Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 048: 8-Bit Superhero Sampler - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Batman

Episode Date: October 3, 2016

After a month, the Retronauts Micro 8-Bit Superhero Sampler continues with a discussion of two NES games that aren't quite as abominable as the ones featured in our last installment: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Batman. On this extra-extra-long episode, join Bob Mackey, Chris Antista, Henry Gilbert, and special guest Chris Baker as the crew extolls the virtues of underwater bomb disposal, and explains why Batman's purple-hued makeover makes sense (which surprisingly has nothing to do with Prince). Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

Attention, Retronauts listeners. If you'd like to meet us in person, and of course you would, we'll be doing a panel at this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo in beautiful Portland, Oregon. On Sunday, October 23rd, we'll be holding the Retronaut's 10th anniversary panel at 3 o'clock p.m. and, of course, you will need to be an attendee of the Portland Retro Gaming Expo to attend. But it doesn't stop there. Later that night, from 8 o'clock to 10 o'clock p.m. will be holding a private Retronauts event at Quarterworld,

located at 4811 Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in Portland. Attendance will be free, not counting Quarterworld's cover charge, but to get in, you must print out a ticket from the event's Eventbrite page and bring it along with you. To find the Eventbrite page, head on over to Retronauts.com or our Facebook page at Facebook.com slash Retronauts. It will be pinned to the top until the day of the event. We hope to see you there, and remember,

you must ask before touching us because we are very sensitive. Boys. Remember that Sunday, October 23rd in Portland, be there or not be there. episode is actually a two-parter, the second part of a two-parter, rather. And if you want to hear the first part, if you somehow missed it, that's Retronaut's Micro Episode 46. It's called the 8-bit superhero sampler part one. And funnily enough, this is the 8-bit superhero sampler part two. Last time, we talked about two pretty bad superhero games, and this time we're going to be talking about two games that are, okay, so one isn't that great, but it's still very memorable, and the other one is actually a very good game. So this time around, we have

Once again, we have Chris Baker from Gazillion, formerly of Marvel, and of course, Chris Antista of Lasertime, and Henry Gilbert of fandom. And we're going to just jump right into this conversation where we left off and hope you enjoy the show. So we're going to talk about teenage Mute Ninja Turtles next. It's a classic game that we all, I believe. People of our generation all tolerated this game. And as its few bright spots, it was made in 1989 by Ultra Games, wink, wink, actually, Konami, kind of sneaking in under that only so many games a year policy that Nintendo had. I don't know how they did this.

Nintendo had to know. But in any case, this game was developed sort of alongside the cartoon. In Chris's book, it was like he clips out a Nintendo Power preview. And it's like, oh, there's going to be a cartoon too with this game. Isn't that fun kids? But the cover of this game is the comic book cover, one of them. And they all have red bandanas, which is off model for the cartoon. That always like astounding.

And for the game. Yes, exactly. But I think the story goes that, I mean, nothing had been approved. But the box art was approved before the game was being made. Yeah, I can see that happening. That totally happens in licensing cases like this. And there's been some sort of like suspicions that this was another game before it was a Turtles game, but nothing has been confirmed. I mean, there are footsold.

There's Rocksteady and Bebop, there's Shredder, but a lot of enemies are just like... The leg soldiers and clay people? And Jason, too. No purpose in Ninja Turtles. Yeah, there's almost nothing aside from foot soldiers and rock steady and bebop and Shredder. Yeah, he has anything to do. Yeah, Mouser's true. But it was, it was a painful game.

Yeah. It was a kid, but I love the turtle so much. I wanted to figure out how to beat it. I was like, I have to. I can't give up on this. All right, I got more pizza. make it like this is why to me the

it wasn't a launch game but it was close to it the game boy Ninja Turtles game I play that way more because that was beatable it's a pretty easy game but it's a fun game too this game though I don't want to this this should not be my get good comments but I always assume like oh yeah the damn level that's where everyone doesn't that's where everyone gives up

but I played it for one up when I was employed there and when it still existed on a live stream and I was like I actually finish the damn level I'm like oh the damn level you can memorize it but level three is when everything it's thrown at you at once and it's just like what do I do now? Where do I go? Things are running me over on the world map. I actually had my mind blown during Awesome

Games done quick because the damn level obviously gave us all trouble and you can play as any four turtles at any time but like they have consistent health and if one of them loses all their health that turtle is just gone until you can find one of those rescue spots. That's right. Yeah they're tied up and you've got to fight a minibos.

And I watched a guy in Awesome Games and Quick he's like yeah I can do this in five seconds. How? Just take damage. That's it. And he just hauls out. He doesn't wait for the timing of the lasers. He just doesn't care about seaweed and just goes through it in like four seconds. And it looks easy as hell. So the pro tip is don't be careful.

Yeah, do not. But that's the thing. You're very careful because you don't want to lose a turtle for the rest of the game. And the hip boxes on the seaweed are really weird. Like, it's never really clear. Like, am I touching. Oh, I am touching it. I'm losing life.

I feel like that's kind of the most infamous part of the game. It's a shared, like, traumatic memory, I think we all had. Well, for me, it's not, though. I remember being challenging, but the really hard part, was near the end where you're in the technodrome and there's all these like spacemen guys with these guns that are shooting at you that take off a ton of health and the only way I did beat the game several times and the way you do it is there's a place where the scroll weapon is which is the most powerful weapon in the game and you just kind of grind leaving the room coming

back getting 20 of them leaving the room coming back or however many it was until you had 99 scrolls. And then you use that against the technodrome and used it against the space guy. That's right. You literally fight the technodrome and the scale is way off. It is. It is. That's actually what I should have pointed out in my book. You pointed out how the Superman goes up to the Statue of

Liberty's knees almost in that little picture of him, that little like intro. The Technodrome is about 12 feet high. Yeah. But it was also unbalanced thanks to them being correct with their weapons because a side doesn't go as far as a

Bowstaff. Yes, Donatello, I love fighting bosses just standing on a platform above them and just plunging it downwards.

See, that's the thing. I attribute Jonatello being my favorite turtle to this game. Me too. Even though I like Raff the best,

he always had the worst weapon. Raff is arguably the coolest, but he's the one you least want to play as in this game and it's all we had. Especially in this game

because he just like spins a like a salad fork in his hand in front of him and that's it like, yeah. He just look a sad gunslinger. Yeah.

It's not even cool. At least it should look cool even if it has poor reach. It has one of the worst life low sounds. Oh, that con it's like almost worse. It's excruciating. Worse than Zelda, I think. And I will say like, I put on the overworld music to help motivate me.

Oh yeah. It like it just, it makes, it puts a pep in your step. Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun for us. For us uneven as this game is, this would begin a legacy of great of turtles games, but they always had great music and the music in this game is fantastic. It's embedded in my brain for life.

Not just the overworld thing, but like almost every theme. Even the monotonous underwater theme. I feel like this is the first example of Konami really working the to almost every song, you know, and trying to make it work. I did like a lot with the song written by the creator of Big Bang Theory and two and a half men.

No, two and a half men. Chuck Lurie. He wrote that song. As was reminded by, if anybody else watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt season two, that's a joke in there that he wrote that song. Oh, really? I didn't see that. But, yeah, also, speaking of the songs I like about this is that Dorkly, the guys Dorkly, they did a video about this game set to the original theme of just like, it was like Turtles for Nintendo, fucking awful.

Donatello's cheap, Leonardo's pretty keen, like, Splitter's a ratocrat. He sucks. It's a great video. And it ends with What a bad game Next one's better And it just has a clip to the To TMNT Arcade

I'm just thinking of the great music And the great cinematics Like when you turn on the game And you just hear like the drumbeat And then like the little twinkling sound And then like the picture of the turtles pop up Yeah It's really cool

Yeah Trying to think what else Like Chris This game has a kind of like non-canonical storyline What are the turtles trying to do in this game? Yeah As I recall they are trying to to get a gun that will turn them back to a lot you know I should have reread my book here

they're trying to get a gun from splinter that will turn splinter back into it I'm sorry a gun from shredder yeah that will turn splinter back into a human exactly which has never happened as far as I can tell I mean I want we resent who we are I've only watched the cartoon but I had the impression that it only like mutation only works one way and smithers I'm not smithers splinter I'm a rat sir you're welcome sir smithers was a human oh my god splinter was a human oh my god splinter a human and he's a rat now because he was in the puddle of whatever with the rat and I don't think it goes the other way. I get confused

about the origins all the time because it's different in the show, the movie, the comic and the new Michael Bay movies and the new comic which is by the way really good. It's great. Yeah, I mean I think the cartoon origins is just from the cartoon. I think another like the movie split up. Splinter is just a rat. We just recorded Talking Simpsons

I'm sorry. Talk about Black Splinter. Yeah, Black Splinter. I like it better when Splinter is a rat that grew human sides instead of a human turned into a rat because he was just like a dude in a cage who was owned by an actual master and that's how he learns

like I prefer that. That's the voice of Elmo by the way. I love pointing to him. That's Elmo. Kevin Clash. And baby from dinosaurs. Yeah. And one cool thing about this I noticed just by reading the book and looking at videos is that Splinter, sorry, Shredder communicates to the TV just like Mama Fertelli does and Gunis too, also made by Konami.

So there's a Konami through line in which the villain communicates through a TV. They somehow pirate. Or that macho man does in final fight. Oh, really? Okay. Oh, right. That is macho man.

I think he does it in later games, too. As I recall, the tournament fighters game, he does that as well. It's a good way to establish a premise. The turtles are just watching TV and then Shredder comes on the screen. It's like, I've done this now. Former coworker of mine, Hollander Cooper, he made the good observation that it kind of works like the second Legend of Zelda game as well, too. when you're in the turtle van

and then in its top down and you're going around and then you stop somewhere and then get out and then do a 2D exploration in that way it's similar to Adventure of Link it post dates Zelda 2 by about two years so I can see influence being there like there's not a lot of RPG stuff

I guess pizza is like your your hit points I love the splinter the splinter advice to just he gives advice and then it says you can do it like after every line of advice I think even April O'Neill says that too My favorite thing I just learned about the game

There are several really frustrating parts involving jumping Yes, there's one really infamous jump in this game And when that was ported over to the PC They didn't finish it So the PC version is absolutely unfinishable You cannot get past that horrible jump Because the dimensions are different And they didn't bother, no one played it

Before they released it Yes, I mean that was kind of common for like PC ports of NES games Or just the worst unplayable messes like no one cared, they just wanted to bank on the name and everything like that. Oh, dirty Americans for the US gold. The Mega Man ports are especially bad. I did

want to mention that none of these games we're going to be talking about, I believe, had been on virtual console, but this one was briefly. You had to pay one dollar more, like six instead of five. But it was taken down when everything else, Ninja Turtles was taken down, along with the re-shelled game, and I think even the arcade game was taken down from Xbox Live.

So there was a point where, I guess, a rights transferred, or a deal expired, and these games... EBSoft had a... a deal with Konami. They did. I think, I can only speculate that was a marketing move for the new Ninja Turtle's movie. In 2007, right?

Yeah, we actually streamed it recently because, like, I have to hold on to that TMNT arcade perfect port on my 360, but it's Konami and Ubisoft, but I don't imagine Konami did anything in making that port happen. Ubisoft paid for it to happen. Right. I could see Konami, Konami's been going through a lot of stuff lately. It happened with their Simpsons game. I could see them just saying like

It's too much hassle Stop listing it But there will be a Turtles NES Pichinko machine at some points We can all play if we go to Japan So yes This game was available for one point But not anymore

But we're going to move on to next game, which is, I think, the best game on this list, but also probably the most inaccurate game, and that is Batman. 1990, Sunsoft. Sunsoft was kind of an uneven developer. They always had really good music, but I think this is one of their best NES games for their short life on this planet. Chris, I'll let you lead with this. What is wrong with Batman for the NES? And some the things that are wrong are things that I like. Oh, I'm not saying I dislike any of this stuff I'm going to mention. Your book is wonderfully, like, perfectly nitpicky. Yes, exactly. Okay, so I want to start by saying I like Purple Batman.

So sue me, but please continue. Well, I like Purple Batman purely as an nostalgia level. And back then, it was like he's just purple. I don't care. I love neon blue Jason from Friday the 13. I want to buy all those NECA figures. Exactly. They are both NECA figures.

I do own the Purple Batman. I almost called the Book Purple Batman. I didn't really want to get in any trademark issues or anything. But I think that was a very clever game design move. Like, we want every level to take place at night. but we can't have a black character against a black background so how do we fix this

so that was their solution. We have 50 colors. Let's see what we can do. Well, there is a mod that has a black Batman that still works. It works. You can play as it.

But at the same time, like, why not just make him blue and gray like he was in the comics at the time? That's true, yeah. But that Burton movie ruined the look of Batman for a long time. Well, yeah, I mean,

he's never really been blue and gray since. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, this is ostensibly based on the Burton movie. But, I mean, Joker is the last thing you fight, but not, I mean, like, this has nothing to do with the movie, correct? Oh, it has a lot to do with it. Oh, really? Okay. I mean, it is a movie game.

Because I know Batman Returns, like, kind of falls a movie beat by beat in its own way. But this movie seemed kind of unrelated. I mean, can you explain how that's basically the movie? Well, the action is very much unrelated. But the box art is very Tim Burtony. Does he fight, like, a different Batman comic boss in every level, like, in their own way. Please explain this. I want to know, like, where these guys come from.

Well, in a way, every character you punch in the entire game is a Batman character. But very, very, very, very, very loosely interpreted as such. Because at this point in the Burton universe, there's Batman, the Joker, and of course, Jack. Everyone's favorite Batman character. I love Jack. Jack is the best. What about Bob? Bob. Sorry, that's what I was thinking.

Okay, Bob. You do fight the Joker at the end of the game. That is the only time when he is not green. He has like a green tent to his face Throughout the entire game But when you do get there He's like eight feet tall And can summon lightning

He's like Dracula So Arkham didn't do it first He was more of a Todd McFarlane Creation in Arkham when you find him Yeah exactly He's reided out But then there are There are boss characters

Like Firebug Killer Moth A couple other ones But they're nothing like they are in the comments Yeah your book shows their Sprite next their actual comic portrayal and it's like well I guess this is very loosely not only that there's also uh like concept art that they put in the in the manual that uh also looks absolutely

nothing like the source material uh electrocutioner is one if you played badman origins you remember he was kind of the joke character oh you're right yeah yeah i yeah before right right when arkham origins was coming out a co-worker of mine you know had the early review copy of it and he asked me like what is it deal with the electrocutioner. I was like, oh, he's pretty much like a D-level Batman villain. I'm shocked they give him such a high level of importance in the game and all this promotional stuff. And then my friend just said like, no, I beat him in one second. He's a joke in the game too. I was like, oh, okay, great, great. Is that easy electrocutioner? Like, he is a total joke. So in this game,

I mean, Batman punches, but all of his special weapons are sorts of guns and special weapons like that. Is that correct? He does have a gun. Yeah. Yes. And I mean, unlike the Game Boy game, however, you can technically play through the game without firing a gun if you're really good. But he does kill people in the Burton movies. That's correct, right? He throws people on the buildings. I mean, he explodes them and sewers with their own weapons, but never just shoots dis in the face. They refuse to tell their friends about it.

He's got like a gun in this game that like spreads, kind of like the contra gun a little bit. Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess we can talk about this too. We'll go back to Batman in 1990, but return. of the Joker. It's basically just like a platformer slash shoot him up where you're always shooting in front of you with the most gorgeous huge Batman Spray I've ever seen. It's one of the best looking NES

games. I don't know how Sunsoft did that on the NES. It's just fantastic. It looks great. It sounds great. I both love and heat the cover to that game. Is it just like the long Joker fish? Yeah, it is a comic panel of the Joker Which artist is that, Henry? Lantern, well it's definitely taken it's Jim Aparo's style

or Aporo. It's his style because he had one of the most lantern-jawed jokers of all time. Like, it became to the point of like, you have a disability. He's like the Rocky Dennis character. Yeah, he's basically Rocky Dennis. But Jim Apparo did that. He was the Batman artist of the late 80s. So I think it at least took inspiration from that, if not the direct art.

But it was like, it's a Batman game. The Batman's not even on the cover of it. Like, you want to sell kids Batman. but you just have the Joker's head. I agree with you, but that cover is so eye-catching from a shelf. Just like the Joker, like, blasting out at you, like, leering at you. It was after, like, Nintendo had, like, let go of certain box art restrictions. So it's just, like, a stark yellow with, like, not a lot of Nintendo notation other than the seal.

Yeah. And I don't know. I remember that cover better than I remember the original Batman one that I played way more. It's just like the Batman logo. And then, like, in a crappy font as the official video game. It's the movie Batman logo, which. If you were alive in 1989, it was on my shoot. Everything like it...

I was counting the days for this game and it kept getting delayed. You know, it was an 89 movie. It came out in 1990. That's right. Was the logo redesigned for this movie? Because the logo itself was like merchandise. Like, I just had a Batman logo t-shirt. I didn't know what Batman was.

That's cool. That logo was neat. I think there was some slight touches to our... I think there had been yellow in the Batman logo before, but not for a while. He will actually. So the situation of Batman logo was that originally Batman had... had no yellow oval around it, and it was just the bat sim a lot on it. And if you know about the differences between Silver Age and Golden Age DC Comics, in most cases,

if they weren't Superman or Batman, they were replaced with a different model, like it was a new Greenlander and a new Flash, a new Hawkman, all these types of guys. But if they were, but if they were Batman or Superman, there was no clear demarcation point of when it was Silver Age Superman or when it was Golden Age Superman. But with Batman, when Julie Schwartz took over as the editor-in-chief of the Batman books, he gave him a yellow oval around his chest to say, these are the issues that are now Silver Age Batman. Once he has that oval on his chest and we changed the design.

And the old Wives tale was that they put this oval around it because it was easier to trademark, apparently. That's the old Wives tale. But they changed it around. There were always like slight updates to it. there's this great video you'll see somebody share on Facebook every once in a while just shows you how the Batman logo has subtly changed over the years

and that's one of those ones where the oval logo of Tim Burns Batman was a very specific one. It's my favorite. So one thing I did want to mention is this spawned a Nintendo Power cover which is one of the only video games magazines I can think of that had Jack

Nicholson on the cover and I have to go back and do research already about this when I post the episode, but in Nintendo Power Issue 50, they did a lot of confessional stuff like, oh, that Total Recall thing, Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared for like a minute to meet the guest winner, and that was it. But they wrote about how there was some issue with this cover, either Jack

Nicholson thought they made him look fat, or they didn't get the right likeness rights or something. There was some sort of legal issue with using Jack Nicholson on the cover. But they printed it, and it's one of the more memorable Nintendo Power covers. I mean, we have the white Ryuai Abusa with blue eyes, you know, the white guy in the ninja costume. But this one was like

Jack Nicholson, like, laughing in like Batman in the background. It was really, really catching. If you remember the, it's not an urban legend, it was, uh, he, Jack Nicholson was a very powerful star and agreed to do that with a sizable back end deal, probably the only one of its type. Yes. I think a lot of it was because they put him in excruciating pain to wear like the Joker prosthetics. No, it was a painful role. He was too good for that movie at the time. Yeah. I mean, Batman was considered like a lot of joke. Yeah, yeah. Nothing was expected of this film. It was one man's dream. I forget that guy, but he's produced every Batman movie up in

Up and two, including Batman versus Superman. But he, but that he was given, Jack Nicholson was convinced, cajoled into doing this with a really, really, I think someone said he made upwards of $100 million on the role. He was given points on the movie. Yeah, he was given points in the movie in every piece of merchandise. So if you put him on something, he's A owed money, B, has some approval.

So if you bought the Batman video game, Jack Nicholson got a dollar. Yeah, because it's not the Michael, it's not necessarily the Michael Keaton Batman on the cover, but that's very Jack Nicholson. Oh, yeah. Like, I don't know if Michael Keaton's likeness is in this, game, but I know Jack Nicholson says, do you remember that at all? Chris, if Michael Keaton is in the game?

There's cut scenes of Batman, so, you know, you can get away with calling that knot a likeness. He's kind of got the Keaton dimple on his chin. Yeah. And the game ends with him punching Joker off of the roof of the clock tower and kill. Like, it's very clear he kills him. It's not the, it's not the very like safe and tidy.

Oh, he fell. Batman didn't murder anyone type of ending. It's like, you're a Joker. I'm going to kill you. That has bugged me because that movie definitively killed the Joker in the first movie

and every superhero movie after that murders the villain is murdered in the most uncommonic way ever to virtually ensure he's not coming back It was a big change in Batman forever when the Riddler wasn't dead They didn't kill him at the end of that One funny thing about the movie itself is that

I watched it like a decade ago for the first time In maybe 20 years It's crazy Batman is introduced as a piece of animation Number one And the Joker is killed as a piece of animation, I'm pretty sure. I know Batman is introduced as like a cartoon like floating across the sky, like literally drawn.

So it's a very Tim Burtony kind of thing like playing with different medium. When Batman gets his ass kicked a lot of times. Yeah. Like there's, you remember the bit where he's like, oh, I've got to defend Vicky in this alley. And then the dudes just like fucking shoot him and he's down and they almost take his mask off.

Like he, like Batman kind of sucks in that movie. And the finale of the movie is kind of like a video game. He's like going up a clock tower fighting enemies until like it's to the literal boss. at the top. I mean, it's such like a film game thing. It's funny to put all that work into him not explicitly killing the Joker at the end of the movie

though he just throws that guy over the banister from the same height. Like, he definitely kills that guy. That means murderer. Though in 1989 or before the film came out in 89 within Warner like it was one they weren't sure. They're like,

wait, no, everybody thinks Batman is Adam West. Like, can we make a dark Batman film? And there's you can find it on youtube the video they made while they made a film internally while making the movie where tim burton was like guys please trust us a dark batman can work where we read these comics from the eight from the last few years like people want to see it it can it can be serious we don't have to make a silly batman film yeah i mean batman 66 was is it that the name of this this series of the

name of the brand now the DC owns like that name is Batman Batman uh the TV show was basically like what the 90s are for us now in terms of time span. It was only 20 years ago, but still, that was kind of the definitive Batman for an entire generation. I love pointing that out that that Batman Adam West Show ran for two or three seasons, hundreds of episodes.

I only watched for the Hogan's Heroes. It was on multiple times a week and then went on to define Batman for 20 years to almost everybody who wasn't reading comics. That's what everybody thought Batman was. When I was a kid, that was the first Batman I saw. I watched it every day. I loved it.

So, yeah, that's why our generation was the one in the early 90s of the toughening up of Batman, like beginning with 89, into Batman Returns, and then premiering it in the same year, Batman the Animated Series, that was, from then on, he was the Dark Night to us, though then, you know, Schumacher tried to bring back the camp to Batman, and it, ugh. Yeah, anime series is my definitive Batman. I do want to do an entire Batman episode because I love that S-NES game. It is so good. We discovered it and just streamed it, the Sega series.

CD version of Batman and Robin. That's astounding. Has the best animation. It has new animation. But in the Sega CD Kodak. Yeah, but it's more fluid. It's better than the show, but it has all the voice actors in it. There's like a lost episode of the show on the

Sega CD. Wrapped in a horrible driving game. You do not see Batman in the game. God, that driving game, yeah. And I believe there was, I mean, there was a Genesis Batman based on the movie, but not in America because Nintendo had the exclusive rights to a Batman game. So, like, Europe and Japan got that Batman game for the Genesis but we didn't so they had their own Batman game

I don't know if it was made by Sunsoft the oh we eventually got we eventually got it okay we did interesting thing about that I was wrong I'm sorry I yeah it definitely came out here it was a little bit later it might have been 91 it felt much much later than the movie yeah but I didn't buy it as a kid because I looked on the back and it had screenshots from the NES game which is totally different really oh man they screwed that up yes yes it is a huge screwing up. And you play the Genesis game, and it is a very literal adaptation

of the movie. It is, you know, you go like through the, that museum and you fight Robert Wohl. Arliss himself. I was really reaching for the Arliss joke in my head too. We're all, we podcast We're all Arliss out. Actually, can I go back to the very, very, very, very, very, very loose

interpretations of characters? So I talked a little bit about the bosses like Firebug killer moth. electric or electrocutioner they're all very loose interpretations but in a very like alternate universe kind of way you could probably get away maybe with saying that's who they are but it's very obvious to me that the developers of the game here or whoever wrote the manual at least had a copy of the who's who in the DC universe and that's all they had and for the actual like regular enemies you fight throughout the game they named them after actual

DC characters. Really, what's that little thing that runs back and forth along the ground? That I don't know. Okay, I know you're talking about. Yeah, right. A little spiky robot Roomba kind of thing. So a runaway from Tom Selle. But like, for example, did you know that Deadshot, Will Smith himself, was in this game. Every, the guy, the just the generic guy who shoots you with a gun is supposedly deadshot. Sometimes there are multiple ones on screen. Whoa. It was like, it was one of Sunsoft USA's three employees like kind of squinting like you could be this guy the uh the exact same sprite without the gun runs at you throughout the game and that is maxi zeus wow maxi zeus if you're not familiar with

this character he's fairly obscure but he was in the animated series for an episode or two uh he's he basically thinks he's a greek god he's a rich guy who goes crazy and then like thinks he's zeus he's more or less a mobster and he's not going to go running at you just to hurt you so there's There's some sort of like cloning subplot they'd never finish because why are there 15 dead shots fighting me? Yeah. Like all the guys who are squatting and shooting you with the flamethrower, that's Heatwave from the Flash. Wow. There's another character called Enforcer, which I'm not really that familiar with who's in there.

The KG Beast is a character who appears once in the game. the very first level, and you either beat him up right away, or he's going to take out at least half your health. But he's basically a cyber ninja. Here, I can show you guys who are here. Now, KG Beast is great. He's such a 90s or late 80s type D. No, KG Beast.

Exactly. Well, I mean, he's got like the spawn mask. He has all the things of an early 90s cliche of like he has the spawn type mask, tons of red, and then like a thing on his forearm, like a, he's. cybernetically enhanced, yeah. Though the KGB's thing makes him like more related to communism. Oh boy.

I mean, so this game, any more like stand out Oh, well, there's other characters that I had never heard of before doing the research of this game, like Knight Slayer, who apparently is a very agile character, but in this, he's like a 1950s robot with Wolverine Clause. Wow.

Yeah, and then shakedown. Yeah, I think his whole. thing is just being a bad guy who's green and then I don't know what he does but he doesn't look anything like when you think of those characters too like when you think of it how they make games today like each of them is a license in some cases you know and so to use them for for nobody characters like that is making them much more expensive than just having you know like a final fight just repeated the same dude but in a different color yeah such a different Warner doesn't even license

it's Batman Outer anymore really it's like Warner makes Batman games themselves pretty much since Arkham I don't know who did it before that but I mean I assume it was I mean Warner wasn't into publishing the first Arkham it was Square Annex and published it the first time and then after it was such a success

then Warner was like okay well we'll do it's now Warner inactive is in full swing like they make the DC games and they'll license out stuff to you know for mobile or maybe like a kids game but and the mobile but i mean they even have warner warner is dc or warner is lego games too so yeah all those dc lego games that's also them it's just there's a very strange time for all licensed characters for people like well we we have

beach towels and action figures i guess we should have a video game why not whatever you want this jack it can make it for us we won't cross check any of this yeah i mean games are for geeks anyway so who cares let me on sale for 10 months right who cares it was probably considered the same as like a board game you know just what I was game too yeah discovering with that Disney research is like that's how long is the contract had last contracts for games tended to last as long

as an action figure would be on the shelf which isn't long it's like maybe a year and no one cared about it after and they didn't expect dorks in their 30s would be talking about them on a Thursday night what do you know I mean I think we glossed over it we're going on a long time about Batman but it's a very good game

it is the archim games never existed this is the best Batman Yeah, like it's, I mean, okay, the music is great. It's fantastic music, some of the best on the NES. The graphics look really good. I should say Laser Time Sister podcast, VG Empire, did two episodes about great Batman music. You should look about VG Empire. Like Ninja Turtles, Batman had a lot of great music. And Konami would take over after Sunsoft with Batman Returns and stuff like that.

But again, really great game. I love those really tight, great feeling wall jumps that Batman does. That's so great. Yeah, it feels really good. I'm not the way. And so. And...

...that... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...and... ...the... ...and... So, Chris, is there anything you want to cover in terms of maybe, I mean, we only covered four games, but any other big standouts from your book that maybe are your most interesting or, or strangest, you know, things that you wrote about?

Oh, in, in, in all or, or, like, maybe what's one or two of your favorites? We might want to stick to eight bit, but. If it goes beyond that, that's fine. There's not that many more actual NAS games. I think an interesting one, it's a terrible game as well, is Swamp Thing. Whoa. He's amazing. So before you start off on this, I want to say that I believe there is a Bartman game that is using Swamp Thing parts.

Is that correct? Oh, oh, there is a character called Swamp Hague in the game. Wow, we just covered in talking about. You know, I think I've read what you're talking about since the time. The third Bartman game is a Swamp Thing game. disguise. I don't know. I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure it's true. Well, I think the third BART game is the

Bart Man game, which you could call a superhero game. And to me, that one is kind of interesting because there's literally no sense of humor in that game at all. And it's a very bad game made by Australians, I think. I think it's like Imagineer or something. But yeah, it's like no jokes. It's just pure, like, dire platforming.

There's certainly room for jokes. You know, he has Radioactive Man. He's like teaming up with Radioactive Man. but every line is like let's go get that bad guy it's like it's nothing

classic Simpsons there's not even an attempt at humor there was only one Bartman game I'm pretty sure for the NES yeah so is a Swamp Thing game based on the animated series

yeah that's the thing I think Swamp Thing is amazing a lot of people probably have never heard of the Swamp Thing cartoon which aired all of five episodes in I think

I think it was 1990, might have been 91. And they got two toy lines out of it, yeah. And they got this game, which came out like in 1992 well after. They probably started development of the game after the show was already off the air. Because, you know, the game is just a basic, you know, side-scrolling punch and, you know, kick kind of thing. But, yeah, just the fact that it's based on this cartoon that nobody saw. And there's a Game Boy version as well The Game Boy, I think, is pretty funny

Because you never are in a swamp The entire game It's like the cliche It's got the desert level And I think there's an ice level And a jungle, maybe a jungle level I think That's probably the closest thing to a swamp

And all the while It has an inexplicably popular USA show In two movies Oh yeah, the live action show That's right I actually assumed when I played this game The first time that it was based on the USA show It's not, it's based on the terrible

Everyone should look this up on YouTube Look up the cartoons just theme song Yes It was a very deliberate reference I will put it in this episode right now I know this for a fact It is all on Hulu Yes

I will put this song in here right now I will put this song in here right now You are So that was amazing You are amazing. And then, like, they're going to see. So that was pretty amazing. Just like Swartis.

You know, it's interesting, too, though. I think that's only in the first, maybe first two episodes where it has that song. And then, like, they probably got a cease and desist. You are not weird else, sirs. Please turn this off. Chris Baker, you're doing the Lord's work, by having all this information. This is amazing, Chris. Any other highlights before we go?

I thought this is going to be a micro, but I think it's going to be a full episode. We've been talking for an hour about these games, and I have so much music to put in here, because all of the, like, well, not Superman, of course. This is all the stuff that Chris will tell you on air. Like, you are a treasure trove of anecdotes regarding these games. I just, it's a very peculiar part inside of me. But, you know, really, I came to appreciate comic book heroes largely because of video games and TV shows. And comic books were eventually there for me.

You know, it was like I got an idea of who the characters and their enemies were by playing through not the greatest video games, but at the time, at the time, a video game was good no matter what it was, unless it was uncanny X-Men. That's the one exception. Yes. Yeah, no, the thing, my love of comic books came at just the same time as video games were doing great. And like, especially for Spider-Man, I got into Spider-Man on here. his 30th anniversary in 1992, and that's when he was having all these great comics, and I could go back to read his just recent Todd McFarlane and Eric Larson run, but the exact same time, Spider-Man was in a video game renaissance because Sega had signed a deal with

Marvel to make a bunch of Spider-Man games, the amazing arcade game, and the OK Genesis game, and yeah, it was that's how comic books and video games are world. always hand and hand. I got into comics through alternate mediums. That is how it happened. I don't know why, because I was reading like Archie and stuff, but not super air stuff until the cartoons. Marvel cards were a huge deal. We did a whole video series on the Lays of Time YouTube channel about that. I started with Image Comics before I graduated in Scare quotes to manga. So I guess the only classic comic book game I really played that I was into was the S&ES spawn, which I guess was okay. Wow. It existed. That's the best I can say about it. And I played all these games too,

But again, with America Comics, I started with Image and then I just kind of stopped and read manga much later in life. But yeah, I mean, this is a great conversation. All these games are at least worth experiencing. Maybe not the uncanny X-Men. Superman should be experienced just for the pure, just like W-2F factor, I think we should call it,

in terms of just pure like, what is even happening in this game? This is not Superman. Check out the laser time guys playing it. Yes. And speaking of laser time, your theme. I'm not sure how many people actually know this. That's right.

That's right. No, don't say it comes from... Somebody made a cool comic about it. Yeah, exactly. It's from the Silver Surfer game. Their theme comes from the Silver Surfer game. One of the hardest game. Yes.

That's a really hard game. If it weren't so hard, it might actually be good. Yeah, everything else about is appealing. It just smashes your fingers with a hammer from the second one. But again, great, is it Tim Fallen? Yeah. The Great Tim Fallen. Like, no matter what that guy does, he's giving it his all.

Same with Rare as well. And it's so weird to me. Like, Silver Surfer is a striking character, but every other character they got to pull from and that is like nobody's heard of them they're not mainstream even slightly and I'm sure there was a Silver Surfer cartoon there had to be like on for a second

it didn't have anything to do with this game though yeah now the cartoon was like 96 first episode's awesome it's and but kids hated it because it was as philosophical and introspective as a silver server comic it's a 70s movie you like pose like the thinker in space thinking about existential dilemmas

they're weird aliens and eventually his entire planet dies and he becomes the Silver Surfer. But he took up surfing at least, so he's doing okay. Classic Surfer books are basically like Star Trek meets Jesus. Because Silver Surfer was made to be a Messianic figure and he is the most powerful thing. Who can also hang tan, bro? Catch some gnarly waves. He's barely ever challenged by on power level.

So it's just all these like moral conundrums or him. And then like pages of him just philosophize him like. Is this what life is about, or could it be another thing? I do not know. So really quick, I wanted to go over each of us to choose what our favorite classic superhero game is. I already said mine was The Adventures of Batman and Ramen for the S&ES. Every level is like a different episode with its own theme, its own villain, its own sort of like weird mechanics. I've gone back to it.

I love it. It looks great. It's by Konami. Great, great music too. You can't buy it anywhere. You can't play it anywhere. So you kind of have to steal it. But it's such a great S&ES game.

Chris, how about you? What is your favorite classic game? It could be one that we've even talked about. Yeah, well... We can go like... It's sub-PS-1, maybe. Maybe it's PS-1 and lower. I think the comic book game

that had the biggest influence on me liking things in comic books was X-Men by Konami, the arcade game. Oh, yeah, that's a great choice. Which, you know, also represents its characters very terribly. Welcome to die. Welcome to die. Welcome to die.

Nothing stops the block. There's just like Colossus going, Roehm. There's a six-hour YouTube video of just that. Yeah, I love it. I don't doubt it. Yeah, in the comics, Colossus changing into metal form

is not an AOE attack. Because what that did, actually, you know, I mentioned earlier that I got really into X-Men through the cartoon, but this game came out the summer before that cartoon started, and I played through it one day at the mall, and that, like, got me in that mode.

You know, it's like, I'd heard of X-Men. I heard they, sold a lot of comics and that they were cool, but that was my first real experience with them. Double cabinet. Even today, that cabinet is a site to be hold. Like, wow,

I can actually play with this thing. It's a beast. Like a mega widescreen double, two televisions and six controllers. In a mirror thrown in there because two TVs can't sit next to each other. Yeah, and when I remember playing it on machines

where one TV was worse than the other one. Oh, yeah, that always happens. But, well, Mr. Baker stole mine, but I think also the, arcade Spider-Man game I really never played it I loved when they made that one Henry it was Sega

and it was just called Spider-Man and it has very random like licensing wise they got all the Spider-Man villains but it has to be a four-player co-op because it's an arcade game and so their co-op is Black Cat who is a Spider-Man character

Namor and Hawkeye are the other three when neither Namor nor Hawkeye were cool at all but the coolest thing about it well as a kid my favorite thing was the sprites were huge like they were super tall

and colorful and it looked like a comic come to life and there were spoken dialogue and when they would say the when they would say lines there would be word balloons on the screen but also it had a neat mix that occasionally you would get to a stage where the camera would just zoom out and it would become more

of like a regular platformer and you'd explain like Spider-Man can walk on walls and And that's how you'd fought, like, Doc Ock in that stage would be in the zoomed-out stage. And then when you'd finish that portion, zoom back in. I've never played this game. It sounds great. It's, it is pretty good.

I've always wanted to. I got to emulate this. I mean, it is an arcade game. So when you don't have quarters in the way, you'll be done with it in a 40 minutes. Yeah. That sounds fun. I like that. That is good.

Chris, how about you? Favorite classic superhero game. On the sub, I mean, NES stuff, definitely Batman Sunsoft. I, for some reason, have fond memories of playing that. grandparents' house because I brought it with and the TMNT 2 it's the first and only thing I've ever put on the layaway at Walmart in my life

because my parents wouldn't buy it for me You mean the arcade game for NES? No, well, yeah, the arcade game. Did you use your pizza hut cut? Totally, totally, man. So you redeemed it before December 31st, 1999. Okay, thank God. Nothing was better as a kid

than getting your own personal paying Pizza Hut pizza. That Pizza Hut, the kids' night were you ate free? My parents were cheap bastards And I went to that every Tuesday. The only time we went out to eat. It's where you took your bucket, too. I want to believe pizza pizza was better.

It's not just my taste buds maturing. I want to believe it was a good pizza at some point. I have, I ordered it once a few years ago. They send me a coupon now constantly. So I continue to order it, like once or twice a year. It is the greasiest thing you'll ever eat. Man. And it is nostalgic.

Right. You have to get your own picture of Coke. Yeah. You have to bring that yourself when you get it delivered. But the game, Captain America and the Avengers, by Data East is I don't know I fell in love with that game

it introduced me to Iron Man and made like he's my guy I'm gonna like Iron Man from now and I'm gonna go and read all these Iron Man comics and it is weird now that he due to whatever happened with the MCU he is Marvel's guy he's Marvel's Mickey Mouse

in terms of the cinematic universe it's all based around Iron Man they pay his actor the most I know that much they do but it started with him he's the central figure but lacking a Spider-Man Wolverine prior to 2008 I never thought

Ironman would be more than a B-level hero. And I always enjoyed Iron Man comics, but I was like, he's not that popular. He's not like Spider-Man, no way. I remember selling a figure of him at GameStop when I worked there, and it's like, who is this dork with this stupid mustache? Like, why would you buy this character? Little than I know in 10 years,

who would be the most popular movie figure ever. Yeah, he's a hammered slut with proton powers. It's beautiful. And he's like, he's a hymbo. Anything you can, like, project on Batman of yourself is like embodied in Tony Stark. He's just a dude. He's Batman without the tortured past, correct? He likes to have fun with his money.

He has some tortured past, but he drinks away those pain. So yes, that was our 8-bit superhero sampler, is what I'm calling it. And you can find us on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and all kinds of stuff, including YouTube as Retronauts. And we are funded by Patreon completely. Everything we do is brought to you by you generous Patreon donors. So thank you so much. We could not make the show without you.

Every penny that you give us goes into the show. We take nothing except to make the show by equipment to make the show. and sometimes feed our guests not all the time but this time I'm in the bedroom studio at leisure time so thanks so much to Chris for letting me take over briefly after Talking Simpsons to, you know, just do this and thanks so much for Chris are coming in

because your knowledge is invaluable and your book is great and yeah, so... Wrong, you just called, wrong has a... Wrong, classic NES box art style cover. Wrong, retro games, you messed up our comic book heroes. What is that, uh, is that McNeil-Ler with the SNLskech?

Wrong, that's kind of the... Watering contract. That definitely, actually the Dana Carvey version of that. Exactly. Inspired. With egg and banana. Whenever I,

whenever I open that in my Kindle, I think of that sketch. So you succeeded. So yes, you can find me, contact info-wise. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Serbo.

And you can find my writing on something awful.com and USgamer. And net. I should say that every Monday, a post goes up on USGamer. That goes over all we talk

about in the episode. We often list what music we use and links to things we talk about. I'll have a link to Chris's book so you can buy it. So please go to usgamer.net, if only to support me and Jeremy and everything that we do. I'll let Chris go first. Chris, where can me find you and what do you do?

And like, let's know all about you. Oh, well, you can know all about me probably easiest by going to my personal website, which is most easily accessed through cbake.com, c-hyphenbake.com. Or you can follow me on Twitter at C-Bake 7.6. And if you just go to that Twitter page, it has all the necessary link. to find out more about me. Cool, yes, and we will have a link. If you're really that interested in me.

We will have a link to your book on the Retronauts blog and USCamer.net. Henry, how about you? Where can you find you? H-E-N-E-R-Y-G on Twitter. You can keep up with all my wonderful political retweets. And sometimes I talk about games too. And I'm also Senior Games Editor at

Fandom.wikia.com, the editorial arm of the Wikia Empire. But also, I work at the Laser Time family of podcasts most often on the Talking Simpsons podcast with Bob and Chris Though also

If you like comic books I don't do it regularly anymore But there are about 200 episodes of Cape Crisis My comic book podcast You can rediscover now And re-download and listen to We did bring up on a show up

It was about development hell And we talked about Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark Which I am so I feel so fortunate That I paid to see that I want to say Speaking of Batman

The Batman musical episode is definitely a must listen. They're all meatloaf songs. They're all meatloaf songs. It's great. In the land of the pig, the butcher is king. That's all I know. It echoes throughout my head every day now. And if I could, obviously, laser time, laser time podcast.

30-2010 is also lovely, Talking Simpsons, but we've streamed a ton of this on our YouTube channel. I know a lot of people like it. We go through these old Marvel and DC arcade games, but I'm very proud of the video worked on with our buddy Josh, our designer on the site. Stupid things Superman does in games Like nobody's watched it But I love it

Everyone should watch it I love it Your book helped out tremendously There has never been a good Superman game Ever I called like Superman's biggest Archvillain is just video games They have done the worst things

I thought it was floating rings Also video games And that's not even the worst It gets so much worse than that But yeah that's on our YouTube channel I should have something talking about Those Disney ports With as much knowledge as I can provide to you

If you really care about old games Cool well thanks so much for joining us for what turned out to be a full-length episode, which is great, and we'll be back next week with a mini episode, so see you then. Bye. Thank you.