By patron request, a follow-up to last week's look at Super Mario Bros. in the form of a look at the sequel to Super Mario Bros., more or less. Yume Kōjō Doki Doki Panic is probably the best-known Famicom Disk System release of all time, and all because its relationship to Super Mario Bros. 2 rendered countless American childhoods a lie...
You've seen the NES lineup for 1985, when the console debuted in America. Now compare those sixteen games to the nine contained in this episode, which explores the equivalent launch time frame for the console's Japanese birth as the Family Computer back in 1983. How different were the early days for the console in its two biggest territories?
By request of David Morton, a look at a game that wouldn't normally have come up in Good Nintentions: Konami's Bio-Miracle Bokutte Upa. A charming little platformer, the most fascinating thing about it may be the way it deftly combines elements from games that had come before it while also including mechanics and aesthetics of classics that would show up months or even years after its debut. Not bad! Definitely worth tracking down on Wii Virtual Console.
As a preface to Good Nintentions 1986, here's a look at an early 1986 game thaaaaat never actually came to the U.S. on NES and is therefore ineligible for normal coverage. Yes, it's Konami's The Goonies, the oddly missing link to The Goonies II that Americans only ever saw on PlayChoice-10.
By request, a look at another cult favorite Konami game that never made its way west. Arumana no Kiseki (The Miracle of Almana) will remind you of a lot of different Konami NES games... and of a certain movie franchise, too. It's not quite polished enough to have made its way to the U.S., but you can definitely see Konami's 8-bit prowess at work here.
Who says NES Works has to be exclusively about old games? A Japanese indie group has released three new cartridges for the Nintendo Famicom over the past year, putting a contemporary twist on the platform. With vivid visuals and top-flight music by legendary composers, Kira Kira Star Night DX and 8Bit Music Power (and its follow-up, 8Bit Music Power Final) offer an intriguing extension of the Famicom legacy.
By Patron request, here's a "controversial game": An unlicensed and slightly smutty American game that became straight-up porn when Japanese publisher Hacker International got ahold of it. And to further tempt the fates, they sold it with packaging that made it look like a Mario game starring Princess Peach. Some men want to watch the world burn; myself, I'd settle for burning this janky excuse for an NES game.
By patron request, we look at the horrible and hideous ball that Nintendo got rolling when it localized the Famicom to America and Europe as the NES: Region-locking. This quick (and not at all comprehensive!) overview of the different methods console manufacturers have used to prevent and punish international software importation does at least offer a promising light at the end of the tunnel: It appears to be a dying practice. Once 3DS shuffles off this mortal coil, we'll once again be free to buy games in yen and pretend we understand the mysterious runes in which their menus are written.
Another new-old release this week—two, actually. And unlike Shubibinman Zero, these are launching in the U.S. Clone console maker Retro-Bit has also gotten into the licensed repro cart business and seem determined to do it up right with two reissues of rare, pricey games packed in overstuffed collector's edition boxes at a pretty reasonable price. Of the two, Holy Diver for NES is the most interesting, since unlike the R-Type games it has never seen an official U.S. release until now. And it'll probably be another 29 years before any of us beat the thing without cheats...
Let's kick off the new year by looking at 2020's hottest NES release: A reissue of Irem classic Metal Storm by Retro-Bit Entertainment (and Castlemania Games, and Limited Run Games, and so on). While Metal Storm came out in U.S. back in the day, this rerelease is actually a new conversion of the Japanese game that shipped a year after America's cart and included some new features, including an introductory story cinematic, new difficulty settings, different color schemes for many graphics, and some handy built-in cheat codes. It's new! And old! It's good.
By patron request of Brian Larsen, here's something a little different: Rather than look at a single game, this episode takes a wider view of NES culture and fandom, and how fans of the platform have kept the NES alive and vibrant 25 years after its retirement. From the rise of emulation to modern clone platforms, NES devotees continue to make NES accessible and surprising, as this cursory overview explains.
It's hard to see this early 7800 lineup as serious competition to the NES—these few games feel very much like relics of an earlier era. That's because they are, of course. They're the games that would have launched alongside the 7800 in 1984 had Jack Tramiel not put the console on ice for two years. Viewed through that lens, however, the 7800's initial offerings were fairly impressive, and even in 1986 these were the best home ports available for all four of these arcade classics. Was that really the most compelling sales pitch for kids who were already immersed in Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt? Absolutely not! But even if timing and market realities tripped it up right off the starting blocks, the 7800 deserves respect.
Our second look at the Atari 7800's release chronology takes us through the initial launch lineup and to its first post-launch title. On the whole, though, this set of games shares a lot in common with the previous episodes: Very good renditions of pre-crash arcade classics, dropped upon the world a little after their sell-by date. Don't let the unfortunate circumstances of the 7800's birth distract you, though; these are some excellent arcade conversions. A couple of them, most notably Food Fight, are arguably best-in-class caliber adaptations. You may notice some changes in how this video is edited and presented compared to other videos. I've steadily been tweaking my approach over the past few months, and I was fortunate enough to have a free weekend to burn through tinkering with a few different concepts. It's coming along nicely, though as always, it could still use a bit more fine-tuning.
While this isn't the end of our side excursions into the Atari 7800 chronology, it's the last for the time being. These four releases bring the console's lineup in line with the current state of NES Works (January 1988), and it would be a while before more games followed. Thankfully for the Atari faithful, the console's lineup with fatten up significantly in 1988 and ’89, but there's no getting around the fact that its slow start really hurt the system. Also of note this episode: The final classic Namco conversion for 7800, and the first batch of (highly faithful) classic computer game adaptations.
Halloween season is here once again, and you know what that means: Time for more Castlevania-themed NES Works videos. It's the Pumpkin Spice of retrogaming YouTube videos. This year, we're looking at the OTHER Castlevanias—that is, the other games that relay the exact same story as the original Castlevania ( • Castlevania retro... ), tracking Simon Belmon's trek through Dracula's castle. All of these games cover the same narrative and gameplay beats.
By patron request of Jon, it's our first (of likely a fair few) full look at a European exclusive for NES: Imagineer's impressive conversion of British microcomputer classic Elite. I won't even pretend to show off the full depth of the game here; it's a complex and intricate game that requires extensive play to master, whereas I struggle with not dying at the hands of marauders the instant I come out of warp in a system local to the game's starting point. I may not be adept at this particular simulation, but I can recognize how impressive a conversion this is... even if the hardware REALLY wasn't designed for it.
This episode brings the recent run of NES Works Gaiden episodes to a head by being both massive, sprawling, and focused on a European creation. Whew. The Aladdin Deck Enhancer is one of those NES tidbits that people have probably heard of but most likely only know through second-hand sources, such as The Angry Video Game Nerd. I don't know that I have much to add to the conversation, especially since the Aladdin has low compatibility with FPGA-based clone hardware, but by god, this was a patron request (from Joseph Wawzonek), and I am determined to give Video Works patrons their money's worth. Honestly, this episode was a lot of fun to put together, despite its technical issues. A few of the games were definitely on the dicey side, but most were solid, and a few are good enough that I want to play them again sometime when I'm not simultaneously freebasing a dozen different unfamiliar games for an episode of a weekly video series.
I've been taking a different approach to video production while we're all hunkered down for the pandemic. Some people cope with booze or by binge-watching; I cope by making videos about games I love. Case in point: Mega Man Legends for PlayStation, which is well outside the scope of Video Works... but I'm let it kite along in the slipstream of the recent NES Mega Man retrospective. It's an incredible game—a personal favorite. So, please: Just roll with it.
35 years ago this week, Nintendo launched the Disk System expansion for Family Computer—one of the most important (and one of the few successful) console add-ons ever. Boosting the power, capabilities, and storage capacity of the Famicom, the Disk System helped usher in a new generation of console games... and then, console games caught up with the Disk System, rendering it obsolete. Nevertheless, in its brief lifetime, the FDS gave us major franchises like Zelda, Metroid, and Castlevania, while also changing the way players interacted with their television games. This episode pays tribute to the Disk System and its impressive legacy.
We move along to 1984 and the first wave of Famicom releases. All but one of these titles have already put in an appearance on NES Works proper as entries in the 1985 and ’86 Black Box NES launch rollout catalog, so the first half of this episode is simple a recap and reminder to give a sense of these games' place in the context of their 1984 debut in Japan. The second half, however, downshifts into low gear to take a leisurely cruise through a game that is generally regarded as a joke (thanks to its title) outside of Japan, when it's regarded at all: Hudson's Nuts & Milk. My hope is that after viewing this episode, you'll have a better appreciation for the place Nuts & Milk holds in video game history—not simply for how it represents a key change for Nintendo's business model, but also for how radically Hudson reinvented it to appeal to Famicom consumers. (You may, of course, continue to chuckle at its name. Titter, even.)
Another step along the Road to NES Works this week as we look again at the next round of software releases for Nintendo Famicom. Unlike last time, only one of these games made its way to the U.S. on NES, the other two (Galaxian and Devil World) seemingly being skipped over due to datedness and, uh, satanism? What was this, 2021?
Two Nintendo games and two Namco (Namcot??) titles this week to bring Famicom's 1984 lineup streaking toward its finale. I'm not sure any of these games will set anyone's heart on fire here in 2021, due to (1) the kinda mundane nature of Nintendo's releases and (2) overexposure to Namco's games. But pretend you are a small child in 1984! In that context, these games are pretty great. Except Mahjong. No child wants that.
1984 comes to an end for the Famicom with a trio of releases that American fans will recognize from the Black Box launch era of the NES. Arriving singly in 1984 rather than en masse a year or two later amidst dozens of other games with a similar visual vibe, benighted NES releases Urban Champion and Clu Clu Land stand up a bit better here. (Excitebike, of course, rules no matter what the context.) Also this episode, Namco's Mappy brings the company's most uninspired mascot of the early ’80s to Famicom in another respectable home adaptation that flatters the Famicom hardware when held up against contemporary conversions. And that's it for Nintendo and Sega's ’84 offerings! When NES Works Gaiden resumes later this year, we'll be in the heady days of 1985.
You'll notice a change in the hosting segments this week, as I've begun broadcasting them from the year 1994—I'm taking a sort of "man on the scene" approach from now on, except in terms of time rather than space. Apologies about the visual fidelity, but we didn't have high-definition digital cameras back then. Or in fact consumer-grade digital cameras, period. Before we continue with the Sega and Nintendo stuff, Atari deserves a brief stopover to see what the 7800 was up to for the first half of 1988. As it turns out, the answer is "not a whole heck of a lot." Happily, the one game to ship during this period—Lucasfilm Games' Ballblazer—has more than enough history and content behind it to support most of this episode before we jump into summer ’88 and, ironically, Winter Games from Epyx.
The other two mid-’88 releases for Atari 7800 consist of yet another computer port and—wow!—the console's first original creation. Although this original creation ended up being ported to several other Atari systems, which rather undermines its exclusive appeal. Still, it's good to see a game on 7800 that hadn't already shown up in arcades and on computers four or five years earlier, you know?
By patron request, this week's video shifts up the temporal alignment of the NES Works Gaiden series to leap forward from the end of 1984 for Famicom to the end of 1992?! Yes, that's right, we spring forward in time here to look at the Japanese equivalent of the Aladdin Deck Enhancer, except one reliant on an even bigger gimmick than simply packing in universal game chips in order to accept smaller, less expensive sub-cartridges. Bandai dared to push the bleeding edge of what the market would bear here by forcing players to make use of collector cards emblazoned with bar codes in order to be able to play their video game at all. It's a bold innovation! And a terrible one! Learn all about it here.
By request of Joseph Adams, I've attempted this episode to explore the history of (and explain the concept of) devices powered by NES-on-a-chip tech. I'll admit up front that this is by no means a definitive or comprehensive history, as a considerable portion of this topic falls into poorly documented spaces: Unauthorized clone consoles, piracy-focused devices, and ventures in territories veiled behind other languages and cultures (not to mention less methodical documentation than you see for mainstream Western/Japanese consoles like the NES itself). Hopefully I've still assembled an accurate and interesting enough narrative to justify the time and research involved...
By request of Peter LaPrade, this week brings us another look at a Famicom Disk System exclusive that ended up being stranded in Japan until fairly recently: Nintendo's own Nazo no Murasame-jou. A brisk, challenge action title with a structure loosely patterned after The Legend of Zelda, Nazo no Murasame-jou seems like the kind of thing that probably would have done fairly well for itself had Nintendo localized it alongside their other FDS titles (Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, and Volleyball) in mid-1987. Instead, it languished in Japan for decades, though it has exerted a small presence on modern games like Smash Bros., meaning you could be more familiar with this game than you realize.
1985 starts the Famicom on some familiar footing with a couple of future Black Box releases (one great, one meh); two shooters previously seen on SG-1000; and a Commodore 64 conversion from Hudson that would show up on NES under the aegis of its original publisher. No big surprises here (including the apparent Nintendo debut of TOSE, and the fact that the games previously seen on SG-1000 fare a lot better on Famicom), but that won't be the case for long. By the midpoint of 1985, the Famicom library will look wildly different from the NES's as more third parties (and, specifically, more third parties of wildly variable quality) stake their claim on NES.
It feels like Famicom is kind of playing catch-up with SG-1000 this episode, as every game appearing here arrived on shelves in the wake of a Sega-published equivalent—either the exact same game (as in Space Invaders), one exploring the same root concept in different ways (Soccer), or a game with almost suspicious conceptual and mechanical similarities (Formation Z). Of course, the Nintendo version of these games absolutely eclipsed Sega's, right? Well... maybe not always.
Halloween season is upon us, and you know what that means: Where other people decorate their homes with cobwebs and giant skeletons, I decorate mine with a Castlevania-related video. This time around, it's a look at a Castlevania spinoff called Kid Dracula. Well, technically, this video is about Akumajou Special: Boku Dracula-Kun! But it's Kid Dracula. It's a little bit Castlevania, a little big Mega Man, and just a few minor quirks shy of being an all-time Famicom classic.
An 8-bit heavy hitter makes its Famicom debut, right around the same time as they first dipped a toe into the SG-1000 market: Konami, eventual creators of Castlevania and Contra, here still a mere stripling of a home games developer. As on Sega's platform, Konami made its debut in Nintendo-land with two games, though I would say both turned out far better than their SG-1000 counterparts. I mean, nobody's going to fall in love with Yie Ar Kung-Fu here in 2021, but Antarctic Adventure (or Kekkyoku Nankyoku Daibouken, if you want to be formal about it) is a good time for all. Less so the third entry in this episode, Jaleco and TOSE's dire rendition of UPL's Ninja-kun.
By request of They Call Me Sleeper, here's one last Wonder Boy game until Segaiden gets to the Master System stuff: Adventure Island IV for NES. Or rather, Takahashi Meijin no Boukenjima IV for Famicom, as Hudson has never localized this one in any capacity. That's a shame, because Adventure Island IV belatedly but capably brings Master Higgins' island adventures in line with those of Tom Tom's, transforming the linear Adventure Island series into a free-roaming exploratory adventure. You know. A metroidvania. It's a fine send-off to the Adventure Island series (which would see only one more proper new entry before riding its dino pal off into the sunset), to the Famicom, and to the 8-bit metroidvania format until portable and indie games revitalized the genre a decade later.
A real sense of deja vu this week as we look at three games that have all appeared on this channel in other versions. I would like to say that these iterations are all the superior works, but Mom taught me not to be a liar. Now, this version of Dig Dug is far and away the best 8-bit home version ever published, an almost arcade-perfect rendition that captures both the broad strokes and the tiny little details that made it a classic (vexing enemy A.I.! Musical walking!). And Flappy is much better on Famicom than it was on Game Boy, its one major downside moving that it moves more quickly to the point of almost being TOO fast. Chack'n Pop, though. That's a tough one. In terms of looks and animation, this version is much slicker than the SG-1000 release. But in terms of gameplay, it's weirdly worse. The levels have all been redesigned in unfortunate ways, ramping up the difficulty quickly and demanding almost expert-level play right from the start. I suppose for Chack'n Pop pros, this
Although the three games featured in this week's episode have already appeared in the vanilla iteration of NES Works, I promise that there's merit in revisiting them. All three titles—Nintendo's Wrecking Crew, Konami's Hyper Olympic, and Nintendo (not Irem's!) Spartan-X—hit differently on Famicom than they did on NES. Especially when one of the games came with its own controller designed expressly for the purpose of mindless hitting.
Three—three!—consecutive vertical shooters hit Famicom in this episode. Well, for a certain value of "vertical." All three of these games about shooting things while moving up or down along the screen, but all three take a very different approach to it. Star Force is the most traditional of the bunch, while Elevator Action combines vertical shooting with the sort of platform-based character movement found in the likes of Donkey Kong. And Field Combat... well, I'm not sure that one even knows what it wants to be. But at least it's interesting.
As we move deeper into the Famicom's history, its timeline begins to diverse further and further from the American console's. Witness this week's episode, in which all three releases remained stranded in Japan. (Well, OK, Road Fighter shipped in Europe in 1992, which is such a weird and unlikely turn of events it seems like we all probably hallucinated it.) All three of these titles also came to Famicom from other platforms—Road Fighter and Warpman from arcades, and Door Door from home computers. And! All three come to Famicom courtesy of some of the system's biggest publishers: Konami, Namco, and Enix. Wow!
Well, I goofed on this episode—the production order list I work for ended up getting scrambled due a copy/paste error, and I accidentally covered Geimos and 10-Yard Fight out of sequence (they shipped right after Robot Gyro, not Robot Block). This means that 10-Yard Fight wasn't actually Irem's first Famicom! Since I was on the road when I realized this during final caption edits, I couldn't rework this episode. So please look forward to next episode, where I walk it back a bit. Overall, though, the details and sentiments here are otherwise correct—Robot Block is a waste, Geimos is interesting if derivative and shallow, and 10-Yard Fight's history largely holds true. Anyway.
OK, this week we have the ACTUAL debut of Irem on Famicom, but it's hard to say TOSE's take on Zippy Race makes for a splashier debut than 10-Yard Fight would have. At least 10-Yard Fight had the benefit of not having been shown up by a conversion of the same game to technically inferior hardware more than a year earlier. TOSE also helps a second publisher make its debut here with Sunsoft's first Famicom release: A similarly underwhelming arcade-to-console conversion of the game Arabian. If you love Ice Climber's jump physics (spoilers: you don't), you'll love Super Arabian (spoilers: you won't). Finally, wrapping up the episode, we have another arcade port from Taito. Front Line more or less invented a genre, but does that mean this version has any value besides its place in history? (Spoilers: it doesn't.) Yes, it's dark times for Famicom.
Although I've previously covered The Tower of Druaga on Game Boy Works, this version precedes the portable rendition by half a decade and stands as the more towering achievement of the two. So to speak. Another solid arcade-to-Famicom conversion by Namcot, Druaga's move to consoles felt like a figurative as well as literal homecoming: As an arcade game, Druaga feels frankly unfair thanks to its harsh one-hit-kill combat and mandatory secrets hidden behind abstruse and unintuitive rules. As a home game, however, Druaga offered a more expansive role-playing-style adventure than had ever been seen on consoles, and its design comes off as far less punishing when you don't have to drop 100 yen into the machine every time you run out of lives (which happens frequently). I don't know that I'd recommend Druaga today, as many games followed in its wake that built and improved on its design... but would those games have had a design to improve on without Druaga? I say they would not.
The machines have risen, taking control of this trio of games and obviating humanity altogether. Well, almost altogether. R.O.B. at least demonstrates the value of mankind working together, hand-in-, uh, claw with its new synthoid overlords to defeat the vile Smicks in Robot Gyro. As for the other games, well, they're all about robo-kind's fight for dominance. If my performance in Honshogi is anything to go by, carbon-based life is doomed.
As we head into the final quarter of 1988, we have three classic Nintendo games appearing on what is decidedly NOT a classic Nintendo console. Atari published ports of three vintage Nintendo creations (Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, and Mario Bros.) on a variety of platforms in late 1988, including the 2600, their various 8-bit platforms, and as seen here the 7800. While the 7800 releases can't quite punch with the actual Nintendo-programmed NES versions, the fact that these three carts exist at all turns out to be more than enough to fill an episode with speculation and musings.
The Famicom finally reaches maturity with the arrival of Mario's greatest adventure—and perhaps the greatest action game anyone had ever created to this point in history. Pushing the Famicom hardware to its absolute limits, Super Mario Bros. would become one of the most beloved games of all time and transformed a character that began as the star of a string one-off arcade machines into a reliable, franchise-carrying cultural icon. Not that Mario wasn't recognizable before, but Super Mario Bros. turned him into true video game royalty. Also, Namcot delivers a pretty fun arcade conversion called BattleCity, which would have likely been the highlight in any other NES Works Gaiden episode. But, well, Super Mario Bros.
By a perfectly timed request by patron TheyCallMeSleeper, this episode arrives just in time to be positioned between this channel's coverage of Super Mario Bros. and its American sequel. Of course, this Japan-only sequel has almost nothing to do with that latter game besides the addition of Luigi as the Mario Bro. whose controls and physics turn his adventure into hard mode. But every mode of Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels amounts to hard mode, doesn't it? Nintendo took no prisoners with this one. No, they took those prisoners and tossed 'em in the wood chipper, laughing cruelly the entire time. Harsh.
Some familiar faces show up this week on Famicom, along with a few that didn't make their way to NES. Konami's Pooyan headlines this episode with a simple but charming and masterfully designed single-screen arcade game hailing from the early career of one of retrogaming's most infamous minds, Tokuro Fujiwara. It's less soul-crushing in terms of difficulty than Ghosts ’N Goblins or Mega Man. He was still young. He hadn't realized that his calling in life would be to reduce millions of children to tears. Also stepping into the post-Super Mario void, we have City Connection—a good game on NES and a better one on Famicom due to simple release timing. A Flicky-style platformer feels a lot more of-the-moment in 1985 than it did in 1988! And, finally, Hyper Sports, the other set of the raw materials that Konami would combine into Track & Field. Like Hyper Olympic, it feels like half a game. That's because, for those of us in the U.S., it literally is half a game.
The two games in this episode have almost zero profile in the West, what with the whole "never having been released outside of Japan" thing. And yet, both hold what is in my opinion a fairly significant place in Famicom history (and therefore, by the transitive property, in NES history as well). Route 16 Turbo matters for what it symbolizes for Sunsoft; it offers our first glimpse into the company's talent for reworking existing concepts into something new and different, and it remains a pretty entertaining game nearly 40 years on. Challenger, on the other hand, does NOT remain entertaining. However, its sprawling, multi-modal game design offers a foretaste of the design methodology that would become standard fare on this platform: Action games turned immersive adventure, arcade twitch concepts infused with greater depth and substance.
One of the games will look quite familiar to NES fans, and I apologize for that. No one likes M.U.S.C.L.E. Tag Team Match outside of Stockholm Syndrome victims, but at least we can take comfort in knowing that we share the psychic damage inflicted by that wreck of a wrestling game in common with our peers in Japan. At least we didn't have to deal with Brocken Jr., too. The rest of this episode has more of an upbeat tone. Sky Destroyer from Taito and Home Data/Magical offers about as impressive a behind-the-cockpit shooter as you're going to find on Famicom and NES, though (like M.U.S.C.L.E.) it too had some WWII-era themes that apparently were deemed too spicy for America. Pity they didn't edit the content for U.S. release and leave M.U.S.C.L.E. in Japan rather than the reverse.
Somehow, sandwiched between a first-party Nintendo release helmed by HAL and a Pac-Man adventure inspired by the old Saturday morning cartoon, the standout release for this episode is a Micronics/Pony Canyon maze chase game with bad graphics and infuriating music. No, I don't get it either, but the heart wants what it wants. Please don't mind the graphical artifacting in some of the Mach Rider footage. Apparently the track mirroring garbage is a known glitch that just happens from time to time. It doesn't affect the gameplay, but it sure does look horrible.
Ah, pachinko! Everyone's favorite subject for a video game. Truly, nothing is better for zoning out and engaging 0% of your brain than video pachinko, and this week we have the first to hit Famicom. It's not an interesting game, but it nevertheless has a very interesting story. Also this episode: Games that demand a little more mental engagement than Pachicom. You'll recognize this BurgerTime conversion from its appearance on NES (only the title screen was adjusted). As for Ikki, well... I don't think it's ever seen a U.S. release outside of Hamster's Arcade Archives. Nevertheless, it appears to be the best-selling Sunsoft game ever. Truly a case of the right-ish game at the right time.
Another Famicom milestone this week, one that ranks up there with the other legends of the system's early days. Unlike Xevious or Super Mario Bros., however, Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken never officially made its way to the U.S., and its influence took much longer to be felt than that of its mighty peers. Nevertheless, this collaboration between Yuji Horii, Koichi Nakamura, and Enix massively shaped the nature of Japanese console games in the coming years with its innovative mix of visual elements and simple interface mechanics. But rather than go on about it here, I'll simply let this episode do the explaining.
This week, a pair of games that have both been covered before on this channel... twice! So, rather than belabor the point, this episode works more as a treatise on the rapid rise and shakeout of the Japanese games industry around this point—the brief Nintendo-led gold rush of 1985 and the harsh reality that followed.
At some point in this episode, I may or may not talk about the actual games presented here (Namcot's Star Luster and Irem's rendition of Spelunker). Mostly, though, this video hooks back into the ongoing discussion of the overall shape of the games industry in the mid-1980s, especially as concerns the Japanese market. What debt does Star Luster owe to Western classics born in the primal soup of video gaming? How did Spelunker end up on Famicom? And could this possibly be the first episode where I hit the entire "influential games" trifecta? You'll have to watch to know for sure...
Robots! They're cool, right? Oh, my dear, sweet, summer child, this episode will disabuse you of that notion. I blame dbSoft. Volguard II manages to be somehow too simplistic yet too over-designed. Macross simplifies a portion of the most complex cartoon drama to air on American television in the 1980s down to a repetitive loop of shooting and transforming into a robot and then regretting your transformation because it drags the fun factor down to zero and immediately transforming back into a fighter. And Galg doesn't actually involve robots, but it does involve shooting, and it somehow manages to be the most inappropriately demanding and repetitive game on offer here. Anyway, don't play these games.
We're winding down NES Works Gaiden's survey of the Famicom's first few years of life, and just in time. This trio of games once again underscores the way proliferating publisher expansion resulted in precipitous plummet in playability for Famicom software. Doughboy sees the debut of Kemco with a disastrous port of a computer game; 1942 marks Capcom's uninspiring arrival on home consoles; and Bokosuka Wars... well, actually, it's not so bad if you know what's going on? But it's the exception to the rule. War really is hell. Also, please ignore the strange background audio interference here—my portable recording equipment appears to have picked up a radio station somehow. The FCC is gonna be super pissed.
A pair of familiar American NES releases (more or less) bookend the real highlight of this episode: A charming little puzzle action game called Binary Land, which sees Hudson slipping back into early Famicom Pulse Line/NES Black Box mode and reminding us of the appeal of the console's formative works here in late 1985's era of tiresome jank. Speaking of jank, TOSE and Bandai kick things off with the middling Obake no Q•Tarou, which Americans will recognize as the middling Chubby Cherub. And then we have Bomberman, which I covered recently on NES Works 1988 but for which I somehow still found new details to discuss.
I had intended to make this the final episode of NES Works Gaiden 1985, but wouldn't you know it? I ended up having too much to say to fit four games into a single episode. So our collective suffering drags on another week.... although the final two games aren't actually too bad. These two stinkers, on the other hand, will make you regret the existence of the Nintendo Family Computer, as both convert decent games from more powerful hardware and make a hash of it. Thexder hails from Japanese home computers, a Game Arts shooter that almost makes the whole "transforming robot" thing work! Not here, though. And Exed Exes helped Capcom build its way to arcade superstardom. You wouldn't know it to play this adaptation, however. Thanks, Square and Tokuma Soft, for helping to cause the Famicom crash. If only it had happened sooner!
With this episode, NES Works Gaiden comes to its true and proper end, at least in terms of chronicling the Famicom's early years. And it goes out, if not with a bang, then at least with a couple of games developed by reliable studios: HAL Laboratory and Pax Softnica. See, as dire as things got toward the back half of 1985, the Famicom wouldn't be entirely doom-and-gloom. You still had good and middling games by great and competent developers, sometimes.
Pinning down a proper "first" in video game history can be a challenging proposition. The medium didn't evolve in rigid steps with clearly defined milestones; it shifted gradually, in strange and hard-to-classify fits and starts. But I feel confident in dropping a pin here, with the Epoch Cassette Vision, as the "first" proper console to emerge from Japan. Several Japanese manufacturers had produced dedicated consoles for years before Cassette Vision came along, and Bandai even manufactured one that accepted cartridges that worked like the jumper cards Magnavox included with the original Odyssey. However, with Cassette Vision, Epoch produced the first game system to have been built from the ground-up in Japan that offered distinct software on standalone carts. It arrived a full two years before Nintendo's Famicom and Sega's SG-1000, and it presented a compelling mix of dated-but-entertaining games at a highly competitive price. The Japanese console games industry got its true start h
Epoch's post-launch titles for Cassette Vision maintain the momentum of its launch releases. That is to say, we have one game that involves swiping the creation of an arcade manufacturer, and one game that repurposes an earlier Epoch-made standalone console. But this time, each game comes with its own diabolical twist! For one thing, the unlicensed Galaxian may obviously steal its title (quite brazenly) from a Namco arcade hit, but it actually swipes its content from a completely different game by a different publisher! And while Big Sports 12 owes its existence to the Epoch System 10 dedicated console, its story goes a little deeper than that and ties into the very core of the Cassette Vision's being. You WILL believe a man can talk for nearly 20 minutes about two 1981 games that mostly consist of boxes moving around the screen.
Welcome to the shadows of the annual Castlevania-themed episode. I'm sort of running low on relevant Castlevaniae to talk about here, at least in terms of games I don't intend to cover in their own right someday as part of Works, so it's a good thing that patron Joseph Wawzonek requested I tackle Konami Wai Wai World, huh? Wai Wai World is technically only about 1/7 Castlevania by biomass, but realistically speaking, Castlevania is one of the few levels you can defeat without acquiring certain character skills or bulking up your team to soak up abuse from the bad guys. So for most of us, it's basically "that one Castlevania game that also has a lot of other dudes in it." An interesting game bursting with good ideas, but definitely one that falls into line with Konami's ambitious-but-flawed (not to mention wildly unbalanced) NES titles like Castlevania II and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... games with which it shares a lot of creative concepts in common.
Not two but three—THREE!—games this episode. This might be exciting if not for the fact that one of those amounts to a barely tweaked version of a game we've seen before, which originally debuted years before Cassette Vision existed. Props to Epoch for scraping as much content out of that one bit of program code as possible, I suppose. Far more exciting are the non-baseball titles here, Battle Vader and PakPak Monster. While both blatantly rip off popular arcade games, both also demonstrate that distinctive Epoch quirkiness, compensating for the console's lack of horsepower by introducing some unconventional gameplay tweaks. Both games also have deep roots in Epoch's own pre-Cassette Vision history. Well, maybe not "deep," exactly. But notable.
While Nintendo and Sega were in the process of entering the programmable console market, Epoch kept churning out Cassette Vision games... slowly. As per usual, these games should look fairly familiar to fans of classic arcade games, being slightly tilted renditions of popular hits. Business as usual, really. To Epoch's credit, their Donkey Kong knockoff beat the release of Nintendo's actual Donkey Kong conversion by several months. To their detriment, it wasn't nearly as good as the real thing. But, all things considered, while neither of these unofficial adaptations will go down in history as all-time classics, they do pretty impressive things with Epoch's very humble and dated hardware. That's something, right?
Another system complete! With this episode, our look at Epoch's Cassette Vision comes to an end. Ah, but don't worry—this system's retirement doesn't even begin to signal the company's intention to depart from the console race. As Monster Block and Elevator Panic perform the Cassette Vision's funeral rites, not one but two new systems would emerge from Epoch's mad think tank.... As for the games themselves, Monster Block offers a pretty obvious riff on Sega's Pengo that uses an added score mechanic to really test the ol' noggin. And Elevator Panic combines a whole lot of different influences while building on Monster Mansion's framework. I realize now that I forgot to cite the most obvious influence here—Universal's Space Panic—but honestly there are only so many "homage" citations I can fit into one of these episodes. Anyway, thank you for following me on this brief jaunt into an esoteric corner of Japanese console history. And thanks once again to Christa Lee for performing the mod
Let's take a break from the world of Epoch to look at an even more forgotten corner of Japanese console history... and, in this case, rightly so. Educational product publisher Gakken really had no business releasing a console just a few months after the Famicom. And certainly not a console that amounted to a stripped-down Tandy CoCo. And absolutely not a console that looked and controlled like... THAT. But we're here to celebrate video game history, both the good ideas and the bad, and while Gakken's TV Boy falls indisputably into the "bad" column of the ledger, the weird little thing wasn't entirely without precedent. And exploring the shape of its short life and meager library helps put other also-rans like Epoch into perspective... and does a lot to explain why Nintendo and Sega emerged from the Japanese console explosion of the early ’80s as the sold survivors. Special thanks to Christa Lee for modding this TV Boy for composite output and allowing for fairly clean video capture.
Big thanks this episode to Seth Robinson (rtsoft.com) for helping me to secure a complete copy of the elusive Robotan Wars! Our second foray into the epic odyssey that is the Gakken TV Boy brings us three—three!—games in a single painful blow. Well, I guess not totally painful. Admittedly, I can't imagine anyone would actively seek out these three titles in the modern day and age unless they were doing something deranged like trying to cover the entirety of the Gakken TV Boy library in video form, but these cartridges do at least contain competently programmed code... which is more than you can say for many other carts we've look at here. Mr. Bomb puts an interesting (and ultimately hopeless) spin on Activision's Kaboom! (or maybe Atari's Avalanche?). Robotan Wars does its best to clone Robotron 2084 on wildly inadequate hardware. And finally, there's an actual licensed adaptation of Konami's Super Cobra that, for some bizarre reason, appears under a completely different title. Gakke
It's the final chapter of my Gakken TV Boy retrospective series, and now we can all move along with our lives, no better for the experience. You're welcome.
Well, it's finally happened: Nintendo and Tengen have filed for divorce, in the form of a $100 million lawsuit. But, as it turns out, Nintendo gets to keep the kids. And by "kids" I mean "Tetris." A shame, too, because honestly Tetris turned out a lot better growing up with Tengen—an uglier child, but smarter. Nintendo's had the looks and the charisma, though, and ultimately that's the one people remember. Life isn't fair, but that's how it goes. In addition to exploring the illegal Tengen version of Tetris, this episode also spends some time with the OTHER version of Tetris for Nintendo's console: The Bullet Proof Software release that only shipped in Japan. When we look back on the NES era, it always feels like American kids got the short end of the stick while their peers in Japan got all the good stuff. Well, this is the exception. Tengen Tetris may offer a good argument for being a superior work to Nintendo's take on the game, but both stomp BPS Tetris into a muddy puddle.
Hello! Want to learn more about Casio PV-1000 and other failed 1980s consoles in Japan? Check out my upcoming book, The NES Era Vol. I: Japan & the Road To NES, available exclusively via preorder at Limited Run Games: https://limitedrungames.com/collectio... The PV-1000 was another would-be competitor to Famicom that vanished nearly as soon as it entered the world. Of all the failed consoles to emerge from Japan in 1983, the disaster that was Casio's PV-1000 seems the most like a massive own-goal. Between Casio's engineering prowess and the impressive lineup of arcade hits their licensing team managed to land, the PV-1000 had all the makings of a hit—a console at least on par technologically with Sega's SG-1000, if not a wee smidge better. But it flamed out on the launch pad, for reasons I can only speculate about in this episode. But if you put aside the system's performance at retail and strictly focus on its software library, you end up with the most promising platform to have tak
Want to learn more about Super Cassette Vision and other failed 1980s consoles in Japan? Check out my upcoming book, The NES Era Vol. I: Japan & the Road To NES, available exclusively via preorder at Limited Run Games: https://limitedrungames.com/collectio... Welcome to the dawn of an entirely new platform. Following up on the Cassette Vision's brief but marvelously weird odyssey, we now have its successor: The more capable Super Cassette Vision, released as a direct competitor to Famicom and SG-1000. By far the most successful (or at least best-supported) of the failed Japanese platforms to follow in the wake of Nintendo and Sega's entrance into the console space, the Super Cassette Vision has enough material to power us through something like a dozen episodes. Although the Super Cassette Vision's design and library feel a lot more, well, normal than those of its predecessor, I'm sure there's going to be plenty of weird stuff to talk about regardless. The games in this episode don't
Atari 7800 is back! Learn more about it by preordering The NES Era Vol. II: NES and the Console Revolution, a comprehensive photographic atlas of every console game released for NES and its competitors—including the 7800—from October 1985 through December 1987. Take a deep dive into the prehistory of NES with this limited-edition oversized (12x12"!) photo book: https://limitedrungames.com/products/... As we wrap 1988 for Atari's flagship console of the NES era, the console finally gets its first third-party publisher. And it, uh, well, it certainly is a thing that existed. Froggo Games' Tank Command is not especially good, but you can kind of see what it was going for? There's potential here... unrealized potential, yes, but potential all the same. Meanwhile, Impossible Mission for 7800 doesn't need anyone to vouch for its bonafides—it was a top-tier Epyx computer classic converted to console in perfect form. Well... almost perfect. Aside from the game-locking bug that makes it imposs
Two more 7800 oddities from the tail end of 1988 with Water Ski, the second and final release from the benighted Froggo Games, and Super Skateboardin', the first 7800 title from Absolute Entertainment, the system's second third-party. That's a lot of numbers. Neither of these games is great by any definition, but at least both are very strange and interesting. And very much about appealing to late ’80s kids! Another strange thing about the 7800: It's proven very difficult to capture high-quality video for the system while also getting accurate sound. Older 7800 videos used FPGA solutions (Analogue Nt Mini and MiSTer) for source footage, and the audio sounded slightly out-of-tune; now that I've moved to real hardware with a GameDrive for RGB output, Super Skateboardin' lacks music but still plays its other sound effects correctly. Apologies for the flaws there—all of this is an inexact science.
Mutually assured destruction: The XE Game System / Missile Command
Concentrated classics: Bug Hunt / David's Midnight Magic / Lode Runner
Oh dear! It looks like the time has arrived for me to begin mixing some additional material into the NES Works/NES Era chronology. Yes, it's a brief sidebar on the Intellivision's short but actually pretty interesting post-Crash existence. If nothing else, the INTV days of Intellivision make for a crisp contrast to the Atari Corp. age of Atari—driven by a very different guiding principle and business strategy that kept an aging chunk of hardware alive well beyond the point that most people stopped caring about it, and which has given the Intellivision a meaningful place in video game history (in part by recording history).
A second INTV-era Intellivision video? How could you be so blessed?! No, but seriously, this episode is capped by the genuinely cool maze-action title Thunder Castle... and even the sports games are interesting thanks to their connection to Mattel's short-lived European branch. These carts really do feel like transitional pieces between two era, resetting the business while keeping the console... well, if not precisely ALIVE, then certainly present.
Rounding out the exploration of Nintendo's 8-bit competition in the U.S. comes the Atari 2600. The original hit console may have found itself diminished by the time NES launched, but that didn't mean it had tapped out. Atari Inc. would continue to push the 2600 as a budget-priced starter system until shortly before the NES's 16-bit successor arrived. This episode looks at what the 2600 represented in the late ’90s as a preamble to a brief series of game retrospectives that may just surprise you with the quality of the material developers and publishers were putting together for this most elderly of consoles...
Our survey of the Atari 2600's post-crash library begins with a trio of games that you could hardly call unprecedented. There's precedent for all of them! But frankly, they all hold up pretty well even today and demonstrate a collective commitment to quality that bodes well for this latter-day phase for the 2600. (It helps that the wizards at GCC developed two of the games appearing this week.) Sure, Jr. Pac-Man looks a bit meager in hindsight next to NES classics like Super Mario Bros. 3, but bear in mind that these carts shipped in 1986, when the NES and Master System were still mewling pups in the U.S. market. In that light, you can actually see the appeal of the 2600 as a reasonable, low-cost competitor to the NES.
Anyway—the cool thing about this approach to covering only the NES era of Atari 2600 releases is that it means I got to skip over all the stuff like edutainment games and the third-party slop that killed the U.S. console biz for a few year and just jump directly to mmmmmaybe the finest original creation ever programmed for the console? I am, of course, referring to Solaris here. Not Tax Avoiders. I guess I didn't get to skip ALL the third-party slop.
Another pair of Konami titles for PV-1000 with Tutankham and Amidar. Unlike last episode's games, this duo's releases under the Casio label are some of the few home conversions of the coin-op originals, making these carts fairly unique and decidedly rare. In fact, Tutankham has the unfortunate dual distinction of being the PV-1000's rarest game, but also (probably) its best. I suppose that's kind of nice, in that it certainly beats something like Pachinko for Sega SG-1000 (rare, expensive, and bad)... but also kind of bad, in that there aren't a lot of options for experiencing Tutankham outside of emulation.
And, hey, just because we've seen variants of all of these games on consoles of the era already doesn't mean these interpretations aren't worth discussing. Even the Mahjong game has an unusual element or two to set it apart from the many largely identical takes on the subject that cluttered game systems at the time. And the way these games play almost, but not quite, like their Famicom counterparts at the time bodes well for this system as, one hopes, an interesting citizen in the console community of mid-’80s Japan.
Lupin III, which plays a bit like Pitfall! interpreted as a single-directional scrolling running, stacks up quite well to other platformer offerings available for Japanese consoles at the time. It's not quite up there with Flicky, which also shipped in December 1984 for SG-1000, but it's a solid and convincing take all the same.
Another day, another NES Works Gaiden episode about Casio's PV-1000. In this case, we have two Namco games that would eventually make their way to Famicom. Dig Dug is a genuine B-tier video game classic; Warp & Warp is... not. But were these cartridges good enough to tide over the Japanese console audience's demand for Namco hits until the Famicom releases arrived two years later? Do they make the Nintendo versions obsolete? Are these, in short, the PV-1000's killer-app kingmakers? The fact that most of you had never heard of the PV-1000 before I launched this series is probably an existential spoilers to these questions. But still. It's fun to pretend. Special thanks to Christa Lee of Sound Retro Co. for modding this PV-1000 for composite output.