Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 92: Celebrity games

Episode Date: March 27, 2017

Though video games were considered the domain of nerds until fairly recently, this stigma certainly didn't stop celebrities from attaching their names to all manner of misguided interactive experiences. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Henry Gilbert, and Chris Antista as the crew takes a tour of the many celebrity-based that baffled them over the past three decades. If you've been waiting decades for someone--anyone--to talk about Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball, this is the podcast for you.

This week on Retronauts, Stop the New Order Barth. Hello, everybody. Hello, everybody, welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and today's topic is celebrity-based games. But before I begin, who else is here? The guy who's always here for most episodes, I think. It's Dana Gould.

Data Gould. Oh, no, wait. Jeremy Parrish. I get myself confused with myself sometimes. You know, he said he'd do retronauts on a tweet. Did he? I said, do you want to do retronaut? And he said, okay.

What the hell are you, Dana Gould? It's been two years. I'll be the honorary, Dana Gould. He'll be in town next Sunday. I'm sure he's got an agent, right? Can I talk to him? Yes. You should never return.

in my, oh, sorry, I shouldn't talk. He does not seem thrilled about gecks. But since you're talking, Chris, please introduce yourself. It's Chris. Antista. Hi, everybody. I love that man. On a recent podcast, he did talk about how he went to Canada and just wanted to see it

on the shelf. And he sort of, like, it's pronounced Jex. Thank you. Like, I think, never mind, it's Jex. Jex. Okay. Yeah, you're the boss, GameStop Park. Just got out of the rain.

Hi, everybody. And where are you from, Chris, of course? Lager Time, you might know me from Talking Simpsons with these fellas in the occasion, maybe the occasional retronauts, uh, 30, 2010. I guess I could plug a lot of things, but I'll, I'll throw it to that'll be, that'll be five minutes dedicated to all of the laser time, uh, universe projects happening. And, and who else is here today? Revolution X's biggest fan, Henry Gilbert. Henry is the weapon. Yes. And so today, uh, you know, normally we're here to enlightening on retronauts, to teach you things, to,

to bring meaning to your life, uh, about, you know, video games. But this episode is going to be frivolous and fun. It's, it's going to be, in time. entirely about weird celebrity-based games because there is no real way to squeeze them into any other episodes. So I just kind of corralled them all together. And I have certain criteria for this. I'm avoiding games where the celebrity is just an endorsement. Like, let's put Tommy Lasorda on this baseball game box because that's the first guy I want to see when I'm shopping for video games. Like things like Tony Hawks Pro Skater.

I've got a Sega hat. I've lost so much weight, and I'm in a Sega game. So, yes, so I'm avoiding things like Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Lee Trevino's fighting golf. to prove to this. One shake for breakfast, one shake for lunch, and a genesis for dinner. No. So, again, I'm avoiding endorsements. I'm avoiding things where the character is doing what they do in real life, so there's

no Lee Trevino's fighting golf, no Lee Carvello's putting challenge. Julian Michaels' parade of Wii games. Yes. Every reality, psychic-based reality show game for the DS, those are all not on the menu. This is really just like a celebrity in a game doing a weird thing for. reasons. And that is essentially what this is all about. Like, we have a lot of weird examples here, and I can't wait to dig into it. Any questions before we begin? I know you guys all saw the notes. What if we hate celebrities? Jeremy, we are celebrities. I'm not. In fact, Henry and I...

I'm only internet famous, which is not famous. It's a rating of celebrity. It's Z-grade. Yes. I'm like a J-grade internet celebrity. I'm somewhere below Kathy Griffith. Okay, Kathy Griffith. Oh, man. I'm so envious of you right now. She's on the D list, I think. Was that her letter show? I mean, she still hosts stuff with Anderson Cooper every year. Yeah, yeah. I've almost hit three dozen subscribers on YouTube.

That's the celebrity I'm after. Yes. So let's get into it, everybody. I did an article on this a long time ago, but it was all based mostly on the musicians. Yes. And a lot of these are music based, to be fair. We can do an entire episode just on music stuff. And the only thing I did find, but which is uninteresting, and I don't know it very well, is that in the U.K., especially, this was

much more common where like comedians would get their own games Amstrad or whatever that thing is called an Amiga stuff and Brice Strad I don't

There are people I've never heard of I'm a specky Or even Jim Seville Of Jim Will Fixit And crime fame And you'll see things on Steam like Bryce McCutcheon's

Football Manager And you're like I assume you're a real guy I don't know that it's the first one I remember seeing wee ones that were like I'm a celebrity player of Snooker, and I've got

my idea. I don't know that it's the first one, because I don't know this guy's history very well, but we just talked about him on 30, 2010, and it was mind-blowing the tie-in, a beat Takeshi. Right, right. He had the first celebrity game, which was written by him about going through him, him coping with depression. When he hates fan, and he

hates games. Yeah, it's about him not liking video games and wanting to torture you entirely. We were just talking about MXC, most extreme elimination challenge, which is it was called Takeshi's Castle, because it's that guy. If you've ever heard the non-American Americanized version, which is not as funny, but contains a lot of, like, bubble, bubble. It contains wall-to-wall, unlicensed video game music with unlicensed Terminator music.

Yeah, it's great. Like, Beat Takeshi has found so many ways to torture people for entertainment. And, no, actually, Chris, I'm going to buy this up because I did not cover Japanese celebrities because I feel like you'd have to explain too much. But there are some examples, like, that would come over here. They would change celebrities. Of course, the one we all know, of course, is JJ and Jeff, which was Cato and Ken. Joe and Mac.

It's, Joe and Mac are just, they're their own, they're their own people. They're their original creations. Does Master Higgins count? Yeah, he does, yeah. I mean, I guess they kind of turned him into a celebrity through his video game appearances. Yeah, but I mean, watching Cron Tendo and other retrospectives, you see, like, there are so many games based on Japanese comedians. It's pretty, pretty strange. There's all those, like, the Wave Jack series for Famicom Disc System where it's a game based on, like, starring, Flavor of the Moment, Teen, Idol,

singer, and it would come with like a cassette of one of her songs. Like a kids incorporated overseas. I think one of the first turbographic CD games was one of those idle games where it was before they would get creepy. It was just like kind of like a playful, like she's your friend and she's going to write you letters and you can call

her and stuff like that. Yeah, Nintendo made one of these. Yeah, you're right. I can't remember the the girl's name. Like Nana Miho or something like that. I totally got her name wrong, but it's like doki doki-dokey memorial. It's a like... Is that a parody of toky-Met? No, like this was before. It was turned into a Mario Memorial.

It was years before Tokomecki Memorial, but it's like a heart-pounding memorial or something. It's kind of like a visual novel where you're trying to get a date with this idol. And I think there was a phone number you could call. Also, the brain training games are celebrity games, too. True. Yeah. Dr. Kawashima, yeah. Yeah, he was a talk show staple.

And, I mean, Arino of Retro Game Challenge fame, he got his own game that we got. here. And, you know, you could argue the mother series, Shigasato Toy, is, well, he's more of a famous writer. Yeah, I mean, he is not in the game, but the games are him in game form. They're completely his idea, his dialogue, his characters, not his battle systems and stuff, of course, but. And, of course, that one character you don't recognize in the Marvel Capcom series,

who is a Japanese community. Oh, you're right. But I just don't, I thought I looked it up. He didn't have another game before that or anything. It wasn't. Yeah, that was only. in the Japanese one, right? I forget his name. I think it's worded over here. Oh, wow, okay. Yeah, there was a Japanese

comedian in MVC 2, I think, or NBC1. Yeah, it was one, yeah. So, again, I did not include these because I feel like most of it would be explaining who these people are, and I think the joy of this is being like, they had a game, Gallagher had a game, yeah, Gallagher had a game that, fortunately was not released. Yes, spoilers. We'll get to the Gallagher game. Don't you hate watermelons? Yeah. So, let's move on to the first game on our list, and it is a

kind of technologically impressive game, and that's Journey for the Arcade. This is not the artful indie game about floating on sand and making friends as ships passing in the night. This is about the band Journey, who I assume this is a year after I was born. They were

probably the biggest rock band in town in the 83. They were huge. They created an original song for the Tron soundtrack. That's how big they were. Did I just listen to that on vinyl? Yesterday, I'm trying to know what it's called. There are no problems, only solutions. And you know what? Journey He's cheesy, but I like them.

They're not like... Eat my shorts. Cheesy? No. They're so good. They're from here. They're from right here. Okay. And here you mean...

So when they talk about the city on the bay? They're from the internet. They're talking about San Francisco? Yeah. Hot damn. Yeah, they're from here. And I don't know. Like, I fell in ironic love with Journey in the late 90s and discovering that they

had a game right when Maine was coming out, like was mind-blowing. Because there's a big gap in celebrity-based games after this. There really is, yeah, we get the next one in seven years. The only thing I could hypothesize is that games weren't cool enough for people like the Kardashians to jump on. But arcade games were because they could go into bars and sports places. So they got celebrity endorsed stuff, whereas consoles didn't because they weren't cool. I thought like there were more, I mean, pinball set up the world that celebrity endorsed things before. They were somehow legitimate when consoles weren't.

And also, arcades were meant to be like, wow, look at this thing, listen to this thing. This is impressive. This is great. This has a unique journey song for every level in character. It does. And the impressive thing, although it looks like South Park now, is... It looks like... It looks like someone is doing a fake documentary and a journey, and this is their video games, but it's real. That's true, yeah, and it uses digitized faces of the band members. There's like two frames per character, basically, them looking up, them looking down, I don't know. It looks like a South Park episode, but this is one of the first uses of digitization in a video game placed on these sprite bodies.

But they look like... I mean, the heads are in black and white, so it's like someone wants... I went to town on a newspaper that was writing about Journey or something and just pasting them onto Sprite. She'd know Journey's keyboard is when you see them. Yes, of course. A silhouette. Just look for the mustache. Mumbly Joe.

I don't know his name. I have fit this game several times. Oh, you have? Wow. Yeah, for some reason. Because I don't know, I really did like Journey. I thought of their music was his... Did your ironic love of Journey eventually become a legitimate love?

Oh, totally. Totally. Like, look. Same here. On a musical appreciation level, the art on their album covers is great in the game, I think. Because you kind of build the beetle to run away or something like. that. Isn't that how the game ends? Yes, you're collecting all of your instruments. And now that we're in a safe space,

I can say I really like cheap trick, right? Hey, there we go. No judgment here. No judgment here. So, yeah, the goal in this game is you play a level for every member of Journey. There's five. And you have to reunite every member of the band with their instruments. So the first segment of every member's level is a, like, a navigation puzzle. And yes, they rip off every video game idea that's happened. There's like a donkey congish one. There's a Pac-Man one. And the second part of the level after you get your

instrument is a shooter. So you navigate down to your instrument and then you shoot your way back to the journey ship. Is that the escape ship? Is that what it is? Yes. And then the 2,600 version would be called Journey Escape based on the album Escape, but would not use any journey songs. But I have a clip of what it sounds like in 1983 to Dude Don't Stop Believing. Wow.

It's whisper quiet. So that noise was Steve Perry shooting his way back to the ship, as he does in real life. I can just imagine eating onion rings while we're saying. That's a soprano's reference, everybody. Oh, I thought it was just like in 1980. This is like peak 1983 or something, like just arcade, journey arcade machines and cigarettes and beer. I never played this game until it was at a California extreme. I went to like a couple of years.

ago, the big arcade enthusiast get together that's in Northern California every year. And I was surprised how cheesy it looked. It looks really cheesy. But I will say that a lot of games at this time

did not have like a soundtrack to them. There was like sound when the character moved, maybe like a little ditty when the level started. But it's cool. As much as it sounds like a merry-go-round that they actually try to approximate real journey songs. You got wheel in the sky in there, I think?

Just imagine how much better it would have been a few years later with FM synthesis versions of Journey Music. That really worked out for Michael Jackson music. So the final level of this, once you get all the instruments back with their band members, you essentially watch Journey play a concert, and there was a cassette tape in the machine. In space. It was separate ways. I just looped on a cassette tape.

A cassette tape in the arcade machine. That's amazing. That's a great idea. When you watch this on a long play, which I did, there's just silence during that because they didn't, like, edited an MP3 or whatever. But it's funny that, so your instruments are stolen by groupioids or something from the seventh nebula. And in this final level, you're stopping groupies from approaching the stage to steal instruments. So it's like, this game, Journey is like really upset with their fans, especially the women fans in the audience.

It's like, groupies are the enemy. So that was a weird choice. This was a band with taking a lot of penicillin injections. Yes. They had a lot of issues to work through, a lot of grievances. I have to assume they had several doctors on staff to take care of their many. Well, yes, I don't want to talk about any more. Sores.

So let's move on to what else is happening in this game. The original open source is off. The games are arcade fine. The drum one is the only irredeemable one. Okay. I didn't get a clip of that. It's, I don't know what to compare to. Jeremy can help.

Just like a doodle jumpy, kind of like he's got to jump on drum-like things at a certain angle that throw him up to the top. It's excruciating. awful. It's a bit like Hubert and then you have to turn all the things one color and they change color when you jump on them. It's needlessly difficult for the character you want to play as the least. Who ever wants to be the drummer? I mean, I don't know.

Rush fans. I'd be the drummer before the bassist, I think. Not a journey, though. So the digitization tech from this game came from another prototype that would actually take your picture with your high score. So it would display your face next to the high score. But obviously they're like, well, of course

people are going to flash this or moon this. So we're not going to do that. But I believe the contankerous and now dead Ralph Bayer had, was trying to, wasn't there some sort of patent issue with Game Boy camera or something like that? Do you know anything about this? I don't. But I mean, if it's a video game thing, Ralph Bear probably had a lawsuit against it. Yeah, it's like a thing is moving on the screen. That's my idea.

I'm Ralph Bayer. So, yeah, there's an Atari 2,600 version. It's called Journey Escape. It's nothing like the arcade game. It's kind of like an endless runner in that the way most Atari games are where you just play until you stop. and you're just moving towards the top of the screen as you're, again, dodging groupies and managers trying to take your money.

There's some weird commentary in this game that I don't know if it came from Journey themselves, but, yeah, again, they're fighting their fans in this game. Yeah, I'm not old enough to remember how big Journey was around this time. You just... Huge. Yeah, I know they're huge, but was the Tron connection what got them in a game?

No, I mean, maybe. I can't imagine it was their own interest. No, they were just probably just one of the biggest bands around at the time. I mean, they were everywhere, And then that's around the time a little before Steve Perry went solo. So all of a sudden you had like Journey and Steve Perry songs on the radio all the time. Like Genesis and Bill Collins a few years later. That's for when I remember waking up to the radio.

Like that was Steve Perry and next journey. Oh, man. What a coincidence. Oh, wow. I think you guys sound a lot of like. But I mean, secretly we all know that Mega Man One is the best journey game for using faithfully. So faithfully are without permission really. And this is loading now.

We're going to hear this. There we go. Oh, wait. So this is Journey's Faithfully. Oh, I'm taking me back to my wedding dance. Uh, did your wedding dance turn into the Mega Man song? Uh, I tried, but no. Oh, man.

No dice. So this is Journey's Faithfully. It'll turn into Mega Man soon. This is great. The Leckman, right? Yeah, a Lechman stage. Here's a Lechman stage. It's going to play any second now.

Yeah, here we go. Yeah. So it. It reminds me a lot of, you know, the Top Gun Street Fighter Connection, of course, just Capcom. Mighty Wings. Just stealing things outright. But that's fine. I think I prefer the Mega Man version.

I don't know. Someone does not legally defend Mega Man, but, like, his name is Rockman to represent not a bolder, but music. Oh, yeah. So, like, all the stages rip off rock music in many games. I interviewed composer Manami Matsumai about a year ago, and I really wanted to ask her, like, are you a big journey fan, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. It just seems tacky. Yeah, and, like, you know, I don't know, I've been making stuff long enough.

You just are accidentally inspired by something. You think you've hit on the perfect lick and it might come from someone. Yeah, I mean, it's a very simple progression, I'm guessing. And actually, there are several other songs that have that progression. There's a Metallica song that sounds almost exactly like that. And doing research, I learned that that is a very common progression in rock music, those chords, that court style. But also, if you were somebody composing a song for a family, Com game in 1986, like you're, you're not thinking about people listening to it even two years later.

No, no, of course not. Oh, there's also an REM song that has that same progression. Are all the right friends or something like that? Okay, maybe I'll edit that in here. I know you say, maybe someday I need never be alone. Or maybe not, I don't know. We'll figure it out if it sounds like what you're who says. I have a great rejoiner for you, by the way.

What's that? When Michael Jackson died, I found raw, Jesus, what do you call it? Just lyrics, and I laid it over all of the Genesis music. Oh, okay. Just for outro, so like not enough to get litigious. Yeah, so Chris is talking about Moonwalker. Oh, yes. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, that is, which hit the Genesis.

Oh, I thought you're talking about Sonic 3. Oh, no, that's a different story. Did you guys know that is the... Yes, he has this picture with Sonic. I can't believe you're just finding this up. Really, I know. But, okay, so this game came out in the Genesis and in the arcade, two different games in 1990.

I mock you for not knowing something before I did. Anyway, that's okay. It's not that. It's not I've written about it like eight times, and that they treated it like a revelation. So really, Sega was getting a lot of celebrities on board for the Genesis. A lot of really great pop culture guys. Again, Tommy Lasorda.

Every kid had a Tommy Lasorda action figure. It just lost out Nigel Mansell. Sega's postmaster. system strategy in the vacuum of a mascot in a pre-sonic time. They're like, then we hire other people to give their celebrity to us. It's like the guy who accidentally

knocked out Mike Tyson, he gets a game. It was like Disney, Spider-Man, Michael Jackson. It'd be shocking if Genesis didn't win. And it also helped the like Nintendo of America made no overtures to nobody. So if you wanted to be involved with people who made games,

Nintendo of America wasn't going to come to you. So Bill and Beer's Combat Basketball was not their idea. It was not Nintendo going to Bill Ambier. You're jumping too far ahead. Oh, sorry. Actually, you know what? We skipped over, I think, a pretty important celebrity game.

Oh, sure. Go for it. Which would be 1983, 84, Jordan versus Bird one-on-one. Okay, yeah. See, I didn't think... That was the first licensed game to feature, you know, named sports celebrities. Right. The reason I didn't include that is because it's two basketball players playing basketball,

and this one is more like, what's a weirder take on celebrity stuff? It's not just like an endorsement. Like, it is legitimately those two guys. Yeah, yeah. And it was the same. celeb focus on it. That was 83? It was pretty early.

It was one of EA's first game. I guess the NES one was the first one I touch. Maybe it was 84. And I confuse it with the McDonald's commercial. We're throwing for point out right. But in the history of sports games, the 80s were in America anyway. The major leagues of basketball,

baseball, and football didn't trust video games would not give video games money or license their things. So they would have to go to you can't own the game of baseball. You can't own the game of football, but you can't own all the leagues, all the teams, all the stadiums. So you have to make, if you're not getting a deal with them, you can make deals with specific players. And there was a weird period in the early 90s where you saw

games that were like NHL football and then it was like National Hockey League Player Association football or hockey. So you have like, you know, the first would be the teams, but the second wouldn't be the teams that you knew, but it would be all the players you knew. I mean, I remember that neony logo being introduced right when the superintendent was coming out. And eventually it just became a monopoly. And basketball games would have everybody but Shaq and Jordan in them because they had their own

separate deals somehow. EA also owns monopoly. Oh. No. That would be fitting. And MLB had the same thing too where they would. It took a long time for them to get both players and teams.

You'd get teams or players. Have we got so many great RBI baseball games? The only sports games I know. But back to Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Again, Sega bringing in celebrities, and this is a very technical showcase for the Genesis, really big Shinobi-looking sprites,

digitized voices, and faithful recreations of Michael Jackson's music. As much as sometimes we rag on the Genesis sound, when used right, it could be used well. And there are some great recreations of Michael Jackson's songs in this game. But I do want to talk about the movie Moonwalker because I just remembered it existed while doing research for this. The 1988 movie, it is a very, very, very,

strange movie released in Japan a year before it was released anywhere else. Strangely enough. It's never been on DVD here. I've only seen it on VHS when I was a kid, but it's not a movie. It is a collection. There's music videos, live performances, biographical information about Michael Jackson.

But the one chunk of the movie that's a explicit narrative, a story is called smooth criminal. And it is where Joe Pesci plays Mr. Big, this criminal kingpin, and he's bent on getting children addicted to drugs.

And in the end, Michael Jackson turns into a robot and murders all of his men. And Michael Jackson actually turns into a car, a robot, and a spaceship. A giant transformer space. A spaceship with his face on the front of it. You won't believe this. If you've never heard of Moonwunker, at least watch the smooth criminal segment. It is cuckoo bananas. And you could tell that Michael Jackson probably had full creative control over it based on how zani it gets.

And how much it's about saving children. Yes, yes. His friendship with children and how great he is with children. Yes. That's a big part of it. Platonic friendship. Well, I mean, if you saw, it was a theme that continued through many Michael Jackson things. Yeah, he's always hanging out with children.

In a very personal thing that, like, I love the video so much, but it reminds me how he probably felt all the time. It's a beautiful video, but it's for the song, Leave Me Alone. Yes. And it's him writing around in a beautifully animated sequence in his very own personal amusement parks, streaming for people to leave him alone. Will Vinton, right? Yeah, I think so. Now, the Will Vitton's part's after that when he does, he dances with the claymation buddy.

Yeah, yeah. And, but yeah, he also, in that one, he dances with the skeleton of an elephant man, not the elephant man. And like a cut of Liz Taylor, his best friend at the table. It's very strange. Leave Me Alone looks a lot like the Sledgehammer video, I think, which was an Ardman thing. It's that, I call it. The 80s, early 90s, 10 frame a second rate that was required for every music video of any kind. We can't animate all of these frames.

But the smooth criminal video, as most people know it, is one of the best music videos ever. And I love that song so much, too. Let's actually hear the chip tune version because I think it's really faithful and it makes the Genesis sound good. So maybe the voice kind of track is not great, but the bass really sells it, I think. I don't know what you guys. This track in particular, I mixed them together because they fit perfectly. Like Michael Jackson's raw audio track can be like right over this. It's perfect.

Okay. Interesting. We just can't help throwing a shade at the Genesis. I don't know if you meant to, but you said, this makes the Genesis sound good. Again, what a shock. Again, many people misused it. We're going to hear some music on this episode, I think. That sounds like the Genesis is eating you alive head first, basically.

So we're getting back to that poor fanficing it. So good. That was Alien Ant Farm on your first. Your 101 Rock Channel. Oh, God, I forgot. That's how they rose to fame. Yes, so I really think they did a great job with this game. I don't know if it's the best game.

I don't think it's explicitly bad. It just sort of, like, doesn't know what it wants to do. But there are some cool touches in this game. Like, you build up a meter, and when you hit a button, everything on the screen dances with you, including dogs, including zombies. It's really cute. It's really fun. And they would use the same idea in the arcade game, which is sort of like an

isometric shooter with three Michael Jackson. It's actually at that barcade. It's really weird. It bubbles the monkey summon. Yes, but yes, right. It's not in the Genesis version. But you, I remember we re-explored this game on Classic Talk Radar because when, when MJ died, I remember you saying like, and here's Michael Jackson's death sound. Oh.

Very tasteful. Here's the sound of him kidnapping, a child being kidnapped. He's freeing the children. Oh, that's right. Yeah. History told a different tale. It's funny, at least, oh, boy. At least in the Genesis version, the child you rescue is just one child, the little girl, Annie, from the movie who I believe.

Annie, are you okay? Yeah, yeah. For some reason, I thought it was Eddie for the longest time of my life. I didn't know it was referencing this, this weird movie where Joe Pesci's the, like, you have to watch. Selling heroin to children. Like, they had to remove the, like, forcefully putting children. And he says heroin, I believe. They have to, like, cut that out of, like, modern releases.

Wow, yeah. So it is, it's such a weird, it's a weird product. I don't know why. I mean, Michael Jackson was still huge in 88. I don't know why there was never another movie. Maybe he was just a little too out of touch with reality to work with on a project like this. I could explain why this is just like, it's a music video, it's a biography, it's a live performance. He just did what he felt like.

Yeah, yeah. And just floating from being the thing, like, you'd be working on black and white in 90, the black or white album may be working on that. That would be coming out two years later, you know. Yeah, that's true. Well, yeah, this is from the bad album. Moonwalkers full of songs from the bad album. Yeah, and I think... The album, bad people do not call Henry.

The bad album. Michael Jackson is bad, and apparently that's good. I think that the song Thriller was in the beta version of this, but I guess they could only license so many songs. But they say Michael Jackson had some direct involvement in this, and I would believe it, because he was a video game guy. He loves Sega games. You would see him in Neverland with arcade machines.

Neverland was his ranch he lived on. That was basically like an amusement park. We talked on Talking Simpsons about him. demanding to write a song for Bart Simpson without being credited and getting no money but he had to write it. That's how his relationship with the Simpson started. It was like, I want to, I won't do Michael Jackson. I want to give

Bart a number one song. And he did. And he did it. He did it. And later I found out his producer actually wrote it. It came out I think after that episode. So it was still like the team that made Michael Jackson music. But I'm sure he had input on it. Yeah, that is the truth of the Sonic 3 thing as well. The people who are credited of writing these songs on Michael Jackson's album have

been credited in Sonic 3 since the beginning, but the internet is terrible at journalism. Yes, yes. Well, we're not paid enough to be good. But it did start a relationship with Sega and Michael Jackson, which continued close to his death. One question, I just want to see if anybody connects on this. This game reminds me of Sam's Club. Sam's Club.

Sam's Club. So what was happening back in the day when the Genesis came out is that there was a Sam's version of the console that came with five games. So every, my parents weren't Sam's Club members. So I got a piddly Genesis with stupid altered beast and Tom Sonic the hedgehog. Every one of my friends got the big six game collection with this game. With Moonwalker. It would do it.

It was like trampoline terror and like just a bunch of like kind of not really sellable games for a blue thunder. Yeah, lumped into a Genesis collection. But it included Moonwalker. And I don't know anybody who bought this, you know, we were real little when this came out. I don't know anybody who bought this specifically. but all of my friends bought it at Sam's Club so they all had it. So I never own the game.

Interesting. I know Sam's Club did a lot of those bundles and they probably still do. They don't actually. Oh, really? No. They just, like you can buy, I think if you go into like Costco now,

you can't buy a discounted Call of Duty. You can buy two Call of Duties and give one to somebody else and it's slightly discounted. That's sort of like how some stores would make you buy games with a new console. Like, no, this is the bundle. You have to buy these games.

We shrink wrap to the box. Like GameStop would do that or something like that. They just did it with a Switch, actually. Oh, what? Yeah, there was a five-game bundle for the Switch, and that's how most people had to get it because they were out of, like, normal pre-orders. So the entire launch lineup, then. I kid. I kid because I love it.

He actually hits five games, yeah. But back to Michael Jackson. He would later show up as Space Michael, the creatively named Space Michael in Space Channel 5 and in Ready to Rumble Boxing. So he would show up in two sort of non-Michael Jackson-y properties. By 99. Although, Space Channel 5. I did a whole thing, and I can maybe relate it. I'll spoil this because I wanted to blow somebody's mind with this.

There's a couple of really awesome Michael Jackson's. Jackson's and licenses. I know I showed you guys one of the Flintstones kids show. There's an anti-drug song. Right. Yes. Song or tune of, what was it? I was beat it, was it?

It was it? But it's Kipling and the guy who sings for Michael Jackson on the Simpsons. And the deepest one is on an episode of the Cubert cartoon show. It is just Cuberts singing Beat It. It's one of the reasons why you'll never see a home video release of it. Not because no one would ever want to watch it, not because it has no value. Not because it entertained no child. I don't know.

I had a Cuberts stuffed animal. Hubert's a cute character, but I don't want to see him in college or whatever dealing with my everyday struggles. But, yeah, by 99 and 2000, I think Sega was feeling comfortable again, recognizing its relationship with MJ. Yeah. And but then a couple of years later, they were like, oh, no, let's not do this. And now he's dead. You don't have to talk about the ugly things about Michael Jackson. He just celebrates the past.

Yeah, I mean, his music is great. And I feel like this is really another case. of Sega of America taking charge saying get Michael Jackson a game, get this person a game. Japan, of course, I'm sure they love Michael Jackson. Moonwalker came out there first. They probably didn't even be convinced, but this idea of recruiting celebrities to be in your game, I feel

like it was probably like an initiative from the U.S. branch of Sega of Sega. That feels that way. So we're going to move on to our good buddy Jackie Chan. This is the Jackie Chan section because at one point in the 80s and 90s, I want to say Jackie Chan was probably one of the most famous movie stars before we knew who he was, really. Outside of America, he had to be one of the biggest stars in the world. It says something really weird about the U.S. that I think I was, I heard he was like the global number one movie star and no one in America knew who he was in the early 80s.

So the quick history of Jackie Chan was that he, he became a stuntman like he was trained in Peking Opera, the classic, you know, stage production in China. By train you mean abuse. I've read all about that It's like, well, you're good for a reason For the same reason Michael Jackson was good. You're beaten until you get good at it. I didn't know that. Like a Chinese circus?

Yeah, pretty much. And yeah, his description of were like, well, you know, it's just how it was at the time. Like, this is child abuse when you went through. But anyway. And a lot of people trained in Peking Opera would then get into the burgeoning film industry in Hong Kong. And so he was like a stuntman on Bruce Lee film.

Like, and so then after Bruce Lee was dead, they were looking for new stars. They first tried to make him a star in the Bruce Lee role, but it really didn't fit for him. Yeah, they're like, you have a similar haircut. Yeah, so, and he had his big breakout in, in China, in the Drunken Master film, directed by Yunwaping, who is famous as the stunt choreographer for all wirefoo that you love, Matrix in particular. And so that made him big in China. And eventually America started to notice, like, hey, we should try. I had to make him a star here. They really kind of failed at it in the 80s.

Like there was a film like Battle Creek, the Battle Creek something. They tried to screen it here, and then someone danked the rights away, and we couldn't see that movie either. And he's in Cannonball Run. So that was their biggest attempt to make him a star here. Playing a character named Toyota. And they said, it's Jack. Yeah, it's like, he's the biggest star in Japan.

And I was like, really? Really. If you can't, what would it have killed you to say he's the biggest star in China? Like, why did you think Americans won't know anything about China? And they've at least heard of Japan. I didn't get it at all. Yeah. But it didn't work.

He didn't become a star here. And then he was like, screw this. I'm going back to Hong Kong and making my films for me. Police story was the first one like that. And police story is incredible. I love that. I just rewatched it recently. So good.

We just watched First Strike based on a 20th anniversary. Jackie Chan is one of the last great physical comedians that no one acknowledges as physical comedy. He doesn't just hit. He gets hit a lot, and it's always funny. He commits to the hit. Yeah, he commits to destroying his body. Yeah, it's about him taking abuse, not him. You'll see a movie with, like, Jet Lee in it.

He's an ass kicker, and you want to see him kick ass. Jackie, he'll win a fight, but he's got to fall off a roof first. It's about his, like, constantly broken nose. He's like, ow, they've hurt my head so much. And so he did police story, and then basically from 85 to 96, he was just a huge star in Hong and the rest of Asia, and then we finally caught on when he was marketed correctly to us

through Rumble and the Bronx. Yeah, that was the first real movie for us. He does all his own stunts. He's so cool. Outside of America, he's a superstar. Inside of America, it's too dark to read. So, we actually got a secret Jackie Chan game in the form of Kung Fu,

known in Japan as Spartan X, a movie that was localized here as Wheels on Meals, not Meals on Wheels. Not a good one. Yeah. The Wheels on Meals is part of the Jackie Chan, I get my friend's jobs, film. Okay. The happy Madison of their day.

Pretty much. It's like Barcelona or something. Yes, yeah. I loved his, he turned also in Adam Sandler style of let's go to a cool place in film. Yeah. But, I mean, Jackie Chan came through the Peking school with all of his buddies. So when he got famous, including Samo Hong, who is a legend in his own right in Kung Fu films, and he just brought all them with him.

And so they'd make these films that, like, he only had to be in 10, 20 percent of, and then his other buddies would be in it. And that's what Wheels on Meals is. So it's not a pure Jackie film. But that's because he was sometimes, he was producing more than three films a year sometimes. Yeah. So that's a workhorse. Yeah. So, yeah, we got Kung Fu.

It was a very seminal game in terms of being one of the first modern iterations of the brawler. Yeah. And early samples. Yeah. And made by IREM, correct? And it was one of the black box. games. It had the asterisk to tell you it was not an Nintendo thing. Well, it was a

Nintendo or an IREM property, but Nintendo EAD co-developed Oh, okay, that interesting. That and 10-yard fight both. I had discovered this through Good Nintention's. Please check it out at Good Intentions. I just did. That's real fun, man. Did it have the asterisk on the box to denote that it was? Okay, cool. Yeah, I was always wondering what that was.

There is a notable asterisk on the box. There is, yes. It's trademark Irim. That and 10-yard fight. Yeah, I just, okay. Everything else Nintendo published in the Black Box series was like, or you know, initially was Nintendo properties, whereas this, you know, Nintendo launched the NES like three years here later, or like two or three years later than in Japan.

So instead of just having the original Japanese lineup, they had like 70 games to choose from, including some pretty good third-party license games. So they published all their own games at first in the U.S. and sort of cherry-picked a couple of games that they thought Americans would respond to, which were Jackie Chan beating up dudes and American football. That makes sense. And of course we have the game with Jackie Chan's name in it. Jackie Chan's action kung fu, 1990 for the N.S.

Made by Hudson, it feels like a Hudson game. It's very pretty. It's a neat platform with lots of special moves. But what I find interesting is that they just left Jackie Chan's name in it. When I was a kid, I'm like, this is not a real guy. This might as well be Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball or Barker Bill's trick shooting or whatever. Dusty Diamond was in, say, by the bell, wasn't he? That's Dustin Diamond.

And he's in jail now. So, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I didn't know who Jackie Chan was. I assume none of us did. That's not Jackie Chan. I didn't know. I think I found out about Jackie Chan from Quentin Tarantino, giving him a lifetime achievement. The only people in America in 1990 who heard of Jackie Chan were the Quentin Tarantinas of the world, which were the jerk.

I was going to say the jerk video store employee. He was just like, you haven't heard of that. But this was the first time I heard his name because, like, I don't know what made them keep the name. And maybe it was a, maybe there was an underground video community who knew who he was, like a bunch of Tarantino's out there with NES. I want to think they were thinking, it doesn't matter. This could be a character or a real guy for most people. Probably. But it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a name that connotes kung fu action, you know, hence Jackie Chan's action kung fu.

Jackie Chan is a really good westernized version of an action hero. And also, you know, in America, maybe a lot of the Asian American communities responded to that. That's true. Yeah. And it doesn't really look like him except for the logo, which it looks like a 45 million, you know. year-old version of Jackie Chan's. It looks like a very ancient grandma. He was kind of young back then, but he's actually dressed like his character a bit

in Drunken Master. Yeah. It's not based on anything, but they know what's popular, you know, in terms of Jackie Chan movies, say they sort of make it look like that. Any other thoughts in this game? I know you guys recently streamed on it later time. It's just one of those things when you play an old NES game, especially side schoolers, you know, and now you're old enough to know when things are bad and poorly designed

instead of just a hard. And this game is like, it's to say it's. easy or not hard. I don't know. It has different kind of abilities you can gain that you understand immediately what they do and how many you have. You have a nice life bar. Everybody's hitbox is okay.

Levels are just the right length. You can finish it very easily. Great bosses, though, great sprites. But I think, I don't know, I always thought a hallmark of Hudson stuff outside of Adventure Island was that they were easy and finishable. Complutable games. You could complete in a rental cycle. Probably didn't help Jackie Chan that much.

No. But it's a very solid game like you're saying, Chris. And I don't think it's been released on virtual console. Do you know this, Jeremy? Any virtual console release for this game at all? I doubt it. I really doubt it soon. Tint not to show up on virtual console.

Likeness rights, I'm sure they'd have to buy them again. But who made the game? Hudson. Hudson. So, Konami now. Of course it's not. No, we'll never see it. It'll be Jackie Chan's action Pichinko and you'll never see it.

So we actually have other Jackie Chan games. True. One that's incredibly rare. Thank you to Hardcore Gaming 101 for shining a light on this. They have a great article on this. All kind of sum it up. It's called the Kung Fu Master Jackie Chan. Chan, not the most creative name, but it is a Mortal Kombat-style arcade fighter made by Kaneko in an incredibly short supply.

So this was a game that was manufactured, but not in a huge supply for America. And how Kaneko got involved with this is they sponsored the ailing production of Chan's movie Thunderbolt. And as a result, they got to borrow the cast to film, to digitize for this game. So there were a lot of production problems with this movie because weather, it was a movie where it's like an investigating crime in the racing search. or something like that? Yeah, this is one of the few Jackie films of that time I didn't see just because I was like, I had race cars.

Yeah. I didn't hear this had any cool stunts in it. Fast and Furious Noir. Did he fight a car? I want to know. Somebody tell me. I'm sure a car almost runs over him all the time. And probably did in a cut scene.

So we also... The credit sequence you'll see it. And the outtakes where he was hospitalized for six months. So there was sort of like an enhanced version of this arcade game, if you can believe it, called Jackie Chan and Fists of Fire. It's basically a tweaked version

of the Kung Fu Master Jackie Chan with, you know, better moves, more characters, things like that. And again, they just missed when the Weinstein company, when Miramax, would make Jackie Chan famous in America in 96. They just missed it. Yeah. And we have more games to talk about. I'm just going to list them because there are still more Jackie Chan games

because Jackie Chan's moment in the Sun in America was the 90s for sure. Like, he was really popular after Rebel in the Bronx. So we had Jackie Chan stuntmaster for PS1, a game about him. That was a fun little game. I mean, it was like, it was a 3D brawler, and it was about, it kind of challenging you to do a cool stunt. Like, do a cool stunt in this area. Don't just beat up everybody. Yeah.

And it had the same cornball story of every Jackie Chan film of just like, my cousin Jackie's in town. Jackie, these guys are being mean to me. And then he beats them up. Yeah. And I was looking at videos of this. It's a 98 game or 99 game, but it's incredibly simplistic looking. I'm sure it could play well. I don't know if it holds up.

But we also have some games based on his craft. Cartoon they're in for five years that I consider an abomination. Jackie Chain is barely in it. Some other guy voices him. I thought you loved anime. No. For some reason, and I hope he's not a listener, but the character designer Jeff Masuda, they used him for so many WB shows, and he had the weirdest, the weirdest designs for his characters.

They had this like concave skulls. He did character designs for Men in Black, Godzilla, The Batman. Matthew brought her Godzilla. It was a very key, I always thought of it as the kids' WB American anime look. Yeah, so it was very specific. I don't want to trash you guy. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't for me. It was a step between American comics and anime, but not really embracing either fully.

So, I don't know. I just thought it was an ugly cartoon. And also, when mentioning Jackie Chan in video games, you know, the City Hunter film he did, which he, that was like, he called it his, his two Japanese fans, which City Hunter is a manga and anime series of the 80s. It was very popular. And the lead character looks not unlike Jackie Chan in it. And so they make a film about that And it is like, it is a very broad comedy that With full of a lot of stereotypes that aren't so nice

But in it there's also a sequence where This big fight scene is in an arcade on a cruise ship He gets smashed into a street fighter two machine And then him and the guy he's facing Transform into all the original characters And he fights them It's really good. Yeah, look up that clip on YouTube.

It's very funny and very faithful. I wouldn't watch all it. Don't watch the entire city. Hunter fell down, honestly. But though there is a cool part where he fights two very tall. He goes into a theater where they're playing the Bruce Lee versus Kareem Abdul-Jabbar fight scene. And then Jackie's like, oh, I could beat up a guy like that. And then two very tall men come in and he has to fight both of them.

That was a neat scene. So we're going to move on to one more game before our break. And I don't know about you guys. But when I think about basketball, two words under my mind, Bill Lambier. And, of course, we have the Year 1 S&ES game, Bill Lambier's Combat Basketball, a game based on the flashiest of the

Flash in the Pan sports stars. I just assumed he was famous when I was a kid because I didn't watch basketball. He was pretty well known. For some reasons. Okay, well, my family comes from the Detroit area, so naturally they were huge Pistons fans, even though I'm not much of a basketball fan. I certainly saw a lot of basketball pistons playing,

You know, like, what was the guy's name, Scottie Pippen? Or no, was he on a different team? He's on the other. I know you're, I can picture who you're talking about as a flat top. He was really short. Like a really short dude. Not mugsy bows. Anyway, not him.

Anyway, like Bill Lambeer was, you know, part of that whole thing. I'm here because my girlfriend is watching sports and I can get away. There you go. So, yeah, definitely he was very notorious at the time because he was an extremely aggressive combative like he got into fights all the time he was kind of like

the John McEnroe of basketball actually doing research for this I'm like who is this guy I look him up on YouTube you can watch him fight every more famous basketball player in several different games

like here's him fighting Charles Barkley here's him fighting Michael Jordan like you can just watch all these fist fights that happen during NBA games he's like a meaner or Dennis Rodman yeah

Dennis Rodman was on that team that team taught him to be mean I know about the Pistons because I watch the 30 for 30 documentary, Bad Boys, which is all about that team and why they're underrated because their great years were followed by the Bulls having the greatest career, the greatest years in NBA history. So everybody looks over the Pistons, but they talk about how that the group of the bad boys.

They're also done the bad boys because they were seen as rougher and then a little more harsh on the court than other teams, which I guess would lead into the idea. of combat basketball. Yes, very much so. Indeed. But this was kind of in that same vein as like Baseball Wars 2020, and that's what thing.

Like the idea of, well, we've done a lot of sports games and there's only so many things you can do with sports. So what if we add explosions? Yeah. I mean, it's an incredibly cheap-looking game because here's the story. There is one sprite in this game,

one basketball player sprite, and they just recolor it depending on the team you're playing. So everyone on your team is identical, and everyone in the other team is identical, and they just get recolored as you play different teams. It's a really cheap looking game. It's a pretty standard. I'm thinking of my double dribble, my favorite.

I think the short guy you're thinking of is Isaiah Thomas. Isaiah Thomas, is that? Oh, yeah, yeah, that's him. Isaiah Thomas. And it's from an overhead perspective, which looks really odd in 2D when it's not done well. I don't think it looks. It's a battlefield. Yeah.

Much like love. This game takes place in 2030 where Bill Lambere is the basketball commissioner. He gets rid of all rules and refs, and he's in charge. He's not even playing. No, he's not. Because by that, he's going to be like 70. I guess by that time. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you try to reach out to him to interview him? Yeah. When I was a one-up, I'm like, I'm going to make all my crazy dreams come true because I have this insane power. Well, not really, but I thought I did. And I went to his website because I guess he coaches the Pacers now or something like that. I'm not sure.

Or he did at the time. And I reached out to him like, oh, Bill Ambier, I really want to talk about combat basketball. It's 20 years old. And can I interview you? And I got no response. So you know what, Bill Ambir? Screw you. You just put it out there.

Burn that bridge. I will fight you on a. basketball court. And you're probably 60, so I might win. To go back on my Sam's Club anecdote, I want to know if anybody else remembers it for this. He's 59, by the way. 59. I'm like 2030, it will be about 70.

The idea that like if you had a Super Nintendo, I didn't, but my friends did. Launch lineup is typical Nintendo, but better. Not a lot of games. And then no release dates for anything. Like five, like five games. And then you're, everybody's kind of like, you're reading

magazines with three months old information. waiting for another game to come out, and the only confirmation you had in 1991, 92, was a commercial. And this is the first game I saw with a commercial to let me know, there is more than five Super Nintendo games, and it's Bill Ambears Combat Basketball. God, what a weird game. And then you bought a Genesis. And I saw the ticket to Genesis. That was Aladdin. I was an animation fan.

Leave me alone. Notably, this was the last basketball game that could ever be based around a white guy, I think. That will never happen again. I mean, Bill Lambier, even on his team was like he was, he was definitely part of the team, but it was Isaiah Thomas's team. Like, he wasn't. Lambeer was not the star, but he was not, he was a white guy, which I would think they would perhaps saw us more marketable. Maybe.

Maybe. America. So we're going to go to our break, but Bill Lambeer, if you're out there, I will fight you in Smash Brothers. I said in Smash Brothers. He could still kick my ass. I'm sure of this. So we'll be back after our. our break.

Usually at the grocery store, you pick out foods you love. But I'm picking out foods I hate, and you're going to shoot them. Spinnit! And I hate Owlham! And I hate anything I can for now. That's the always subdued Gallagher in Gallagher's gallery. Apparently, having stopped at Hammerhead Gas Stations in Final Fantasy 15.

It really sounds like, Gallagher. I've got the ingredients you needed. I think that sucks, too, because he couldn't shoot, or he couldn't destroy, you know, known items. Or, like, you know, products. Yeah, well, I kind of consider Middle Gear Solid to an honorary Galler game. That's true. Watermelons in such a loving detail. Look at the physics.

It really is. And so Gallagher's gallery, not much to say about it. I just want to play out. In case you don't know who Gallagher is. Yes, Gallagher is a joke the man. He is an over-the-top prop comic who is now known for being incredibly racist and standoffish with Mark Merrin. I feel like he, that was even five years ago. Yeah.

What is he even doing? I own the Ninja Turtles. Does he? There's a weird story. He helped make, he sold off his ownership of it, but he was the guy who discovered Eastman Laird, and he was like the middleman to making it a cartoon and toys. Is Casey Jones based on him? Oh, wow, it could be. Wow, I think you're right.

I mean, I want to point out, like, no one loved Gallagher more than, say, eight-year-old Bob Mackey. Hell yeah, I loved his stuff so much. He had no idea. He had to wear a tarp to sit in the front row. That's crazy. Oh, my God. If I would have seen him live, I would have died as an eight-year-old. How do you spell it?

D-U-M-B. So to explain Gallagher's act... How do you think's going to build the wall? Oh, God. That's his new act, Chris. That's his new act. Gallagher's old act was essentially really, really, like, I don't know, everyday observations, like, why does this happen? And then he would bring out the sledge-a-matic, which was the highlight of the show, where he would smash various objects with a sledgehammer.

Like, of course, watermelons, that was his main gimmick. I'm going to smash watermelons. And there was some, there was some, there was a Gallagher, too, once. There's lots of jokes about Gallagher 2 on 90s. His brother license his appearance and life isn't and jokes. Well, because he said he wasn't doing Smashormatic anymore, so he let his brother do it, but he had to be Gallagher

2 on the road, and then he started selling himself some as just Gallagher, and so then he sued his brother in a very, you know, very non... Kramer versus Kramer. Gallagher versus Gallagher. If I may take this into, like, Lasertime, 30, 2010 territory... That's why you're here, Chris.

We will remember Gallagher for, is that he more so than anybody else embrace the home video market before almost anyone else did. Except Playboy. As a comedian, though, as an individual. I mean, we mentioned Gallagher on Talking Simpsons, and I told you that we had a Gallagher section in our video story. It was like, here are all of the Gallagher specials on a wall.

There's Melanchozy. There's the other one. All I remember was Melancholy, baby. Melancholy in the Infinite Sadness. We got a real Gallagher three on our hands. Smashing Pumpkins with Gallagher. Wow. Wow, that's connection should have made a long time ago.

Breaking the histogram here with these calendar impressions. I never saw him until Comedy Central reruns in like the late 90s because it was still too hotly coveted because the video store was awash with watermelon and mustacheo stuff that I remember vividly. He was like an ex-hippy too. He wore the very like the, he was still wearing like bell bottoms in the 80s. That was part of his look. He's kind of a hippie clown outfit. He looks like an art crumb drawing to this day. Yeah, he really does.

Art, you know, like the beret. in the straight black and white shirt. The gray going bald but keeping the long hair. It's the kind of stuff you just don't see anymore. Thank God. In addition to embracing mediums, he embraced not only video games, but the Laserdisc, which is what this game is. It's a Laserdisc arcade game.

Yeah, it's a Laserdisc arcade game. I guess they have it at California Extreme. I have never played it. I have been to California Extreme. Oh, it's great. You got to go on these things. I know. Something always happens.

I think Retronauts always happens. Yeah, we were talking about doing retronauts at California Extreme this year. I think that's maybe. Look for us there, maybe. Get your hotel room now. That's all I want to say. about Gallagher's Gallery. We got some good material out of it, but it exists.

Gallagher still exists as of this recording. So let's move on to... Thank you, Matt. Let's move on to the Make My Video series, guys. Now, this is Comedy Gold. I've been waiting to get to this. These are notoriously bad, quote-unquote, games for the Sega CD by digital pictures. These are the same guys who brought you Nighttrap and Sewer Shark and I think one was called Double Switch.

They are very, very slight gamey experiences built around video. And so we... It's an editing game. It really is. And not a good editing game. So there are three different releases for the Sega CD. There is a Criss Cross release, and there is a Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch release before he was Mark Wahlberg, serious Transformers actor. And we're a rescuer of 9-11.

Yes, hypothetical 9-11 preventer. But back when he was just a guy who beats an Asian man nearly to be. Maybe you don't want to buy a Super Nintendo. Blinded a Vietnamese man as a youth. Famous hate criminal Mark Wahlburger, of course. And in excess. You know, every kid loves in excess. Hey, that don't change song, kids.

You got to edit that video. And we all know what happened to Michael Hutchins. I don't think we need to discuss that. It takes away some of the comedy. It does. There's only one musical group has all its living members of these three groups. Yeah, the Make My Video Curse does not touch Marky Mark yet. Although he did.

Yes, the Walburgers exists. He was allowed to make that. And we're all very proud of him. So this game essentially is editing. So each game for each, there's three releases for each group. And there's three songs on each game. And you are asked to edit videos to the specification. And it's sort of like Adobe Premiere for Cavemen.

In that there is a main timeline. And as the video is playing, you see three windows, one for the A button, one for the B button, one for the C button. You hold in that button for the video you want to place on the main timeline. You just hold it in. So it's like real-time editing to the specifications of what people are asking you to do. And the framing devices for these games are pretty wacky. So the Marky Mark in this Funky Bunch game, it's a brother and a sister. Like these games open with opening credits and like scenes, introducing characters.

So the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch one opens with a brother and sister arguing and they're challenging each other to edit music videos. The in excess one is this bar room setting where it's like, whoever can edit the best video controls the TV in this bar. It's a story about these two women being hit on by guys editing videos for them. Oh, boy. Yes. And the Criss Cross one is a fake radio station in which you're receiving fake calls for videos. But I do want to play some of these clips of the framing devices. And I call this clip, I couldn't possibly edit this video.

Can you? So we're going to see how this is set up, how they set up you editing these videos. So here's the in excess one. So you liked a video? I guess. You mean you don't like it. Is that what you think? I don't know.

Okay, Mr. Cool. Give us your gems of wisdom. Tell us how you'd make it. What do you think? Even better. What do you think? Can you just get gaslighted? He immediately, maybe.

There's some weird, there's some weird... There's some negging going on there. But, yeah, like, what do you think? He's looking at the camera. All I could hear was, like, luxurious hair flip. Yes, yes. Gee, your hair smells terrific. They're setting up these weird universes in which people challenge each other by editing music videos.

I guess they have like an avid there or something they're going to wheel out. I mean, I suppose in real life then you'd say, I could have made a better video. Oh, yeah. Prove it. Here's three clips of stock footage. Here's the bridge shaking. Here's the guy getting hit with the cannonball. And here's some Bosco cartoon now. Make that into Marky Mark video.

Oh, no Hindenburg. Which were the music videos of 120 minutes back now. I mean, they were cheaply made, so it was like stock footage city. So, yeah, I mean, this was the game. They were widely panned at the time. And these framing devices, I got the most comedy out of this. And this is a clip I call Thirsty Mom. This is from the Marky Mark make my video.

It's about a brother and sister who seems strangely attracted to each other. Many people in the YouTube comments. That Christmas commercial, though, is it Folgers? Folgers? I don't know it. The best part of waking up is... Your brother in your bed. Oh, my God.

I set Chris up for that. So, we met before the show. I will play the Thirsty Mom clip. This is from, there's going to be a moment of silence between the clips because, of course, you can't just edit into a new scene. You have to have a pause awkwardly. So this is the brother and the sister arguing over who's going to make the better Marky Mark video. A argument I had with my sister in the 90s countless times. Do it to me, all right, because I'm using it.

I said, no more fighting. I've had enough of this. But dad, he's such a little jerk. Oh, it's her, the raging hormone victim. Oh, yeah. What's it about this time? She wants to make the new Marky Mark video more fluffy. Wait a minute.

Your mother and I watch a lot of VH1. Maybe we could help. You want to listen to them? So here comes Thirsty Mom. This is the Thirsty Mom clip. You're about... Well, that was dynamic. But don't you want it to be more romantic?

Oh, well. Little romance never hurt anyone. Honey, the kids want us to choose some shots. Well, you choose something romantic, big bloke. Mom is all over dad right now. I say more of those shots of that empty room spinning. What? That's not romantic.

And basketball, definitely more basketball, and less dancing. Who needs dancing? That's not a romantic either. How about that shot of the muscular mechanic washing his hand? That's it. I'm taking the car in for the next tune-up. Make my-ma-ma-ma-ma-vada-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-v-video skate. So, yes, I had no idea that these games had framing devices.

I thought they were just, like, video editing suites. But, again, it's very rudimentary. You were editing in real-time to these, like, these sitcom episodes of video-editing-based conflicts. I'm just glad we got to hear one more Marky Mark in the Funkey Bunch song. I don't think I've ever... Good vibrations. Give Me Money and something else is on this. Whatever that, it sounded like a Spikely Nike commercial.

Yes, it really did. So, yeah, that is the make my video series. I was happy. As much as we can rightfully make fun of these, the idea would be revisited a couple of years later, much more seriously by Peter Gabriel with the Explorer One software. Did you ever see that? No.

Which was much more like, it gave you an opportunity to actually remix the music. It had like multi-tracking so you could, you know, change the sound mix in his songs. It wasn't so much about making videos, but it was really like an interactive piece of software about creating music and about shaping music production. No, I've heard you mention it before, but I've never actually seen it. Yes.

I mean, Jeremy Parrish mentioning a Peter Gabriel thing. Of course it's happened. Well, that I've actually really mentioned Peter Gabriel on this podcast that much. You mentioned a lot, Jeremy. It's a problem now, but we'll talk about that later. Is this like a caveman thing? Yes. So our next game is very, very short mention, I guess, for this crew ball for the Genesis.

This has to be the bad Genesis music. Yeah, oh, it is. Like I said, it feels like you're being devoured by the Genesis face first. And I'll play a bit of Dr. Fieldgood until we start screaming. It hasn't even gotten that bad yet. Okay, I apologize for that. So as you can see, Michael Jackson was treated much better by the Genesis's. his music chip.

It shows you how bad it could be. His music didn't, like, consists of an entirely one slap blade, slap bass with the strings made of electricity. Yeah, I mean, it feels like... Do, do, do, do, do, do... Well, Jeremy's now a tube and throat singer,

apparently, but... So, when used them properly, the electric guitar sound from the genesis really feels like your teeth are being drilled. I can't figure out a better metaphor for that. It just feels like you're being electrocuted or there's something being drilled into your brain.

To me, it sounds like if silverware got caught in the garbage, yes, thank you, Henry. So there's an interesting story to this. I mean, nobody knows Motley Crew anymore. I mean, I think we all know Tommy Lee, of course, from one of the most famous sex tapes, not to get too dirty, but... This is insanity. Yes, exactly.

I think it was like the first, the first one that happened when the internet was around. Show me your weanus. Show me, show sketch, of course. But this started as a project called Twisted Flippers, and the devs wanted it to be a headbanger's ball, pinball game. So Headbanger's Ball was the MTV metal show, and they wanted it to be a licensed headbangers ball pinball game, but MTV said no, so they went to Motley Crew, and that

is basically what happened, and the rest is history. Motley Crew is a, or was a glam metal band, and glam metal is not the most hardcore, edgy music you can think of, but it kind of fit in with the edgy genesis. There was like Alien Crush and Crew Ball, like these edgy pinball games. So that was like Vince Neal and Nikki Six with... And, boy, I can't remember the fourth one, though. God dang it, Hank. I am impressed.

I remember Nikki Six. Is it Ricky Rock? He's on the radio now. He's like the voice of classic rock radio. I thought they were all like reality show stars now. I mean, that's what Evan Vince Neal. Yeah. You might be thinking of Brett Michaels, who's not crew.

Was he poison? Who the hell is he? I think he was poison. I think he's in wrestling promoter. Brett, the hitman Michaels? Okay. Also, I just looked it up. There was a, there was a game in 96 that was kind of like make my video except for movies, and that was Spielberg's director's chair.

Oh. A PC game from DreamWorks Interactive in 1996 when DreamWorks was brand new of just like, cut together your own movie. And Steven Spielberg, like, recorded two things to say, hey, yeah, cut together your own movie. Don't use any of my movies. And it was also famous because it had Quinn Tarantino and Jennifer Aniston were both actors who filmed scenes. for it, that they cut things together. That's pretty amazing. I didn't know about this.

Look it up. Thanks. I will have more about that on the blog, maybe like a video or something. So let's move on to a very notable game, Revolution X, where music is the weapon. Yeah. Boy, oh, boy. Could 94 be any of a bigger year for Aerosmith? They were dominating the airwaves, music videos, of course. We have the crying, crazy, amazing.

It's all the same song, really. All the same video, but they made it work. It's hard to put that in perspective if you're a little younger, but Aerosmith is a band that my dad maybe would have liked it. Big in the 70s, took a deep dive, and somehow came roaring back 20 years later. It was with Rone DMC, wasn't it?

They did walk this way, and all of a sudden, like, they were cool again. It was weird because that Get a Grip album was huge. And right after that, they had a 20-song greatest hits album, all the songs you would know. And then another album that was just as big. Yeah, and I mean,

it was perfect timing for them because, like, CDs were big for my generation, in my age, like the first albums I owned on CD were they might be Giants Flood and get a grip. Those were the two because Aerosmith was just everywhere. Yeah. Not only just I saw them on The Simpsons and the Flaming Moes episode, which made me love them or introduced me to them. Then I see these sexy, exciting music videos directed by Michael Pay. And you're like, wow, this is amazing.

I've got a sexy time for you. Beat the Rich. That album is on Beat the Beavis and Budhead. Weird Al does live it in the fridge. Yeah, yeah. That's right. It brought, I mean, it was more popular. As a 12-year-old boy, this brought Liv Tyler into my life.

And for that, I was very appreciative. And Alicia Silverstone. Oh, yeah, that too. Yeah, she's the big one. She kind of broke out with this video, too. Yeah, the crush was away this time. The stink of Batman. And people definitely made a thing of his daughter being so sexual.

She's not sexualized in Alicia Silverstone in that video. Really? It really is. So the. It made me like butts, that's what I remember. So they were so big that they could even open their own arcade gate. Yeah, really. And so the plot of this is a fascist government led by a dominatrix named Mistress Helga.

It would have been too obvious if they called her tipper-gore. Yes, I know. Really, I mean, you really know what they're going for here. It's like, okay, so this dominatrix is taken over. It really feels like a take on the PC movement of that era, like a backlash against that. It was very different than what we experience now. But it's the scrolling text The beginning of the game is like

All video games, television magazines, and especially music have been declared illegal and are strictly forbidden And people are being rounded up in camps Mostly women in bikinis in the game So you can see a lot of T&A, of course When you're playing your Erasmith game And the bad guys are the New Order nation

Symbolized by the logo N-O-N And I'm like, is this like a slam against nine-inch nails? It seems very suspect And I don't know why they would make fun of nine-inch nails Because they were the type of music coming to unseat them. Maybe, yeah, they felt threatened by it. They were younger people doing industrial music, which is very modern compared to their 70s style rock. Yeah, I mean, and this is not a bad game. It's a light gun shooter with a lot of fun set pieces. It's cheesy

as hell now, and there's some great bad acting by Aerosmith, and I'll play you Stephen Tyler. The most dialogue are here in this game, really. If you're watching this, then they've taken over. It's up to you now. Find our car and stop the new order. He throws you the keys. Remember, music is the weapon. So thank you, Stephen Tyler. I mean, he's an Oscar-winning actor compared to Steve Perry in this game.

Joe Perry. Joe Perry, yeah. I mean, and so, like, ever seen it, there's that other guitarist who on, like, S&L is so subtle and on The Simpsons kills. Yeah. There's one guy. I forget who he is in the band. Slash? No, not slash.

It's, I forget, I cannot name the other six members. of Aerosmith. So I have one clip that's always in my head because every Aerosmith member introduces their own level. They get like three words because none of them can act. But you have to rescue each of them in the levels to get the good ending where you party with Aerosmith because nothing is more fun than partying with 45-year-old men who went through rehab and are going to play free music. So I'm going to play it for everyone. Yes, exactly. Who wants another? What's the name of that drink? Shirley Temple, there we go. So I'm going to play this clip that's been in my head forever. It's Joey Kramer, I think, is the drummer. It's either

like, Mrs. Kraboppel. Yeah, there you go. So here it is. Stop the new order bus. You can barely hear it. It's like, stop the new order bus. That means that was the only usable dialogue. Yeah, I don't think they did a second take for him.

Stopped it. Well, they probably, their manager probably said you have 30 minutes. They went to a claim studio like you get 30 minutes. You got to shoot a roller coaster, shoot a Disney world. This was a claim, right? I think it's midway. Okay, midway. A claim was probably the console version.

Yeah, that was usually their relationship. But I remember spending what felt like $8 as a kid. I'm like, this is the one arcade game I'm playing in Aladdin's Castle today. I can't afford any others after this one. But you just get to sit down and be surrounded by the music. And at the time, the stuff on the screen was amazing. And seeing actual Stephen Tyler walking around. Yeah, I mean, shooting CDs.

You're like, CDs are $80. And I'm shooting a million of them. Yeah, just hearing the music was great. I mean, it was such a gimmick, but, again, really high-quality samples. They looped them a lot, obviously, to save my memory, but it was interesting at the time. It's a fun little 90s timepiece. Well, I mean, you can still find this game. I'm pretty sure it stops across America.

I've seen it in plenty of places recently. Just it's there, and I'll never die. I pop a dollar into it and play a level, and I'm cool. It's like the portrait of Dorian Gray for Steven. How is he still alive? How is it still look relatively young? Oh, the game. He's become a cat man now.

He is very much a cat man. I haven't seen him lately. But the game. Play, though, it really reminds me a Midway's T2 shooter. It really is, yeah. I wouldn't be exactly the same game, actually. Yeah. Yes. I think this one's a bit easier, or at least

I found it a bit easier, but yeah, it's fun to play. And we'll go to our next game, which is Michael Jordan, Chaos in the Windy City, Super Nintendo 94. Now I know what you're thinking. This sounds ridiculous, but it's actually not a bad game. It was actually designed by Amy Henig, who you might know from

Uncharted and Jack and Daxter. This was like one of her first games. Star Wars game. Yeah, like she designed this game. And, I mean, it depends on what kind of a game you want. This reminds me of a very dense, like, European-style platformer where it's like a lot of winding levels, a lot of collectibles. What was the developer on this? Was it Delphine? Oh, okay.

Elfine was Shaq Fu, right? Yeah, we'll get into that too. But, yeah, this is not a bad platformer. There's not a lot to really go over. I mean, it is a platformer starring Michael Jordan who could not be bigger in 94. Lots of elemental basketballs being thrown. Lots of rescuing people. I mean...

When you say elemental, you like ice... Ice fire, lightning, basketballs. Hot balls, cold balls, every kind of balls. Is that a reference? No. Okay. Just wanted to say, excuse, say, balls. Okay, well, we're talking a lot about balls right now.

But, yeah, I mean, it's an inoffensive platformer. It could have been much worse, but I think Amy Hennig is a great designer, and you can see that. And how many performers came out of EA? Not many. I don't know. In this era, I'm not really sure. Was that Bob B-O-B game, EA? I don't know.

Bums over a robot guy. What? Oh, yeah. Of all people, you should know. I know. I need to keep track of all the bobs and video games. Yeah, I think this, I guess this was one of the very few platforms they made because it was related to sports because they were the sports people. So they just ended up with Michael Jordan in that.

But I wonder if that was like Jordan's managers were just like, we got to hit you out of sports games. You're everywhere. You should be in a cartoon. You should have your own cereal. You should be all these things. Should be in a Looney Tunes movie, ruining it. The worst part of that movie. Yeah, I mean, people made fun of this a lot.

lot at the time because they're like, why is he in this game? Why is he doing this stuff? But it's not like a super memorable game, but I think it's fine. Like, go back and play. You'll never see it released in any format ever again. But just try it. It's okay. It's fun. This is the dawn of angry hipster nerd Chris.

But just knowing why he was in this game and not where I wanted him to be, along with Shaquille O'Neal. I was mad. I've actually never played this, ever in my life. Never tried it before. You could be right. I mean, though, getting your own video game much more fits with, in the 90s, much more fit with Shaquille O'Neal than

Michael Jordan. Yes, and that brings us to Shaq Fu, which came out for many platforms in 1994. Again, fighting games were huge. Shack was huge both in terms of his celebrity status and in heights. So why not make him a fighter? Status and stature. Yeah, that's true. A chart-topping rapper, I'm the hooper,

the hyper, protected by viper. That is a literal shack line spit. With the same emotional intensity of Shaq. Actually, Chris, I looked up a Shaq rap song just to be like, oh, I forgot he did this. And it's like, everybody raps but him and he gets like half a verse and they just shove him out of the way.

Can we rock? What's Up Duck? That's the song, yeah. Which is not terrible. I own the album on Shaq Diesel, track number 12. Oh, yeah. Everybody had that one. He got to star in a movie because he had a Superman tattoo. They're like, oh, you like Superman? Well, there's sort of a black Superman named

Steele want to be in a movie. We will erase all Superman elements from the movie, but you can still be in it. So, yeah, this is a game. that had an odd developer behind it. Delphine Software, the French developer that made Another World and Flashback. And actually, the guy who designed Flashback, which is the semi-sequel to another world, designed Shaq Fu.

So you can already see how maybe they were a bad fit for the Shaq-Foo universe. The Shaq-Fu Universe? Yes. And it looks like those games in that. The characters are fairly small, but they're very well animated, which is not make for a good fighting game. I only played a bit of it growing up. It didn't hit me as, like, a very good game. game.

It was just like, this is not fun. And now there is a recent Indie Go-Go raised $450,000 for Shaq Fu 2, which is a brawler and not a fighting game. He kind of launched it right after his retirement. Yeah. He retired from the Laker, or

no, the Heat, whatever. Miami Heat, I think, yeah. Yeah, he was on the Lakers for a bunch of years and went back to the Heat and I believe retired there. Yeah. I just like the Shaq. I like Shaq as a celebrity. I feel like he does what he wants to do and he has fun.

And he's like, if he wants to film a thing with the jackass guys, he'll just do it. Yeah, he just shows up in weird places now. If he wants to... Play basketball with the police for no reason. If he wants to appear at WrestleMania, he'll just show up. Or if he wants... He'll just be a playable character in a UFC video game because he's just like, well,

Shaq could be here. And like Henry, I don't watch sports, but I do love sports documentaries and public scandal. Shack having somehow avoided all of that forever. He seems like a good guy. Yeah. And also that he just did those goofy lift. ads where he like drives people around Atlanta and then people have to pretend like they don't recognize chat.

Just that time, he's hosting an NBA wrap-up show and he falls over and like pulls the monitor out of the wall. I did see that. He's like, he's like, a thousand dollars to anybody who can make this, me busting my ass better with Photoshop and just like makes himself, he's, what a great dude. I mean, I read interviews with him about this Indiegogo when it started and he was basically saying, no, like, I chak-foon one sucked. I was so ashamed of it.

I don't want it to haunt me. I want there to be a good shack-foo. And who knows, this game could be okay. It looks like an okay brawler. She's about to ask because this hasn't come out yet. Based on what I read, it will be coming out soon. It was due in 2016, but it got delayed. We'll get it before the Narlsburg.

Charles Berkley. Shut up and jammed. That game is crying. Hey, I kickstarted that game and I'm waiting for it. I will wait and I'm patient because I want to play it. Thank you. Hello, podcast listening friends. It is I, Jeremy Parrish, co-host of Retronauts,

and I'm here to share the good word of Midwestronauts. That's right, both Bob Mackey and I will be taking a break from our lives as coastal elites to return to our Midwestern origins. We'll be going to Midwest Game. Classic in Milwaukee. Join us on Saturday, April 8th at 3 p.m. for our next live presentation. A look back at Namco's Splatterhouse franchise. We'll be joined by Caitlin Oliver and Kevin Bunch, two experts in the games, and by experts, I mean, world-class high-score competitors. It doesn't get more expert than that. So if you're in the neighborhood, come on out to

Milwaukee and Midwest Gaming Classic. Experience the Magic live. It'll be splatterific. You know, when you're a kid, there are a lot of things that you think exist. Unicorns, dragons, mermaids, you name it. When you're a kid, it's real. But when you find out later that they don't, well, it's kind of disappointing. Of course, as you get older, you get over the disappointment. But when you're looking to buy a car, there's nothing worse than finding the one of your dreams online. And then you find out later, it doesn't really exist.

It's not true. That's why at TrueCar, they show you real pricing on actual inventory. This isn't pricing offered to you by TrueCar. It's an actual VIN-based price from a TrueCar certified dealer in your area. Real prices. And these aren't just any dealers either. True Car certified dealers are a carefully curated network of dealers committed to transparency. They offer competitive prices and a faster, easier buying experience for you.

It's a fact. True Car customers are more likely to enjoy a faster buying process when they connect with the True Car certified dealers. And, on average, they save over $3,000 off the MSRP. So when you're ready to buy that dream car, visit True Car, and enjoy a more confident car buying experience. Some features not available in all states. Hey, everyone, this is Sean Wheelock,

inviting you to check out our new MMA podcast, Sean Funky and the Baddest Man, right here on Podcast One. Every week I'll be with welterweight titleist, Ben Funky Ascran and the baddest man on the planet Joe Warren to take you inside the sport of MMA. So join us every Wednesday for all new episodes of Sean Funky and the Baddest Man. Download and listen at Podcast 1.com, the Podcast 1 app, and subscribe on iTunes. Thank you. The reason I brought Chris on this show, that in Gallagher, which came out of nowhere when I was peeing today, was...

You've seen a doctor about that? I mean, I was using the bathroom between Retronaut shows, and I was like, Gallagher had a game. Yes, I don't know why I was peeing when I had that thought, but that could be a testament to Gallagher's quality. Probably all the seeds. Yes, that too. So this is Dennis Miller. That's geek to me. Ninety-four.

This is not a game, but it's more of an excuse to make fun of bad. bad Dennis Miller jokes. So Dennis Miller had two CD-ROM products. One was called That's News to me. It was essentially you pick a week, you pick a month, you pick a year, and Dennis Miller will tell you a joke of something that happened then. With the classic Dennis Miller style. Or 100,000 years ago.

Yes, or 100,000 years ago. And in this program, it's essentially a glossary of computer terms. You click on one of them. Dennis Miller tells you a joke. No. That's very loosely considered a joke. No. And then an animated nerd technically joke.

Yes. And then an animated nerd will tell you the actual definition. He's just grumpy. It's a mouse. So let's hear Dennis Miller. It's not actually something that he's cheese. It's a mouse. Let's hear Dennis Miller tell us what a PC is.

You can see this joke coming a mile away. Dennis Miller, define PC for us, please. PC. Isn't that when your mother starts insisting you call her your ambulatory reproductive source? As you can see, Steve As you can see You had to that laugh track That could be the funniest joke ever

Yeah, that laugh track was all right Oh my God I'm still going Okay, sorry about that That was a little self-indulgent of me Wow, something happened to my audio Okay, yeah, so that's Dennis Miller That's geek to me

There's a few more jokes I want to throw out here So let's have Dennis Miller tell us What True Color means True Color Michael Jackson around, what, eight, ten years ago? One more take of that. When monitors are able to show millions

of colors, they are said to represent true color. So that is the entire program. We'll do, we'll do... How this costs money? How easy is that like, Michael Jackson Joker?

So we have one last Dennis Miller, that's geek to me joke. I'll play it now. Ethernet. What they used to capture Dennis Hopper's character and blue velvet. That's a pretty good one, actually. The King of References strikes again. Dennis Miller.

That's smarter than just the easy Michael Jackson one, I guess. It contains more extraneous data than the Freddie Farkis manual. I thought I liked Dennis Miller until just now. It took us a long time to learn that he wasn't actually funny, and then he went crazy because of 9-11, as some other pieces did. I can see the one-star reviews. They're popping up in front of my face right now. I grew up watching Dennis Miller Live with a dictionary, learning how to tell jokes and what words were.

Yeah. I was, I liked his HBO show quite a lot at the time. It was, it was informative to me then. And then, yeah, after 9-11, I was like, you're brave, bro. Yeah, we started a political show. We're like, no talking about the president. What? You have a political talk show where you're not allowed to talk about the president.

It's off limits. So the next game on our list is one that was unreleased, but it's a really cool idea for a game. It's called Penn and Teller Smoke and Mirrors, and it was leaked to the Internet in 2005. It was originally designed for Sega CDE and IBM PCs. And this entire, quote-unquote, game was essentially made for you to troll people with. So there are all these, quote-unquote, like, digital magic tricks in this game. I can go through them. And the one is the most famous, but I'll get to that one last.

So there's one called Mofo, the psychic gorilla. It's a card trick where the victim, the person who's playing the game who you're tricking is always called the victim. these. So the victim is choosing a card, and MoFo sends a coded message to the player in order to guess which one the victim chose. So it's like the game is sending you a message as the person watching for you to guess which card is being selected. And a lot of these are like game-based. So there's buzz bombers. It's a shooter where player one always wins and can input cheat codes. You can also input a code to change the cheating controller in case your friend's like, let's swap controller. Something's wrong with mine. That's kind of incredible. Yeah, like all of these seems. like really cool ideas. I guess they just, I don't know, Acklead, they went out of business or they couldn't find a way to sell this, but it was Acklead? Buzi.

No, no, no, Acklead, that was the company that, like, that comedian we knew worked, a very quick story. Chris and I went to, like, a stand-up comedy class, like to learn stand comedy that was in San Francisco. I'm sure you can tell from the rest of this podcast. It's so funny.

You're professional. But it was run by a comedian, Kurt Matthews, and And when we mentioned our jobs in the video game, Phil, he's like, I worked in video games a long time ago, accolade. Locally, I was like, wow. So that was his company. Interesting. We should have dug more into that.

Honestly, like, put a pin in that. We could do, we could get him for a retro. His office still has a Genesis with like a billion games set up. That's weird. NHL 94 right next to it. He owns the real bubsy. So let's move on to the other things in this game. There's something called, What's Your Sign?

It guesses the victim's birthday based on a bunch of insane questions. like total non-securter questions. No, blue-collar comedy tour. What's that? No, sorry, that's Bill Ingval's. Oh, okay. What's your sign? Yeah, I got it.

In reality, though, the player inputs the victim's birthday ahead of time. And then the player thinks, oh, the game gets my birthday based on these very odd questions. That's... This is way cooler than I ever gave it credit for, actually. Some of these are really high concept, like something called Sunscorcher. So this is sort of making fun of blast processing in, like, different effects and video games. So they start the game by saying it uses a... something called thermographics, and what happens is it, like, it flashes on the screen.

It's supposed to be, like, it's supposed to replicate the sensation of heats or something like that in the video game. So every time this happens, the game, like, visibly damages your screen in some way. And the third time it happens, the game pretends to break your TV, and you, as the person playing the trick, you're supposed to touch the TV and pretend to burn your hand. So it's a very, very high concept joke to play on someone. The last one, of course, is Desert Bus. It's the ultimate troll game.

It's an eight-hour real-time bus trip where you have to keep your hands on the wheel at all times because the bus is always drifting to the right. And now people play this for charity. They play this desert bus for something. Desert Bus for something. Extra Life. I'm missing the word here. Desert Bus for something. Charity.

I don't know. But apparently Penn & Teller created Desert Bus to show up anti-gaming lobbyists. And there is a little bit of like anti-gaming backlash in this game like baked into it. I mean, these are the guys. who would do the show bullshit about how every, usually against PC culture, or just restrictive culture that they would see on both sides of the, because both sides are just as bad. But they, but yeah, this seems to come from the same place of, oh, you want reality. Here's reality for me.

Exactly. Like Teller said, I have a quote from an interview. The route between Las Vegas and Phoenix is long, Teller said. It's a boring job that just goes on and on repetitiously. And your task is simply to remain conscious. That was one of the big keys. We would make no cheats about time so people like the Attorney General

could get a good deal of how valuable and worthwhile a game that just reflects reality could be. So it's like, you want reality, here's what it actually is. Like, these violent video games are not realistic. This driving a bus simulator is, and it sucks,

and it's the most boring thing ever. So, yeah, and I feel like the one downfall of this game was it was previewed a lot, and the magazines gave away every joke. Sort of like how Eternal Darkness was previewed to death. And it's like, here's all the tricks that'll play on you. Oh, thanks.

I really wanted to read that. So, yeah, I mean, that was Penn and Teller Smok and Mears. The only people you could play it on are people who don't like games, thus ensuring they'll never like the medium. It really is, yeah, it really is about trolling non-gamerers with Penn and Teller stuff. So we're in our last run here. I'll go through these pretty quick. One of them is called Apocalypse, which it's weird that this is like the one game to be named Apocalypse. It's a PlayStation game from 1998.

The first original game by NeverSoft. and Bruce Willis is on the cover So there were development problems I don't know what happened But Bruce Willis was originally meant to be the psychic character But then he became the protagonist But they didn't record any new audio So he's talking to somebody

The elite singer of Poe? What's that? The lead singer of Poe? I don't know what that means That's a band Yeah, Poe Yeah, she was in the game too Oh really? Okay, I had no idea But like he's meant to be talking to somebody

With his dialogue but there's nobody there like nice work kid yeah like things like that who are you talking to because he was clearly meant to be following you or being like on like a codec or something and they got one shot to record stuff with him you don't get a second take notoriously cooperative Bruce Willis such a cool guy yeah yeah he had to go record some blues record no one would want to listen to yeah respect y'all so

did he do that was that it? Oh it's close okay but I mean in a way I was maybe you too much into this, but I think they really created a commentary on the types of characters he plays, because all he can do in this game is say, one-liners. There is no other dialogue. Exactly,

like the Benz-Tillorio sketch. So if you watch a long play, it's just one-liners, and you can tell he's incredibly bored while reading them. So it's kind of, like, surreal that it's a character speaking to nobody, but still delivering all these one-liners as if he is speaking to somebody. And as far as I know how

it plays, it's just a, like, a contra- like, a 3-D-contra-like. I'm sure it can't be that good. If it Neversoft media, it's probably okay, but I'm guessing it didn't age well. So the second and last game on our list is Kiss Psycho Circus, the Nightmare Child for Windows and Dreamcast. And apparently, this is like a polymorphic assault on your senses. There was a Kiss Psycho Circus CD. Kind of copying insane clown posse's act a big. Hannah Barbera TV movie in the 70s. Yes. Kiss saves the carnival or something. This is a mart.

Kitsch is a merchandising collective. They're not a band. Now, now, no, no. We're artists with a merchandising wing. That's what we do. They defeated the Phantom of the Park, so I don't think you can really throw anything. Gene. One of them sounds like snagopuss, of course.

Paul Stanley? Yes. Paul child. I got my 10-inch boots. We are ripping off Dana Gould, by the way. But it's all on YouTube. It's fantastic. But Gene Simmons, like, owns every.

part of it, and he's much more of a greedy monster than he is. Yeah, it's weird. But the history with Kiss, you know, they were big in the 70s. Then the 80s, they unmasked and took off their makeup and like, no, now we're going to be serious. Like, basically the 80s. Weren't as

good. Then in the 90s, they're like, okay, make it back on. We're going to sell this crap again. We're nostalgic. We're going to star in Detroit Rock City, that crap movie. That movie's great. With the fake Jay and Silent Bob and it. It was great. And we're going to team up with Todd McFarlane, who is a big fan of Kiss,

and he's going to make toys for us for our new line, the Psycho Circus. And so that's what it is. Like, Todd McFarlane was already getting big with, thanks to his relationship with corn. And he also used that to lift up or to re-popularize kiss through the Psycho Circus. Yeah, like Psycho Circus seems like a strange, like, reach, but I guess they are evil rock and roll clowns in a way. Yeah. So, I mean, this game is just a, by the,

Numbers Quake style first person shooter developed by former ion storm people Sure And it's actually not about kiss But about a kiss cover band Who receives supernatural powers Like I think if you're buying this game You want like the kiss people to be in it

Presumably You don't even have to be the real voices Yeah you already bought the license I mean you just do Just do a four player Beat them up I'm just like I call Star Child That's me

I'm the cat I guess this is based on that image comic which is presumably about the Kiss cover band receiving magical powers from, I assume a genie or some sort of Osmodio type figure that only they can see. Something like that. But in a hardcore, new metal-ish way of the late 90s. Yeah, and in fact, I was reading reviews of this. Strangely enough, it has a techno sound track, techno versions of Kiss songs.

Like, you're really missing the boat there. You want that classic rock and roll sound, right? That wasn't cool in 99. Oh, man, not cool. There's also a notorious photo of them. God gave rock and roll to you. Run up their fruity loops and you got yourself a kiss record. There's an infamous photo of them dumping their blood into the Dreamcast Factory VAT.

Oh, is that an urban legend? No, they did that. Okay. And that was another of those like, these guys are Satanist, yeah, for their comic book. Yeah. So our last entry on this list is David Cage's first game, Omicron, the Nomad Soul, featuring the recently departed David Bowie. It's been a year, over a year now, man.

Yes. Not that recently. Yeah, well, it's somewhat recent. I mean, he lived for 69 years, so. So, like, every other cage game seemingly, it's about a serial killer. What's telling us with that? I don't know. He watches a lot of seven every night.

But this one takes place in a sci-fi setting. The game opens with you, the player, inhabiting the body of a space cop to solve the crime. It's like, they're directly addressing you, the player. To spoil this game, you won't play it. Believe me, you won't. The twist is the killer ends up being a demon who lures players into the game you're playing. to steal their souls. And the thing they're trying to tell you is if you die in Omicron,

you the player will die. It's sort of like a Kojima-esque plot twist. Oh, God. I mean, he's just the B-grade Kojima. That's right. It's like the French alternative. I'm no fan of David Cage. I find that he just kind of borrows too much from, like you said, like Kojima,

he's really bent on borrowing things he likes. But, Kajima has game. I mean, Kojima likes tons of things, it feels like. I think David Cage only likes psycho. film, seven-ish films or the saw film. We're about to play Not Blade Runner this year, so get ready for that. What if a person thought is a robot? The beauty of this, and this is a lot of speculation on my part, but we did cover it a lot

on Lasertime and Vision Game Apocalypse last year, because David Bowie was probably approached to license music or do something for this game. I can tell you what happened, Chris. You want to know what happened? Yeah. So Cage wanted to use heroes for this game, and he met with David Bowie, and David Bowie was like, be a bit short,

wouldn't you? I will not let you use heroes. I will write you an entire album. And then that's what happens. I don't stand by that boy. David, he was on the tip of technology. He embraced the internet very early.

Yeah, there's a great clip of him being like, you don't understand the internet. Yeah. Meme school. And he likes, and he seemed like a guy who, if you came with him with a new idea, did you do something new someplace,

he would be excited by that. Just give it to show, mate. This is ground control to David Cage. And also, and this is a recent laser time topic, we were trying to trace back the mergers and acquisitions that lead to something like David Bowie dies and all of a sudden Square Enix owns the game. Yes, it was released for free, right? Yeah, for free. Everybody, if you want to play it, because we cannot charge anybody money. Listen, I mean, it's not a great game.

I was reading lots of reviews watching Let's Plays and stuff. And like many David Cage projects, it is way too. ambitious for what it's possible to do in the game. So there's three kinds of gameplay awkwardly mashed together. There's an open world adventure where you kind of swap souls to solve puzzles. There's an FPS, and there's a one-on-one fighter portion where you're engaging

in combat. So it's like all these genres smash together with really ugly late 90s 3D graphics. Not a good looking game, a very awkward game with some interesting ideas. I mean, I like that Cage dreams bigger than he can do. That is an admirable quality

in a game design. And they're like, maybe more game makers should have a reach that out seeds there. I always say there are better David Cage games than what David Cage makes because he makes the mistakes first. Yeah. D4, the Swearer game is a good David Cage game, actually. I prefer that to his work. One of the D's stands for David. Dark Dreams Don't die, David.

D5. So David Bowie in this game, we're wrapping up here. But David Bowie plays boss and like an electronic ethereal being who works to combat the computer demons. I wrote that sentence, and that is what happens in this game. So I have a clip of David Bowie. There's six minutes of him in this game, but here's just a little bit of him talking. I remember the snowman.

He's materializing. Talk, David. So here you are. The stranger in Omicron, conquer other demons. Dacabar told me much about your ex. exploits. David, you're going to turn this background music down and post on. No.

But you're certainly the first to stay alive so long. Okay, that's enough of that. But, yeah, I mean, again, some kind of crazy ideas in the game. Like, for some reason, David Cage likes to involve, like, religion with the internet. I don't know where that comes from, but it's a really weird high-concept game. I'm sure that got him his real start in the industry, which is why he continues to make games. But it's cool that David Bowie was like, I want to be hands-on with this. I want to make you an album's worth of music for this game.

But happy to make something weird as long as it was new. Yeah, and he was willing to embrace new technologies even as he was aging, which is great. Yeah, he was always trying new stuff. He could have coasted a lot more than he did. Yeah, there are lots of guys in his generation who do, you know, you didn't blame them for stop trying. Like, your best stuff was ended in 1979. It's okay, Paul McCartney. You were with the Beatles.

You owe me nothing, Paul McCartney. You keep having a wonderful Christmas time. Every year. So to wrap up real quick, I want to ask you guys what your ideal celebrity game is. And mine, I want to steal something Chris said on our laser time, sorry, on our retronauts about Fester's Quest. Ever since he said it, I've been envisioning it. And he compared Fester's Quest as if today they would make a Carl Winslow game, an overhead shooter, where you rescue members of the Winslow family and team up with Urkel or something. I've been envisioning this.

I want some indie game jam to make it. But someone make Carl Winslow's quest with a big creepy cover with him smiling and lightning striking in the background and a spider hanging from his face. It's what I want out of life? Somebody else, tell me, what is your ideal celebrity game? Just the craziest idea that could be made in some way. I always wondered why, because he was embraced by every other meeting except the one that gave him fame. Bruce Campbell. Yeah, he's in some shitty evil dead games.

Yeah, but only evil dead games. Whereas, like, Bruce Campbell, and I was even thinking earlier in Shaq Fu or Jackie Chan, like, why didn't someone? just come to, like, two years ago, even an app of, like, Chuck Norris, like an actual Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, John Claude Van Nguyen game, starring them as their persona. So, like, the expendables of video games? Yeah, well, or just, just what about it, like, one Chuck Norris game where, like, all those jokes come to life in the game. I could see, for Bruce Campbell, I could see, like, a LucasArts, Scum-style Boba-Hop. Yes, that would be great. Use chin on door.

I like it. Henry, how about you? like you have an idea. Combined chainsaw with wrist. You know, I think if it is celebrity driven and it's not like an adaptation of something, I would, Dennis Miller would seem to prove you shouldn't do this,

but you'd go with like a comedian because a comedian is themselves when they're in a movie, you're just like, that's just a comedian being themselves. Hey, Bordolo of Blood Dennis Miller is a very distinct character. Totally.

So that's why I would want one driven by a comedian and also a comedian who would give all their time to the game who wouldn't just be like you give me for one week at best I'll film my shit and I'm going home and doing my better projects I'm more invested in they need to be invested in and I feel like a comedian

would be on that level the someone I would pick maybe it's just because I just relisten to her audio book but Amy Poehler like she's super into wanting to inspire kids especially young girls but kids in general and wanting to

reach out to them and give them things to inspire them and I think she could do that in the video game form too in tapping into the same kind of comedy she made famous in Parks and Rack and on SNL and through the show

she produces now like difficult people and broad city and I'll also you know say I think she could even make something in the Kim Kardashian style and I think the people hate not Kim Kardashian are wrong they are like she if you hate her game

like, more than other celebrity-driven phone things? Like, you analyze those feelings of lie. Break it down. Yeah, but she, and also, yeah, she should be a billionaire if she did it. Anyway. Jeremy, how about you before you wrap up? Do internet celebrities count? Yes.

Jeremy Parrish's video game chronicles, a Metroidvania adventure through the history of video games. So is this a Patreon tier we're hitting or what? Yes, exactly. For $25,000 a month. Wow. No. Actually. Jeremy teaches sleeping. Unfortunately, two-thirds of them have passed away within the past year,

but a game based on Emerson Lake and Palmer's Tarkas, where you, it's like a tank combat game where you're driving around inside this giant armadillo tank, like shooting up Catholicism. That would be such an amazing game. I don't know how it would work, but just the concept is so weird and cool. I think millennials would love it. I mean, they can't stop talking about. You were the first I thought of both times when both those guys started. Greg Lake and Keith Emerson, yeah, R-I-P. I thought immediately of Jerry Parrish. I need to reach out to Carl Palmer before it's too late and be like, can I make a video game based on Tarkas?

I need your likeness. I don't even need his. I just need Tarkas, the giant armadillo tank that fights the Pope. We all need Tarkas in our life. I do miss, I should say rappers are also good for it. I do miss the early 2000s era is where like eight different rappers started. Or the Def Jam or the Def Jam fighting games too that they just signed every rapper to fight each other. like Red Man v. Snoop Dog.

And Snoop Dog almost had his own video game. Yeah, well, there was 50 cent blood in the sand. It's one of the ones I neglected. But if you can think of any I neglected, please let me know in the comments. I couldn't get everything. Obviously, there's a Eugene Levy golf game someone told me about. Oh, yeah, that's a lot to look up. It's like for CDI, I think.

That was his pre-American Pie post-SETV fame. So, yeah, if you can think of any I forgot or things that are worth mentioning, let me know. I'm sorry if I neglected it. But, again, we're running late, and I found it as many as I could. So to wrap up, you can find me, your host, Bob Mackey, on Twitter. As Bob Servo, I also host the podcast Talking Simpsons every Wednesday on the Lasertime podcast network. It's a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Every episode is a new episode of The Simpsons.

By the time this episode launches, we'll be in season five, a great season. There'll be 100 episodes before that you can listen to, too. So please go to TalkingSimpsons.com. As for my writing, you can read it every other Thursday on something awful.com. And every day at Phantom.com, I'm writing about those damn video games. So somebody else, tell me where we can find you. Laser Time, Latertime Podcast.com. If you like this show, you'll probably like this with a lot of nostalgia, retro-based stuff.

Topic-based, usually. Recent topics include, man, dead media formats. That's not that recent at this point. But mergers and acquisitions, trying to, if I yell at a character, you tell me who owns it. I will say Batman, and you'd have to say AT&T. How did that happen? How did that happen? It's definitely been a lot of celebrity-driven ones.

Like, well, the celebrity murders. Their albums. Oh, yeah, celebrity albums. Murders and albums, yeah, I believe we have one of both. Bad Beatles covers, there's an episode there. And 30, 2010, if you like this show, you might dig that one. That looks 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and 10 years ago into the past to see what games, movies, news, TV was notable that week in history. We're in 87 right now, or 87, 97, and 2007.

Join us, and it's okay if you skip out in 07. And I'm H-E-N-E-R-Y-G on Twitter. You can follow me there for a lot of tweets about video games and politics. Also, I am a big part of the Lasertime family. You can support that too through patreon.com slash lasertime. And you can find my writing at fandom.com. And Jeremy. You can find me here on Retronauts and writing at Retronuts.com.

Also, I'm doing some freelance work for other sites, including a weekly column for U.S. Gamer, still writing for them a little bit, called Design and Action, where I look at classic and contemporary games and break them down. I did Symphony the Night and then Last Guardian, so check out that stuff. You can follow me on Twitter as GameSpite. And, of course, the Retronauts Video Chronicles, such as Good Intentions and Game Boy World, that's all stuff that I'm doing. And to save the best for last, Retronauts is brought to you by Patreon. This podcast happens because you give us money. Well, 2% of you give us money anyways. I give you money.

Maybe 3% could give us money. That'd be awesome, too. If you like the show, even a dollar a month could help. And there are incentives to, if you want to give more, we have things we can give you, things we can send you, early access to episodes. But really, we appreciate anything. So if you want to give, if you like what we're doing, and want us to keep doing it or do more, go to patreon.com slash retronauts

and look at what we have and we have exclusive things for you. And I really appreciate it. We could not do this without you. So thank you so much if you give. And if you don't, please consider it. As for me, we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. And we'll see you then. Thanks for listening.

The Mueller Report. I'm Edonohue with an AP News Minute. at the White House, his special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officer started shooting at a robbery suspect last week.

Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.