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.