Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 67: Little Nemo, the Dream Master

Episode Date: August 11, 2017

We NES kids know Little Nemo best from his classic Capcom platformer, but what about the character's role in a revolutionary newspaper comic from the early 20th century? And what of Little Nemo's extraordinarily expensive and fairly obscure box office flop that spawned two different video games? On this episode of Retronauts Micro join Bob Mackey, Henry Gilbert, and Mikel Reparaz as the gang traces the history of Winsor McCay's sleepy hero across three different forms of media.

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But hopefully that won't happen. So, yeah. You'll defixiate in this room if you fell asleep. We would just all die in a heap. Three podcasters found dead. No one came to the funeral. You see what I told you guys? It's going to get loop.

That's fine, though. But so this is all Michael's fault. I will tell him why. Ah, yes. I know exactly why. You made me. I forced you to. I put a gun to your head.

It was a long night with a long night with a, gun to my head. I've got to say, but for some reason, Little Nemo was in one of the top fives on Vigachem Apocalypse. Yeah, it was going to be arcade games that are, like, came out at the same time as home console versions. Right, right. And that, but were drastically different games. And I did a lot of research about a lot. I mean, like, 20 minutes. But I was like, oh, this is really interesting. And I was disappointed it didn't come up. I'm not blaming you. I realize, like, I think, and my rationale, like, I could, I could actually have walked this back was it was that like well the arcade game actually came out like several months after

the game hit the NES so this isn't really an arcade conversion right right it's but yeah it's not the home version of an arcade game it's the arcade version of a home game it got me into reading by little Nemo remembering the characters where it came from the movie which i remember the movie exists every five years i'm like oh they did make that movie okay but yeah it got me on this kick and so i'm going to turn it into an episode so michael um the way you hurt me is now going to be used for good. I'm just kidding. Michael's a great guy.

And so we're going to talk about Little Nemo, and I don't want to talk about the roots of Little Nemo and how it ties into like just the history of animation. It's really interesting. So does anyone in this room actually, have you ever read the comic strip Little Nemo? I've only seen like archival pictures of it. And I'm a big comic book fanboy, but Windsor McKay is kind of a blind spot for me because he is a comic strip, not a comic book so much. Yeah, I mean, it's true. In the history of comics, Little Nemo was extremely important.

It was a comic strip that ran from 1905 to 1926 in newspapers. And when I say comic strip, it's not like a three-panel Garfield. It's an entire front page of a paper in glorious color with beautiful illustrations. And this is in an era of America where a comic book, sorry, a comic strip could sell a newspaper. Totally. And the main reason behind that is, okay, this is the early 20th century and lots of immigrants are coming over. over to America. Immigants.

Immigants. Or bears coming over to America. And before the Immigration Act of 1917 really curtailed all of that. They wanted something to read that wasn't necessarily in English. And that's how they sold a ton of newspapers by these great comic strips that often depicted working class situations and lots of slapsticks. So if you came to America and you wanted something to read to entertain yourself, you could buy a newspaper and just read the comics page.

Yeah. And there were bidding wars over the papers. There was also, like, famously during a newspaper strike, then Governor Franklin Roosevelt read comic strips to kids. I thought it was like Fiorella LaGuardia. Oh, I think you're right. It was LaGuardia. It was LaGuardia. Sorry.

One of those airport guys. But it's right. But, yeah, it was a huge, huge deal. One of my favorite oldie-time comic strips to return to is E.C. Seeger's Popeye, because it started as a different comic. Popeye took it over, and Popeye comics are just so fun and full of adventure.

And the Popeye is just a huge weirdo. They kind of normalized him, even in the later Fleischer cartoons, but the Popeye is just this weird solo sailor who also just loves he will go hunting for treasure and he'll sometimes just punch a horse

in the face, and they would, they're definitely, if you think you know Popeye from the Fleischer cartoons, which I love, this Popeye in the comic strips is is way different. Was that Thimble Theater? Yes. Yeah.

By Seeger, correct? Where he debuted. And he was like based on an actual person like this old toothless man who would like, you know, he had all these stories from the sea and like would tell kids these stories. And so he was like the local character. And he would eat spinach through its pipes. Seager grew up. And then so Little Nemo was, he was a compatriot of Popeye in those oldie times.

Actually, I think he was probably done right around Popeye was taken off. Yeah, yeah. I think every time I've tried to. read the Little Nemo comic strip. It's like, it's always in the middle of some story arc, so, or maybe just the stories are structured that way. They told long, yeah. I mean, they told long story arcs, like, it takes eight months for him to get to Slumberland

when, from the first strip until when he actually gets there. Wow. And this is tied up in the history of comic books because I totally recommend you read the book, the 10 cent plague. Oh, yeah. Which is all about comic books and censorship. And even back in the oldy times, people hated comics because those immigrants are coming over and they're reading our comics.

And, I mean, they were against them because of that, because of obviously, oh, look at all the violence in these comics. But it was really a big, really like a classic, classist and racist thing, as we see with a lot of censorship. Yeah, the original comic books that were selling were really just on newsprint and then folded up into magazine style and soul. Right. And I don't think it's a coincidence you talk about immigrants that a lot of the big artists of comic books in the Golden and Silver Age, specifically Jack Kirby, for example, were the children of immigrants. That's right. Jack Kirby is really Jacob Kurtzburg. But, and so I think that's probably connected to it.

That was part of it too. And I believe the Tencent Plague talks about the first graphic novel, which was a crime novel, and it was done by a black artist. So yeah, I think a lot of this was done to be like, oh, these people should not have these jobs. Like these people are writing things that are children are reading. God forbid. But yeah. Yeah, I think that's something in when any new art pops up because it's not as established,

establishment can't keep out the people. They normally keep out. And so then they have to attack it to keep out the undesirables, the minorities and the queers and all the immigrants. And it's something you see with every art form I hope to see and whatever follows YouTube, the same thing will happen. And I'll complain about that when I'm 50. Yes, because I won't understand it.

And Windsor McKay, the creative Little Nemo, the artist and writer, was also an animation pioneer, making some of the first animated films ever. And you can find these. I'll put these in the blog post for this episode, but you can find them on YouTube. There's a great 19-19-11 little Nemo short with it does not look primitive at all. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous.

It was drawn on a rice paper. Everything is just hand-painted. It's, I can't, I don't even know. He had to invent an art form and then teach himself that art form. I just don't know how he did it. And that he did that years before Walt Disney would animate anything like. And then as animator, you do mean like he drew everything. Yeah, there were no cells or anything at the time.

It's just like, oh, every drawing is a new piece of paper with a new background on it. Okay, which is why the little Nemo short does not have backgrounds. But Gertie the Dinosaur does. That was a 1915, sorry, 1914 vaudeville routine he did in which he had a basically pre-recorded animation of a dinosaur that he would pretend to give commands to. So he'd be him in front of the movie playing and he would just have an act with the dinosaur. people go insane, like, oh my God, this is Matt, we're watching magic happen in front of us. So he is very tied

up into the history of animation, and like, he basically invented animation and kind of invented comic strips in a way. I didn't know that, that it was, Gertie was an act. Like, I'd seen footage of Gertie, the dinosaur, before, but I didn't realize, like, oh, a guy should be with this. Didn't Muppet Babies use it a bunch?

Oh, totally. Oh, yeah. Talk about public domain. Muppet Babies did not know a piece of public domain. It didn't like. And also Star Wars. Yep, yep. I'm sure you can see some of these online, but they started republishing them, and the books they're in are massive because they have to be to replicate the artwork correctly,

and they're like $80 for a hardcover compilation. And this was a comic that ran for 20 years. So, God, someone put this out on, like, PDF form or something for me to read, because I really want to see these. That's how I bought the Popeye collections, and also they did a DC. D.C. had newspaper strips, too, and they did a big collection of it. And the way, like, they want to present it as it did when you looked at an entire newspaper page right in front of you. So that means they have to print a book that's basically two, they're three feet tall. Oh, they're two feet tall.

But it's really big and they're really unwieldy and giant on your bookshelf. But if you are a collector, I love those things, they look awesome. But that's also why, like Bob says, they're very expensive. They are as Mr. the legendary Mr. Dink. Well, side note, I remember there was an arc in the Sandman comic. where there's a character who's like a little boy who's abused and he's like being kept by foster parents. And they like every time he dreams, it's in the style of the little Nemo strips to the point where like he'll fall out of bed at the end and then his foster parents will yell at him from somewhere off panel about how they're going to kick his ass. I think I vaguely remember that.

I need to reread that one. I did not read it as a obviously little Nemo, but I did not reread it as that. Man. So we're going to get to the NES game eventually. Don't worry. But for my money, the most interesting part of all this Little Nemo stuff is the movie, which, again, I said, I remember it exists every five years or so. It's called Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland, and it's what the NES game is based on, even though it came out in America in 1992, and the NES game is a 1990 game. I wrote an entire article on Retronauts, if you want to read more about this, there's lots of links to sources.

But essentially, this movie is an anime. It's a multinational production, but it kind of is an anime. and it is the dream project of TMS, that's an animation studio in Japan, Utaka Fujioka, an employee that's putting it lightly, an artist from TMS, a director from TMS, he had a dream of making a smash hit international movie, and Little Nemo was going to be that. And in fact, he acquired the rights himself. He, like, flew out to wherever the Little Nemo, Windsor McKay descendants were, convinced them to sell him the rights. And for about a decade was trying to get a movie off the ground. He went to people like George Lucas. He went to people like Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki and Asau Takahada.

He was trying to find the biggest names to attach to this project. I'm sure you saw Spielberg and people like that too. Yeah, well, because also those guys did take inspiration from Nemo. So to be involved with Nemo is a big deal. But, like, yeah, Tokyo movie Shinsa was a big deal in anime for the very long time. And they did have some of the best animation even in the 70s. They were great. And they are kind of proto-Gibli, or they worked with a lot of the Ghibli staff because they did the Lupon shows.

And on Lupo on the 3rd, Hayao Miyazaki and Asa Taka Hara were high-ranking people on it, especially it's where Miyazaki got his first solo directing gigs to the point that he then directed the first Lupo movie, Castle of Cogliostro. That's a second movie, Henry. Is it Mystery? No. Is Mammo third or first? I don't know, but all I know is that Cogliostro is the second one. Okay. Well, so he did direct that.

and TMS animated it as well. So it's their film. I'm going to see that in theaters in September. Please look for it. Fathom Events is doing a multi-cast. Oh, all right. We're going to that. Oh, God, it's so gorgeous.

So they had Miyazaki in their rolodex, but Miyazaki, by the mid-80s, had split off. By 84, really, they put out Nazica. So he was separate at that point. But they'd want him involved, but it's just hard to get him. Like, he was working on his own stuff, so he wasn't going to direct a Nemo. Yeah. And I mean, when they met with him, they were like, oh, this film, this story you want us to tell us has these problems and we don't want to do this film. And it's, that's clear in the final product. Like, oh, yeah, they were right. Like, these things are pointing out are problems with the movie. But yeah, I watch this movie for the first time. And I kind of recommend you watch it. It's a little dull, but it's gorgeous. It's really very, very pretty. I felt that way, too. It's all on you. Well, it's in many places, but one, it's legally on YouTube. TMS posted it on their website or on their YouTube channel. Because, like Bob said, they own it.

They don't have to negotiate with somebody for the Nemo license. And there is a Blu-ray, apparently. Yeah. I bet it looks a lot better. I mean, the YouTube version is an HD, but I think it's only 720P. I don't know. There's a little bit of artifacting. If you want to go full hog, get the Blu-ray.

I want a special shout out of the people who put out that Blu-ray. Disco-Tech Media, the guys who make anime DVDs for me, which is they see licenses from 90s stuff that lay fallow that then they can re-release. Like, they're about to put out Yerai Atsura 2, Movie 2, Beautiful Dreamer, which has been out of print in America for over a decade. Really? And they just put out a release saying, like, we got the special features approved. We're going to be authoring real soon. I was like, oh, my God.

I got to get that. And they did the best Cogliostro Blu-ray as well. Oh, yeah. At least for American releases, Discotech is my favorite in anime right now. And they did Little Nemo. That's true, yeah. And when you start watching Little Nemo, it starts with, like, hear all the names associated with. with this movie.

So, Ray... In a cheap-ass opening. Yeah, just like, I mean, for a kid's movie, you want to start with a bang. Which is like, no, you will watch these credits over a blue background and you will watch nothing else. You know how hard we had to get to work to get these people on board. So let me name a few people you might have heard of Ray Bradbury perchance, Chris Columbus, the French artist Mobius, the Sherman Brothers, who wrote a ton of Disney songs, including

all the Mary Poppins songs. Like, all these people were attached to this project. But I feel like it is a too many cook situation. and maybe the source material could not make this sort of movie happen in a way 80 years later. That would be entertaining. Sort of sounds like something out of Jodorowski's Dune. Yeah, we had Salvador Dully and... Yeah, and you think having all these people, they'll work great together.

But just because you're famous doesn't mean you work well with other artists. And I won't talk too much about the movie because we have to eventually get to the game it's based on. The game has like 2% in common with the movie. It's an okay movie. I just enjoyed it as an animation. nut, like, all of the great scenes. Like, if you're, if you're going to watch the movie, just watch, like, the first 10 minutes of the first dream or the pilot movies they made, which have much better animation

than the movie because they only had to make three minutes of it. I think those are just a great example of the pure Japanese craftsmanship that can happen with animation. The TMS, especially, they employ some of the best animators in the world who don't take shortcuts. Like, they want something to be fluid and good. And when people could settle for something less they don't. And when I watched it, too, it absolutely reminded me of their American night.

90's work, which was my unknown introduction to TMS, and just seeing like, wow, just the way somebody like will scramble up or the way somebody will point at something or look at something, it's very specific and fluid animation. And so even when it's boring and, you know, in some old hobo is talking to Nemo about doing something. Oh, Mickey Rooney. Give me a little curse. When Mickey Rooney is talking to him, I'm just like, boy, this is boring.

but it looks so beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I'll give you a brief overview of the plot. It's like Nemo is chosen to be the princess on their land. He gets there. Everyone loves him. He just kind of meanders around for about an hour. And then the king's like, here's a key, Nemo. Now, don't you open the door to the third act?

There's a bad guy behind that door. And then he does, and then they have to fight the bad guy. It's not a great plot. And it just sort of dull and it drags along, but it's just very pretty to watch. Yeah, it's gorgeous to watch for minutes on film, or just for the action going on there. Theatrical level animation, you don't, in the 80s, if it wasn't Disney, you didn't see something that good. And it was released in America. I don't think I saw it until VHS.

Same here, yeah. But, or maybe a play, it played on like TBS or something. Yeah, I think I saw it on like Showtime. Yeah, and it actually released against Kiki's delivery service in Japan. I was shocked to find out it was an 89 Japan. Yeah, 89. Yeah, we didn't get it until 92. 92.

That's like a Super Mario 3 situation there. That's true, yeah. And that, but that against Kiki, like, fuck, man. If I was TMS and saw Kiki was opening next to this, I'd be like, all right, just quit. Let's just quit now. We're not. They believe that much in this movie, though. Like, Kiki is about a flying child who has adventures as well, except it is a much better told story and honestly better animated too, which like that's mean to TMS.

But only, I would say, Studio Ghibli is one of the very few anime companies that would make better animation than TMS then. I mean, Nemo doesn't grow up. He doesn't learn anything. I think just people like him for no reason. He's an okay character, but there's nothing to him. And that's just kind of what makes the movie dull. So the good thing about this is, so TMS always outsourced, received outsource American animation projects. To pay the bills.

To pay the bills. But after this, they needed to pay a lot of bills. And it was at this time when Nemo crashed that Steven Spielberg, who I assume TMS talked to about the Nima movie, he was behind some very high budget animation projects like Tiny Tunes, Animaniacs, Batman, the Animated series, all the double. They're like, oh, they want to pay for quality animation. We'll give them quality animation. So TMS, because of the failure of Nemo, I got great animation on my TV every day. And then we as kids, I as a kid, didn't know it. I just knew this episode of Tiny Tunes looks markedly better than the rest of them I've seen this week.

But I didn't know it was because of TMS. Yeah, they did the entire direct-to-video movie. Yeah, they did how I spent my summer vacation. It's amazing looking from start to finish. And that's what happens when Warner, if I was Warner, there's no other studio they go to for the direct-to-video movie than TMS. And if they were given the same money as every other company that also just shows you like, wow, you guys are going above and beyond of every other animation studio. In case you don't know this about how production of animation at least worked back then for Tiny Tunes Animaniacs, Batman, the animated series, they were concurrently producing like 60 shows at once, 52 in most cases. And for that, you can't just have one animation house that you send it to in Korea.

Unless you want it made in three years, instead of one year, you need to ship it off to everybody. And so they shipped it off to multiple studios, and that's why TMS ended up getting it. I'd say TMS is my favorite work they ever did for American animation. They did some great Animaniacs episodes and Tiny Tunes, but it is Batman the animated series. They did part two of Feet of Clay, which is the Clayface two-parter, where Clayface goes through these transformations that are just like impossible. How did someone draw this? Yeah, every drawing. It's like amazing.

And they also did the animation to get this back to games. The Batman, the anime series, Sega CD game. Oh, that was them, right. They did be cutscenes for that too, which like that is a crime against TMS to put it on a Sega CD and make it look that bad. And they also, lastly, they did the animation for the Batman. Mask of the Fantasm movie, which is the best Batman anime series ever looked. And they also did the animation for the Harley and Ivy episode, one of the best of the series. And they did...

And the opening to Batman, the actual opening. And they did the Batman Beyond Return of the Joker, which is the best Batman Beyond episode two. That is great. And I think, unfortunately, once they paid off those Nemo bills, then they went back to focusing on anime and their own... I think they were getting too expensive for Americans, and Stephen Spielberg didn't care about making cartoons anymore. So no more TMS in America cartoons. Steven Spielberg and also the Batman team, they could talk Warner into paying the TMS money, but apparently nobody else could. Yeah.

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So Little Nemo the Dream Master, I believe... Can't focus just on cartoons just yet. God, I just love cartoons so much. But Little Nemo the Dream Master released in September 90 for the NES. I believe it's called Nemo Pajama Hero in Japan. But we didn't know what this was when we got it. I mean, I think magazines went to some lengths to explain it to kids. Like, lo, Nemo was a comic strip character, kids, and he's back now.

I remember reading... Well, I knew about the game mostly from Nintendo Power, like with all other NES games. And so I was super pumped about it because of that, because of Capcom. And, like, the fact that the character was from something was sort of like an amusing little side note. Yeah, yeah. There used to be comic strips about this. But, yeah, I had no access to these comics scripts. I was like, I'll tell you word for Nintendo Power.

Yeah, I think it was one of many random rentals for me. I think of anything why I rented it is because I believe it had the set. Capcom box art. Yeah, the purple border. Yeah, that like Ducktails had. And so I'd enjoy duct tails. I had enjoyed Mega Man. And so I see the same border like, okay, this tells me it's the same quality.

The mark of quality. Remember, that used to mean more than the NES seal of approval. That just means it works. Yeah, exactly. It won't brick your system. Yeah, and I feel like Capcom got the rights to this because like, oh, yeah, we like Disney stuff. This is as high caliber as Disney.

This is a very esteemed license. It will make a good game based on it. If I was then meeting with Tokyo Movie Shinsaw, and that, They told me, like, this is going to be our next Disney thing. They're like, well, we've got to get on the ground floor of that. Especially, it's probably easier for them to negotiate with TMS than it is for them to negotiate with Disney in America. Yeah, I could see a Japanese guy chopping a cigar and saying, we want to be in the Nemo business with you. I think they'd just be chain smoking.

That's true. That's true. If I may put it in a stereo. Well, I mean, I remember seeing this game, this game and I was like, okay, I'll play this game. And it was too hard for me and it still is. But then years later, 1992, or two years later, rather, seeing this movie and video stars, being like, why do they make a movie out of this game now? I mean, I know everyone played it, but it wasn't that big.

But only later learning the history of this, it's, you know, it was all unveiled to me. But I want to talk about the people behind this game, not super notable Capcom people, maybe a little bit. So the director is Tatsia Minami. He's often credited as Mickey or Super Mickey in his games. He directed the SNES version of Final Fight, Final Fight 2, and then he just went on to produce like everything at Capcom. So he's been attached to a ton of Capcom. Topcom stuff, too many things to list. But more importantly, the music is by Junco Tamia.

And her other OSTs include Bionicamando, Sweet Home, and Final Fight. So, Bionicamando, a great soundtrack. Wow. Yeah, and this game has a great soundtrack. So I do want to talk about the game and how it works. So it's very cute, it's very colorful, it's very well-made, it's very hard. So basically, you are thrown into these levels. You have to collect a certain number of keys. I don't think they tell you up front how many keys you need.

But you basically have to do a lot of backtracking, a lot of exploring. And in order to do this, you have to take use of animals throughout the levels in which you throw candy at them and they fall asleep. Then you touch them and then you either enter their body or become smaller and ride them. And they have various different abilities. And using these abilities will let you solve like sort of environmental puzzles in this game in order to reach these keys. That's how it works. I will say you are virtually defenseless until you hijack an animal. Oh, yeah.

Because you have the candy and you can throw it, but you will just start. stun these things that are coming at you. And when you do that, you actually make it harder to get around them because there are certain ones, I think it was in the second level, like these big snakes that pop out of the ground. And unless they're moving toward you, it's real hard to jump over them. Nemo's jump can barely clear a lot of things. Or there's a really specific timing to it where I found getting hit, I was getting hit a lot just jumping over enemies.

You can't jump on them in this game as Nemo. And if you freeze them in place for a few seconds, it actually makes them impossible to get past a lot of cases. You're actually better off just avoiding enemies until you get an animal that can kill them. Even your animal friends will hurt you, though, if you touch them. It's just like, this game, I feel, okay, so nothing makes Retronauts listeners matter than me saying something is difficult. And I want to say, it's okay if you don't think this is difficult. I have found unanimously most people do think this is a very difficult game.

And I feel like a lot of games at this time, it was made difficult artificially to combat the rental market. It's like, you're not going to beat this game in a weekend. You're going to sink months of your life into this game. There's no continue. There's no save. You start from level one. Oh, there are continues. Are they limited?

No. Okay. I know there's a stage select. But, okay, so there are continues. There's no stage select as far as I know. It's a code. It is a code. Okay, so there are continues, but there's no saving or anything like that.

It was made to be super hard, and it really is a difficult game. And it's weird to think this cuttie-cudely license is just like pure hell. And if you think of how little this game, this game is actually based on the movie. The movie opens to like the game. It's like, you're invited to the Slumberland. Come have fun. with us, be your prince. In the movie, he goes off and everyone is nice to him, and he gets to have a lot of fun.

And this is like, welcome to Slumberland. You die here. Welcome to your grave. You're now in hell. I do know Mickey Rooney's character is in it, but that's... Yeah, yeah. I mean, they use characters just to be like, well, we have to use these characters. They'll show up and give you a hint.

Is Mickey Rooney's character Flip? Yeah, flip the clown. Who shows up exactly once in this game at the very beginning and like, hey, little boy, who are you? This is no place for a little boy. You should leave here. Go ahead and collect all the... keys and open the store. By the way, my name's

Flip. It disappears. I'm an important character in the movie, but you won't see me again. That is his last line of dialogue. By the way, my name's Flip. Okay, I forgot about that. There's a lot of dialogue in this game for being as basic as it is. But yeah, this is sort of like Capcom thinking of the Mega Man idea and sort of like predicting

Kirby. So in Mega Man, you kill a boss, you get its power and then you can use that power, switch to it on the fly. This is sort of like Kirby in that you have to find the enemy to steal its power. So you have to locate the thing first to use it. So a lot of this is like, okay, I have the bee now. I need to go through this area. I have the frog now. I need to swim through this. And yeah, it's very much like that.

I think it's like, I was thinking, man, like, I want to play a little Nemo, but I want to be easier. And I was like, oh, right, I'll just play a Kirby game. That's what I'll just play. That is what Hal kind of learned with Kirby. That they may. Kirby games are so nice to you and friendly. They're easy to play. They are much easier than, say, a Mario, if that's the baseline of difficulty. I just want to say that B-suit, fucking bullshit. It's awful. Because the first time you get it, the first time you ever see a bee and feed it candy, so you get in there and it's like, okay, now I have to fly up to this tiny little platform that's above a bottomless pit. And I imagine most players found out the hard way you can only flap the bee's wings six times before it stops and you have to land on something or you plummet straight into that. There is a fat boy inside of that bee, so it's not like an actual bee.

They're very so cruel, though. Like, you can't explain it to you. It's just you're going to have to learn through trial and error. They could have put it without the bottomless pit there, and then I would have figured out, oh, okay, I can flap this many times, and then I can get up there. But, no, I will die and have to start the fucking level of now. You have to learn through pain, Michael. That drives me crazy. And Nintendo games are so much better of that.

If we're giving you a new power, this first area is a basically harmless playground to test out that power, and then we'll challenge you. Yeah. So let's actually go over the different forms. There's a surprising amount of them for a game of this vintage. So the frog is very much like the Mario 3 frog suit. It actually lets you jump on enemies to kill them. It has giant ears for some reason. Yeah, giant weird ears.

I don't get that. I guess maybe some frogs do have that. But you can also swim fast underwater. Go figure. The mole, you can tunnel through the earth. And I always love how in Japanese media, moles are always wearing sunglasses. It's a very Japanese cartoon touch.

Yeah, yeah. Or at least the sun hurts their eyes. It's so bright. Well, in Marvel Comics, Mole Man wears sunglasses too, but they're not cool guy sunglasses, that's what I like too. And it's not just the like Japanese designs and moles have glasses, but they're the kind

of sunglasses that like the punk kids in 80s anime and wear like I'm a bad boy. I'm wearing my school uniform the wrong way. What you get to do about? They don't play by the rules. So the salamander, you can basically squeeze through tiny passages and

sort of knuckles your way up walls. Also the gorilla does that too, but you can also punch enemies which is one of the few like direct attacks you can do in this game with an animal form. I have very few of these, I find that on this game are usually running away from things or on the defensive. They don't give you a lot of verbs for

killing in this game. Maybe that's by design. It's like, Nima wouldn't kill anything. The salamander is defenseless. You can try to jump on enemies with it and it won't work. Yeah. But it's also weird because like its eyes are closed, so it looks like, oh, I've actually put this creature to sleep and I'm controlling it

while sleepwalking or something. Yeah, I mean, everything, you're inside their bodies while they're asleep, which is very bizarre. This does not happen in the movie, and I'm glad. Lino does not throw candy in the movie. The closest thing that happens in the movie, like I said, they open the same way.

And they're like, oh, come play with a princess. And Nimo's like, oh, that's a girl. I don't want to play with a girl. And it's like, oh, she brought you cookies. And he's like, oh, I like cookies. So in the game, it's like, oh, we brought you candy. Use this to kill things or put them to sleep. Well, I think, like, okay, writing around on the lizard

with its eyes closed, that's like mildly creepy. What's really creepy to me is the mole. Because, like, so a lot of the animals, animals in this game, you will wear them as a suit. And it's like the frog suit and Super Mario where like you're sticking your head out of their mouth. Right. But then the mole, Nemo like puts on his hard hat and like his head is just sort of trailing

behind like the hood on the hoodie. Oh, you're right, man. So it's it's kind of like, did you just skin the mole or is his head like flattened and malformed now? Little Nemo has a Kronenbergian implications in terms of body horror. There's also like a fish with like big arms. it looks like it should be able to punch things, but it doesn't. Yeah, what a rip-off.

You just cut off the top layer of it, and Nemo sits in it like a submarine. And when you don't want to use his animals anymore, you hit Select and they're gone. Exactly. Little Nemo, what have you done? Where's the mouse? He was alive a second ago. They went back to their homes, and they're perfectly fine and safe. I'm sure.

So more animal friends, the hermit crab, who I like, he can dig through sand underwater. The fish, as we talked about, can swim faster, but can't attack despite his giant boxing glove hands. And the mouse can climb walls. A lot of things in this game can climb walls. But for some reason, all mice have hammers naturally. It's an important trait, and that allows Nemo to smash certain rocks. How, you know, why, what gives a mouse a hammer? That doesn't make any sense.

I don't know. Maybe it's like a Western exterminator thing. That could be it, yeah. Reminding me of the Game and Watch classic vermin, which is about smashing rats with hammers. That's a very humane and clean way to kill vermin. But, yeah, there is, oh, God. the Nemo's house stage is like the biggest pain in the ass because you have to get all the way up to the attic to find the mouse and the mouse is extremely vulnerable and you have to get them all the way over to like where there's the special wall that only he can smash through and if you do something like accidentally hit select on the way guess what you got to do all that stuff again what I find weird about this in the game is that they kind of get bored of the animal idea almost immediately it's like stage one okay stage two okay stage three you're on a train there's no animals you're now in like even deeper hell.

That train stage is a miserable bastard. Oh, yes. It is just like, even with quicksaves, I'm a baby. Even with quicksaves, I was like, this is too much. How did anyone, how did anyone, how did any, I dare you to tell me you finished it? I know some people did, but man, you had to be like a super genius to finish that stage. I mean, I know I beat this game when it was out, so I must have done it somehow. I think I was just miserable trial and error over again.

And it's one of those things where it's like, okay, I finally got past this bit by dumb. luck. We could have all been learning languages or learning the program and said we learned how to finish a little Nemo. This is one of those games that like you just leave your Nintendo paused and on for weeks while you get through it. Don't tell your parents you did that well actually some

parents you'd want to warn and be like please don't turn it off. I'm just here like Yeah and like I said they get bored with the idea at stage 8 if you have the fortitude to make it that far they're like here's a thing you can use to kill things with. It's the morning star. It's the magic wand from the movie. It charges up. You can actually have a melee attack. I'm like, why couldn't I have this the entire game? This would have made things not easy, but manageable. I want to like this game, but it is so miserable, despite how cute it is and how interesting it is and just how full of life it is. It's just like, it's so punishing. Sorry, Michael.

Well, I mean, that and the plasma beam from the NES Strider are like two things that I remember, like, reading about in Nintendo Power is like, oh, this is something you can do. And like, going through the whole game expecting like, okay, well, I can do that now. right, what do I need to push? Is it like down and be? Like, how do I get the scepter out? Yeah, it's weird. And it's like at that point in the game they start introducing bosses. There's like three bosses after you get the scepter. It's a completely different structure, no keys to collect. And then there are a few stages like

that train thing. It knows that you can't backtrack, so it puts all the keys right at the end. And I think it even gives you extra keys too in case you mess up somewhere. That makes me feel like this was like multiple teams were brought in and it just was no communication between the two. So one team made their Nemo.

game, the other team made the other, and there's really no that can sometimes explain jumps in a story like that. That's for sure. So there is another Nemo game. One I've never seen in the wild. Apparently, it was released internationally just called Nemo. That's the Japanese title of Little Nemo Adventures in Slumberland.

A November 1990 arcade release, it is sort of a brawler slash platformer. One person plays as Nemo. One person plays as Flip the clown. Nemo has his power rod or morning star. Flip has a cane. And that's really all there is to it, really.

Yeah. It's a very, like, especially compared to the NES game, it's a very straightforward just like run and gun type of game. There are a couple of stages that they have in common. Like, there's a train stage in each. That's right. In Nemo, the arcade game, they get it right out of the way at the beginning. It's the first stage. Yeah, and this has

a little bit more to do with the movie than the NES game. If the NES game is 5%, this is more like 15% in that. It sort of moves in the same way with the plot of the movie. It borrows things in order, but doesn't have any regard for the plot. It's just like those weird goblin guys are there. You eventually end up in

Nightmareland and there are some things directly taken from the movie. But they didn't really care too much about being faithful in either of these games. I do have an issue with the arcade game if I can climb up on the SJW box. Oh, no. In that, okay, so Flip the Clown was always like a borderline

municipal character but he's green so he's not actually blackface or anything. The arcade game makes him black. They do and that's an odd choice because little Nemo thankfully, they took him out of, they didn't actually introduce him in the movie, but it was Nemo Flip in an African native, I think, named Impi, and he was outrageously offensive by 2017 standards, even by 1990s standards.

So maybe they're like, I like that blackface guy. Let's add more of that to flip. It's just a weird choice to make. Yeah, that is a weird choice. Though I, this is my understanding of it for reading a Kitaku article on it, that like, blackface in Japan is not seen the same way as it is in America. Not that there aren't people who

say it is offensive and shouldn't be done, but it is more acceptable there than it is in America. This is my impression of it. Please tell me if I'm wrong. I'm also ignorant, but I mean obviously less context. They're not living in a world where they're seeing the effects of that sort of racism, that

specific kind of racism. They don't have the baggage of hundreds of years of slavery and mistreatment and racism. But that's something that actually happens a lot with old comic strips when they try to bring them back into modern stuff and redo it, that they know that people remember

say the spirit and the spirit's really cool and but not everybody read every issue of the spirit and they really don't remember that there was a character name I believe it was White Wash Jones who who you know just search for him you'll see some pictures

and it's just like it's I feel bad even saying this about Will Eisner because he is one of the most important people in comic book history, but like, and he, I think he felt bad about it as he became more evolved as a creator, but there's stuff like that. It's just like in the 60s, in the 40s or way earlier than that for Nemo, Nemo, it was seen as normal. It wasn't right, but they thought it was acceptable then.

So, yeah, the arcade game, I would say, emulate it if you want. It's a very frivolous, like, hour-long game. It's pretty, I'll give it that. It's very pretty. It's more fun than it looks. watching someone else play through. Like, if you just jump in, and, yeah, if you're playing it on Maine, you probably have infinite continues. So it's really just one you can just sort of charge through constantly dying.

Yeah, I mean, it's like money is meaningless when you're emulating an arcade game. So we're actually getting this in on time. I do want to read a few patron questions because this episode's a few days late. And I want to reward you by saying things you wrote with my voice. So maybe Henry or Michael can read one of these two. So I want to start with Kenneth Hoyt, who says, talking about Little Nemo. This is all about Little Nemo the Dreammaster, by the way. I played this game first before seeing the anime or having heard of the Windsor McKay comics, which looked beautiful,

and I've always wanted to buy someday when I have too much money to spend. I remember the animation of him jumping into bed before each level was really emphatic to me. It looked like such a comfortable bed. The game eventually becomes Nintendo hard, and I've never beaten the auto-scrolling train level without safe states. The music for this game is top-notch, and the game mechanic of being able to ride monsters was really new to me as a kid. And great, once you figured out which ones work, on by trial and error. This is also one of the few NES games I still own, despite not having had an NES for decades. Thank you, Kenneth.

See, don't you yell at me on Twitter about this game being hard. You also have to yell at Kenneth. That's right, Kenneth. I'm throwing you under the bus. Please don't do that, guys. I'm just kidding. But yes, more validation for me that this is a hard game. Garbage Town says, as everyone has said this game is a prime example of a game that was really easygoing and handholding.

in the first level to draw you in and then promptly uses that hand to smack you around repeatedly from the second level on out. The music is great and they really nailed the dream world of the 1900s aesthetic really well. 10 out of 10 would nail animals in the head with candy again.

I find that animals don't fall asleep, me, throw candy at them. They attack you or they just walk away. Animals don't actually like candy. I died more than once being touched by a bee that like lunged at me suddenly. I just hate how the friendly animals that are sitting there peacefully will hurt you when you touch them. Like, what did that frog do to me? That's very unfair.

Yes. So you could say I curated all of these to agree with me, but you'd be wrong. Or maybe right. I don't know. Well, Dave Funk says, I love this game and I love this movie. At the time, not having seen any anime, this was my first glimpse into such fluid, colorful and beautiful animation.

I showed it to my six-year-old daughter and three-year-old son recently, and like their dad, they loved it too. As for the game, I received it as a gift on my seventh birthday, and it was immediately enthralling. Beautiful sprites, great music, and super fun game mechanics. That's great as kids like the movie. I will say, Dave, don't let your kids play Little Nemo.

I will call Child Protective Services on you, and you will be taken away from them, rightfully. I can't even imagine handing that game to, I don't want to say kids today can't take hard games. But they play different type of hard games, I would say they are up for a hard game, but not one that is obtuse. Yeah, where's my teens react to Little Nemo, the Dreammaster? video that we'll get three million hits. You're going to have to make it yourself. You got to go looking for them teens. I don't want to talk to teens.

I don't even like teens when I was a teen. No, they're no fun. So thanks for listening, folks. I hope you enjoyed this examination of Little Nemo. Again, just how important it is to the history of comics and animation and how unimportant it is to the history of movies and video games. But still, there's some stuff worth salvaging. And, yeah, thanks for listening.

Thank you, Michael and Henry, for sticking around. We've been recording for like 9 million hours. but I feel like we weren't too loopy. So if you want to find me on Twitter, folks, I'll be on there forever as Bob Servo because I never stop posting. If you stop posting, you're not using Twitter correctly. And I will let Henry tell you all about Talking Simpsons,

which is a fantastic show and Talking Critic, which is rolling out. Yes, if you liked all this animation conversation here, Bob and I do it full time at TalkingSimpsons.com, or you can get access to it early on patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, where also there are a ton of exclusive. There, like interviews, the season five wrap up a deleted scenes video, and the exclusive Talking Critic show where we go through every episode of The Critic from the beginning.

We are about five episodes in, and Michael is one of our co-host on it, and he is great, right? Yes, thank you. I like the way you said animation conversation there, because it was like Fox's animation domination. Animation conversation. We're shoving our conversations in your ears. We just want to converse. We don't want to dominate. No, no.

It's more like animation submission. As always, you can follow me on Twitter at Wikipara's. That's W-I-K-I-K-I-R-A-Z, not easy. And you can hear me every Friday on Vigigamapocalypse at Vigigamapocalypse.com. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you again very soon for another episode of Retronauts Micro. Take it easy. The President's Day Sale at Mattress Firm has been extended.

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Restrictions apply, valid at participating locations only. For offer, details, visit mattress firm.com slash sale. The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House if 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.