's like midnight and you don't have time to play the next day. But, you know, there is the real-time clock in Boktai's cartridge. And the longer, you know, when you save the game and then you can't return to it for a while, the boss is able to get further and further back toward its lair. So it incentivizes you to return to the game as quickly as possible once, you know, sunlight is available. So there is this element that, you know, the conditions around you and the time of day and all of that affects how you play. So in concept, it's a really, really cool idea. It does have some drawbacks, which, you know, Stuart, you're here to talk about that. Am I? Aren't you?

You live in the UK where the sun has never actually shown. It's true. I mean, the game would be a lot harder to play if it wasn't Taylor talked for the UK weather. Until recently, we'd never got any sun. You'd get like a little bit, but I would say there are 11 months out of the year where this game would be extremely difficult. Living in England is essentially hard mode, I would say. Imagine like Scandinavia, right?

This is where the sun isn't coming out much at all. Well, but then, you know, in the Arctic Circle, you know, it's rough for half the year, but then the other half, you can play Baktai any time because the sun is never under the horizon. I mean, I had a really, like, clever way of getting around this problem, which was to play. the hacked run of it and not go outside ever sit in the dark and in front of a desktop computer with a keyboard but

I mean generally I just thought that even without that the gimmick which is a really cool gimmick I don't say gimmick as a pejorative even without that this is just a really fun well designed kind of maze game I really enjoyed it

it does throw back in my opinion to the sort of stuff that I grew up playing because it isn't easy I don't think at any point even if you have full sun it's a pretty difficult game to play there are no rooms that are sort of safe or slack

there's lots of enemies even from the off there's lots of different types of projectiles and different types of damage you can take and you've got to constantly keep an eye on your ammo because everything obviously revolves around the sunlight there's just a ton of things to keep an eye on

and a ton of different Gondel's soul, like, what are they called? What are they, what the hell are they called again? The different types of frames? The frames, yeah, that you can get. I don't even know how to begin praising this game. I think they nailed almost every aspect of it. I love the visuals.

I like the fact it's got block pushing stuff in it because I've always been a fan of that. I like the way the stealth works. It's not, I mean, it's simple, but it has the whole kind of metal gear, up against a wall, tap the wall to get the enemy's attention, go behind them, do more damage, or just avoid them completely. I think the only thing I don't like is, and it's not really specific to this game,

is I hate the way this game is obsessed with grading you on your performance, because I hate that. Yeah, that's something that it carries over from Ghost Babel is the idea that, you know, these stealth sequences should be sort of self-contained challenges, and you're graded at the end. But it doesn't really make that big a difference. No, it doesn't. Like, you get some bonuses, and it just makes you feel bad about yourself if you get a D. But eventually, you just have to say, I don't care.

And then everything's so much better. Yeah. Well, it's like much later, it's like something like Bionetta, where after every combat, it tells you how much you sucked. And, like, I just think that's kind of a bummer. But in this game, it's nowhere near as bad. It's just kind of like, whatever. But no, I mean, I think it's probably one of the best-looking GBA games that I can think of. It doesn't have the gross kind of pre-rendered too bright.

graphics. As you say, it's designed around the natural Game Boy's advanced screen, and for that matter, it doesn't feel over-saturated or anything. It's quite atmospheric. It really works for the vibe that they're going for, which is really an odd vibe with a sort of

spaghetti western hammer horror kind of thing. It's great. Yeah, it combines a lot of different influences, and I feel like there was probably a lot of fine-tuning in terms of logistics for it. Kojima has said that originally, in addition to the sun sensor, he also wanted, like, a water sensor so that you could, like, splash the vampires with holy water, which obviously is an extraordinarily bad idea on the face of it. also he wanted a breath sensor that could detect the smell of garlic to help you defeat vampires and fortunately they just went with a sun sensor and that's plenty of garlic sensor so okay so stewart it sounds like you've only really played this under emulation is that correct i'm afraid i have i and i have it on um 3d s it's just it's the same

problem you can't do the um the sunlight thing unfortunately so i've never had the experience of real buck tie, and now it's too expensive to bice. It is. It's so expensive now. If anyone's going to spare copy, get in touch, okay? Here I ask, is it like $200? How much is it go? Like, the cartridges alone are, you know,

like in the 150 range, and then boxed, it's really expensive. I wondered if the Japanese version might be cheaper, because I don't think I would need to read it that much. Yeah, I mean, relatively... It's mostly an action game, really, so... I bet they made more copies for Japan. own. I think the Japanese versions are somewhat less expensive, but still getting up there

in price. It's annoying. Maybe one day I'll have a copy of Buktai to call my very own. Someday. But what about you, Shane? What is what is your experience with Boktai been? You haven't really talked about that. Well, I think my earliest memory was playing either preview or review build, and it wasn't the finished casing. It was like a naked, weird, extended rom-cart with the sensor on it. And really enjoying it. But then having the, experience of fighting a boss during as the sun was going down like as the sun was setting and i think i remember i was living in san francisco and i just clear memories of like chasing the sun as i'm losing the sun and like not not killing him in time and then watching his coffin

slowly start moving back and like and yeah i'm being very frustrated and like the fact that like that that exact thing happened to me like the you know the thing you hope isn't going to happen um right but you i came back to it the next day and did it again but uh but yeah i really i really enjoyed it and like I think I gave it an eight or nine I should have looked it up I think I reviewed it for EGM and I definitely gave it high marks and and I was a little upset that it wasn't

a bigger deal because you know even though it was well regarded it you're right it wasn't considered like a game of the year contender or anything at the time and a lot of people found it to be you know kind of onerous to have to deal with that and like you couldn't just play it on the plane or whatever right like I have to go outside yeah I have to go outside

to do that and and but yeah I definitely have a very fond memories of it. And I think at that point, I wanted games like that for GBA that were original, but so kind of a throwback to things I'd played previously. Like, you know, it is very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid, really, like, which I like, you know, but like, you know, I think some people also felt like it should have showed more, more growth for, you know, and not just been kind of like, yeah, a fantasy Western sequel kind of to Metal Gear Ghost Babel, you know. Yeah, but I think a big part of the appeal as its weird sort of setting. It's like an exotic far future setting when entropy is

basically taken hold of the universe and the sun is dying and, you know, humanity with it and vampires are conquering the world. And so you're like the last bastion against that push of entropy by the galaxy. It's kind of weird. I also recall there is like a whole like new game plus. Do you remember what it was? I think there was like you could play the second time and there were stuff to do, which was cool because it was already, you know, a pretty meaty game playing through once. Yeah, I never really spent much time with the new game plus, and I've never seen the best ending, the proper ending to the game. I've beaten it, but I didn't get the best ending.

And for much the same reason as you mentioned, because I fought the final battle as the sun was beginning to go down. And I had just enough sunlight. Like I was craning and straining and lifting up my arms to keep, you know, the sun in the sun in the sun. the solar sensor as it was going down behind the building across the street from us, and I just managed to defeat hell, the final boss, right before the sun vanished altogether. And I felt so good. And then in the final, like the actual ending, there is an interactive QTE where you have to

pull sunpower to revive Otenko, sorry, spoilers, your companion Otenko, the sunflower. And if you don't do that, then you don't get the, like, the best. ending. He dies. So I've never actually seen what happens when you save Otenko because it was impossible for me to pull sunlight in at that point. I had just, just beaten the game at that final threshold. And it turned out that I outplayed myself, basically. But overall, the game, you know, it came out at a perfect time for me to really glom onto it. I feel like it should not have shipped in September in the US. It should have shipped a couple of months before

like it did in Japan. The beginning of it. So there would have been. more summertime for people to enjoy it. But I had just moved to San Francisco and started at OneUp.com the month before that. So for me, the arrival of this game, I didn't review it because I wasn't allowed to write for the site at that point. My God,

I was an artist. What was I doing? Writing. That's nonsense. But, you know, the game gave me this opportunity to go outside and experience this new city that I lived in. And as it happened, I lived in an apartment that was just, you know, like a block away

from Golden Gate Park. And so on weekends, you know, for like a month or so, I would take my GBA and walk over to Golden Gate Park. And there was this nice little duck pond. And I would just kind of sit at the edge of it in this area that was sort of half shaded and half not, you know, with trees overhead. So when I needed sun, I could kind of poke my system out. But when I didn't, then, you know, I'd retreat into the shade and there would be like one

or two blocks. So I wasn't totally in the dark. But, you know, people would walk. past not paying any attention to this weird little guy playing a video game by the duck pond the duck pond you know the ducks would come over and be like is this guy going to give us food and then they realized no he's just playing a video game so they'd leave uh but it was it was just a great opportunity to kind of like i don't know sort of experience the city in a in a way that i might have had i not had the game and i you know tried to experience the game at the office like

what does it take to play this game in downtown san francisco where you're surrounded by skyscrapers and it's you know it's often cloudy and foggy um and i wrote a nice little feature about it which i illustrated and i think i put it on my blog but maybe it was like a as a feature like a side feature for the site that no one read i can't remember but in any case i enjoyed it and so when the sequel came around you know obviously i i jumped on that and said i want to review that and didn't really enjoy the sequel that much um it was okay but but i you know i lived in a different place in the city at that point. And there was no park nearby. So I would like go and sit in front of the cathedral that was, you know, a couple of blocks from my house and up on Knob Hill.

It's an appropriate place to kill vampires. Right. Exactly. I was like, you know, I'm going to be safe from them here. This is a holy place. But it was, you know, like here's this guy playing a video game, straining to get the sunlight in front of the cathedral. What's up with this weirdo? But, you know, San Francisco. So no one no cared. To me, it'd be a good print ad for Bokai, I'd be like Jeremy Paris trying to kill vampires on the church, on the cathedral steps. See, I'm telling you, Castlevania, right there. Jeremy, I've discovered this Kojima interview from Femitsu from 2003, and there's one quote here that I need to add because you referenced that he wanted to add other sensors. This quote is, Kojima saying, sometime last year I approached Shigeru Miyamoto at Nintendo and gave the presentation

pitch. In the beginning, it wasn't just a sunlight sensor. I wanted to also include a sensor that measured how your breath smelled. I really wanted to add that. The enemies are vampires, right? So if you ate something garlicky and breathed on the mic, they would all die. And fortunately, he did not do that. But could you imagine, like a breath smell sensor on the GBA that would have been... I'd breathe on the mic and the GBA would just break.

We'd just shut them permanently. Here's a game that is trying to make gamers better by making them go outside and, you know, experience sunlight. Now, let's make the game also make them worse by... making them really, really smelly. Yeah, it should have been in a game about, like, giant teeth, and you have to, like, brush your teeth and then breathe on the mic, and it kills the giant teeth, although the idea is to save teeth. That's a stage in tempo, isn't it?

Who knows? Nobody's got past the first level. Prime Day is coming. Check out to the HyperX store on Amazon.com to find great Prime Day deals on July 12 and 13. Stock up on the latest gaming gear from HyperX, so you'll be ready for all the new launches and content drops this summer. your calendars and set your alarms. Deals like this will be around long. The award-winning Go-Nintendo podcast is the best place to get the latest news on the world of Nintendo.

We cover the biggest stories, share impressions of the latest games, and answer your burning questions. There's also some general pop culture talk, game music trivia, a heaping helping of silliness, and did I mention our robot companion? I'm the star of the show. Catch new episodes of the Go-Nintendo podcast every Saturday on the hyper-micter. X Podcast Network. Sequelcast 2 and Friends looks at movies and video games and franchises

on movie and game at a time. Hosted by Matt Bradley Shurge, Thrasher and Alex Miller, been going since 2009, and we're part of the HyperX podcast network. Find inflation the old-fashioned way by spending less money. Check out the HyperX store at Amazon.com to find great prime day deals on July 12th and 13th. Stock up on new gaming gears so you'll be equipped for the new launches and content drops.

Mark your calendars and set your alarms. Deals like this won't stick around long. So let's see what the experts had to say about long. this game. On Wikipedia, there are two citations on the main Boktai page. The first says... What is Jeremy Parrish? The U.S. Gamer called Boktai similar to a mashup of Metal Gear and Castlevania, although remarking that there was more to it than this, as the games also drew heavily on Spaghetti Westerns. He called the requirement to charge the player's gun using actual sunlight baroque and complex and an extreme solution, but perfectly fitting coming from

Hideo Kojima, a man known for his love of manipulating audiences and breaking the fourth wall. Citing how he found memorable real-life places to play Boktai, he stated that the lengths to which I went to complete Boktai made it one of the most memorable gaming experiences I've ever enjoyed. Yes, this is one of those games where I went to do research and discovered there's not a whole lot of text about these games on the internet for some horrible reason, and so I'm just like reading my own citations, which that's not useful.

Like, I came all the way to the Library of Alexandria just to find out that Jeremy Burrish wrote it. All right. So, let's see if there's anything in the overview that I have not really explained. Are there any, after that it was like a cameo or is that in two, where there's actually to be like a kind of metalgeary cameo? Oh, it's a, I don't think there's a Metal Gear cameo, but there is the Mega Man Battle Network angle. And Steve, I seem to remember you wanting to talk about that. Oh, I don't have a huge amount to say about it. I just remember that it existed.

I'm fairly sure they ripped it out of all the Western releases of Mega Man Battle Network 4, 5, 6, because in 6, I'm fairly certain there was actually like a full-on, like, section of the game dedicated to Buktai. Although I think that may also have been in the DS game, Mega Man Battle Network 5, double team or something. All I know is they wrenched it out and I was, I kept playing the game going, I wonder when Django is going to turn up. And then he didn't. And he never did. And there was a play through a whole battle network game, multiple battle network games, and they're awful.

I bailed out after three or four. They were all the same, man. It's so boring. But they're actually quite similar to Bucktai in terms of isometric, like, moving around. The difference is Buktai is actually good and, like, feels like a game when you play it. A Mega Man Battle Network feels like going to work. It's so boring and annoying. Battle Network, I don't want to get too much into it, but it has a terrible story.

Like, it's just unbelievably juvenile, and the actual quest goals and world navigation are the absolute worst. But the combat system is really good. It is. The combat's cool, but I also, I want to praise real quick, and this is a spoiler, so cover your ears. The ending of the first Battle Network game is some wild shit. Oh, yeah, it goes places. Yeah, and I want to praise it for that. But then the problem is immediately afterwards, they just kind of, they just don't care anymore.

They're just like, yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't, we don't, but whatever, we're not going to reference that. Nope. By the, by a PET, please, watch our terrible anime, please. Was there a Boktai anime? There was a manga. Of course not. There was a manga in Japan. Well, there should have been.

It would have been cool. So, yeah, so the collaboration, this was kind of early on in the Boktai project. Kojima, there's an interview with him that I linked on the notes. at the Rockman EXEZone.com. But Kojima met up with Kiji Inafune, who was at Capcom at that point and overseeing the Mega Man Games. And the Battle Network series was at about three at that point and has really kind of picked up some steam and was, you know, selling extremely well in Japan, had a tie-in cartoon.

And I think, you know, there was this kind of simpatico like, hey, we're both dudes overseeing games that have a lot of depth. and they're, you know, more or less original creations for GBA. And they're kind of oriented toward kids, but also have enough substance that they can appeal to older audiences. So maybe we should team up and, you know, kind of lend our names to each other's projects. So Django showed up in Mega Man Battle Network 4 and had a fairly extensive cameo. There's even a remark in the interview where they were talking about how difficult it is to do cross-company collaborations. like this, Capcom and Konami, and the battle network team was like, is it actually okay that we're

using Django this much in the game? There was apparently a multiplayer mode where you could do a battle, like player versus player battle, and you could use both Mega Man battle network, like turn-based mechanics and Boktai real-time mechanics. I don't know how that worked. Because they wrenched that out of the localized versions. Yeah. Because you know, cross-company collaborations just too crazy for American companies to do it. They just, they went no no fun, just do more

exams. Do more battle network exams, damn you. So they reprised that stuff for Battle Network 5 and 6 but again, those were removed for Western release and then Kojima returned the favor by putting Mega Man EXE

in a special quest to fight Shade Man XE, which makes sense because, you know, vampire robot, as much as that makes sense, I guess, in Boktai 3. And they removed that element so hard that the entire game never got translated. They were just like, rip the hell out of that. We're not bringing that over. I remember interviewing the director of Lunar Nights at TGS, Tokyo Game Show, I think, 2006.

And I mentioned that I had imported Bacti 3 or Shinbokura Notayo or whatever they called it and played a bit of it. And he was, like, deeply moved to the point where he stood up and bowed to me and was like, oh, thank you so much for playing this game. I was like, thanks for making these games. I think they're cool. And then, you know, still didn't get the game translated. But, you know, Lunar Nights was okay, I guess. It sort of surprises me that there hasn't been a fan translation of that. Surely it's in the works, because it's...

I think there is a partial translation. Oh, I see. Okay. I mean, it's just, it mentions in the notes that there are some bits where you drive around on a motorcycle, and that sounds fun. It's on the cover. It's probably a feature on the box, the motorcycle. Yeah, it's kind of Metal Max looking,

but not as weird as Metal Max 4's cover, where Metal Max is, like, riding around on a girl who is also a motorcycle. Oh, dear. Have you seen that cover? It's one of the worst things I've ever seen in my life. Which one is it, Metal Max 4, did you say? Yes, for, I believe, DS.

That franchise also will not end. It will never end. They keep canceling them, and it keeps coming back. It won't end. Mental Max 4, D, cover. Okay, here we go. Live Reaction, like on the internet, which you love. Oh, God, no.

Oh, why is it like that? Hopefully she's just his friend slash cycle. That's more than friends right there. That's even worse than, you know, what's his face? Snow riding around on the scissoring Shiva motorcycle.

Yeah. That's just upsetting on so many levels. Anyway, let's, let's drop that. I am happy to say that Shin Bokura Notayo does have a partially localized, partially completed English patch that was last modified, modified earlier. this year. Patch version 0.7b, so it's not, it's not complete. So it's on, in the works, that's great news. The entire game script is translated and the game may be played from start to finish

without issue. A small number of in-game graphics remain untranslated, but this has no impact on the player's ability to complete the game. So you can, you can play this in English now, yeah. Are you telling me, Mr. Jeremy Parrish? I am telling you that. I can play Shin Bukta, Sabata's counterattack right the hell now, beginning to end. That is absolutely.

Correct. Please do after this podcast. If you make patches, if you make fan translations or undubs, if you make those things, I just want to say to you right now live on Retronauts, you're cool. I like you. That is good news because I did not know that was available as a fan translation either. Yeah, I didn't realize it was quite that far along in terms of completion. But that's great. This is a great day for gaming. Also, as we transitioned to Boktai 2, it would appear that it was born already at the time that Boktai 1 came out. I mean, it came out a year later, but in that interview I was reading,

Kojum was already joking about the sequel, already kind of talking about his ideas for the sequel. He was joking about the name. Yeah, as the first one was coming out, you know. So, yeah, there's, you know, because this is spaghetti Western, there's kind of a, not a meme, it's just like a tradition, I guess, a tendency for sequels in samurai media to be called Zoku to indicate that it's a sequel. So this was a Zoku, Bokoono but it people you know fans have kind of shortened that to Zoktai so it's a yeah so he was

kind of leaning into the Chambara samurai Western ethos right there and doing his usual punny thing but usually he tries to make puns in English this was a Japanese pun the second one the sequel it's more in the experience I've played maybe two hours of this one it fills more like an action game straight up like there's a lot less sneaking and there's a lot less well there are still puzzles but there are a lot more monsters and more weapons did you have more weapons too more weapons okay so in the first game the first game was designed and the story was planned by hideo kojima the main planner which you know in Konami speak basically means director designer was Shinta nojiri who had directed Ghost Babel and then would go on to basically be

the map designer and director for Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4. And then the third person, the third kind of lead person, was Iquia Nakamura, who headed up graphics, scenario, design, and direction, which does not actually mean direct or in the sense that we normally think of it, because Konami's weird. But Nakamura was the person who had designed the dual shock elements of Metal Gear Solid 1, so he was very much on board with Kojima's gimmick-based game concepts. And from what I can tell, Nakamura is still with the Metal Gear series, having worked all the way up to Metal Gear Survive, if you remember that existed.

And then basically after Metal Gear, or after Baktai, Kojima stepped back significantly, and Nogiri basically went over to work on Metal Gear games full time. So Nakamura would head up the sequels. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the design ethos of those games, the games changes a lot from the first game because the first game really does play like Metal Gear, you know, Ghost Babel especially where it's broken down into small stages where you have kind of the ratings and everything. But it's extremely stealth oriented. It is a game about sneaking and, you know, it kind of varies by time of day. Like when there's a lot of sun, then yeah,

you can kind of be aggressive and shoot enemies down. But when there's not a lot of sun, then you need to play, take a much stealthier approach, sneak around, lure enemies by not. on walls or, you know, there's a gun frame called the beat mania frame, which will generate noise. And you can distract enemies by using the beat mania frame. So, you know, there's kind of this very different design ethos. You just have a gun. You have the different frames for it, which affect kind of how it shoots. And then you have lenses, which affect the elemental power. And then you have a battery, which affects the amount of energy you can store it once. But the Gundal Sol is taken away from you at the beginning of Boktai 2, and you're given this

solar glove that can charge melee weapons to use solar power. So it's kind of the same mechanic, but it's all melee as opposed to ranged. And it becomes much more of a like a get up close to enemies and beat the crap out of them kind of game. It's a stepping stone towards Lunar Nights, which is much more of a straight hack and slash, in my opinion. Mm-hmm. I'm not saying

it's bad, but it definitely feels like a step up from this. I thought Boktai 2, I enjoyed what I played of it, but it felt a little bit

kind of anemic in a sense compared to the first one. It doesn't seem to have the depth of the first one. But it was fun. I just, you know.

I did like that I think the sensor was used for more stuff. It was kind of another currency that could be used to get different items and weapon upgrades. And like,

there was more for that. There was more use for filling out the sensor. Well, and also there were a lot more puzzles based around the Sunsensor. There were like crystals in dungeons that you had to hit, you had to charge up, and those were very, like, you know,

hit them with solar weapons and that sort of thing. So you couldn't really play this as much outside of day late hours as you could the first one. The first game, outside of boss battles, you can actually make a lot of progress in the original Boktai, even without sunlight. There are, you know, the chlorophyllins or whatever

they're called, that'll appear when you hit certain areas in the game world, like little bugs that appear kind of like fireflies, and you can use them to draw in solar power. You know, there's certain recourses. There's the Luna lens for the Gundal soul that doesn't expend solar energy, and it can't hurt anything, but it can stun enemies.

So, you know, it really kind of pushes that sort of, the same sort of like tranquilizer gun gameplay as Metal Gear Solid. But that's all taken away for Solar Boy Django. And you really can't make a lot of progress without a constant source of sunlight, which if you look at my review on OneUp.com, I actually said that was a bad thing about the game.

It also reduces Django's inventory slots. Because in the original game, you can just amass tons of stuff. Just like Solar Boy Django carrying around, you know, an apartment on his back, like that junk lady in Labyrinth. But here you have like a 15 item inventory slot, it's very limited.

So it definitely has a different feel. But I will say that, to the game's credit, when you play it beyond the first few hours, it starts to become less anemic. You start to get more combat options, but also there's a town that serves as the hub of the game, and you spend a lot of time going back to this hub town and expanding it and building up options, you open up shops, you open up a blacksmith where you can take weapons and combine them and create, you know, upgraded versions and that sort of thing. So you do, you do need to kind of invest in this one more time before it really starts to pick up.

But it's, you know, it's not, I wouldn't say it's anemic compared to the first one. It's just balanced very differently. I think I will, I mean, I'm definitely going to continue playing it because I was enjoying it. But yeah, I mean, it's just initially really, it's just initial impression. So obviously, like, I can't be too trustable than this one, unfortunately. I think the speed by which it was a follow-up at the time I was slightly disappointed that it was while simultaneously more of the same

also in some ways a little less satisfying yet didn't really expand the scale much but it was a year later it was good it was another good GBA game I don't think I made it all the way to the end but yeah I definitely had a good time with it and I do remember there is a solid snake cameo he just shows up in a shop

it doesn't have his name but he like shows up in a shop while you're in it at one point yeah yeah I play through this to review it, and I don't remember a lot of the details of it. It didn't stick with me the way the first game did. And I think that is because I really enjoyed

the stealth of the first game. Like that that kind of Metal Gear proper stealth, you know, I can't believe it took so long for them to say, what if we put an isometric viewpoint in there? But it really works. Like, it's a great fit. And you know, the later games

kept that isometric style, but they lost a lot of the stealth. Like each game strips away more of the stealth. And so, So, I don't know that. First one just hit a sweet spot for me. Isn't there also like a dungeon that you can go back to that has different enemies that you can keep going? I think there is in this game, like kind of a mysterious dungeon element in it as well. There is definitely is one of those in the first game.

It's kind of like a post game sort of thing. Do you mean like a randomly generated sort of rogue? I don't think it's maybe it was like the first one I was like here. The first one I was like here has something called Azure Tower. This one has something called Dream Avenue, which is like the same idea. Okay, yeah, they both have that. well there you go and there's also a boss rush mode you can play

another thing that the second game lost from the first one was just the sense that you're traveling through the world the first game is really kind of built around key dungeons that you have to visit and fight bosses and you know collect stuff and basically I think there's

like four or five elemental dungeons that you have to defeat bosses in before you go and take on the count and hell and dark boy sabata your nemesis your counterpart. But on the way to get to those dungeons, you're always passing through spaces

that you have to play through and you have branching paths and you can choose to go different directions. And so it kind of creates the sense of a world that is contiguous and kind of sprawling. And even though you don't really have a proper map screen aside from just like an overview,

it just has that kind of role-playing feel where it's really big. It kind of reminds me almost in a way of vagrant story in the sense that you can't just like jump, teleport from place to place. Whenever you want to go someplace, you actually have to trek through

there. And, you know, there aren't really shortcuts and that sort of thing. So, you know, when you approach a space from a different direction, you know, going one direction versus the other, it just has a different feel to it. You know, the enemies are laid out differently. The safe spaces.

You have a different relationship to them and different access to them. So it's always interesting. And this is the first game, sorry. Yes, the first game. Yeah, but the second one loses this in what respect would you say? Because it uses the town as a hub. You're not really traveling around as much.

You're kind of like, you're in the hub and then you go to the, you know, the next place you need to be. Whereas the first game is much more of a journey. Okay. This is much more of like, I'm setting up shop here and I'm going to strike out from here. I'm going to throw this out and then we're going to move on as if it was never set. but what you're basically saying is the first game is Dark Souls

and the second game is Dark Souls too that's what you're saying right now Okay sure Yeah thanks Thank you everyone That's my greatest thing I've ever said You know the idea of comparing a game to Dark Souls is really fresh

And I'm really surprised No one's ever thought of it before I know Oh what can I say I'm on the cutting edge of games journalism I'm the future My time is now All right, so, yeah, so, yeah, basically we had, in the span of about two years, three Boktai games for Game Boy Advance, or two in the space of one year, if you lived in the West, because we didn't get the third game.

And so... Did the second one do that badly, you think? Do you think that's the decision? I don't know. I think also the fact that it had so many hooks for Mega Man in there, I really think that played a huge part in it because Konami was like, this game isn't going to do enough here for us to bother with all the licensing and dealing with the royalties for this.

So let's just not bother. They couldn't just hack that stuff out because it's so integral to the quest. I am extra curious to play this fan translation because there is this weird future. futuristic bent to this one that is kind of confounding me. It's like, huh? Why is it like someone from the future in this game? But I mean, this game, the series does take place in the future. Like a post-fallen-down world future. Yeah, it's like, yeah, after the fall, basically. You know, like I said, entropy is really, really kicking in and everything is cooling off. You know, the ultimate solution to global warming is just let entropy take over. Talking of the series sort of as a whole,

I haven't played the third one, but I assume visually it's of a piece with the first. too, so to speak. Yeah, it's pretty similar. I want to say, like, I just want to, I know this sounds a little bit vague, but I promise you it's not. The thing about Buktai is, it's just really cool. Like, everything in it is just cool as hell. The visuals are really cool.

The characters are awesome. Like, the premise is fantastic. Yeah, I mean, the main character wears a scarf that is stained with the blood of his father, a fallen vampire hunter. That's intense. Mm-hmm. And it's just, I mean, I feel like Lula Nights actually kind of lost this a little bit. I don't think it looks as cool as the GBA ones, but I just want to, I just think it's a shame that it isn't more well-known than it is. I mean, it's Hideo-Kajima, for Christ's sake. Like, people should be venerating this game constantly.

Like, it needs a remaster. You course, you have to rip out all the solar stuff, but like, if it was available on any modern console, I think it would be thought of more highly. Put a trilogy on the Switch, you cowards. Everything should be on Switch. I mean, that's just a given at this point. Chuck Rock, please. So we've finished with the Game Boy Advance Boktai Games. We do need to talk about Lunar Nights for Nintendo DS. And here's a real crime.

In Japan, this was called Bokorah Notayo DS, Django and Sabata, which is a miracle before the DS was ever announced. Kojima said, I'm going to make some characters for this series, and their names, their initials are D and S. D and S. Who would possibly have known that three years later, that would give him the ability to jump right on the DS naming convention gimmick, the subtitled gimmick, organically without stretching things. And then, and then for the American version, for some reason, they decided to change those characters' names to Aaron and Lucy. What the hell? Why did they do that? I didn't even know.

I mean, I knew it was a Boktai game when I bought it because I was like, oh, it's that guy from Boktai. It's Otenko, right? But the main characters would be redesigned to the extent that they weren't necessarily recognizable, I would say. And then later, many years later, when I found out that they were actually meant to be Django and Sabato, I was just like, what the hell? Why'd they do that?

I think the localization idea, the philosophy here, was to make a clean break from bachai because I guess the bachai name was a poison pill that's so sucks so badly doesn't it isn't that awful what a horrible world it's completely how it felt at the time that they were like distancing themselves from from bachai where in japan the japanese saddle gives you everything you need know it's a sequel you know the characters are back you know from the previous games and it's the clever pun on d s whereas here like being in the press at the time you know i i i think they felt like trying to sell it as like a new thing kind of instead of like oh remember this boktai like yeah It was a little bit of a weird left turn

and the fact that there was no solar sensor at all. So I'm remembering that Ryan Payton, our friend, who now runs, what you call it? The Maker's... The Republic Company. Camouflage. Yes. He was, I think he was like the head of localization for this.

I'm looking at the Moby Games credits now, and it turns out our pals at 84 Limited. worked on the localization. So we can put their feet over the fire next time we see them and say, hey, what happened, guys? What's going on? I bet it was a corporate edict to be like, oh, Buktai 2 didn't set Europe or America on fire, so we need to pretend like this is something new. Yeah.

It's kind of like with Final Fantasy 9 where, you know, basically none of the references in Final Fantasy 9 actually connected with the U.S. audience because they made some like higher-up, high-level localization edicts that just completely gul-a-gur-gur-gur-gut-gold volcano, yeah. So it says in the notes here that you could plug in one of the GBA games into the second slot of your DS. Oh, to like backdoor, a-solar sensor into it. Yes, because for whatever reason, no one... Each boat type would do something different, right?

That's how it worked. I remember that now. Yeah, for some reason, no one built special features into G2. to DS cartridges aside from the Pokemon company who would, or creatures, I guess, or maybe Nintendo, whoever owned and made the decisions for Pokemon cartridges, they would put little IR sensors in the DS cartridges, which is how you can tell if you've got a legitimate DS Pokemon game, because when you hold it up to light, they're actually slightly translucent.

Right. But that's it. As far as I know, that's entirely it for upgraded DS cartridges with special hardware. So we did not get a solar sensor in Boktai. three or four lunar nights, whatever. But yes, as you say, you could plug one of the GBA carts into slot two, and each one would yield a different effect. The one common effect they would yield is that because they took out the solar sensor item

or mechanic from the game, but they wanted to kind of retain the feel, basically, I think semi-randomized weather events within the game actually determine the amount of sunlight you have at any given time. So you might go into like a tropical situation where it's storming and have very little sunlight available. But if you plug in a cartridge, then that kind of overrides the weather. Like you'll still have the weather. But if you take, you know, your cartridge or you take your system into sunlight while you have a cartridge plugged into it, a GBA cartridge plugged into it, then you just have access to this like bonus sunlight. So you can kind of juice the game a little bit and kind of get past the built-in delimitations.

That would be sort of the optimal way to play Lunanites, I guess, to recapture that kind of... Yeah, to have like an e-tank of sunlight at all times. Yeah, basically. Well, not at all times, but when the sun's available. I think that fans have actually kind of undubbed this game and changed the names back to what they're supposed to be. So that might be worth a look for people. I don't know. Because, I mean, if I played this game again, I kind of want to play it with the right names you know it just it's ridiculous that what they tried what they did i mean if it's a corporate idiot then that makes sense yeah sure it doesn't break the game by any means it's still quite

fun it's just it seems really weird that they just went now screw that bucktie crap there's lunar nights now baby this is the new hotness well and then i sadly i bet the big change didn't help because i don't think this title did that well i mean you know it was i think i got decent reviews but it definitely didn't like set the sales charts on fire i mean the the reason I bought it is because of the reviews being like, I'd say that 80, 84, this is pretty good, that's like catnip to me, games

that score okay. So I just grabbed it up. Is it 80 to 84 really just okay? In the UK, in a UK magazine in that area, yes, yes, it was. Because we, we, we, they weren't very good apart from edge, let's just just say that. Um,

but I mean, when I played this game, the one, the main thing I take away from it is it's a little bit, um, all over the place in terms of like what you're doing at any one time because while the main sort of gameplay is almost kind of manor style you know slash slash and hack yeah and it's fun it's fun it's fun it reminded me a bit of children of manner in fact on the d s the roguy one um but then you'll get into a sort of spaceship and take the coffin up into space and it almost becomes a bit like star fox for a bit except with stylus controls for aiming

And it's really insane. And it takes place after a fight with, like a traditional boss fight. You have to kill them by doing this weird Star Fox thing that lasts like 10 solid minutes. Yeah, instead of dragging the coffin around, you launch into the coffin rocket. And you have to take, I think, you know, the idea is that the vampires have scorched the atmosphere, kind of like the machines from the Matrix. So the sun can never come through. so there's not enough solar power to use the pile driver

so you have to take the vampires into outer space beyond the limits of the atmosphere and scorch them with solar radiation in space which is so weird and out there that I love it it's great yeah they just don't make them like this anymore and it makes me sad

I hate sounding like a commogean but they really do not make games and this and localize these things like this anymore even, oh, it makes me sad. I wanted to launch a coffin into the sun, God damn it, in every game. Oh, well. I mean, it's, yeah, like the premise, you know, defeat vampires by taking them into space where they can't be protected by the atmosphere is like, yes, of course, obviously.

That's how you totally defeat a vampire. Why had no one thought of this before that? So, yeah, I don't love Lunar Nights, but it does definitely have some interesting ideas. I wish there were a way for the series to come back but with Kojima's name on it I don't think Konami wants to do anything that involves Kojima at this point Maybe I'm wrong

Never say never, you never know Yeah but I don't think this one had enough cachet Like I could see them revisiting Metal Gear at some point Or even doing something with Snatcher But Boktai I just don't see it happening I mean just think of it this way If there had been continuing Buktai games then we could have had a crossover with Mighty Number 9.

No, don't bring that up. But yeah, I do think this is probably dead and buried because it's been like almost 15, 16 years since the last one and no one really talks about or thinks about it. Yeah, it seems unlikely. Of all the classic franchises, the Konami could revisit, you know, I feel like we would get the big ones before we got this one. We got a new Getsu Fuma then.

We're getting a new box for you, okay. That's true, so maybe anything's possible. Well, we'll see. But I feel like the kind of unique element of Boktai, the solar sensor, is just not something you can do on modern hardware. Well, it'd be well suited for cell phones if mobile phones had, if they could. Maybe they can. Your iPhone can.

iPhone knows how bright it is outside. Maybe there's some way. Oh, yeah. Brightness is not the same as UV. As actual UV. Well, they can put it on the phone and make all the vampires sexy and you have to get them with a gacha and it costs $1,000. Oh, I love that idea.

That's so good. Thank you. Bok Thai. Thank you for making my life better. Alright, so what are our final thoughts? All right. I think it's an interesting anomaly, and it's, like, of the era. It, like, always harkens me back to very specific physical memories of playing the game in real life,

which is a fun thing to do with the game. I think it has an enormous amount to recommend it, and I would suggest playing it if you haven't, because it's better than we've made it sound, and we've made it sound awesome. So, yeah. And, you know, all those other games we mentioned, all the other oddities that do strange things with Game Boy, whether it's Kirby's Tilt and Tumble or Mario Wear Twisted. I think all of these are really, really fun to play in real life

because there's this element of whimsy, this physical whimsy of doing this thing that's slightly ridiculous. So I think it's worth trying to track it down, even though it's expensive. Even if you can't, it's worth playing on an emulator because, you know what? If they're not going to re-release it and sell it to you, then what else are you going to do?

It's still fun even without the sunlight mechanic, but the sunlight mechanic is all gives it that extra, you know, The extra kiss from Stuart Chip. I will say to anyone who is too young to have experienced this game at the time, find a cartridge, kill someone to get it. No, don't do that. Borrow a cartridge from someone, the original thing, with the solar sensor in it, and play it outdoors. Because back in the day, this was as close as we got to Pokemon Go. Yeah.

Like this kind of, you know, a game that was very much about your location. about your physical space, you know. It was much more primitive and limited than Pokemon Go, but it was getting there. Would we have had Pokemon Go without Boktai? I say no. I'm wrong. We would have gotten it anyway, but I nevertheless say no. So consider this Pokemon Go Zero.

And if that's not enough to sell you on it, then also it's Metal Gear and Castlevania and eventually you launch vampires into space to kill them. Like, God. If you're not sold on that, then your soul is dead and there's nothing more we can do. RIP, you. Okay, anyway, that was it. That was Baktai. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me on this discussion of vampires and coffins in space.

Thank you for having me. Yeah. So this is a patron-supported episode, so we don't need to tell you where you can find retro nuts because you know, and you like, retro-not so much that you, the listener, I apologize for saying your soul is dead, that you support us by giving us money and make these podcasts possible. So thank you very much for that. We'll be back on Monday with a public episode or an episode that will go public eventually. But you, the patrons, will get to listen to that first. Anyway, that's enough of that.

Let me tell you where you can find me and these other people can tell you about themselves on the internet. Stuart, where can we find you on the internet, and what are you doing? You can find me on Twitter at Stupacaba tweeting terrible things that people hate. You can find my writing on Rock Paper Shotgun, RetroGerman Magazine, Sega Powered magazine, NintyFresh magazine. I didn't name it. It's just a magazine I write for. Nintendo Live, Push Square, all sorts of places. And you can read my webcomic, Maryhill at Maryhillcomic. Sorry, I had to plug my webcomic. All right. And Shane, how about yourself?

You can find me on the Twitter at Shane Watch. And that's once in a great while I'm on other podcasts, but usually this one every few months or so. So hopefully I'll be here again at some point in the next year. All right. And you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, here on Netternats at Limited Run Games on my YouTube channel. Those are the main places.

Also, you can find me on Twitter, mostly saying innocuous stuff, but occasionally making weird nerds mad by saying that Steam Deck isn't very good, which is correct. Anyway, I am not going to play Steam Deck. I am going to go play Boktai in the analog pocket, thanks to the cartridge lengthener adapter created by Andrew Bear, the guy who created the Bit Boy. He sent me one of those.

So I can play the maximal Boktai experience. I can take the cartridge, get the sun, and have a really kick-ass screen to play it on. Don't forget your sunscreen or parasol. Just be careful about the UV. die. I'm even wider than a vampire, so I have to slather myself. You know, they launch me into that space coffin. I'm not going to last a second. All right. Anyway, that's it for this episode of Retronauts. Thanks again for listening. Thank you, Shane and Stuart. And yes, go grab the sun in your hand, but be careful to wear an oven mitt because it's hot.

We're going to be able to be able to be. Everything should be on Switch. I mean, that's just a given at this point. Chuck Rock, please. And, you know, the Switch does use cartridges, so maybe they could figure out a way to build a little solar sensor into that cartridge. They haven't done it yet, but...

I was about to take the Chuck Rock bait because I was about to be like, but, Stuart, isn't the best version of Chuck Rock on the Mega CD? Oh, well, that's a real. Or Amiga 32? Does Amiga 32 have an even better version of Chuck Rock? Well, hang on, we'll talk about that on a two-hour dedicated Chuck Rock podcast at some point, okay. And you have to listen to it for some reason.

What's the racing? What's the cart racing game? BC Racing. Come on. Everyone knows that. Was Chuck Rock an Idos game? No, it was core design. Core, core, quote-unquote, design.

Excuse me. Oh, boy. And excuse you, do not say that. Chuck Rock 2, son of Chuck is generally great. It's a great game. I mean, it is better than the first. Yeah, the first one actually is kind of stinking. I'm not going to lie.

It's pretty bad. But that title stream with that song, come on. I wasn't going to take any bait for Europlatformers. You know, I feel like Stewart should be off wandering around at empty level, collecting fruit jellies to put in his Jubilee trifle. You know what? You can come at me about this whole fruit collecting thing, but you're never going to stop me loving collecting fruit.

I love it. Fruit's delicious and it's good for you. You know what? You know what? Bringing it back around? What do you collect in Boktai? You collect fruit. So shut up. Really, and really, Pac-Man, since 80s, since 80s involved, he's fucking collecting fruit. Oh, Stuart just dropped the mic. So, yeah, I was just asking about IDOS because there's a distinct possibility that Square Inix owns Chuck Rock. And that we will see a Chuck Rock reboot in the style of Final Fantasy 7 remaster. I would like a Chuck Rock dress, dress fear for Final Fantasy. 10-4

I just want to see a full triple A like incredibly expensive take on Chuck Rock just because of the everyone would just be like Wait What are you doing?

Also Square sold all the I'dos property Imagine this It's E3 You see a trailer Feel free to cut all of this out Please editor You see a trailer It's an incredibly realistically

Relended prehistoric scene With like dinosaurs Attacking each other or something Gradually zooms out And the title fades in and it's a chock-rock reboot. How good would that be? Imagine the incredulousness that it would provoke.

Oh, my God. If only we could live in such a world.