Retronauts - Retronauts Micro 95: Mailbag - Final Fantasy VII, Dragon Quest, and more

Episode Date: September 7, 2018

Nadia Oxford dials in to swap listener mail submissions with Bob and Jeremy for episodes we've recorded but not yet published. Get a preview of things to come in the weeks ahead with community opinions on Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy VII, and more!

As we can Retronauts, it's Speedy Delivery. Hi, everyone. Welcome to a mystery episode of Retronauts. It's a mailbag. how this is going to be used. Maybe as a micro, maybe as a backup segment. Maybe we'll just throw it at you when you least expect it. But in any case, you're listening to it now. So that's what really matters. And I am Jeremy Parrish, also on this episode, because he's always on the episodes. Hey, it's Bob Mackie. And not always on the episode, but on this one, it is on the

Skype line. Nadia Oxford. I am here. Hi. Nice to be here. Hi. Thanks for coming back to our show. It's been so long. Actually, I don't know when this is coming, when this is posting after the Dragon Quest episode. But anyway, Nadia was here for Dragon Quest 2 discussion, and now she's here to read or respond to your letters, listener mail, about Dragon Quest and other things. So we should just jump right in and read these letters. So since Nadia is here and letters in the mail,

we're going to read them to you now. So since Nadia is here, and we just talked about Dragon Quest 2. We are going to read letters about Dragon Quest 1 and 2 from you, listeners, who have fond, or maybe not so fond, memories of Dragon Quest 1 and 2. So starting with an email from Louis Antunez. I know Dragon Quest 2 hasn't remembered as fondly as other entries,

particularly if your memories of the game stem primarily from the NES or Famicom versions. But to me, even those versions hold a sense of nostalgia, particularly the music. The arrangements for the NES and Famicom versions of Dragon Quest Monday music were quite basic. Like many other games, early games for the system, one pulse wave channel plus the triangle channel, blah, blah, technical stuff. Dragon Quest 2 not only uses both pulse wave channels, the triangle channel, and even very occasionally the noise channel for music, but it also manages to use tricks like pulse wave tone switching, octave switching, and low volume note releases instead of abrupt ends,

to add richness and even punginess to both the music and sound effects, such that the oral experience of the sequel as far as are, passes that of the first game. That, and I love the mischievous nature of the battle music in Dragon Quest, too. Is it mischievous? I guess that's a good kind of descriptor for it, mischievous. It has a kind of a bouncy, hey, you know, lookout sort of theme to it.

Look out. You're going to get blown up by a rock crag. Game over. I can play it if you guys want to hear, like, a little taste of it. Do it. Yeah. It's pretty spooky. Yeah, it goes from, like, Arabian Nights to sort of like a ragtime thing.

But it's all sort of minor key and weird. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. That's almost as interesting as the way Final Fantasy 4's music is like the battle theme is, if you listen to it, it's like mariachi music. I never thought of to do that. I've been playing it a lot for, like, you know, recording and stuff.

And after, you know, 10 hours of battles, I was like, I could see, like, a mariachi band playing this music without having to change it too much. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Final Fantasy Six goes for the Hasidic sort of theme. Hmm. Yeah, I can hear that as like a trumpet, like, do-l-da-doo. Yeah, that's great. I think you've been playing that game too much now, Jerry. I have.

There's not so changed too much Final Fantasy for. But, you know, I have a whole lot of footage for it. If you ever want HD footage of Final Fantasy 4, my God, I've got you covered. Bob, why don't you take a litter? Sure, this is from the website. This is from Game Corner Guides, who says, Like many others, I received Dragon Warrior for free with Nintendo Power. I did eventually finish it, but I never found it particularly appealing

and didn't try the other NESDQ games as a result, even though their Nintendo Power coverage looked pretty cool. Much, much later, when the Dragon Quest 4 through 6 remakes were coming out to great reviews, I decided to pick up Dragon Warrior 1 and 2, as well as Dragon Warrior 3 for Game Boy Color, which we mentioned earlier, to try to catch up with the series. I played Dragon Warrior 1 again and enjoyed it with the much faster balance, and I love Dragon Warrior 2 for about 80% of its duration.

Then I entered the cave to Rhone and quickly got frustrated with the difficulty spike. Quote unquote, it can't get harder than this, I thought. Then, of course, Rone itself. Brutal. I feel like this part of the game really ruined and otherwise fantastic entry in the series. It killed my desire to play Dragon Warrior 3 and Beyond at the time, which is too bad because years later I'd come to find the Dragon Warrior 3 and five are utterly amazing games.

So thanks for keeping me from that Dragon Warrior 2. I'm totally diss Dragon Quest 4 there. I guess Dragon Warrior 2 did not throw off a lot of Japanese players because didn't Dragon Warrior 3 end up being the biggest selling game until 7? Yeah, Dragon Quest 2 was the breakout game for the series. The first one was kind of like, okay, sure, but then two came out and everyone was like, damn, this is good. So I don't know.

I guess the difficulty spike bothered me, of course. Americans are babies. Yeah, Dragon Quest always just kind of loved those. Early Dragon Quest loves those difficulty spikes. There's one in three as well when you take the cave to Baramos's castle. And I remember distinctly the instruction book slash guide saying, if you can't handle this cave, you can't handle Barramos. So I felt very inferior.

All right, here's a letter from Fight Club. I was spoiled with a Commodore 64 and Ultima 4 as a child. So when my friends started crowing about Dragon Warrior, I turned up my nose. No conversations, just one-note villagers repeating stock phrases, no party members, just one hero, no visible monsters on the world map? To me, the game seemed paper-thin and not worth my time. I never gave the series a chance until Dragon Quest 1 and 2 got ported to Game Boy with some welcome tweaks. But the mere act of making two long-form RPGs portable made the experience more worthwhile in my eyes. I ended up enjoying them and playing Dragon Quest 3 on Game Boy as well.

Then the series spun off Rocket Slime and the world was a better place for it. It's a true, utter crime that we did not get, what, now three rocket slime games, or just two? There are three, and we missed two of them. Oh, so there was a Game Boy Advance, which we didn't get. And 3DS. And 3DS, which is so good. I played like four or five hours of it, and you get, like, pirate ships and have battles. That's great.

So we only got the, there are three, and we only got the DS one then. I'm glad we got the one, but we really got cheated. The world is not fair. So any more letters on the website? Dragon Quest. So this is from Nathan Spicer. He wrote a lot. I want to Jazeer went on his Dragon Quest 2 comments. So he says Dragon Quest 2 was released a few months before the first Final Fantasy. And while it suffers from balance issues due to a troubled and rush development cycle, it has none of the bugs that final fantasy has. Ooh, throw Nacier under the bus there. It's sort of my guilty pleasure for the series, since I like how it has a massive world that really opens up when you go on that search for the seals. People, again, complain about grinding, but it always strikes me as a modern complaint. Grinding is usually a problem for people because they're playing. with a strategy guide, which means they aren't wandering around as much to get into random encounters. It ends up creating an effect where the player is basically running from half of their battles by never having them in the first place.

And I'll say, Nathan, I partially agree with you. I feel like in Dragon Quest 2, the economy was very harsh. And I remember having to do a lot of grinding just to afford things, especially because now it's like, okay, now you have to buy things for everybody, not just one character. Yeah. So I feel like grinding. was not just part of the experience of finding your way. It was at certain points you had to stop what you were doing

and get all the best equipment for your weak-ass party members. Yeah, I remember spending so much time, just trying to grind for that. I think it was the iron pole. Sorry, the iron spear. I just, it was like my, my, I just remember spending so much time grind to get the iron spear. It was my, I just wanted it so bad. And when you get it, it's a nice sense of accomplishment. But, yeah, it took some time to do.

Yeah, and in Dragon Quest games, they always, say, okay, here's, so here's a store, here's the weak-ass bamboo spear, here is like the slightly nicer, you know, dagger, but if you really want to wait, there's a really cool sword, and you just, it's stupid to get anything but the best weapon because you're just wasting your time. So you kind of have to stop. All right, from JP McDavitt, Dragon Quest 1 and 2, I tried out Dragon Warrior from the library as a kid and didn't understand it. Years later, I bought it at Funkoland, and luckily the manual was included, which gives you the basic template for grinding.

I learned to love the grind under the right circumstances, a quality that's probably helped me out in life in general. Eventually, I finished one through three, and the battery on my old cartridge of four is still working last time I checked. I'm a coder now, and just recently at work, we ran into a bug trying to insert more than 65,535 characters into a database column. This made me smile, and I'll leave the explanation to you. That's a 16-bit energy error, right?

I think so. Yes. No. What is that? 65,535. I think that's a 16-bit. bit, like, integer. That sounds right.

Sure. I'm going to go with that. I'm not a math person. So we have other topics to cover, but there are a lot of Dragon Quest letters. Gish. Are there any more on the website? Oh, yeah, there's a few more I can go through. And they're fairly short, so I'm doing some selective editing, by the way.

But J.W. Harris says, he's talking about Dragon Quest. Dragon Quest 1 was not a bad game, really, but its single character structure means the essential casino, test your luck nature of the game, is a lot closer to the surface, with less space for strategy. Dragon Quest 2 is a bit better, but you still only get up to a three-character party, and you still spend a good amount of it alone. The best Famicom slash NESDQ game was

three, which is greatly replayable due to the fact that you create the other three members of your party yourself. Four's characters have more character, but it also takes direct control of your group away from you for the last chapter of the game. I kind of like just how many party members

you have and four at the end of the game. Yeah. Everyone just kind of stuff into the caravan. It's a neat little, like, I don't know, it was very ambitious for a 1990 RPG, but I can understand why you would be put off by not being able to control all of those. All right. So I apologize for the pounding next door. I think the people next door are playing Dragon Quest 2 and just smashing their faces

and frustration as they get to the cave to roam. They're like banging, hey, let me, let me in, let me in, I want to talk, Dragon Quest 2. Somebody talk about Dragon Quest 2? I love that game. So we're going to do one last Dragon. Quest Letter. This is from Kevin Boyer. Dragon Quest Warrior 1 still represents my favorite presentation

of JRP's. The spiral fade in for combat, especially on the overworld map, where the combat overlays the world map. The flash of the enemy's sprite before battle begins. Maybe this was to represent it approaching the hero. The meaty sound of the hero's attacks, that beautiful orange red NES flash when the attack connected.

The screen jitter when the enemy hit the hero. Saving Princess Gwailet, I remember most. I died several times against the green dragon, so when I finally won, I was beyond excited. The dialogue of Gweilin embracing the hero, the short musical did he afterwards, and her exclaiming, I'm so happy and topped off with the sprite of the hero, carrying the princess all the way back to the king, swooned me as a 10-year-old boy. I truly felt a hero. P.S., please play Dragon Quest Builders.

It's good. Yeah, I think maybe two was the first one. They could have done this in one, though. I could be misremembering, but two was where the UI would just turn red when you were about to die. It was very demoralizing. Yeah. Yeah, no, that was one and two. One and two, okay.

Yeah, yeah, I just, I mean, for a game where you're fighting in a black void, I like that they did something to dress up a little bit. And I think if you're getting close to death, the screen turns yellow, but that might be, I don't know if that's in two and three or just three, but that's also very nerve-wracking. So there are a lot of other responses about Dragon Quest, but they seem to mostly boil down to either people playing the games for the first time with Nintendo Power's promotion

or people having played computer RPGs and saying this is for babies and later changing their minds. But now we're going to move along to another RPG. Many years later, Final Fantasy 7. And we have that episode. We haven't recorded that yet.

But I'm sure many people are familiar with this game. I've received multiple messages from a person that is very worried that we're going to be mean to it. I love Final Fantasy 7. I'm going to be mean to it just because of that person. Just to spite them. Okay. Okay, so from Tom Q, the community manager for Laced Records. Cool. I had no notion at all that JRP's even existed until I came across a preview for Final Fantasy 7 in the UK magazine CVG in May 1997.

The screenshots were so vividly colorful that they couldn't fail to grab my attention. Everything seemed so exotic. At age 12, I think I was primarily impressed by the Orientalism of it all, that especially Japanese quality in the game's visual design, as presented by CVG. My single strongest gaming memory across 27 years of playing was of watching a friend reach the final floors of Midgar before busting out a window on that motorcycle maybe a week before I laid my hands on my own copy. The prelude, the opening cutscene,

the what the heck is that hellhouse design, cross-dressing in the wall market. I'd recall it all screen by screen without any effort, probably because I've played the game 10-plus times over 20 years. What primarily sees the game into my memory and affections is Nobu Uamatsu's melodic and harmonic work, a creator at the absolute height of his musical creativity, even if later scores are more refined.

So what do we have on the website, Bob? We have a lot of stuff here. Let me grab one. So this comes from David Camacho. He says, the thing that I remember most fondly in retrospect is just how confusing it was when I saw Final Fantasy 7 previews and magazines. I was a huge fan of Final Fantasy 3, and I was extremely confused about where 4, 5, and 6 were.

Were they also on the PlayStation? Were they on the SNES? And I just missed them. That and the petty jealousy and anger at classmates who were able to afford a PlayStation and FF7 so early only to cast it aside because, quote, unquote, you can't even move your guys in the fights. And I'm sure I'll talk about that in the episode we're going to record. But I remember people like turning against me in high school because you're like, you said this game was good. What's going on? I select things from a menu.

I can't move my guys. But yeah, people were not ready for that. That's not how the game was advertised. I was right, we were not ready. Yeah, ooh. But not in a cool way. I want my money back. From John McLean, who is probably expecting us to make a diehard joke, and I won't, because I'm classy.

Frankly, I'm sick of all the Bob Mackey jokes, and I want them to end. I grew up as a Nintendo kid, so the Nintendo Power propaganda machine had me super hyped for the N64. So as a huge fan of FF2 and 3, as we knew them in the U.S., I was very upset when I heard the Final Fantasy 7 was going to be a PlayStation exclusive. However, I was determined not to betray Nintendo until a friend invited me to over to show me his newly purchased PlayStation, complete with a copy of FF7. After watching the cinematic intro with a close-up on ERIS, zooming out to show the entirety of Midgar, and then sweeping back in to show our protagonists jumping off the train I was hooked, I got a PlayStation and a copy of the game as soon as I could

and primarily stuck with Sony consoles for the next decade. The Midgar section of the game was particularly good with visuals, music, and story all coming together to create this feeling of dread and hopelessness for our heroes. Um, yeah, so anyway, well, yeah, that was, uh, some more space to some other people, but yes, that intro was quite compelling. And nobody learned from it even square themselves. Just like, it was the perfect way to start an RPG, but nobody, people, I can't even think of one, another example that just starts with here, go do something, not like, wake up in bed and talk to people for two hours and then fight your first enemy in, in minute 45 or whatever. You're in a battle immediately.

Did that with Final Fantasy 6. Well, yeah, but that came before. Seven was basically riffing on six. 13 did that, but no one likes 13, so no one gives it credit. 13 did that, but it's like for the next 10 hours, you will have like two battle options. Pretty much. Ouch. The other 13 games are way better, guys.

Lightning returns is good. Yeah, I would say, great. Cat was selling me on that one. I got to play it. From Scott Schneider. Emerging into the overworld of Final Fantasy 7 for the first time after escaping Midgar floored me. One of the main appeals to me in video games is exploring a new world. Never before had I experienced one that looked like a world. That combined with the story sequence

at Nibbleheim won me over. I'd like to Final Fantasy 7 up until that point, but after that point it was something that resonated with me. Yeah, that was a very, that's still, I still love thinking of that scene where you go into Nibelheim for the first time and, you know, clouds talk enough this town of his and then you get there and everyone's like, who are you? Yeah. Why is this town not burnt to the ground? What's going on here? So that's a really compelling hook. Or I just really having, I mean, even following previews and things, I didn't really realize there was going to be a world map. So once you hit that and you know, it's like, oh, there's so much more out there.

It's a great feeling if you didn't see it coming. So this is from Met Man Moss, and he says, Whatever unfortunate trends may have come about in the JRP industry, thanks to Final Fantasy 7 success, the game seriously had so amazing presentation for the time. Like, I'm still really impressed by how good the pre-rendered backgrounds and in-battle models look. I mean, it's obvious that Square always had some really talented art direction, folks, if you start looking back at their Super Famicom works, starting around romancing saga or Final Fantasy 5 or so. The SFC and PS1 eras both have some of my favorite square output.

Admittedly, I don't mind extreme verbosity in Western RPGs, but that's because Western RPGs tend to have better writing and often a wide range of conversation topics and options to choose from. In JRPGs, you really just sit and read, yes. I replayed Final Fantasy 7 like five years ago I was unemployed But I have to say yes

Even though Those graphics are low resolution The grittiness and the little details And like just the fun things you can find in the background Yes absolutely Are so much fun And you don't see that in any other game And I feel like in an 8 and 9

They wanted to make a more realistic world Instead of just saying Oh that's a fun idea to put in the background You know I just love all the weird just the weird and funny things that are in the backgrounds of the Final Fantasy 7 environments that Yeah, especially Midgar. Yeah, yeah. Just like the slums.

Every room is distinct. And I love the fact they obviously sat there and said, what can we put in this background to represent the people who live here? Like you go into one town, sorry, one house in Midgar where there's a couple whose son had just loved home. And you could see, they're talking about what a punk he was, and how much they miss him, nonetheless. And you go into his bedroom and you see, like, kind of a jolly Roger flag and all those other stuff that kind of indicates, yes, he was a bit of a punk. But it's just a lot of life-nosed backgrounds still, even though, as you say, they are low-resolution. I'm also thinking just the wackier backgrounds in the Golden Saucer, that haunted house you sleep in. And all the fun little, like, things, all the fun little gags that are around you, like, the ghosts are playing cards, and there's just monsters everywhere.

It's so cute and great, and there's so much detail packed into those very low-res backgrounds. And the innkeeper is he kind of comes down on a rope. Yeah, yeah. And there's like a little scream sound effect when he drops down. Yeah, they really put a lot of love and care into Midgard. It's maybe my favorite place in an RPG. If I don't mention this, just in case I don't mention this on the proper episode, I love that even something like the game tutorial segment is diagetic.

Instead of having like the tutorial houses or something or just like menus explaining how you do stuff, you can get a tutorial in the game because by going into a place where there's a bunch of kids who are like, wow, a soldier first class, cool, what's it? like to be an elite soldier for Shinra. And so your tutorial is cloud showing off for these kids, like telling them about what it takes to be a badass and how you use materia and stuff. I love that. Like, no game since then has done that where they've just been like, you know, like let's

integrate everything about even the game mechanics into the story. Yeah, that's really cool. And the times when they don't do that in FF7, like when they're explaining how to use the finger cursor, cloud's like. What the hell? Finger? Yeah. This guy is, like, confused about this cursor floating there.

They didn't take it too seriously. No, you're totally right. I totally forgot about how the tutorials are optional and how they're used, just like in Final Fantasy. So it's like an inversion of Final Fantasy 4 and 6 where they have, uh, so in Final Fantasy 4 and 6, uh, the tutorials are optional, but they're also like schools where people are learning and you just listen to know their conversations to find out about the world, but it's cool that Cloud is an established, like, he knows what he's doing. and I like how the game design supports the fiction of cloud.

Yeah, yeah. And I think later on. Until you realize that cloud is a fiction. Yeah. Oh, maybe that's like a secret like foreshadowing. It's like, why does this guy think he knows so much? He's really putting on airs. He's trying way too hard.

Were we going to say no idea? That's a good point, yeah. I was going to say later on in the game, you learn advanced skills from the same people except their ghosts because Midgard by this point, the sector they were in has collapsed. I thought that was kind of cool and sad at the same time. All right. So we'll do one last Final Fantasy 7 question. This is from, or not question, but mail letter.

Yes, that thing. From John Lansing. In the fall of 1998, I had just started high school and was obsessively playing Pokemon Blue. I didn't even know what RPGs were and was totally enraptured by the leveling up stats and battle systems. A few months later, my friend showed me Final Fantasy 7 and it was a complete watershed moment. I didn't realize Pokemon was just one entry and entire genre of games waiting for me to explore. Final Fantasy 7 delivered a much more complex battle system and leveling system. along with an engrossing storyline.

I bought a PlayStation, leveled every character to 99, defeated all the weapons, and went on to become a huge fan of the genre. When people would make fun of Pokemon, I would defend it saying, it's an RPG, just like Final Fantasy 7. I don't think it made a difference,

but Final Fantasy 7 had a cool factor about it, they gave me confidence in my gaming hobby that lives to this day. Ah, an awakening. What, the times were different back then? I think games were cool or what? So Trevor Welch says on the website, Trevor Welch says on the website

I only ended up playing Final Fantasy 7 because my brother ended up buying a PlayStation with several games including it I think his group of friends at the time talked him into buying it because he has never been a big fan of video games and no longer plays them, wow, he actually didn't like the game but I became

obsessed with it. I was about 13 or 14 when I first played it, but I was unfamiliar with the series and RPGs in general. I never played a game that actually told a huge story with multiple characters. I could only compare it to Pokemon because the characters didn't move in battle you just chose their attacks and watched it when I left Midgar for the first time

I actually didn't understand the world map at first why was Midgar so tiny my character so big? Where was I supposed to go as I started visiting more towns and locations it became apparent to me how big this game was although it's dropped down the list of my all-time favorite games it still ranks pretty

high and have some of my favorite memories playing games and I have to say it's funny because what I love about Final Fantasy 7 maybe the most I'm not sure I love how it carries over the the abstractions that were necessary in 16-bit RPGs but were no longer necessary but they weren't thinking that way like sort of the scale of the characters

and the town and the world maps and things like that I just love how those abstractions are in the game but much prettier and they don't need to be there eventually eight would just be like oh these are all real people the world's to scale you know it in a way in a way I mean the towns are still are still

you're still like Godzilla size but it's less of you walking onto like an icon or whatever to jump to the town. and no sign up. Pluto TV is the easy and completely legal way to watch your favorite TV shows and hit movies. What are you waiting for? Never pay for TV again. Download Pluto TV for free on all your favorite devices today. If you like this show, then you must check out the Adam Carolla show every weekday on podcast one. The Ace Man still holds the title of the number one

downloaded podcast in the world as he complains about whatever's on his mind with a celebrity pals like Dr. Drew Pinksy, Joe Coy, and many, many more. So don't miss it weekdays on podcast one or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. All right. So let's move on to the final segment for this mailbag segment. And that is remakes and remasters and reboots. So this is from David Coe. and this actually wraps back around to a previous topic. I would have to say my favorite remake of all time

is Dragon Quest 5 for Nintendo DS. I first played the game on my first computer when I got into emulation in the mid-2000s. Despite the very simplistic graphics, especially compared to Final Fantasy 4, I enjoyed the multi-generation story rendered through the cromulent English translation. It is promulant.

It is. I never finished the game as I had homework to do and other things to distract me like Final Fantasy 7. Wow, this is really just bringing it all together. This ought to be the last one. When Nintendo decided to publish the DS remakes, my interest was revived, and I played through all of the Zanethian trilogy, and unlike some haters out there, thoroughly enjoyed the multi-layered, heavily accented, punny translation. I was a humanities major at the time, and I'm grateful for these games and helping me hang on to my comprehension of the books I had to read for class. That's cool.

Oh, the letter's not over? Yeah, but that's okay. That's all we need to go over. I'm glad Nadi is here. So I've been writing professionally on the internet since 2001, but Dragon Quest 5. five was the, I rarely wrote reviews at the time, but Dragon Quest 5, DS was the first game I formally reviewed, and it was actually on a

site that Nadia and I both worked for 61 frames per second. Oh yeah, yeah. And it's dead. Yeah, what was that a spinoff of? A website called Nerve, which I'm still not sure what that is, even though it's like one of the oldest websites that still functions. There were soft core galleries on that site. I still didn't

understand what I was doing. It was a weird site. It was also the kind of place where they got a new CEO and he looked at our stuff and he said, games, and we don't want games, and we were gone. It was really a shame. And that rarely happens on the internet. That never happened. Let's cover games. Oh, shit. Let's not do that anymore. Let's stop. Let's pivot to video,

but not video games. Those are for dorks. Everyone made a lot of good choices. Bob, are there any awesome letters on the website? Yeah, let's do one more. And actually, I have not seen what this guy's talking about, but now I want to. So writer Rigo says, I have been watching Tim Rogers' Final Fantasy

7 video series. I believe that's for Kotaku. Is that correct? Yes. I think so. And it's quite interesting to see how bizarre this game really was. Oh, we've moved on to a new topic. Oh, I'm sorry, what was a new topic? Reboots and remasters. Oh, I'll go up. Sorry. So, Seth A. Finkelstein says, I think that Game Freak doesn't get enough credit for basically perfecting

the remake. I devoured Fire Red and Leaf Green as a preteen and Heart Gold and Soul Silver as a senior in high school because they added the quality of life elements from later games to make the game the experience I remembered, not what I actually played. While I certainly feel that sometimes their new games don't iterate quite enough,

particularly in the DS era, It still feels like they have been building a single experience for 20 years instead of stopping and starting with reboots like Star Fox or Donkey Kong. And I got to say, Seth, Leaf Green was the last Pokemon game I played. And I will gladly play any remake of the first Pokemon game because I feel like it is the most pure Pokemon, the most, like, frictionless, just fun ride to the end. You got to go for Let's Go? Is that what that is? Pretty much, yeah. It is a remake of Yellow, basically.

Okay. I didn't look too much into that, but now I'm more interested. Like, I kind of have so much nostalgia for just all of the core, like, Gen 1 Pokemon stuff. Like, I can name all the towns and all the gym leaders and all the Pokemon and everything like that. I have a real attachment to that first generation. Oh, this is for you. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But, yeah, you're right.

Gen 1 are in our midst folks. Game Freak does a really good job of just constantly, you know, bringing out new Pokemon games, basically to tread water while they frantically develop more characters, more Pokemon, and 3D graphics. stuff like that. But yeah, I've always thought they did a great job with their remakes. All right. Here's a pleasantly brief letter from James. Dear Retronauts, my favorite remake has to be Grim Fandango. The graphics got a welcome touch-up, but my favorite detail has to be the amazing soundtrack. Double Fine actually went to the effort of re-recording the whole thing with a live orchestra. It's the best way to enjoy a classic game.

You're a big fan of the Lucas Film Games, LucasArts vibe. What do you, what do you think about Grim Fandango's remake? It is, it's, it's, so Grim Fandango, you can actually read my review on, on USGamer. comer. I reviewed the remaster version whenever that came out. I used to work there and used to run it. But I will say Grim Fandango is not a great adventure game. It's got a lot of problems with puzzle design.

And I think Tim Schaefer would even agree if you go back and look at some. how up to some of those puzzles are. But I feel like it is such a fun story to experience that it's definitely worth going through. And actually, all of the, like the day of the tentacle remake is fantastic. And you can read my entire oral history of that game on US Gamer as well. But that is probably the best remake to date because they didn't change too much about it. And they still present the original version in its entirety. And you can just, you can play with any array of options you want.

You can have new graphics or old graphics, new music or old music. Those are good. And my last thing I'll say is the Monkey Island 1 and 2 remakes that came out about a decade ago. The graphics, I will say, are problematic. They have a weird interpretation of Monkey Island graphics, although you can't play with the original graphics. But I will say, boy, the instrumental soundtracks, sorry, the orchestrated soundtracks for those that they remade are just so amazing, including especially Monkey Island 2. Just go on to YouTube and listen to the Monkey Island 2 remastered soundtrack. It is so good.

All right, from Andrew Rosenblum. I wanted to comment on the topic of reboots and remakes by bringing up what is probably the first well-known remake of a game, or in this case multiple games, Super Mario All-Stars for the Super NES. This is what a remake is supposed to be. Redone graphics, sound, keeping the control is the same as it was in the original.

There's some physics difference, dude. And adding features to all-included games. This includes a save function for all the games and a mode where you can play the arcade version of Mario Brothers and Mario Bros. 3 against a friend. I would say it's a perfect remake, but for some reason the sound in the Mario 3 version of All Stars falls flat to me because the instruments it uses on Super NES. I love the original music because of the richness of the NES sound chip, but that just

didn't replicate all that well on Super NES. They got the other games right, but Mario 3 has always been lacking in the sound department for me. Hmm. They continued to use the same type of sound for the GBA remake as well, which was a bummer for me when playing that version. I wish there was some way to play the game with the enhanced graphics with the old sound. That would make a perfect remake, but unfortunately I don't see Nintendo doing this anytime soon. So I will say, I slightly disagree with you, sir, or madam. I forgot what the person's

name was, but, okay. What I do like about there, even if you don't like the instrumentation, the, all of the available sound channels means you're not going to have a sound channel overwritten by the P meter or sound effects. So I felt like that was a major problem with the original game. There was not enough bandwidth

to have all of that sound happening at once. But I will say that I really like what they did with the All Star's version because Mario 3 finally has title screen music, which it didn't have originally. I remember when I interviewed Koji Kondo, which was an amazing experience, and that was like one of my ultra granular super nerdy, will they hang up on me

questions, was like, why didn't Super Mario 3 have music on the title screen? And they were like, well, that wasn't a standard thing then, so we just didn't even think about it. So that was the boring, practical answer that I wanted. The Super Mario All Stars, first of all, that game arrived for me. On the same

weekend, I had a major project due in school. And I kind of clubbed the project. It was actually a writing thing. I was supposed to write a big-ass story. And I really, I just really phoned it in. And thankfully, I got an A anyway. That was probably my greatest triumph. But Mario 3 on the All-Stars collection has a really nice,

all the games actually have a really nice kind of Calypso theme. And I always appreciated that. Although I love those steel drums. And they changed all of the King's animal forms into Mario references. So now they're all Mario enemies instead of just like animals. I was going to say something about Mario All-Stars, and now I can't remember what. Oh, well. Oh, actually, yeah.

The idea of reworking Super NES soundtracks for use on flash cartridges like the Everdrive is actually a pretty big thing now. And there's been a movement toward like remastering Super NES soundtracks into like orchestration and stuff that you can actually play on Super NES or Super Famicom hardware with an Everdrive. So it's possible that. Someone has put together a Mario All-Stars rework like that. It might be worth checking into. I don't know. I think they're called like the MU-1 versions or something. M-U-1.

I can't remember. I haven't used them myself, but I see them mentioned a lot. I can get the next one here from the website. Oh, okay. So remix and reboots. This is from Nega Scott, 1,28. He says, one thing I'd like to know, what's everyone stance on where Shadow of the Colossus 2018

and Crash Insane Trilogy Fall on the Remain. a reboot spectrum. For me, I consider them remasters because they're fundamentally the same games underneath the new graphics, but at the same time, the graphics have been overhauled to such a degree that calling them remasters feels like selling them short. Usually a remaster just consists of a resolution and frame rate boost, perhaps with some updated models and textures. I feel that a remake should overhaul the gameplay as well as the graphics, whether that's

with new content and balance tweaks, Resident Evil remake, or by making something completely different, Resident Evil Remake 2, sorry, Resident Evil 2 remake. do you think that updated graphics alone can justify calling something a remake or are gameplay changes also necessary? And I feel like my answer to this is like it's such, it's just sort of semantics, I guess. There's no, I guess the question is how do you define a remake? And I think it's a different interpretation depending on who you are and what you value and what you think needs to stay. I kind of think that if you want the pure Shadow of the Colossus experience, you might be better off playing the HD re-release for PlayStation 3 because the PlayStation 4 a game is a Shadow of the Colossus, but it's also just like from the ground up remake of the game, which is kind of bizarre to me. But I just, I enjoy playing that remake, but I feel like it did feel like a slightly different game.

I feel like Crash has a better claim on being a remake since they did add some new content to it. There's like a new level or something. I haven't played the remaster, but it's also like three games and one. So you start kind of putting things together and bringing them into sort of a consistent format like that, and it becomes more of a remake. For the sake of the reboots episode, I said none of the Sony remasters on PS4, but I could see you making an argument if you really care about the semantics of it for Shadow the Clock. because they did so much work on the graphics, but at the same time, they didn't add new content to the game. It's like there's, you know, the extra Colossus,

the bonus Super Colossus or something like that. They didn't change the story. They didn't really change the interface and how the game works and that sort of thing. So like physics. So to me it strikes me more as a remaster, but, you know, it doesn't really matter. My problem with that game, it just seemed like,

I mean, everyone should play shot out of the Colossus, by the way. We did an episode about it. It's one of my favorite games of all time, but I feel like, why did you spend all this energy, like, remaking it? Can't you just port it? I mean, I don't know. I don't understand. But I assume it sold well and it justified its cost, but it seemed like a lot of waste of energy just to rebuild it from the ground up.

So from normally retro, I had the highest anticipation for the Bionic Commando Redux reboot and was completely satisfied when it was released. The play mechanics were mostly the same and brought new life, humor, and intriguing puzzles to an already incredible game. I completed all the trippy challenges except one that required two players. to complete, and I'm glad that they decided to do an updated version of that game along with the soundtrack, because the 3D version was not the business. Yeah.

All right, and we'll do one last. Oh, I have one thing to add to that, actually. It's funny how I feel like Bionicamando remastered was a promotional game for the upcoming 3D game, but it ended up being just the one everyone

remembers and talks about. Yeah, I remember the one thing they added to the remake is they gave Rad Spencer a wife and well we don't know how that ended. And I know somebody who's worked at game publishers and they've told me like sometimes retro re-releases are part of the marketing budget because it's just promotion for a new game. So that's how they consider that a lot of the times. All right. So our final question for this episode, or not question, letter response for this episode, comes from Aaron Kearns, the Plus DLC containing a new set of levels and extra characters to play as Sonic Mania both fits the theme of discussion. and is fresh in my mind to talk about.

Rant mode engaged. Sonic Mania isn't quite the first of its kind. Its precedent, in my opinion, lies in Sonic Pocket Adventure. The NeoGeo Pocket have remake of Sonic 2 that expanded levels and added ideas, characters, and music from the other Genesis Sonic games as well. Both games were released to tie in and promote a 3D Sonic Game, Forces for Mania, Adventure 1 for Sonic Pocket Adventure,

and both commit what I see as a sin. Mania Pocket Adventure and even the Revisit Revival game Sonic Generations all start out with the same two levels, Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Please, Sega, other levels exist. Some of them have more interesting themes or develop the themes of these levels in interesting and creative ways. Chaotic's isolated island takes what Emerald Hill took from Sonic 2

to enhance Greenhills visuals, and it does it to Emerald Hills visuals. I agree. I am so sick of Green Hill and chemical plant. Tidal Tempice from Sonic City gave us the idea of a polluted techno base built into watery underground ruins, and why is the only playable version of Sonic? Two's Hidden Palace on a release for devices without d-pads or a jump button. That's my biggest issue with Sonic Mania.

Way too much return to ground. The silver line of all this is that our friend Ray Barnholt, as of this recording, he's really embracing what I call Ray Mania. He is. The revival of Ray the Flying Squirrel. And what I love about this character, he's adorable, I have to say. He's so, I mean, maybe you can tell me if you agree with me, Noddy. He's just so dopey looking that it just makes me smile whenever I see him.

He is. And actually, my husband, I'm watching my husband play the Sonic Media add-on. That just completely slipped my mind. Sorry, guys. I'm watching my husband play it. And he rescued Ray. And Ray just kind of pops out, like, gives me these thumbs up. But, like, he's not just, like, doing a thumbs up.

It's kind of wagging his thumbs back and forth. I'm like, oh, my God, that's adorable. I do like Ray. And I think a lot of people don't realize he's an existing character. Yeah, yeah. That's why he had, like, the want, sorry, the missing posters on other games. Like, have you seen me? he from Chaotics?

No, he's from a Sega arcade game. Oh, he's from Sega Sonic? Oh, Sega Sonic. Is that the non-fighting Sonic arcade game? Yes. Okay, wow. That is so obscure.

Yeah. He's actually really fun to use, too. He's kind of like using the cape in Mario World, except you can't really, you don't have the momentum to keep on going. You have to maybe get one or two really good swoops in. It's a really kind of technical way to use the cape. It's a lot of fun.

All right. we need to wrap up to clear space for our next episode, my goodness, but thank you everyone who wrote in and thank you Nadia Oxford for joining us for this episode. Nadia, why don't you tell us where we can find you on the tubes that comprise the internet? Well, on the internet tubes, I am on Twitter as Nadia Oxford. That's all one word. And of course, I am with usgamer.net where I do a heck of a lot of writing every day, so keep an out for me. And also, Kat Bailey and I do the Acts of the Blood God podcast every week. It goes up every Monday.

You can also find it on iTunes, Stitcher, wherever podcasts are sold, as Kat says. So please keep an eye out for us. Robert. Robert, Mackie. That's my legal name. Don't use it, though. You can find me on Twitter, as Bob Servo. I do a ton of other podcasts for my network, the Talking Simpsons,

network. I do with Henry Gilbert. We have a lot going on there. If you go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you can find out how to support the shows. All of our stuff is there, including Talking Simpsons, a Chronological Exploration of the Simpsons. What a cartoon where we go into a different episode of a different cartoon every week. And Jeremy will be on a future, probably past as of this recording, G.I. Joe episode. So we're looking forward to that. And we have so much stuff on the Patreon exclusive series, like Talking Critic, Talking Futurama, lots of interviews with huge Simpsons writers and artists and things like that. Of course,

Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon are both free. You can find those anywhere you find podcasts. So check them out. If you want to support us, just go to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, and we can give you a lot of stuff there. Thank you. And I, of course, am legally Jeremiah Parrish. Actually, no, that's not true. Jerome. Jerome. It's true. Yes,

I'm Jerome Parrish. You can find me at Gamespite on Twitter or at Retronauts.com, the website where I write about old games and post podcasts about old games, such as this one, which you're listening to now. And you can hear another one next week, or you can hear next week's right now by joining our Patreon campaign, $3 a month, let you hear episodes one week in advance, at a higher bit rate without ads.

If you don't want to do that, that's fine. You can listen to it for free on iTunes or the Podcast One Network. You'll just have to wait a little longer for your next hit. Anyway, thank you for writing. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. Thank you, Nadia for Skyping. And I think I'm out of thanks.

Bob, thank you for sitting across for me. Oh, shucks. Thanks, everyone. I love you all. Goodbye. The Mueller report. I'm Edonoghue 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 a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor.

of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers 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, they acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. at Donahue.