Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 63: The Simpsons Arcade

Episode Date: June 16, 2017

On this very special episode synergistically (but not cynically) engineered to help launch the brand-new Talking Simpsons Patreon campaign, we take a look at what many people consider the best Simpsons game in the 25 years we've had them: Konami's arcade masterpiece. With its gorgeous graphics, fun Easter eggs, and surprising faithfulness to the source material, this colorful brawler wowed us back in the day, and continues to wow us in the present. Join host Bob Mackey and guests Henry Gilbert and Chris Antista as the crew try to pin down what makes The Simpsons Arcade so amazing.

Hey everybody. It's your buddy Bob here with a special pre-show announcement that's actually extremely relevant to today's episode. So I'm asking you, please don't skip it. So, you know, that being said, I wanted to announce that I recently quit my day job to focus on being a full-time podcaster. And part of this involves launching a new project that's actually not all that new. So I'm sure a lot of you Retronaut's listeners know all about Talking Simpsons, the other podcast I host. It's a Simpsons podcast that explores every episode. in chronological order and in breathtaking detail. Well, my co-host, Henry and I have decided to expand our operation, which means recording even more podcast and, yes, a separate Patreon campaign to fund it all. So please head on over to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons to see what we have in store for you. We've put a month of work into this just to make absolutely sure we have enough extras up front to make funding us seem like a perfectly cromulent idea. We've got all the details over.

We're at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, but I'll give you the gist of it here. For just $5 a month, you'll get every episode of Talking Simpsons a week ahead of time and ad-free, as well as our new series Talking Critic, if we hit that goal. And you'll also get whatever bonus episodes we happen to produce along the way. Right now, we've got three podcasts waiting for you as soon as you sign up, as well as the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, if you've never heard it before. If you've never been part of the Laser Time Podcast Networks Patreon, you're looking at nearly 20 new podcasts just for signing up, and they're all Patreon exclusive. I'm sure a lot of you are wondering, you know, hey, Bob, doesn't retronauts support you in your insane podcasting lifestyle?

Well, only a very tiny amount. It mostly supports Jeremy because he chose to make this his full-time thing when I left for my former day job. And I only take a little, and I only continue to take a little, because I want Jeremy to be happy and to live the lush podcaster's lifestyle. But now I kind of want that, too, so I'll be splitting my time between Retronauts and Talking Simpsons. So I won't be going anywhere on Retronauts. And I'll also be doing Talking Simpsons, hopefully more podcasts on top of that. And I'll also be available to do more podcasts. So if you like hearing my voice, you're going to be hearing it a lot more because this is all I'm doing now.

So anyhow, thank you so much for letting me pollute your ears with this self-promotion. Remember, that's patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Now, on to the show. Ahoi hoi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Retronauts Micro. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie, and today's topic is the Simpsons arcade game and who else is here

today with me cool man it's Henry Gilbert takes a wind out of my sales let's fruit roll man I'm gonna say I'm Bob Embrace Nothingness Mackey

even though I already introduced myself so yeah I mean obviously we are the Talking Simpsons crew as well and I'm on Retronauts and this is another crossover episode

and so far we've done Bart versus the Space Mutants we've done Bart's Nightmare we've referenced it so much I feel like it's time to finally talk about the Simpsons arcade game, which would be the best Simpsons game until

13 years later. Nothing else would ever be as good. Hit and run is a good game. It's up there. I have not played it. I've actually played it five years ago. I'm sure it's age badly, but it was a very competent. But if you're a Simpsons fan, it's still fun, and it's very writing is great. And it's a very competent

GTA claim for as many as there were in that time period. I feel like it has the writing is great. You see all the great locations in Springfield, but we're not talking about that today. I do want to get around to that if there's a way to play it in an easy way. I got to talk to you after the show. Okay, please do. So yes, this is the Simpsons Arcade game.

I'm astonished we haven't done this, but then Henry peeped me to, we've done numerous playthrus on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash laser time. And an entire playthrough if you're taking your time is about 35 minutes. Yeah. So we've done that three times

so we know so much about it. I feel like I've done this before with Retronauts, but I guess I haven't. Well, when it was, when the game had just come out, we did it at our old place at games radar, then you played through it once in the early days of laser time, and then when it seemed that Harry

Shearer had quit the Simpsons, we wanted to do a stream... I did it alone, without any of you, when I first was doing it on my own, and I love the game so much. It's a great game. Let's get into some background info on it. I tried to find as much as I could about it. So this game was released in March

of 1991 in the USA, and I think August of 91 in Japan. Again, this is an arcade game release date in 1991. I'm not sure how accurate this is. Wikipedia has it at March 4th. Is it February? What's that? Well, the game, the XBLA game

said February. Yeah, there's a timeline in the XBLA game, which I have to assume is the closest thing to accurate. It might be, but again, these numbers could come from anywhere. And arcade games never rolled out everywhere at once. No, it's not like they all arrived all across the United States on March 4th. They could have showed up in New York first

or maybe California first or New Jersey. Chicago. Chicago. I did I didn't even look at it. I just thought it was February 91. Okay. It could be. It could have arrived somewhere earlier than that. I don't know, but that's what that's a date I could find.

So generally, spring of 91 is when it showed up. And by the time this game released, the episode Bart's Dogg, it's an F, would have been the newest one. So this is the middle of season two. And that's why it's so insane. Because in terms of Konami,

they were working on a Ninja Turtles game before the world knew what that would be? I think so. I mean, the cartoon was what, 87? But they were gearing up to make it before the cartoon. That's why the cover of the NES game is comic book art. Because that's the only thing people could agree on yet. Yeah, I think, yeah, the NES game was made before the cartoon was a hit.

But the arcade game was made after the cartoon was a hit. Whereas the Simpsons arcade game, like the Simpsons is already a big, instant phenomenon. Oh, yeah. This was like at the height of Simpson mania, like in the middle of season two. And that's what makes it great because everything in the game had to be defined by the loose and regrettable details of season. Season one. Only season one. We'll get into the references later, but man, I play through this again just yesterday, and

they pull some deep cuts out of those seasons. So before this, Konami had a bit of a brief history with action slash comedy games. So they're a good fit for the Simpsons arcade games. So things like Perodias, which is their parody of their other shooters. Parodius games are fantastic. Please play them. Kid Dracula, which is a parody of Castlevania. And Y, Y, Why, World, which is Konami's weird, like, let's cram all of her platform heroes

in the one game. Likey from the Goonies, Simon Belmont's in it, that dumb babies in it, Upa, Upa. King Kong. King Kong? King Kong is in it, too. Oh, okay, yeah. It was, yeah, it was like smash before smash. Oh, okay.

I never really thought of Konami as a master of comedy in retro games, but they really were. They were. So we have these action comedy games by Konami, but they're also really good at making arcade brawlers, and obviously I have to name drop the Ninja Turtles arcade game from 1989. Oh, yeah. One of the best brawlers of that type. course, all of these games are extremely limited and made to steal your money, but the showmanship on display in both this and Ninja Turtles is

like superb. On a composition level, it looks better than most episodes of the show. Yes, it does. And I would add, I would add X-Men to that. Yeah, totally. Oh yeah, X-Men would be the next year after this game. Yes, yeah. It's one of my all-time favorites. It's so, we're just like other people would try to make ones like this in a license game. Like, Sega's Spider-Man arcade brawler is really good, but it's not as good as the X-Men one. Like It's something about the scale of the characters, the amount of detail they get in there.

And also, as we will see in the Simpsons game, like the care they got into replicating what was a drawn cell media into digital effects. They worked really hard. So I previously did a Simpsons game's episode for Retronauts in, like, 2012. That's in the one-up years. And if you want to find those episodes, you have to go to archive.org and search for them.

I'm revisiting these now because I'm doing a lot more work than I did before. and I want to find out who made this game because there are credits in the arcade in the arcade game when you beat it and they're actual names so I went to Moby games I looked up some of these guys surprisingly I did not find a single person

who worked on this game who also worked on the Ninja Turtles arcade game so it could be that that game no one knows who made it and these guys could have also worked on it but I was looking through the credits and none of them were on Ninja Turtles I mean I wouldn't be shocked if it was just like

concurrent development or when the Ninja Turtles team was done they then push them over to a new game Turtles in Time or something, right? They could have been just working on turtles in time. Who is credited with the development of the game? So I only have a few of the people written down here because the other ones, they didn't do anything that notable.

So the few I wanted to mention, so the graphic design, these are the credits in the game, so they're kind of weird. So graphic design and supervisor. Supervisor, I feel, like, director. It would be called a planner in some other games. So that's Kengo Nakamura. All I have for him is he did character designs for Konami's Ajax

and the Aliens Arcade game. So he's more of an art guy. And in this period especially, people wear a lot of hats. Like, you can be doing the art and also writing the script. Or you could be, like, doing the music and also, you know, doing gameplay elements, too. Like, people did a lot of things for games. Teams were much smaller than, and they didn't. And in the time investment was a little smaller than it is now.

So you could wear different hats on a project that took six months to a year. Yeah. And I've loosely been trying to pay attention to every detail I can about how well the Simpsons are received in Japan because I'm fairly certain it airs over there. It does. It does. I actually watched an episode in Japan. But it's not the phenomenon.

I go over there and like, man, you guys really love Snoopy and Adventure Time. I couldn't find out when it started airing in Japan. I don't think it started airing this early in Japan. But that's what is so funny to me that like if this is a Japan production, it's sort of like if Activition contacted us to make

a game out of coupling, a UK show. Like, like, please, try and recreate the comedy of this show that is not a phenomenon over here. It's a sitcom, essentially. Well, the biggest thing that the Simpsons had over there wouldn't be until the late 90s when they became

the official stars of C.C. Lemon, the drink C.C. Lemon over there. And I think they were all dubbed in those commercials. Yeah, they were dubbed over, and they had new people. But it was then season 9 caliber animation. Yeah. I go to Japan. I've only, you know, I haven't been

there not many times, but I go there and I, My goal is to buy obscure merchandise that would never be produced here saw no Simpsons stuff. So it's funny to me the idea that the Simpsons somebody had to have a giant meeting translated from someone in America to explain what this was

and they somehow did an astonishing job. Oh yeah. And we'll get into why it's so great after we get through a few more of these people that worked on the game. So a few of the other ones I pulled out of the credits were Yasushitaka no. He's credited with main character design

and I love how the graphics look in this game and it's not surprising that he also created the character of Sparksder, at Konami. And he would also direct the sequel titled Sparkster. Of course, it's a sequel to Rocket Night Adventures. So he was one of the main engineers behind Sparkser. A very great looking game of this era in Konami.

Yeah, no. You can see the care in all the sprites is amazing there. So I can see why he was the guy who would design Konami's Sonic. Like character design, in a mascot game, character design is one of the most important aspect you can

have. And he really nailed it. So the last person I have written down is Norio Hanzawa who did the music. The music in this game is really good. It's not just a bunch of shitty remakes of the Simpsons theme. They do fun things with it. So this person did

he went on to go to Treasure to work there, which is a bunch of people left Konami to make Treasure and did the OSTs for things like Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Hedy, Mischief Makers. So if you like Treasure music, this person did almost all of it. They're credited with so many great

soundtracks. I think that Gunstar Hero soundtrack just came out on vinyl. Yeah, I just think of how times I replayed through like misdemeaker, Gunstar Heroes, and heard those songs and now realizing I'm hearing music over and over again from the people who made the Simpsons arcade game music too. I forgot, I forgot that Treasure was like the early platinum games. Like I, and you think of, you think of, normally what I think of Japanese developers, I think, oh, you work in a place for 40 years. You don't ever leave. But Treasure did something nobody did in the early 90s of starting their own

dev house. Let's not talk about what happened to them in the, about a decade ago. In my mind, Treasure's last game was Astro Boy, and I don't need to think of it. They all went to video game heaven after that. So, let's talk about the game itself. What I want to know from you guys is when did this game enter your life and when did you first

stumble upon it? That's what's so awesome to try and remember. Because I think I would go to my local arcade, spend my $5 allowance usually. And at one point, I'm like, I can't keep pumping quarters into these games. I I've got to get the tickets so I can invest in something like a spider ring or a tick-tac. But I saw it debut there and then I went on a family vacation.

And it was kind of a race to see what hotel and what pizza place, what restaurant would have the Simpsons arcade game. And over a two-week trip across America, three of them did. And it was like every time I could look at the machine because I couldn't afford to get very far in the game because it's cruel and unfair. It's May the quarter. The first level is nice It let you beat it with one quarter But then after that it's a little punishing Yeah

And jumping ahead My memory of beating it in the arcades Was at the Tallahassee Mall Cyber Station Oh yeah there's like seven people right now Just perked up You were too young to be cybering Chris A friend had a birthday

And a birthday at Cyberstation meant you could pick one game And the attendant would come over Open up the machine and flick on You have not infinite play But he'll just flick the quarter thing To where like you have As many credits as you can

The dip switch Is that what that's not what that is? I think it is. I don't know. That could actually just be on the board itself. I don't know if that's what you do with the coin slot. So that's what my friend Michael wanted for his birthday to have infinite play of the Simpsons

because we could not afford to see the game through. And the guy put on, here's the maximum credits. Getting to the last stage, he had to come back and start flicking the quarters because it was that ridiculous. The double boss fight, yeah. It's so unfair. I had a similar experience to you. Chris, where I'm sure I played this game

as soon as it hit my local arcade, which is called Fun N Pizza. I love that place. I had a birthday party there and that's actually where I finished the game. So I was playing it before that party happened and I can only get so far because I would have like $5 that will get you like halfway through the game if you're 9 years old in 1991. But I had my first and only formal birthday party at Fun and Pizza

and on that day everyone who attended the party got double tokens. You better believe my friends and I all beat that game together. It was a magical experience, which is why it's so special to me. And the birthday, because it was four of us, all playing, like, you get Marge asshole, a little brother. I think I got Bart because it was my birthday. Yeah. It was your birthday right to get Bart. But when I saw this game, it was the same experience I had when I saw the Ninja Turtles game. Like, no one tells you these games

are coming out. They don't preview arcade games in magazines. And that's what I remember my parents being the cruel, cheap assholes they are. I'm like, I'm in, like, Navajo country and like, they have the Simpsons arcade game. You know, no. Like, that's cool. I'll go look at this. Because the opening of the game... The track screen is magical enough. I can't compare it to anything because that was the first big show of pop culture

woke Chris and that it was recreated stunningly at the time in the game. They recreated the intro of the show with the right music and sound clips and that hadn't really happened before. They do a pretty good job. Better than the Ninja Turtles arcade game, which was impressive. They had the light beaming out of the sewer

but they didn't do anything more than that with that intro. Oh, Henry, please. Where do you find this game um i i'm as soon as i saw it i i must i in 91 i must have played it as soon as i saw it we i can my regular arcade in florida was aladdin's castle i went there all the time but that was we didn't move there till 92 so we would just go though to mini golf places every couple months and so that was also we play around to minigolf but the real main event was getting 10 dollars of tokens and and playing the games we wanted to play. And so that's where we played Ninja Turtles.

And then boom, here is the Simpsons game. We were, I was ecstatic. I, me and my brother couldn't have been to bigger Simpsons fans at that point. And my mom, too. And so we were just super excited to play it. And though we never got it too far in it either, I think like we'd, his that crusty balloon would take us out pretty much. But what great effects?

A dive kick that baby. But then it came to, I believe it was my brother's, Yeah, my brother's birthday is August, mine is in September. So we didn't do birthday parties per se at arcades, but part of a birthday like sleepover would be mom takes us to this mini golf course and she's like $20 of tokens or however many out of tokens it takes to beat this game, I'll keep feeding them to you. And we have that same thing too of like we're in the nuclear power plant.

Who knows how much longer this is going to go, but this looks like the end. Mom, I think we're out of tokens. Get more tokens, Mom, please. It's a race against time. We probably didn't say please. Now. So that was how much we were into it. And we did beat it.

And it felt amazing to watch. Like, after you've spent an hour, feverishly playing this game that you never knew how far we get. You can never watch the ending. There's no YouTube video. There's only rumors in hearsay. Knowing how much you spent, had been spent to get there. it was amazing to see the ending and you paid to get there

and so yeah we and we would later the next year replicate that with we didn't do it with TMNT but we would replicate that with X-Men but so that was that was how I first played it and of course I was super into it every time even in years to come

if I saw it at an arcade I'd be like I'm going to give this a little play because again I couldn't just pull it up on my computer and play it and that's the beauty of doing Talking Simpsons with you guys that we're revisiting those first seasons, because if we didn't say that, it has no source material to

draw from other than the first season. They have 13 episodes of source material. And so the ending is the ending of the, oh my God, the Marvin Monroe episode. No disgrace like home. No disgrace like home. So the ending of the Simpsons game is directly pulled from that episode. Yeah. And I want to get into just, okay, so it's not surprising this is a good

game because it was made by Konami in this era where they were just making good game after good game. It is surprising that it is the most faithful Simpsons game that would ever exist until like they actually started getting writers involved in the process. And what's inexplicable to me is that this was made by a team who didn't speak

English, presumably he had never seen The Simpsons. And I have to feel like the Simpsons creators could not have known that Bart versus the Space Beans was going to be bad. But it feels like they were more hands-on, maybe they were listened to more because there are so many deep, deep cuts, including things like Binky from Life and Hell. He's an enemy in the game, and there's

like a little interstitial scenes with him between the levels where he's doing something. It's just exemplifies that Matt Grinning was there giving them notes and reference material. Because there's no fucking way They knew about life and hell They couldn't have Life in hell the comic that Matt Grainning wrote

That sort of got him the fame To meet James L. Brooks Who wanted them to make a Life and Hell show I believe right? I think he wanted something With the same art style He wanted Life and Hell cartoons As the interstitials on Tracy

Yeah, that's the last minute He's like I don't want to do that I don't want you to sell it Like he would have had to sell it to 20th century Fox So he just made up something else And outside something obscure like the comic books, this is the only time Life and Hell crosses over

with the Simpsons. I'm not sure it ever happened on the show. I think there might have been like a Life and Hell. Chargers will draw in toys. Yeah. There'll be toys drawn in. And that's the best factoid Marge's shock sprite animation. Yes. Is, yeah, you might know more about it than me.

So I forget which episode it is but they're on the, on the Simpsons when Burns lands on a helicopter. Is it, is it, uh, Rosebud? Yeah, no, it's a, it's a Springfield with an S okay no wait I'm sorry last exit to Springfield last to Springfield the top

of the helicopter blades cut off her hair and they said like oh we were going to have a rabbit's ear come out there because she was going to be a life and hell rabbit and then Matt Graney goes like did I tell you that like draining's plan

from the beginning from the beginning was that underneath Marge's hair was binky life and hell rabbit ears yes so you see rabbit ears on Marge's skull when she gets electrocuted. You also see them. So if you hit the attack button too much, characters get all tied up in themselves, like the jump rope ropes around Lisa. Marge's vacuum, get stuck in her hair, and she's pulling on her hair. You can see the beginning of the ears. And it's, it's like one of those things that clearly gets scrapped in the process of writing a show,

but because of the nature of how little they had to pull from the games, it's in there to show you this was, this was Matt Grinning's intention before, so he was talked out of it. As much as Matt Graney goofs on it now is something he doesn't care about or he's embarrassed those were his plans. I've heard multiple interviews where they talk about how, like, in the first season, Matt Graney had all these big plans for crazy reveals that, that Krusty and over are the same person that was going to be his reveal, too. And these were all these things he'd just let go because they realized they wouldn't really

work on a show. But I could imagine in a meeting in 1990 with Konami that Matt Graney could say, don't have this. This is my plan. I'm doing this. And, you know, her hair is going to be a rabbit. and all this stuff that they would then pick up on. They'd be like, oh, okay, well, we can put that in there.

We can put that in there. So in terms of references, like I said, this show was released around the time Bart's Dogg. It's an F was, you know, released into the wild. But because of the animation production schedule, I feel like these people had access to almost all of Season 2's production elements. I think maybe. Because I see a lot of season two things in this game, one of which is the boss of Moz Bar. He's just a random character model that appears a few times in The Simpsons.

He's a semi-consistent background character. in Moe's Bar. He looks like a Moe but a skinhead almost. They have voiceless voiceless patrons in Moes Bar that are like

set in stone now but I guess they didn't back then. But actually if you look in the in the episode Homer versus the Eighth Commandment is it?

Yes. If you look at the entire crowd of people watching the fight, he's in their house like sitting in front of the TV the boss of Moes Bar but like things like

the first thing you see are references when you start the game you see the Rusty Barnacle you see the hamster from Bart the Genius Skinner and Martin appear. Like, even in Mo's bar, you see a poster for Carmen, which is the opera they see in Bart

the Genius. Like, they're finding everything they can to shove them to this game, which no other game at this point tried as hard as they did to be authentic. Well, in Principal Skinner is his more darker suit of the first season, not his redesign in Season 2. And Barney's hair is correctly wrong. Yes. It's part of his flesh.

When they walk by the arcade in the first level that the boy who teaches Homer how to play the boxing game is right there. Yeah, whatever his name is. sherman her me like it's listed in the credits but he's like he's he's elevated so one of the main players he's in the credits of the simpsons game is a this is a character who matters and i can totally see that they just were part of their thing was the animation studios sent them all their character packs and you shared with them here's every character here's the book the bible of every character and that could get them season two elements as they're working on season two stuff yeah and i have to wonder if it was conami if it was conami being like no we need all this stuff or if it was Fox saying here's all the stuff you need because maybe whoever made Bark vs. Spaceman's Imagineering they're like we don't

need all that stuff we know what the Simpsons look like. I would I would expect this being hardly their first license game that Konami would know from experience we need every character design you have so we can make every enemy because you will run

out. It's weird I did some work for the Disney afternoon and I got the reference material that Capcom got to make games like Duck Tales and Chip-A-Dale. And Chip-A-Dale. And there was so little information

when those games started out that they're literally giving them unfinished storyboards. So I have this giant folder of characters with the wrong names and unfinished storyboards. I want that, by the way. I don't know that I can give it away.

Let's do this. Okay, let's do this. But yeah, so I could even imagine they just had the storyboards for season two episodes that were midway through production. Though, by like, if they were making this game and say, like, you know,

late summer, episodes, season two episodes are done at that point or close to broadcast. We've never gotten a great consensus on this, but it's something that exists and we know it because we're super fans. When Bart appears outside the show, his shirt is blue. In the show, his shirt is orange.

On t-shirts, on merchandise, his shirt is blue as in this game. His shirt is blue, but in Space Museums, it's a shirt regular. Is that red or orange? I don't know what it is. I read it is orange. I always thought it was orange,

Like, this is blue shirt and merchandise, Bart. I don't know what that's about. Yeah, it's strange. I don't know why that's like it is. You know, that can be something I can dig into in future stuff. Like in Butterfinger commercials, his shirt is blue. I have to, there's people we got to interview about this. We need a, we need a, the truth is out there poster with Bart and a blue shirt.

The secret of the blue shirt. I meant when we were watching, I had a note, like pay attention and just find fucking Marge's vacuum because I think that is an original Konami creation. Yeah, it's like, well, she's the mom. What does she do? And she's so ill-defined. She has, that's all she's got. I mean, in her, in her, okay, so we talked about the attract mode, the attract screen, which is an approximation of the Simpsons opening, but they cut to profiles as they would in many comedy brawlers.

Like, here's this character, here's how old they are. Here's a quote from them. They're not great. I mean, like, Marge's characterization is from Notice Gracelike Home where she talks about making gelatin desserts. Or that's what it says. That's one of her hobbies. Marge and gelatin desserts was an early character trait for her. Yeah.

And she would, like, even be on trading cards with, like, a big gelton dessert made with your hair. I mean, in the 70s, I always took that as, like, dudes who grew up in the 70s, that's what they think of their mom's doing, is making a complicated gelatin dish with fruit inside or marshmallows or something. Or meat, disgusting. Yeah, I don't want to meet one, but, you know, it'd be nice to try a gelatin casserole. I eat one spoonful of gelat's enough. Yeah, and on this attract... It's made with real hooves, you know. On this attract mode, shockingly, Homer's catch.

phrase isn't Doe, it's yellow. So I guess dough had not been hammered out in stone as Homer's ultimate catchphrase. We just happen to have this on the board because when we did Talking Simpson's season one. This is Homer Simpson's first dough in like what episode? Notice Grace like Home?

Whoa, look at this place. What a dump. It's worse than you think. I just trampled this poor Saps flower bed. Homer, this is our house. They were more fond of using the Whoa, whoa, geez. I think we heard that six times in the Talking Simpsons so far. He definitely did it a couple times in the first season,

but it wasn't solidified until the merchandise following the first season. I can forgive them for that. Homer wasn't, in 1990 in production of this game, Homer was not the character you merchandise. You merchandise the shit out of Bart. And Bart is the most well-treated of the characters. Why weren't there four playable Barts? And I always say this, and this is to let you know,

I've been saying it's so long. because we've been doing Talking Simpsons for two years. When The Simpsons started, I was exactly Barth's age. And the only frame of reference I have for Homer's age is the arcade stat screen. Because his age changes all the time. Is it 36 on the Atrex screen? It's 36. So we started doing the Talking Simpsons.

I was Bart's age when the show started. Two years ago, I was exactly Homer's age. Now I'm older than Homer. Actually, Oakley and Weinstein aged him up to 39. They did. So you're safe, Chris. It's not safe. You'll never be 39.

You'll die before that. No, I'm just kidding. So the plot of this game is... Oh, but Bart is Bartman in it, too. He is, yeah, briefly. Very briefly. So the plot of this game is a bit silly. I mean, the Simpsons don't really belong in a brawler at all,

which is why this game is so fun, but the Simpsons are in downtown Springfield as they're wont to do, and Smithers is robbing a bank as he's want to do. And he collides with the Simpsons, a giant diamond flies out of his hand, lands in Maggie's mouth. Instead of removing the diamond from her mouth, he just takes Maggie and runs away, and your goal is to find Maggie

Catch up with Smithers and find Maggie Call the police You know who stole your baby But instead Apparently Smithers is part of a vast Underground crime syndicate With many faceless goons That can come back to the family

It's how little was defined in the show That Burns is the closest thing To the ultimate villain He is but not to the extent That he's stealing jewels No not yet In the some of the greatest designs in this game I want to give them a billion points of credit for

is all the other characters that are unique to the game They look like real Simpsons characters But this pink-shirted gray-haired guy doesn't exist The green-suited executive guy doesn't exist Yeah, the really cute mobsters One is in an oversized suit Look awesome I love how they look

I have to believe they're in some notes somewhere Because that's before they came up with the fat Tony crew These would have been good Simpsons mobsters Well and that they get one of the few that they did get were it was the pro wrestler yeah, they were able to get him but otherwise yeah

Smithers employs about 200 the pro wrestlers on state on screen for like four seconds. I mean he's a boss fight yeah no no no on the show oh on the show yeah very very briefly it's when Homer and Barney are fighting yeah as the fighting in real life as they're fighting on the TV and the bear

the bear from the camping episode They call the Simpsons. Yeah, the problem in this game is it's not their fault, but at this point, the Simpsons did not have enough villains. So I feel like a lot of these were like, let's look through character model sheets and find out who looks like a villain.

So we get the wrestler, we get the Wino and Moe's Bar, who's somehow like a giant. Like, we get, say, a Kabuki man who looks like Burns, which I'm sure they just created out of full cloth. In hindsight, you could have done something really cool with like a Flanders boss fight.

We're like, you don't attack him, you just like break his shit. So your stuff seems good by comparison. Yeah. So, I want to, okay, so one of the most amazing things about this game, I mean, it's a brawler, it's pretty repetitive and pretty cheap in terms of how much it kills you. But the greatest appeal of this game, to me at least, is the artwork. The Simpsons have never looked like this before or since, but it's this great mix of, like, great Japanese sprite work sensibility and Matt Graying's iconic designs. And together, they're beautiful.

And if you look at sprite sheets of these characters on websites, there has not been before or since more artwork per character in a brawler. There are so many unique animations for different weapons, for different attacks, for just everything possible to do with these characters. They put so much time into making these characters convincingly cartoony and just fun to watch. And the characters have like a dull team-up ability. Yeah, yeah. Uniquely with each one. If you leave all four of them. Yeah, if you leave one character standing by another for long enough without moving, they will team up briefly for an attack that like Bart and Lisa hold hands and kind of clothesline enemies.

Marge and Homer get into this weird, like, giant. circle and like rollover enemies and I think Homer just puts Bart in like Lisa on his back. And Marge's super attack is the weirdest looking animation. Which one is that? Well just when she swings the vacuum just she's making this derpy look on her face.

Because it follows the Konami template as well like there's a better attack. It'll just cost you some health. Yeah, it's going to cost you some health but that was also gave them the excuse to draw them in their super character costumes which I'll give Konami big

thumbs up there too that Bartman already existed as just a cheap licensing but only in merchandise at this point yeah yeah but I love Bartman Bartman was my favorite as a kid but then meanwhile for Homer Marge and Lisa they just had to draw

them in new in superhero costume they didn't need to do this you see those superheroes for a second when you die and you come back to life they're flying to the screen of superheroes and turn back into regular people they didn't need to do that it's such an amazingly like just creative touch just someone had to draw sprites for that and create new characters for that. And all those sound

clips, too? Like, they got voice work in it. That is true. Everyone but Harry Shear. And they did not get a... Whoever did Burns is some Konami, like, a secretary or something, because it's not even trying to be like Burns. It was the one white guy in the company. Yeah, it's like, welcome to your grave, suckers.

That's what Burns sounds like in this game. I grabbed it. Because I wanted to grab... The thing I've always wondered for years, I always thought he was saying nice fruit roll man. Because you would smack trees and, like, health power-ups would fall down. And Binky would pop out, or bongo. Yeah, I would tell you, like, it's all gone. Get out of here.

But, like, it was an apple. So I thought Bart was saying, let's fruit roll, man. And he's saying, let's go for it, man. I think he's saying, let's go for it. And you might even get a, you may even get like a word bubble, because when the characters talk, you get a word bubble because you're in a noisy arcade, presumably. And all you can hear is, like, Marge murmuring. Well, I love all the sound effects in it, too, like, bloop. Like, it's very simsony, but also cartoony. The wet thwack you get when you hit enemies is really great, too. I can just

teared in my head. Well, and the idea of like, yeah, Bart, when you deconstructed as Bart beat into unconsciousness, hundreds of guys with his skateboard, it's kind of dark, but, but it's funny in practice. Homer's the only one is like, yeah, Homer would beat up 30 guys in a day. He uses his fist. He does kick, too, like a Ninja Turtle, yeah. But he fights like how Homer would fight. This is more painful than him. You can't make him scream on a heel of, himophiliac in this game. Oh, and one of the, again, one of the great things we did going through the first season of Talking Simpsons was a failed inside joke that they kept going that no one really noticed. You eventually get to like Channel 6 as one of the levels. Yeah, one of the levels of Channel 6.

No, Ken Brockman, though. And Ken Brockman's not there because a running joke in the first season was like, hi, I'm this guy, Scott something. Scott Christian. Well, let's say the Channel 6 news is Kent Brockman. Hi, I'm Scott Christian. Kent Brockman's not here tonight. And that was supposed to be a running joke, but it's like, that's not that funny. Eventually, let's see Kent Brockman

So Kent Brockman did not exist at the time of this game No, I don't think he did Maybe he was working his way until the show No, Kent Brockman was on Krusty, it's busted So he had appeared but he wasn't the news guy He wasn't the news guy, yeah Yeah, so how this game plays It feels like an evolution of the Ninja Turtles

Konami game two years prior Only it's a lot more advanced than that You have your standard array of attacks That are identical to the attacks in Ninja Turtles But the Simpsons can pick up and interact with background objects, they can grab some limited use items and weapons from time to time. So you can literally pick up

and throw Sainna's little helper at an enemy if you want to. Yes, yeah. Which is great. You got to throw snowball at the crusty balloon. Yeah. That's a free... There's so many cool things like that in there. And also, I just remember another reference in there is like, I believe the I Am a Weiner

spray paint to see that too. In the first level. Yeah, which that was a recurring gag in seasons one and two and then Simpson stopped carrying. I don't remember if there any El Barto, uh, graffiti, graffito tags. Grafito tag. Damn you, Grafito. Hey, everybody, Bob here, and you might be wondering why a guy who gave up driving five years ago has any business at all reading an ad for something like true car.

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Again, that's True Crime Tuesday. Visit DarknessRadio.com and click the True Crime Tuesday banner. Subscribe now. And I do a special shout out to the Dreamland stage. Oh, very good. At the time, I wasn't that versed in the show, but it's one of my first. favorite stages, and it's so weird. I mean, it shows you what they thought. Well, they'd had so many dream sequences in The Simpsons.

And I think that in the first season, even, I think that's where they took the coloring cues from because the colors were washed out in Bart's dream. Season one first episode air quotes is his math dream is all black and white. That's right. And, yeah, it's pretty intense. So the levels, we went over a few of them. So the first one is downtown Springfield, just a regular great tour of

Springfield. Then we have Krustyland invented for this game, which is basically you fighting a bunch of binkies I think and like fat men and teacups and things like that and guys in crusty outfits bouncing up and down on balls once you knock them out that's another extra thing they added which I wonder if that was a mac graining thing to be like you have to make it clear these weren't crusty attacking them their mask has to fall off to show that they're not crusty

and actually when you when you kill the bear the boss bear he transforms into one of those pink guys and the pink guy runs away inexplicably I think they're like you don't want to kill a bear in the I would expect Mac Raining knowing how hands-on he was with changes to the show that he could have been the force saying the Simpsons don't kill an animal. They're not going to do that. Even if it attacks them first. So up next we have Springfield Discount Cemetery in which you fight zombies.

Very thriller-esque zombies where they dance and everything. It's great. It breaks the magic of the show. It's like, oh, I guess magic exists. And then they have to put in a thing at the end that, oh, they were disguised and suits. Except ghosts chase everyone away at the end. guys that are, so you go into a grave to go to Moe's bar, which is underground. Well, because they...

It was during Prohibition. It was a long time ago. Well, it is a 90s beat him up, so there has to be an elevator station. Yeah, so you take that elevator down into Mo's Tavern at level four, which is just gigantic. It's like the size of a stadium, and Mo is in the game. You don't fight him or anything. It's just kind of in the background, but Princess Kashmir is there.

Multiple. The Simpsons's arcade game is in there. Along with aliens, which one of the guys worked on them, which we talked about before. One of you guys said that, like, you know it's a, season one or two product if it really plays up the Space Mutants. Because that's such a fucking tertiary thing in the show. It's really season one.

By season three, they're like, we've made our last Space Mutants. This isn't funny. They're going away with a happy little elves. So yeah, at the end of that level, you fight a giant wino who just breathes fire on you because he's so drunk. It's a really grotesque caricature. I love how he looks, though. It's just a weird, weird strange character.

It'll be, if you ever rewatch season one, it'll be bizarre to see him again, like, really? That guy was like one of the most painiest losses? Could they be fighting him? A guy never says anything. Level 5 is the Springfield Butte, and it's basically just the Call of the Simpsons version of video game in video game form. Called Simpsons episode in video game form, rather. Lots of caves with bears in it.

Yes. I like that one because it's, I think, one the first times they introduced multi-level design, because it was only one plane you were fighting up all time. But this time you could be up, you could be on the top level or the bottom one. That's true. And Dreamland is the next one. Because they all die. Yes, so we didn't mention this before, but some of these levels have mini-games between them that explain. I mean, every level ends with an explanation of how they end up in the next level.

And that's, to me, that's one of the amazing things, like, made watching it so much fun because Bart and Lisa would fall. Right. Sorry, whoever you were, was playing, would then... The thing would happen to them, whatever the bridge was. Yeah, I mean, it's not dissimilar from the Ninja Turtle's arcade game, but, like, it was something that wasn't very common. Yeah, so they fall off a waterfall in Springfield Butte, and the mini game you play is tapping the button to have them slap themselves in the face to wake up, which is really funny, right? have someone slap them in the face, presumably you. So you're slapping Simpsons characters in the face to wake them up.

But that's after they fall over a waterfall and are at least concussed. They're like, the whole family's dead. Thanks to Smithers, like Smithers did that. He put them in that calamity by grabbing Maggie. And sinking countless numbers of Burns's henchmen. I mean, many men are dead now. We can't forget that. So we have Dreamland, which is a very inventive stage.

You fight giant bowling balls and flying saxophones. One thing I was thinking of in this game It's like Lisa's weapon is a jump rope Why wasn't it a saxophone? That would have made much more sense Maybe it was too bulky or something That's where I don't know exactly where the continuity is Because Krusty gets busted

It was one of the first things To define continuity on the show as little as exists But Sideshow Bob appears in the game To give you a power up Yeah I don't think they understand I think it is just a misunderstanding Of what Sight Show Bob's job is

Yeah and in Space Museum He was a boss Here he is there to give you like a hammer or something. That's right. Yeah. So up next we have Channel 6 which is just Konami's like, okay, we've had enough fun with Simpsons, now we're Japanese.

We have to let you know we're in Japan making this game. So here's our samurai stage. It's the equivalent of a factory stage. It's sort of just because it allows for like endless sprites. It doesn't look anything like any other level and it kind of has the stupidest look. You're going through a few different sets, like a space set. Like the end of Peewee Herman.

Yeah, yeah. You can go to every movie possible is being shot in Springfield. And it was kind of like how we saw Channel 6 in Barkett's Famous, where they're doing a lot of things in one studio. Playing it now, it reminded me the first Ace Attorney Mission. Oh, yes, yeah. We're shooting a local samurai show

here. Yes, that is more of a thing, I think, in Japan, of like, no, this is a TV drama and we're filming it out of our Tokyo's local samurai show. We didn't get that one. And that they got to have you fight a giant kabuki guy. That's so great. They were just allowed to make that guy up.

He looks like Burns, actually. His face looks a lot like Burns, like the kabuki mask guy. But yeah, you fight a kabuki dancer. Very cool. And I think actually in Ninja Turtles, the arcade game for the NES, they added a very Japanese stage to that as a bonus level. And I think you fight a Kabuki guy at the end of that one too.

It at least fits more with Ninja Turtles. Yeah. But yeah, and this is, I don't know why you're suddenly fighting ninjas, why Channel 6 is fighting YouTube. It's like, get out of our studio. We're trying to record here. Maybe there's all Smithers agents in disguise.

And the last level is, okay, it's basically just give me your money, because it's a dual box. fight and I want to say I wish I had played this or watched the video I want to say Ninja Turtles arcade ends like this where you fight Shredder and then Crang and this one you fight Smithers and then Burns

and a giant mex suit and they're both dicks yeah huge dicks but you also you don't really have a Springfield Nuclear Power Plant stage you just run into the room almost immediately and which I feel like they could have got a lot out of a nuclear power plant

they really could but this is a long game as it is with eight stages for an arcade game But, I mean, it is a lot of, but coin munching. But so then you play Smithers basically wearing a Dracula cape full of bombs that he is trying to kill you with. And he has a mad cackle, which you hear a lot in the game. I am shocked. I wonder if at any point he was blacksmithers in the development. I wonder if they immediately were like, no, no, no, he's always the white smithers.

I'm wearing my smithers shirt right now. It's from the arcade game. He's a bunch of bombs in his coat. I love that shirt. It's a great shirt. I love how evil he is. then you get to, when I was playing it the first time as a kid and got to that point, I was like, oh, I guess it ends with Smithers, but it'd be really weird if it wasn't Mr. Burns, then like, ah, there he is.

What a fake out, and you fight him in a giant mecca, which goes through many forms as you destroy parts of it. And the one cheap thing about this game, I mean, it's very cheap, it's an arcade game. But as with all arcade games of this type, when you fight a boss, when it's about to die, it'll start flashing. I sort of got Mr. Burns starts flashing when his health bar is like halfway done. The health bar you don't see. So it's like, man, he's almost dead. five minutes later, oh my God, I'm still fighting Mr. Burns.

Just all about the cowardly dive kick. Get in, get in, get out. And then he dies. He dies. He says, exes over his eyes, and Maggie puts her pass fire in his mouth, and they walk away. Presumably having killed scores of men, Smithers, Mr. Burns, they're just walking home peacefully to watch TV. With the diamond, yes.

They're now millionaires. They can pursue their dream of having dream and friends. And they also spent the money on the Danny Elfman's on. They did, yeah. You know, we talked about that on Bart's, nightmare and on Bart versus Space Mutants that only in the NES Space Mutants, did they pay

for the Danny Elfman song? Everybody else is like, no, like that's a lot of money. And the EA one, and I don't know, I put it on our YouTube channel and the highest quality I could get it in. But it's a really, it's really fun. It's the best, the best 1991 technology could do to recreate an opening

sequence. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, they did cut corners obviously, but they did the best they could with that memory and technology. I don't know. It all fills me with such warm memories. The exact kind of game I wanted over this thing I was becoming obsessed with, like I was already obsessed with. Well, it should be said that we never got this game in home versions if you were on

a console because obviously a claim we're like no, we want to make a bunch of bad games. Keep that good game in the arcade. It's really weird that they made a bunch of terrible ports. I could also see why this didn't get a port at least in America because when Konami made the ports to Ninja Turtles

they didn't share a port with another publisher. So if a claim was going to publish it, they'd have to make a with Konami and probably they weren't talking to each other. Like they were going to make a deal. There were some home ports of this. The Commodore 64 version, I would call it a noble attempt.

They did what they could, but... Does the color black not exist on the Commodore? I couldn't tell you, but they did the best they could, but it was not capable of delivering arcade quality graphics, this old system from like 1984 or whatever. I think somebody said it was one of the last Commodore games.

It probably was, yeah. So there's also a DOS version that looks pretty close, I'll say, but it does cut a lot of animation, and that's what really makes this game special. So, that was probably the most authentic version, but now, of course, you can emulate it through maim, and it's really easy to get. Or you don't even need to use

MAME if you were... Oh, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yes, you do. You don't have the game now, you've got to use MAME. I mean, I can plug it by my 360 and play it. I ain't doing that. Mine's hooked up to... That and the Ninja Turtle game is why I'll never, ever get rid of my 360. I mean, I probably won't

get rid of it, but I won't hook it up for a while. But I mean, okay, so what we're talking about is very, very, very briefly on Xbox Live and PSN. The dates I have are February of 2012 to December of 2013. This game was available in a great port with the American and the Japanese version of it. And now it's unavailable because shit sucks. Well, it's a very weird agreement that I learned about briefly in my little battle with publishing and whatnot. These games and Ninja Turtles were financed by companies who currently had the life. to then port those arcade games

to promote bigger games. The only reason we got the Simpsons arcade game is so EA could promote the Simpsons game. I see. I was wondering because I know when Ninja Turtles Arcade came out for Xbox Live. Ubisoft logos all over it. And also it was promoting the new animated CGI movie

which was coming out around that time. And it's the same way like when the Star Wars movie came out, Super Star Wars miraculously appeared and it was just me having worked in there briefly. I'm like, that was part of the marketing budget. Yeah, that is a marketing. That is a marketing budget thing because there's no way Konami would have done that on their own.

They would never do it. Well, they wouldn't pursue the license again and they wouldn't put the money into it because there's not that much money to begin with. But it was, I mean, thanks to, I'm infinitely grateful to Ubisoft and Konami coming together to make that Turtles arcade thing happen because that was an early proof of you can make, people will buy this if you release these things. It's online. It might still work. I don't know. Is it also unavailable? in stores?

Well, when they delist any, yes, because it was a loose, a light marketing deal. I think it was like two years. It was on there. Nickelodeon has TMNT now so it's not even Ubisoft.

But Simpsons, that was like, it wasn't there that long. And it was also one of those eye-opening things as like a game rar getting older because people slightly younger than me reviewed it and like, uh, six.

And I remember yelling at, I think to Henry and like, what the fuck? How do you get the Simpsons? A cave game is six. He's like, have you played it lately? Part of it loving this

game is being there when it happened. You need the arcade context, too. The splendor of the arcade in how this game was meant to be played. But on unlimited continues, you're done in 35 minutes for a game that you did pay $10 for. I think it was 20. No, it was 10. It was 10. I bought it. Well, because TMNT was 5,

but after that, people realized, like, we can charge 10 for this. But also, I thought if 10 is what covers it to be licensed from Fox Interactive Entertainment, then fine. I will pay this because I love the Simpsons. I want And as much work as they could put into it of just, it had every arcade flyer,

it had the Japanese version, it had all these extras in it to make it more worthwhile, but it was just for the nostalgia. The version had a nuke power-up. Which seems odd because they removed... Should be the reverse. Yeah, I mean, they removed the stuff in Fallout 3, obviously, because they're a little sensitive about nukes.

But now there's like a nuke weapon you can throw in this game. Well, yeah, the... When you're fighting burns, he throws nukes at you. Yeah. But in the game up to then, along with the bowling ball and other and the slingshot, you could find a nuke, which was a screen-clearing attack. Interesting. I didn't know. I actually did that.

I didn't actually play the Japanese version. It's a little harder, but it was awesome that it was there. It was that one moment of time, like, we're going to get every arcade game ever. So one last thing, which is deceptive on Konami's part, not Konami's part, but whoever made this. Yeah. There is a mobile game called The Simpsons Arcade. Go to hell. You are not the Simpsons Arcade game.

Ooh, it sucks. It's a lousy interpretation of it in some ways, but what astounds me is like, okay, 25 years later, with all this advanced technology and this game looks immensely worse. It is ugly, it is cheap, it is awful. I don't even, like, they made this to trick people, I think. Like, I like that game. Oh, what the hell is this? It nails only the balloon blowing up minigames. Yeah, and everything else is wrong.

It is Homer, just Homer fighting, and it's like, do you like two frames of animation instead of, eights for a punch? Yeah. This was to promote the big EA game. I forgot all about that. It made me so mad when it came out. Like, I'll play Simpsons tapped out all day before I touch Simpsons Arcade.

This is, Simpsons Arcade was, or touch, what is it, tapped out? That's a game they made to keep going. This game was to promote the EA game, because if you remember,

and I was not this big a Simpsons fan with contacts at EA, there's one on every platform and every cover is different. Yeah. They wanted to sell you every single version They spent an ungodly amount of money on the Simpsons game. And it sucks.

And from what I hear... The production values are visible in them. Tapped out is just makes EA like an insane amount of money every month. And I will argue it's not a game. It's an ant farm with timers. Like, it's one of those things. It's like, you can build stuff. We'll build a faster if you give us money.

But, you know, you don't have to. I have Disney Magic Kingdoms and I'll never play another game like that again. I mean, it's like, it doesn't matter where you put anything. It doesn't, you just, you touch things and donuts pop out. You have to wait for things. Cool down times, managing six different currencies. I think there's a great South Park clip about how these games are made. About the whales.

It's all true. All real. Maybe I'll put it in here. But yeah, that's been our Simpsons arcade discussion. We've been at this for an hour. But, I mean, this is one of my favorite arcade games, not just because of the Simpsons. It's just a very well-crafted game. It's so artfully made.

The graphics are great. The sound is great. It's very authentic to the show itself. I mean, we should on Konami a lot deservedly, but we have to remember they were one of the best developers of all time. that they come to what they become. But man, the Simpsons Arcade game is so good. I love it so much.

Still to this day, go back and play it. Steal it from the internet. You can do it. It's fine. Very good. And just the idea that like playing arcades games at this point, you didn't know any of the characters. And I wasn't aware of Ninja Turtles around the time the arcade game came out.

I was aware of X-Men when the X-Men came out. But like, I didn't grow up with them. I was on board with the Simpsons day one. I wasn't just like part of the fandom. I was the reason for the fandom. And seeing a great game immediately for something I was on board from day one of was just astonishing. I'll never be able to recreate that. And I'm just so glad I was there.

Such a, such a beautiful game. One of my favorite memories and just, yeah, the, God, the sprites, everything is beautiful. And it is such a great distillation of what was magical about the Simpsons and that Simpsons mania first year. And also, it ruined you for all future. Simpsons games you would play on NES and Super NES. And I think Space Dunes would release around this time too in spring of 91 so yeah

But yeah. Disgusting. Well, we talked about that before. Dig up that episode if you want to hear it. So this has been Bob Mackey. I've been your host for this episode of Retronauts Micro. Thank you so much for listening to it. I'm so happy that you listen to it and if you want us to do more Simpsons stuff, please let us know. I've been kind of wanting to explore the more notable and actually the few

good Simpsons games with these mini podcasts. And by mini, I mean, an hour instead of 90 minutes. So thank you so much for joining us this wild ride. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. And I'll let Henry tell us about, I'll tell you about our other podcast. Bob, me and Chris host, Talking Simpsons every week where we chronologically go through every episode of Simpsons. We are deep into season five right now. We have done over 100 episodes. We have a great time talking through it. And we are the greatest Simpsons historians in the world. I'm going to say it right here.

You can tell how nerdy we are. Look at these. We're talking about Marcus Rabbit Ears. We're talking about so many deep references. We have to dump all this information out of our brains or else we'll go mad, mad. That's every week on, you can find Talking Simpsons on iTunes. Talking Simpsons.com is where you find a repository of all the episodes. And we may have more cool things, so you should definitely follow me on Twitter to hear about that as well. H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G, follow it, baby. And I also want to talk to you about our Patreon.

If you go to patreon.com slash retronauts, we have a lot of great incentives if you want to support our show. of course our show is funded by great listeners like you if you want to donate just go to patreon.com slash retronots a very popular tier is the $3 a month tier and with that you get episodes a week ahead of time at a higher bit rate and with no ads which a lot of people have been saying I don't like the ads and this is a way for you to get our podcast without the ads

and Patreon is very nice and that they give you an RSS code or address that you plug into your player and you download podcast as you would normally so it's very convenient and it's a way for you to give to us directly without hearing ads so go to patreon.com slash Retronauts. Chris. Laser Time. That's about it. Hey, wait. You guys are on a show.

Laser Time is a big, dumb podcast network with a bunch of fun shows, including a video game show about current games, Vigame Apocalypse, really fun. Microaparge. You've heard them on here before. You have that. 30, 2010, awesome look 30 years ago and 20 years ago and 10 years ago into the past. It's really fun. So we're in 87 right now in the first segment. Trying to find release dates for games. It's impossible.

It's impossible. No one on that. We just had to, like, designate, like, let's just talk about Akari Warriors. It's within this eight-month window. It was June or July or August of 1987. And most of the notable games at that time are arcade games still in 87. And Lasertime this week, I think you two are on it. Oh, boy.

Around the time. But I finally did a show I've wanted to do for a long time. It's about farts. All about farts in pop culture, the most popular farts, the greatest farts, the most tremendous farts. Oh, laser time, really. I'm on that one. You are on that one. And if you like Simpsons, there's something in there for you, too.

So check it out, please. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back on Monday with another full-length episode. See you then. The Mueller Report. I'm Edonoghue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House a 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 of 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.