Chrontendo Ep. 49 Transcript

Yes, after long delays, here it is: Chrontendo Episode 49 (only one more episode away from our 50th episode - yay). 

So today we're gonna finish up September 1989 and move into October, surprisingly enough. 

However we still have to pass through some rather murky waters, om, as we finish up September U.S. releases with three games from L.J.N., including a rather infamous movie adaptation. 

But we also have a very fondly remembered game from Capcom [and] also an actual game published by Nintendo, themselves. 

We will also see another installment in one of my favorite ever game series (yep, it's another "Fist of the North Star" game). 

Alright, with that said, let's get started. 



There were a total of six games released on September 29th and we covered two of them last time, including "Uninvited", and we'll start today with the remaining four, including "Thunderbirds" from Pack In Video (who tended to specialize in T.V. and movie license stuff). 

We've already seen "Rambo" and, uh, "Predator" from them. 

This intro has some nice multi-layer scrolling effects. 

Obviously, "Thunderbirds" is based on the well-loved 1960s British T.V. show of the same name. 

While it's more of a cultural touchstone in the U.K. than it is in the United States, I suspect that most people who grew up in the '70s or '80s encountered it at some point. 

It was a somewhat, uh, common sight on American T.V. via syndication, during those decades. 

The original T.V. show was broadcast from 1965 to 1966, the original series only lasted 32 episodes. 

Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Thunderbirds was one of several T.V. series to feature, uh, "Supermarionation", which basically means, uh, fancy-ass marionettes. 

Others from them included "Supercar", "Captain Scarlet", uh, and "Fireball X.L.5". 

The Thunderbirds consist of Jeff Tracy (in the bottom corner there) and his five sons, each of which drive a, uh, super high-tech "Thunderbird" vehicle. 

Oh my God! 

Why are you jacking off in front of your kids? 

The story here is that the Thunderbirds arch-villain, The Hood, (it was sort of a stereotypical Fu Manchu/Yellow Menace-type villain) ...he's gonna' start, uh, wrecking shit, using meteors. 

Hood gives the Thunderbirds a 60 day deadline to turn over their, uh, special Thunderbird vehicles to him. 

As a result, Thunderbirds doesn't have a life system, but rather a time limit. 

You have to finish the game in  sixty days and you can die as many times as you want, in that sixty day time period. 

We've seen some pretty good Shoot-'em-Ups, um, for the N.E.S., but this is definitely not one of them. 

It's about the most generic uninspired thing you can possibly imagine. 

Ships fly down at you and you shoot them; there's also turrets, and tanks, and things. 

The tanks are actually super annoying, since their projectiles move very fast. 

Pretty much impossible to dodge, if you just happen to be in their line of fire, so you'll have to memorize where the tanks are going to appear. 

There's a very basic power-up system. 

You can upgrade your main gun twice and get two orbiters that act like "Gradius"-style options or little planes that fly next to you, as in the "1942" games, and... that's about it. 

When you die, "Brain" (the Thunderbirds science guy) chides you for damaging the ship. 

Despite, uh, seeing your ship explode into a million pieces, Brain says it can be repaired in three days. 

So the sixty day timer counts down every time you complete a level, and loses three days every time you die. 

Also, getting killed returns you all the way to the beginning of the level. 

I didn't encounter any bosses, exactly, in this game, but many levels end with some kind of roadblock that you have to fight your way through. 

The game is not strictly linear; you can select the order in which you visit the different locations. 

Depending on the type of location, you'll be given one of the five Thunderbird vehicles. 

Oh, God, I hate this level! 

Is this game trying to make you vomit? 

Geez! That's some laser! 

For a game based on a T.V. show, the narrative structure is pretty weak. 

The levels feel kind of pointless. 

A level begins, you shoot guys for a bit, and then the level just ends and you get some dialogue explaining that now you've gotta' travel to some other part of the world. 

The levels' themes are mostly just borrowed from better shooters. 

This looks like "1942" or one of Toaplan's military shooters. 

So, basically, it's just a bunch of completely uninteresting shooter levels, kind of tossed together, and a licensed property slapped on top. 

For some reason it was deemed worthy of a U.S. release by Activision, who kept the name "Thunderbirds" and the characters' [names], but didn't otherwise reference the T.V. show anywhere in the packaging or the manual, even altering the iconic logo. 

I'm not even sure why this game was created. 

Thunderbirds were hardly a fresh property in 1989 and there wasn't a remake or anything happening at [that] time, as far as I know, so this does seem like kind of a strange choice for Pack In Video to put out. 

So, just like another game we'll be seeing later this episode, it was a pretty strange choice to license, for a video game. 



Let's move on to a somewhat better shooter. 

From our good buddies, Konami, it's "TwinBee 3: Poko Poko Dai Maou" (or "Great Devil King, Poko Poko"). 

Real quick, let's take a look at the menu screen. 

There's an Options menu at the bottom. 

Here, we can choose, uh, two difficulty levels: Easy (which is... pretty easy, and that's what we'll be playing today) and Hard (which is pretty damn hard), but no Normal difficulty. 

So, here you pick your ship: either TwinBee or WinBee and choose how many lives ya' have. 

For the purpose of my sanity, I'll give myself ten lives. 

You can also pick which stage you wanna' start on. 

This is the third and last TwinBee game for the system. 

Earlier, we saw the, uh, the first "TwinBee" game, which was a port of the arcade game. 

Then, in 1986, there was a console-only sequel "Moero TwinBee". 

This was released in the U.S. as "Stinger". 

Now, three years later, we have "TwinBee 3", which I'd say is better than the first two. 

The main distinguishing factor in TwinBee is the system of collecting bells. 

When you shoot clouds, bells pop up; gold bells give you points. 

Shooting the bells will change the color. 

For example, blue bells are speed-ups; white bells give you a double shot. 

If you keep shooting them, you can get even more options. 

Um... However, this can be a bit tricky, uh, shooting them, when you're also in the middle of shooting at enemies and trying to dodge them. 

It is very easy to accidentally shoot the bell and change its color to something that you don't want. 

And one very, essential part in TwinBee is to avoid the blue bells. 

Getting a few will speed you up sufficiently, but accidentally continuing to, ah, pick them up will make your ship way too fast to accurately control. 

TwinBee uses a "Xevious"-like double weapon system. 

Um... You fire your main weapons at airborne enemies and drop bombs on ground enemies, complete with a little "Xevious"-style targeting reticle. 

Bombing things will sometimes reveal hidden items (like a question mark that destroys all the enemies onscreen or, here, a better weapon power-up). 

You can get a laser beam weapon from the bells, but the spreadshot is only found in a few places in the game, when you bomb the correct item. 

Probably the best part about "TwinBee 3" are the bosses. 

They're actually all quite odd and creative, in a very sort of goofy way, such as this guy: a, uh, leather and spike-clad Buddha, who divides into smaller and smaller versions of himself, as you, uh, wear down his health. 

After, uh, beating a boss, you can (under certain conditions) play a bonus level to collect yellow bells for points. 

And this is pretty much the extent of the game. 

Uh... Each level has a different theme. 

This is a sea-themed level. 

You can drop bombs on starfish, shoot jellyfish and whales, and also large white butterflies (for some reason) which are normally not found out in the ocean. 

The boss is quite odd; these guys are performing a musical number and the music is actually pretty wild 'n' the whole, uh, boss fight is actually reasonably amusing. 

As I mentioned, Easy mode is pretty damn easy. 

A couple of reasons for this, aside from the enemies being much less aggressive, is that you can actually take three hits before dying. 

The first two hits, uh, will blow each of your arms off. 

When this happens, a health refill will drop, which restores your arms. 

When you do die, you can, uh, keep your power-ups, if you go grab the spirit of your [departed] ship before it flies away to heaven. 

This boss is also pretty creative and amazing. 

Um... You shoot out the little fellows living in the dragon's teeth. 

The fourth and last regular stage is a, uh, so-called dungeon level (that looks like it takes place in a mine, rather than a dungeon). 

It then moves into a flooded area with Roman-style columns. 

Again, not really sure what the theme is supposed to be, here. 

Ah... And here we have, uh, this very rare torch item, which does nothing upon getting it, but then the next bell you hit will drop a power-up for temporary invincibility. 

The least interesting boss follows: a sea serpent which simply pops up and shoots lightning at you (really nothing too special, there). 

Finally, we get to the last level: a surreal level full of magic hats, cannons, electric fans, playing cards, and Jack o' Lanterns. 

It's pretty frantic, since cannonballs are indestructible and the fans will cause you to sort [of] lose control of your ship and sort of push you around a bit on the screen. 

However, this isn't nearly as interesting-looking as the earlier levels, with its plain green and blue, uh, checkerboard design. 

The final boss, however, is absolutely nuts looking. 

I mean, just look at this guy. 

It's not immediately obvious what to do, but it's simply a matter of shooting out the bottom of the floating island he's sitting on. 

And, the fact this is so easy is... makes this final battle, kind of, a little anticlimactic. 

"TwinBee 3" is hardly the best shooter on the FamiCom. 

On the other hand, compared to all the other mostly terrible shooters we've been seeing lately, it's pretty playable! 

(I wish they hadn't put that large bar at the bottom of the screen that shows your score, as it takes up quite a bit of, uh, vertical space.) 

It's cute, the levels and enemies are mostly charming, it doesn't feel unreasonably unfair or cheap. 

Quite frankly, the TwinBee series wouldn't really take off until the next arcade game, um, "Detana TwinBee", which we'll see on the, uh, P.C. Engine. 

Either way, it's still a lot better than the other two shooters this episode. 



Alright, moving right along, here, here's one from Sunsoft: "Maharaja" - a rather unusual Adventure game that's, like, got all mixed up with an R.P.G. game. 

While it was published by Sunsoft, I think it may have been developed by Quest. 

Now, this was never released outside of Japan, but we do have a fan translation, here, that'll sort of help us appreciate the game a bit more. 

Checking out, like, the... the graphics, you'll see some of the character design in this is actually pretty good. 

So, apparently there were, uh, limitations in regards to the number of characters they could squeeze in on the menu panel on the left hand side. 

Thus, uh, for example, om, "see" becomes "S.E.", "show" becomes "S.H.O.", and... and so on. 

I guess they, om, when they translated this, they didn't... they didn't actually do the hacking to, like, you know, change the, uh, the character width, or something like that. 

So, you happen to find, uh, the Maharaja's box in a river. 

You bring it to the Maharaja, who treats you as an honored guest. 

However, that night a princess reveals to you that you are going to be killed the next day in some kind of, like, sacrificial rite, or something like that. 

Um... So far this is a very by-the-numbers menu-based adventure game. 

Om... The first thing you do, here, is to find your way out of the palace. 

There's no obvious way out, since the only exit is guarded, um, but eventually you'll figure out there's like a hidden door that can be unlocked by moving a statue. 

And you are, of course some... some kind of chosen one, who's destined to save the world or something like that. 

Um... The actual game world is set up just like many many other Adventure games. 

There's basically a series of, uh, sort of, connected screens you can travel among, using the menu commands. 

So, for example, from the Swami, you can move to the town square, and from there you can go one step over to the weapons shop, or ...n... in another direction to the inn. 

And there's a shop that sells, like, consumable items as well. 

Also, right next to the town square is a jungle. 

And, uh, here you... is where you can actually find enemies and random encounters. 

These battles work just like every other J.R.P.G. 

Um... There's a menu option to fight. 

Eh... You can use magic, use items, and so on. 

You'll gain both gold and experience from winning battles, and as you gain levels, you can learn spells (or mantras, as the game calls them). 

Now, once you figure out you can bribe Ganesha by giving him an item, you'll be able to talk to Shiva, who has, sort of like an... an anime character face, here. 

Now, whenever you talk to him, you can learn new mantras, if you've reached the sufficient level. 

The first two are a Heal spell and a Teleportation spell, which are actually, uh, pretty useful, when you think about it. 

After that, there's lots of other spells that can be used in battle, such as a fireball spell and a spell that freezes an enemy, or one that prevents them from using magic and... and so on. 

Pretty much, kind of, very, sort of, typical J.R.P.G. spells. 

So, this hybrid Adventure game/R.P.G. system is pretty unusual. 

There were a couple other games that attempted similar ideas (for example Square's 1987 F.D.S. game, "Cleopatra no Mahou", which we covered back in Episode 20, and "Kujaku Ou" from Episode 35). 

Now, one issue, here, is that, unlike the giant overworlds found in R.P.G.s, the area in which you can move around is somewhat small. 

I mean, everything's like really really close. 

You don't actually move around a lot. 

The jungle is the, uh, the first place in the beginning of the game you can actually encounter enemies, but it's not that big - only around six by six squares. 

So, you have to spend a great deal of time, being... just, sort of, like, you know, going... going back and forth, in order to actually gain a few levels. 

There's really not much, like, exploration of the world in this game. 

Eventually, you'll find the towers, if you take the correct path through the jungle. 

The enemies in the iron tower are quite a bit stronger, and you'll need to gain several more levels to get very far. 

So again, you need to grind in the Iron Tower. 

As far as dungeons go, the towers are pretty dull. 

They're simply a, uh, a... a regular straight path going forward, with a constant stream of enemies at each step, and then a boss battle at the end. 

So, once you get all the way through the Iron Tower, you'll find an item, om, in a chest that will unlock the door connecting the Iron and the Silver Towers. 

But to leave the Iron Tower, you have to backtrack all the way to the front door. 

Then the only way into the Silver Tower is to go all the way through the Iron Tower again, and then travel down the long hallways of the Silver Tower, and so on. 

So, these rather long, completely linear dungeons are actually pretty damn monotonous. 

"Maharaja" doesn't really satisfy as an R.P.G. or Adventure game. 

There's not really much exploration, as I mentioned, there's nothing really in the way of puzzle solving; it's a... it's a very curious oddity. 

And it's not exactly poorly made. 

I mean, the quality of everything seems relatively high, but the, sort of, lack of variety may frustrate you. 



One last Japanese game from September: 

It's "Meiji Ishin", from Use Software (publishers of such terrible crap as "Bats & Terry", which made my worst FamiCom games video). 

So far, none of the games we've seen from Use have even been remotely good. 

This one, however, is at least a little weird. 

It's sort of a combination Adventure game and Military Strategy game. 

It's basically two different games, sort of, stitched together into a Frankenstein game. 

"Meiji Ishin" is what we call the Meiji Restoration. 

That is the period in the late 19th and early 20th century, which, uh, resulted in the overthrow of the shogunate and the reinstatement, um, of the Emperor as the actual ruling power in Japan. 

Obviously this game is very Japanese-heavy and will not be [of] much interest to most of us, but we will still take a quick little look at it. 

I think you might be playing as Saigō Takamori or some other historical figure (not sure who, exactly). 

The first part o' the game has you traveling to Edo to gather allies. 

The second half switches over to a simple math-based Military Strategy game, based on, I think, the Boshin War of the 1860s (I'm not sure). 

Not having the patience to get through this, you know, kind of a long game, I'll be looking just at the first half, today. 

You have the typical action menu on the right hand side of the screen, with the, uh, standard options of Move, Look, Talk, et cetera. 

The opening section of the game is basically one of those, you know, press the A button to advance kinda' deals. 

You might call it a walking down the road simulation game, because you do a lotta' walking from town to town. 

You often need to speak to a guard, each town and show your pass or something. 

You'll also have these very uneventful encounters along the road. 

Uh... At one point someone comes up behind you, and keeps tapping you on the shoulder until you turn around. 

Good stuff. 

Eventually some excitement happens when you get trained in the combat system. 

Later in the game you'll actually encounter enemies and need to fight them, and this guy trains you how to fight. 

When green or red dots appear, you need to press the D-Pad in the correct direction and hit the correct button; green dots are defense and red are offense. 

So doing this correctly will keep [you] from losing life and will cause you to do damage to the enemy (though this guy, you really can't actually do any damage to). 

After you've passed this training exercise, you have to do it another three times. (Great.) 

Then, it's back on the road. 

Eventually, at some point (well into the game) you'll have real fights with real enemies. 

Um... I think that's still a while into the point... a while after the point that I got, though. 

This is definitely the most obscure game this episode. 

It doesn't even have its own, uh, page on Japanese Wikipedia. 

The first chunk of the game is so repetitive (I mean literally just walking down the road and talking to the same people over and over) so I can definitely see why this has been completely forgotten. 



Well, here it is: another one of those games. 

L.J.N.'s "Back to the Future". developed by those boys from Down Under, Beam Software. 

Beam Software's résumé was erratic, to say the least. 

We've already seen the U.S. version of "Airwolf" and "Bad Street Brawlers", from them, both of which were just incredibly dull and sloppily made games, though a few years later they would actually produce uh, "Nightshade" and "Shadow Run". 

So, yeah, pretty weird company, in terms of the quality of their output. 

Their name is mostly associated with hastily produced crap, however. 

The movie came out in 1985, but this game is clearly released to help promote "Back to the Future II", which would arrive in theaters in September of 1989. 

There was an earlier "Back to the Future" computer game, which is completely unrelated. 

This game is hated and despised for a number of reason. 

One of them is that there is not much connection to the movie, in terms of the actual gameplay. 

The majority of the game is spent, uh, doing this: walking around town, uh, in a series of, sort of, obstacle course-like levels. 

These are timed forced-scrolling levels. 

So, they sort of resemble a, uh, vertical Shoot-'em-Up, in some ways. 

I suppose the inspiration might be Atari's "Paperboy" game? 

The object, here, is to, uh, keep collecting clocks, in order to prevent the timer from running down. 

Touching anything other than a clock will cause you to fall down. 

This means avoiding women with a hula hoop, random guys who charge at you, garbage cans, park benches, and little fences (or whatever the hell those little things are on the edge of the sidewalk). 

Most dangerous, though, are the enormous bees that fly around, since they fly directly at you and normally try to circle back around you to hit you from behind. 

Hitting anything causes you to fall down and, uh, sort of flop around on the ground (and this will result in all the clocks around you vanishing, so you lose valuable time whenever this happens). 

Once you reach the end of this section, you move onto the next. 

Uh... This is actually the same thing: walking down the sidewalk. 

You do this four times in a row, until you reach Lou's Diner. 

Then you get one of four minigames that appear in "Back to the Future". 

The first one has you throwing root beer floats at the dudes that try to rush the counter. 

If one reaches the counter, they'll grab you and toss you down the bar into the door. 

Keep in mind, you have to hit these guys directly in the head. 

Aiming for their bodies will not work. 

The root beer float will just, sort of, float right through them. 

It's not that difficult, in theory, but missing once will cause you to lose the level, and you need to knock down a hundred guys. 

Then it's back to the walking sequences. 

Eventually you'll get to the library, where you encounter the next minigame. 

Your mother throws hearts at you and you try to catch them. 

Well, technically you aren't catching them; you're blocking them with a textbook or something. 

But if you don't want the hearts to touch you, wouldn't you just, uh, be dodging them, as opposed to trying to sort of catch them with your book somehow? 

I don't really get the concept, here. 

So this pattern repeats four times: some walking segments, then a, uh, a different minigame. 

The walking segments do have a few extra features. 

You can grab a bowling ball, and throw it at enemies, and (even better) a skateboard, which allows you to move much faster. 

Now, it's really easy to get knocked down off the skateboard, but it goes so fast that even if you remain on it, for, like, just like a few seconds, you're almost guaranteed to be able to finish the level before the time runs out. 

The game actually has two sorts of timers. 

[Do] you remember in the movie, there's that photograph that Marty had with his siblings, and they started to sort of fade away, as, um, time progressed throughout the movie? 

Uh... Here's actually the photo from the movie itself. 

And then compare this to the photo in the game. 

Wow, those guys from Beam really went the extra mile, here; it's like looking at the exact same picture! 

Anyway, if the picture fades completely, you die. 

Aside from this sort of thing, it almost feels like the people who made this game had never actually seen the movie. 

My main issue with "Back to the Future" is that there is no cohesion between the different parts. 

It's essentially a handful of very basic minigames, kind of awkwardly crammed together, and the individual games feel like they could easily be from the Atari 2600 era, in terms of gameplay. 

And none of these are, uh, little minigames are actually very original. 

I mentioned, uh, the the traveling sequences re... resembling "Paperboy". 

The minigame in Lou's Diner, where you throw root beer floats, is basically the same thing as the old arcade game, "Tapper". 

And the game in the library, where you're catching the hearts is really not that different than the old Atari game, "Kaboom!". 

After you complete this guitar playing section, which is actually really easy, once you kind of wrap your head around it, you make your way to the final section, where we need to race the DeLorean to reach 88 miles per hour. 

However, I think the lightning melts the roads, which slows you down, so you need to avoid all the, ah, the spots where the lightning has hit. 

And then, on top of all the other crap this game throws at you, if you fail at this part, even once, you get a total Game Over. 

I mean, quite frankly I recommend abusing the Start button, throughout this game, which pauses it, so you can actually see in advance where the lightning is going to strike, and you'll be able to avoid it a bit easier. 

It's weird that they used a pause button on a game mostly built around fast reaction times. 

I mean you can use the pause button to pretty much beat the minigame levels, like involving catching hearts or catching guitar notes, but pretty much everything else in this game is completely absurd, so why not this as well? 

Anyway, having actually played this game, I can now understand why people really really hate it. 



Oh man! 

Number 2 in today's shitty L.J.N. game trilogy, "N.F.L.", (despite being the first N.E.S. game with an actual official N.F.L. license) is almost forgotten today. 

It's sorta' stuck, forever living in the shadow of its far superior ah, rival, "Tecmo Bowl". 

So, when we say N.F.L. license, uh, this means that the real team names were used. 

The names of individual players were not used, since that would actually be a completely different license. 

For game select, you can choose to play an American Conference game or a National Conference game or InterConference or Super Bowl. 

I'm not really sure exactly what the difference between Super Bowl and InterConference is, but of course, these allow you to choose an opponent from, uh, the other conference. 

So, as we see, this does, in fact, use the real life team names. 

But for the players we only get the position names. 

You have the option to upgrade a player, but doing so will penalize you, by supposedly making it more likely you'll have a penalty called on you. 

Now, it's not a hundred percent clear who developed "N.F.L.", but it appears that Atlus was somehow involved, um, as they were in several other L.J.N. games. 

Possibly [Sanritsu] may have also been involved? 

According to the manual, Tom Bass (coach for the Buccaneers and the Chargers) was "instrumental" in the development of this game's "authentic action". 

Bass had written a few books on football tactics and used to give seminars aimed at helping women understand football. 

Of course, what exactly he did on this game is anybody's guess. 

So, basically [there] everything that, uh, Tecmo's uh, football games do right, this one does completely wrong. 

The little arrows over the heads indicate, uh, which player's being controlled. 

But actually controlling anything is sometimes needlessly complicated. 

Whereas "Tecmo Bowl" is, uh, pretty damn intuitive in terms of how you play it, doing stuff in "N.F.L". involves, uh, pressing a series of buttons that you'll need to, uh, refer back to the manual a few times, in order to, kind of, read up on wh... you know, what the hell you're supposed to be doing. 

However, the biggest stumbling block for playing "N.F.L." involves calling plays. 

Much like "Tecmo Bowl", you select [an] offensive or defensive position by pressing a combination of buttons on the D-Pad and using the A and B buttons. 

However, Tecmo's game actually displays diagrams of the plays. 

"N.F.L." has you entering your plays while looking at the scoreboard, for some reason. 

Nothing really helpful in determining what play you wanna' use. 

The manual has this, uh, also not very helpful list of plays, but doesn't tell you the right button combinations to press. 

You see, originally this came with a couple little fold out play sheets that gave details about the plays and how to select them. 

However, the play sheet seems to have almost, kind of, completely disappeared down the memory hole. 

I couldn't even find a good photo of it online. 

A few listings for complete-in-box copies of "N.F.L". didn't even have the play sheet. 

Now, obviously you can find guides online that'll tell you how to input each play, but this game is pretty much completely unplayable without having that information. 

So you can't just, like, you know, buy a loose cart and pop it in and start playing. 

One other weird little thing: most resources call this "N.F.L. Football", yet the box cover, the game, the manual - everything calls it just "N.F.L.". 

A little strange. 

Anyway, this is the, uh, one football game that you should definitely "pass" on. 



Our third and final piece of unrepentant trash from L.J.N. is "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". 

And we have one of those classic Rare wall of text screens, here. 

I mean, geez, just look at this! 

What's with the flying question marks? 

And look at the "Who Framed" text; is that really the best they can do? 

Why is there such a huge space between "Who" and "Framed"? 

There is just so much typical, "Who gives a shit?", attitude from Rare in this game. 

Now, I assume you're all familiar with the movie, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", from 1988. 

Produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, it was an odd mashup of Chinatown and American animation of the 1930s and '40s. 

Bob Hoskins plays a detective, named Eddie Valiant, who gets involved in the murder case of one Marvin Acme, who is having an affair with Jessica Rabbit, wife of the cartoon star, Roger Rabbit. 

Acme's missing will (a major plot point in the movie) becomes the crux of the story for this game. 

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is, I suppose, an Adventure game, of sorts. 

The object is mostly to go around town, collecting items. 

Some of these items will help you advance the story. 

Now, when you put it like that, this sounds kinda' like "Déjà Vu", but in this game the idea is implemented very very very differently. 

The first part of the game takes place in Los Angeles, where you walk around the street and explore a series of almost identical buildings, all the while trying to avoid getting hit by cars. 

Inside a building, you will find numerous rooms, which are always full of tables, chairs, dressers, and desks. 

You can open the desk and dressers, in hopes of, uh, finding a piece of the will. 

Of course, 99% of the many many drawers have nothing in them. 

Aside from that, you will find items just lying around on the floor. 

Some [of] them are unique quest items; others are usable items. 

There's, uh, stuff like wallets (which contain money), items for dealing with enemies, and so on. 

For example, the whistle will summon Benny the Cab. 

You can use him to drive around town quicker, and he's required to access later parts of the game. 

Now, aside from its impressive combination of live action and animation, the one thing that stood out, at the time, in this movie was the huge number of guest appearances from various cartoon characters from different studios. 

In the days before extensive cross-branding, ["Who Framed] Roger Rabbit?" accomplished what seemed to be the impossible act of getting Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny together in one cartoon. 

I mean, at the time this seemed, you know, virtually miraculous. 

Of course, none of these other characters were available for this game, so the concept of Toon Town has been reduced down to basically almost nothing. 

Toon Town does appear later in the game, but it's actually a lot like Los Angeles, with different looking buildings. 

["Who Framed] Roger Rabbit?" is one [of] those games that tries to do many things, but doesn't really do any of them well. 

It looks like an open world adventure game, but there's really not much interesting to find. 

Exploring L.A. mostly just involves walking up and down streets, entering a bunch of these identical looking buildings, and picking up randomly scattered items. 

You talk to people, but unlike in Sierra or LucasArts games, no one ever says anything even remotely interesting. 

There are also some action bits, like shit falling on your head when you try to pick something up or, uh, animals that attack you the second you enter a screen, uh, which kill you in one hit. 

And if you're not careful, this can happen over and over and over. 

Birds will fly out of the sky and pick up Roger (which also kills you), cars will run over you, killing you. 

Everything in this game is all just so awkward and wrong. 

For example, um, you walk around the street, using the D-Pad, you know, exactly like you would expect. 

When you hop in Benny the Cab, suddenly the control scheme completely changes. 

All Benny does is make you move around the streets faster, yet (for some reason) Rare decided they needed a completely different control scheme for this. 

On foot, the Up button moves up; in Benny, Up button does nothing. 

They went through the trouble of actually creating this second control scheme, which adds absolutely zero to the game! 

And that's the weird thing about Rare! 

I mean, it's like, they're not... lazy, it seems; they're not exactly cutting corners. 

They put effort into things that do not enhance the game experience (and quite possibly detract from it). 

Among other odd things, sometimes Roger gets captured by these two weasels and they tell corny old jokes (you have to choose the correct answers). 

This feels like something Rare sort of threw in as filler. 

I mean, does anyone actually enjoy these parts? 

To me, when the weasels grab Roger, it's like, "Oh great. Not... Not this crap again.". 

There is some sort of logic to some [of] the puzzles. 

For example, you can't enter this club until ya' find the password (which is placed, of course, in some random location in town). 

When you enter the club, you find Jessica Rabbit. 

You can try to talk to her, but she'll tell you to find her phone number (which I'm sure is also randomly hidden in one [of] the buildings). 

There are tons of items in this game - usually with one very specific use. 

For example, there are separate items for, uh, fending off the wild, uh, cats, dogs, and snakes that attack you. 

There's lots of one time use items, like a password or Jessica's phone number. 

You can see which item you have selected, up there at the top. 

However (get this) at various points the weasels will attack. 

We have to fight them, but there's not just an attack button you can use. 

No, you actually have to select your fist (or weapon), [at...] from the items menu. 

And this is done by (I shit you not) holding down the Select button while you scroll through every item, until you reach your fist. 

And you cannot move, while you're doing this, because you're using the D-Pad to browse through the items. 

So, often you'll have to, sort of, stop going through the menu, move away from the weasel (so he doesn't hit you), and then start going through the menu again. 

The actual fighting is quite awkward, and you can lose a life if you get hit too many times. 

Apparently, you have a life meter, but it appears to be invisible. 

And those little "P"s that appear across, uh, the bar at the top, there? 

They, apparently, don't represent your life bar (and I swear I read through the manual and it doesn't mention them at all) so who knows what those actually do? 

There's so much weird shit like this. 

Like, when you start winding up your punch, you can't move while doing so, unless you were already moving when you started winding up the punch (then you can continue to move). 

Was this intentional or is it some kind of weird bug? 

In some ways, this reminds me of the old Atari 2600 game, "Raiders [of] the Lost Ark". 

There's a lot [of] things [you] have to do, in a very specific fashion, but the game is very obtuse about it. 

So, you just, sort of, wander around randomly, hoping you'll be lead in the right direction. 

Even the manual doesn't tell you what any [of] the items do. 

Some [of] them (like the password) get explained in the context of the game. 

But what do rattles do; what about baseballs [or] the cigars? 

Even purchasing items from the store is really not that clear. 

You need to select a wallet from the items menu, and then use it while you're actually standing right directly next to the item that you want to buy. 

In what other game does buying from a shop work like that? 

I mean, it's weird! 

So many games are so intuitive, with how the basic controls work, but here you walk into your, uh, store, and you're like, "Uh... How do I actually buy this shit?". 

It's not even clear what Roger Rabbit does in this game. 

I mean, he follows Eddie around everywhere, but it's... he's pretty much just window dressing. 

You can't control him, and he's totally useless, for the most part, at least in the first half of the game that I played. 

I guess they couldn't figure out any other way to, sort of, work him into the game, so he's just sort of this fellow who shadows you everywhere you go. 

I can't think of many games that just fail at so many levels at once. 

It's actually completely exasperating. 

It's really an utterly bizarre game. 



Well, here we are - the big game this episode: Capcom's "DuckTales" - the first in a series of very successful Disney games from Capcom (and I mean very successful). 

Supposedly, "DuckTales" was Capcom's biggest selling N.E.S. game. 

It was, of course, based on the wildly popular animated T.V. show, that ran from 1987 to 1990, which was, itself, based mostly on the duck comics of Carl Barks from the 1940s through the 1960s. 

While Barks did not create Donald Duck or his nephews, he hid... did introduce lots of characters like Uncle Scrooge, The Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold, Magica De Spell, Gyro Gearloose, and many others. 

Barks' duck comics were among the most perfect comics ever created and the "DuckTales" T.V. show was basically a tribute to Barks, in many ways. 

Capcom released this in the U.S. first and then gave it a Japanese release in January 1990, under the name, "Wanpaku Dakku Yume Bōken" or "Naughty Duck Dream Adventure". 

The rather strange English text found in both the, uh, beta of the U.S. game and the Japanese game states that, according to Scrooge, the most important treasure is "Dream and Friends". 

Capcom had a pretty fruitful relationship with Disney, and this was the first Disney game that they actually developed themselves. 

They had published "Mickey Mousecapade" in the U.S., though that was actually developed by Hudson, who published the original Japanese release. 

"DuckTales" continues Capcom's streak of quality Action/Platforming games for the N.E.S. 

We'd previously seen "Bionic Commando", "Strider", and of course the two "MegaMan" games. 

Just like "Bionic Commando", this uses a rather unusual mechanic for getting around. 

Scrooge can [walk] and jump, but the only way he can attack enemies is by using his cane as a pogo stick. 

Now, this seems absurd. 

Canes don't have springs in them, for one, nor do they have a place to put your feet on, and if you look closely at Scrooge's sprite, you'll see that he's actually completely bent over to the point where his torso is almost touching the ground. 

He's holding onto the cane with his hands and the top end of the cane appears to be pressed up against his chest. 

Attempting to pogo like this would either impale him on the cane or at the very least shatter his sternum, yet Scrooge, very improbably, is able to bounce around all over the place like this, unharmed. 

Not only can Scrooge jump higher than normal, using the cane, but this is the only way that he can directly kill enemies, by impaling them on the end of a cane, which is, I'm sure, a very horrible way to die. 

All this sounds really cool, except for one problem: initiating the pogo jump is slightly too complex. 

You need to press A to do a regular jump, then before hitting the ground, press Down on the D-Pad, and hold down the B button. 

This doesn't sound like much work, I know, but I don't quite understand why it has to require three button presses. 

The thing is, you use the pogo jump constantly. 

I mean (just a reminder) this is the only way you can kill enemies; if you do a regular jump and land on an enemy, you die. 

Many many jumps in this game can only be done, using the pogo jump. 

Other than that, there are lots of weird little issues with it. 

It seems that if you are running, then jump forward into a pogo jump, you will, like, stop moving forward when you hit the ground, and it can be hard to initiate the jump in very tight quarters. 

Sometimes, when you're, like, landing on a narrow platform, when you land, you'll actually come out of the pogo jump. 

And, you can still die, while trying to pogo jump on enemies, if you don't hit them exactly right. 

For example, right here, I thought I was going to land on this Beagle Boy, but if we look at it frame by frame, we see, yes, I'm getting quite close, cane isn't quite lined up right, and "Blammo!" there I go. 

At the end of each level, you'll encounter a boss battle; here's the first one. 

Unfortunately, all the bosses are pretty simple variations on the same fight. 

The boss moves around and you need to pogo and land on his head. 

Then, after a few times, he drops the treasure, and then you return to the Level Select screen. 

For the most part, the main objective is simply to find the exit of each level. 

However, while you're in there, you can also search around for money and items. 

Uh... Gems and diamonds are found everywhere. 

They fall out of the air; they're also inside treasure chests. 

You can only take a rather straightforward path to the boss, or you can explore around a bit more and find various detours and alternate paths in order to get more treasure. 

You can also occasionally find helpful things, like ice cream and cake, to restore your health (though I'm not sure that birds can digest dairy products) and, in a couple cases, you will find an item that extends your health bar. 

There's also a couple hidden special treasures. 

Once you defeat the second boss, Magica De Spell, (who is, incidentally, the only boss that is actually taken from the cartoon, instead of being just some generic monster). 

You then go on to the African mines. 

However, you immediately run into one of your nephews, who tells you you need a key, in order to proceed. 

And the key is found in the previous level. 

Yeah, you actually have to immediately return to Transylvania and look for the key. 

Fortunately, it's a very short trip to the room where the key is kept. 

The mine level is kind of strange and th... the path to the boss [is] actually quite short, but there is a much longer meandering path, where [you] can pick up lots of treasures and money. 

While playing "DuckTales", it reminded me a lot of the N.E.S. version of "Strider", aesthetically. 

Just like "Strider", there is a vibe of, you know, "Here's the cave level, here's the jungle level,.. oh, and here's a snow level!" 

The computer thing cr... Scrooge uses between levels is very similar to the one "Strider" uses. 

Of course, "DuckTales" is much simpler than "Strider". 

There's no special items that give you any additional abilities (other than the life bar extension) and there, [you know], are a couple extra lives found here and there. 

But there's not much backtracking, other than that brief return to Transylvania. 

It's pretty much a matter of wandering around the level until you find the boss. 

I mean, sure, there's exploration, but there's not much to find, other than diamonds. 

And the question is, "Why look for diamonds?". 

Your money counter is basically just a score. 

Diamonds don't do anything in the game. 

There is no actual in game benefit to picking them up. 

You can't spend them at shops or anything like that. 

The only thing they actually do is impact the ending, which we'll get to in just a bit. 

The other thing that bugs me is the lack of any kind of game story or narrative drive. 

"DuckTales" was aimed at younger audiences, so there's not a lot [of] dialogue, but this doesn't really make great use of the "DuckTales" license. 

I mean, this could easily have been developed as something else entirely different and then the sprites swapped in at the very last moment. 

Huey, Dewey, and Louie just appear in random places throughout the game for no reason and don't really do anything. 

And why is Mrs. Beakley in the diamond mine? 

Or, why is Bubba in the Himalayas, frozen in a block of ice? 

It's interesting that people always complain about "Back to the Future", for, like, not being faithful to the movie ("Did they even see "Back to the Future" before making the game?") but really, did anyone at Capcom ever see an episode of "DuckTales" or were they just handed character model sheets and told, "Stick the characters in there, somewhere.". 

Even the instruction manual doesn't offer any kind of story, other than simply, you know, Scrooge is looking for treasure. 

DuckTales is pretty repetitive and most levels are quite similar, with just the background graphics being a little different (like, in the jungle level you climb up vines and, on the mine level, you climb up chains). 

The Himalayas level is about the only level that, sort of, finds a way to use the environment to alter the gameplay. 

That is, if you try to pogo on the snow, you'll get stuck (which makes sense, of course) and it does use falling icicles and slippery blocks of ice a bit, as well. 

Now, please don't think that I'm telling you that DuckTales is a bad game. 

It's actually pretty good! 

I mean, it's sort of unambitious, when compared to Capcom's other recent Platform/Action games, and, whereas "MegaMan 2" was a labor of love, "DuckTales" feels like competent guys making [a] game that they were paid to make. 

Everyone loves the Moon Level music, and yeah I will admit, it's pretty darn nice. 

1up.com once put this game at number 9 on a list of the best ever N.E.S. games, which seems (quite frankly) insane to me and I grade this as a solid B... maybe a B-. 

So, once you've found all five treasures, something of a plot twist occurs; your treasures all get stolen, somehow, and you get a message, telling you to come to Dracula Duck Manor (which turns out to be the Transylvania level again). 

As someone pointed out, this was, uh, produced by Tokuro Fujiwara (designer of "Ghosts 'n' Goblins") which might explain why you have to play through this level twice. 

So you make your way back to same boss room as before, then face the final boss: Dracula Duck. 

He's a bit trickier than the other bosses (which are all quite easily beaten, um, but here you actually need to land on a bat, in order to bounce high enough to hit him on the head. 

All this seems to be a, uh, Castlevania (parody? homage? rip off?); I'm not quite sure. 

Once defeated, uh, Magica De Spell and Flintheart Glomgold appear and say that they will race you to your treasure. 

I don't even know which one is supposed to be talking... or, for that matter, how Magica or Flintheart are even connected to Dracula Duck, but you do get this very silly little race, where all you do is climb straight up the rope. 

There's no way to lose this unless you deliberately try. 

Now, there are three possible endings. 

There's the regular one (this one), um, but if you have, uh, ended the game with more money, you get a picture of Scrooge on a larger pile of treasure, and if you beat the game with no money, you get a pic of Scrooge looking, you know, sad because he has no treasure. 

Overall, it's a nice game. 

I wouldn't put it among the top tier of Capcom masterpieces but it is better than 90% of the crap on the FamiCom, and it did inaugurate Capcom's series of high quality Disney games. 



Oh no! 

It's "Fester's Quest" - one of the most hated and despised games on the Nintendo Entertainment System (probably not hated as much as "Back to the Future", though). 

Now, it might not be clear, but, uh, Uncle Fester was moonbathing one night, when a spaceship kidnapped a bunch of people. 

Gomez must protect the family, so it's up to Uncle Fester to rescue all those poor Manhattanites. 

It's not even clear what this game's name is. 

The title screen says, "Uncle Fester's Quest: The Addams Family"; the box art just says, "Fester's Quest". 

This was developed and published by Sunsoft, and only released in the U.S. and Europe. 

What's it like? 

Well, do you remember the parts of Sunsoft's "Master Blaster" where ya' got out of the tank and the game became sorta' like a top down "Commando"-type game? 

Well, just imagine an entire game of just those parts and you'll have "Fester's Quest". 

The game takes place in Central Park, I assume, as well as the sewers below. 

We don't see the Addams Family mansion, per se, but instead there's several smaller houses are scattered around the park, each containing one member of the family, for some reason. 

Now, I'm sure you're all familiar with "The Addams Family" and Uncle Fester. 

He first appeared in the, uh, Charles Addams New Yorker, uh, cartoons as an unnamed creepy bald weirdo. 

When The Addams Family was developed into a T.V. show in the mid-'60s and the cartoon characters were fleshed out and given names, while Fester is clearly someone's uncle, he's sometimes described as "Gomez's brother" and sometimes as "Morticia'a uncle". 

Former child star, Jackie Coogan portrayed him in the original show. 

The game draws some elements from the character from the T.V. show, such as Fester wielding a blunderbuss and, uh, somehow being able to power a light bulb. 

Aside from your gun and the light bulbs, you'll also need keys to open doors, money to buy hot dogs (to refill your health), gun power-ups, as well as items provided by the other family members, such as various types of potions and missiles and so on. 

"Fester's Quest" is usually regarded as a pretty difficult game for several reasons. 

One problem you might encounter early on is that your gun's projectiles move in weird curved paths. 

The patterns actually change as you power up the gun and some travel in a... such a severe curve that it's almost impossible to hit enemies, eh, as they close in on you. 

Or, when you're traveling in tight quarters, your projectiles will actually just curve, right into the wall and you won't be able to hit anything at all. 

Once you power it up all the way, the gun becomes an actual, like, wall of death, but gun power-downs are dropped just as frequently (or probably moreso than gun power-ups, so you can very easily power down your guns by accident. 

At first glance, "Fester's Quest" appears for... resemble a Metroid-vania or Zelda-type game. 

You have this big maze-like overworld and you can explore around the park, find various helpful items, climb down into the sewers and come out in new areas. 

In fact, the overworld and the sewers are two big maps, connected together at various points, with only certain areas being... being accessible at the beginning of a game. 

However, as the game progresses, you'll see that [it] becomes very very linear. 

There's only one specific path through the world and while there are a few areas that are slightly off the main path, the game pretty much goes like this. 

You walk through a path in the park that ends in a sewer entrance, you go into the sewer, re-enter the park, take the path through the park to a building, enter the building, fight a boss at the end of the building, and then repeat. 

Five bosses and then you enter the final level: the U.F.O. 

For some reason, the game throws in these first person sections, right before the boss fights. 

There's not much point; I mean, they're just small mazes with nothing in them. 

At the end is a rather boring-looking office door, wherein hides the boss. 

All the bosses are sorta' similar to this: a large dude who moves back and forth, attacking you from above. 

You need to dodge his attacks, which are simple repetitive patterns and shoot him until he dies. 

Afterwards, you exit, and then move on to the next level. 

Now, you must admit, "The Addams Family" was sort of an odd subject for a game in 1989. 

There hadn't been any new Addams Family material, since a, uh, made-for-T.V. movie in the '70s, and "The Addams Family" movie was still a little over two years away. 

As it turns out, this was sort of a passion project from Richard Robbins at Sunsoft. 

According to an interview on KidFenris.com the idea came to Robbins in a dream, and in order to get it made, he spent a great number of, uh, phone calls to Addams' widow in France, trying to convince her to give him permission. 

Sunsoft's home office in Japan didn't understand why he wanted to make this game, but obviously it was made, and it was developed by the same team as "Master Blaster". 

Apparently the lack of any sort of save system was due to a "oversight" and once they realized the game really needed one, it was too late. 

Which brings me to the other thing that makes "Fester's Quest" so damn difficult. 

You can take two hits before you die. 

What happens when you die? 

You restart at the beginning. 

No, not the beginning of a level - the beginning of the entire damn game. 

That's right, if you killed, um, for example, like, on the final boss fight, you go all the way back to where you started at the beginning of the game [and must] go through the entire game again. 

Now, granted, you get to keep your weapons and items, but still (I mean, you get hit twice and you have to start all over again?) that's insane! 

Now, there is a well-hidden secret item that extends your life bar to three notches. 

In fact, apparently there's another one of these that I didn't find, that gives you a fourth notch. 

And you do get some potions early on in the game, but only five of them (and you can't buy extras anywhere). 

So, you have to play through the game in one sitting and basically not make more than a handful of mistakes. 

Now, after your gun part way through the game, you get a second weapon from Morticia (a whip, which kind of resembles the flaming whip of "Castlevania 2", when fully upgraded). 

This actually is a bit more powerful than the gun, but on the other hand you have to be a bit more careful when aiming it. 

The final U.F.O. level is full of tons of difficult enemies. 

Um... Though a very helpful item you get late in the game is the noose, which kills all the enemies on screen (presumably by hanging them, I guess). 

Now, should you make it this far, luckily it turns out the final boss (which is some kind of killer robot/computer/metal gear thing I don't know, but it) can be easily defeated if you still have enough invisibility potions and missiles. 

Once you've knocked out the guns up in front, you can just stand right here, and its, um, remaining weapon can't hit you and you can just fire away with your missiles until it blows up. 

And that's it! 

I guess the spaceship decides to beam down all the Earthlings, um, back to Earth, right before exploding. 

And then the happy New Yorkers and you have a little rave together. 

It's a shame that "Fester's Quest" is, like, so close to being a good game. 

Just a few tweaks and it would have been pretty decent. 

Um.. Either way, though, it actually sold pretty well: a million copies, apparently. 

So, while it's far from perfect, it's still better than "Back to the Future". 



One last game for September. 

This one is also, curiously, a U.S.-only release. 

But listen to this music. 

Now, if you've played enough, uh, N.E.S. games, your first thought might be, "Now, that is some hella' British music!". 

I think it's that little "brrrring" thing that gives it away. 

So, "Sky Shark" is the first console game to have music by Tim Folan, who had previously found fame doing the music for various games on the Commodore 64 and the Z.X. Spectrum and, uh, you know, systems like that. 

As is often the case with these N.E.S. games that were released in the, uh, western market only, Taito went to a British developer (in this case, the infamous Software Creations, who are also known for such, uh, N.E.S. games as "Silver Surfer" and "Wolverine"). 

"Sky Shark" is a military themed shooter, where naturally you pilot an old-fashioned-looking biplane. 

If "Sky Shark" feels exactly, sort of, like, uh, so many other military shooters, that's because it is a port of a 1987 arcade game, originally developed by Toaplan (also known under the name "Flying Shark"). 

This game feels a lot like Toaplan's "Twin Cobra" or "Twin Hawk". 

You face off against hordes of, uh, flying enemy aircraft, along with tanks rolling along the ground, boats shooting at you from the water below. 

The original arcade game was nothing special, but reasonably charming. 

The N.E.S. port rips out all of the charm, cranks up the difficulty quite a bit, and leaves you with a game that is not very enjoyable. 

So I think you get the idea, here. 

Shooting the series of red planes will cause [an] item to drop; usually it's a power-up or an extra bomb. 

The power-ups are nothing special; they just add extra projectiles to your weapon and make the shots spread out a bit more. 

You don't have any secondary weapons, or anything like that, here. 

In terms of enemies, you get your standard planes, tanks, mounted turrets on the ground (you know, just the usual stuff). 

Some boring bosses appear, like this giant tank. 

Don't really expect much in the way of originality when it comes to this game. 

"Sky Shark" really borrows a lot from Capcom's "1942" series. 

For example, you have parts where you fly over battleships, knocking out their onboard guns. 

I... I guess it's not terrible. 

There are some slightly irritating things about "Sky Shark" (like the way enemies are always shooting at you from the sides and from behind). 

It's not terribly difficult. 

I guess this might have seemed cool back in 1989 but, after 25 plus years of better Shoot'em-Ups, "Sky Shark" doesn't really hold much appeal, now. 



We now turn our attention to the month of October 1989 and it's "Koushien". 

We have an almost elegiac musical melody, here. 

Then it picks up a bit. 

Published by K.A.C., it seems to be assumed that this is developed by S.N.K. (though their name isn't actually found anywhere on the front of the box). 

I have also heard it described online as using the same "engine" as S.N.K.'s "Baseball Stars". 

Alright, so this is rather clearly the, uh, Honshin Koushien stadium, depicted on the title screen. 

"Koushien" usually refers to the, uh, high school baseball championships, which take place at Koushien Stadium. 

This is... has a, uh, a reasonably high level of customization, here. 

You can play through the entire championships, pick which teams are gonna' be in the championships, as is done on this map of Japan, here, swap out various team members, [and] so on. 

The kid giving this speech here, uh, strikes a rather fascist pose. 

Oh yeah, [and] look at the face of the dude third from the left on the, uh, left hand side of the screen, there. 

The, uh, team first up gets decided by a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, of course. 

The soundtrack is pretty interesting! 

They use, like, this great deep drum sound in places. 

I'm guessing this utilized a, uh, special sound chip. 

Now, in terms of how this plays, it's not as irritating as some FamiCom baseball games, though I tended to get a lot of relatively high fly balls... and the C.P.U.'s outfielders will catch these balls around a hundred percent of the time. 

As always, it can be harder for you to catch fly balls, when playing defense, because you can't see where your outfielders are, until a ball gets pretty close to them. 

Overall, though, it is actually a... a... a pretty well constructed baseball game, however it is one of those games that got a pretty heavily re-worked, uh, version, released here in the United States in 1990, under the name "Little League Baseball: Championship Series". 

And while it's not quite as an impressive a catch as the N.F.L. license, this is an official Little League baseball video game, just in time for the, ah, 51st anniversary of Little League baseball, since this came out in the U.S. in summer of 1990. 

Um... Maybe it was planning on being released earlier and didn't quite make it. 

And this was actually published by S.N.K. in the U.S. 

However, when [you] actually load this thing up, all of the animations and screens and the intro have been completely changed. 

But, you know, the overall structure remains the same. 

Om... Instead of having, uh, like the map of Japan this is where you pick the teams you want to actually play in the championship from an international roster of various teams. 

The Rock, Paper, Scissors game has been replaced with the traditional thing where you put your hands on the, ah, the baseball bat. 

The game, itself, is pretty similar to the original. 

The sprites of the batters have been changed, but the pitcher, the basemen, and the outfielders remain exactly the same. 

Unfortunately the music gets a pretty heavy downgrade, losing those great pounding drums. 

I really don't wanna' sell this short, because Little League Baseball is actually a pretty solid game. 

I love the little touches, like the pitchers, you know, sort of, bawling out the other players when they fail to get a runner out, or this absolutely marvelous Home Run screen. 

(I mean, just look at all those faces - pretty much the best Home Run screen we've seen so far in... in... in any baseball game.) 

And why are they cheerleaders in the stands, though? 

So, final conclusion: "Koushien", a.k.a. "Little League Baseball" is a pretty damn playable game - really sort of the polar opposite of L.J.N.'s "N.F.L.". 

I mean, we have a lot of baseball games on this console. 

This isn't certainly not exactly the best, but we've seen far far worse. 

Now, we do have one last sports game, this episode. 



Ah, here's another game with a somewhat confusing naming history: "World Super Tennis" (a.k.a. "Top Players' Tennis", a.k.a. Four Players' Tennis). 

Published by our good buddies, Asmik, this is, I believe, the second Asmik FamiCom game we've seen (the first being a Mahjong game that employed a, uh, manga license). 

Just like that game, "World Super Tennis" appears to [have] [been] developed by a little company called Game Data. 

It features the names and likenesses of two tennis champs, Ivan Lendl (who was top t... uh, the top ranked male tennis player in the world at... at this time) and (a bit strangely) Chris Evert (who was, I think, retired by the time this game came out). 

She dominated the women's tennis world in [the] mid-'70s to late '70s. 

However, um, she was, perhaps, the best female tennis player ever (at least in the pre-Serena Williams era). 

So, aside from Lendl or Evert, you can create your own custom character here (a, [you know], boy or girl). 

Now in 1990, this got a pretty straightforward port in the U.S., under the name "Top Players' Tennis". 

"Chris Evert" 

"Ivan Lendl" 

They added some voice samples, and, uh, prominently put Evert and Lendl's name in the title. 

Also, one thing, they reversed the order in which they appear in the intro; Lendl comes comes first in the Japanese version and Evert is first in the U.S. version. 

Other than that, though, pretty much everything's about the same. 

You have multiple play modes for up to four players. 

So, playing against the computer, there is a career mode, of sorts. 

You need to beat three opponents to win the tournament. 

After this you move on to several real life tournaments, such as the, uh, French Open and so on. 

So, the first dude is pretty easy. 

Probably the hardest part is serving. 

You need to hit the ball when it's relatively high up in the air. 

In fact, the ball, to me, looks like it's still well ab... like, way above your head, when you make contact. 

But when I swing at the point where the ball appears to be at the correct height, I always get a fault. 

Though, on the other hand, I mean, your player appears to be the same size, no matter where you are in the foreground or background, so I guess it appears unnaturally short while you're standing at the baseline. 

I don't know; it... it's kinda' weird; you sorta' have to swing the racket, like, too early, in order to get a good serve. 

So, using either the A or the B button, you can lob the ball or perform a faster swing. 

You can get up close to the net and do a smash and your racket has a little bit of reach. 

There were times when I thought I wasn't going to quite hit the ball and I ended up just barely making it, somehow. 

When you run around, your player has a bit of momentum, so it actually takes a second to sort of stop or change directions. 

I'm actually reasonably impressed by the way this handles. 

Tennis games can be a bit monotonous, however, and I... I really can't possibly imagine having the dedication to play this game all the way through to its conclusion. 

Uh... For each opponent, you play multiple games and multiple sets, so it actually takes a while to beat each opponent. 

As you win, you get "points", which unlock new moves, and also the opponents get much tougher. 

Now, for some reason in 1992 this was released in Europe, with Lendl and Evert completely stripped out, under the name "Four Players' Tennis". 

It's the exact same game, only they've been replaced with two more generic players. 

Anyway, I can't say I'm a huge fan of this, but it's certainly not as awful as some of the other tennis games we've seen, and it is actually reasonably playable, at least for a little bit. 



Alright, "Venus Senki" from Varie, and apparently developed by Human, whom we've been seeing doing quite a bit [of] contract work, throughout the series. 

Now, you wouldn't know it from the incredibly boring box art, but this is based on a manga and anime, both of which were quite recent. 

The manga only started in 1987. and the animated film version, in mid-1989. 

Created by veteran illustrator and character designer, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko. 

It happened to come out during the U.S. manga craze of the late '80s/early '90s, so it got translated into English and published by Dark Horse pretty quickly. 

The anime was released in the U.S. on, uh, V.H.S. tape [a] couple years later. 

Now, this only came out in Japan, of course, but we do have a very nice translation by J2E Translations, who are known for their Final Fantasy IV translation from the early 2000s. 

So, wow! 

In 2003, a comet hits Venus. and greatly changed the landscape of Venus and Earthlings colonized it. 

Then a war happened. 

Um... By the way, Ishtar, uh, Terra, and Aphrodite Terra are, in fact, real parts of Venus. 

So, "Venus Senki" revolves around the rebel biker group, "Hound", (which is a terrible name for your biker gang) and their struggle to retake, uh, some captured city in Venus, or something like that. 

So, what kind [of] game is this? (R.P.G.? Shoot-'em-Up?) 

Nope. It's a military tactics game, in the vein of "Military Madness". 

So, here's your crew. 

"Carts" sounds like a name that somehow got mangled in translation from, uh, English to Japanese and then back to English again. 

Notice you have a level and points. 

Yep, your team members get points as they kill enemies and can actually Level Up throughout the game (pretty basic stuff, here). 

These are your guys: eight bikers and two transport vehicles. 

These transports are actually, uh, really the key to the game, in some ways. 

You and the enemy take turns moving your units around. 

When you attempt to move onto a space occupied by an... a unit from the other side, a battle will ensue. 

Now, throughout Chrontendo, we've seen, sort of, two forms of these type of games. 

There's the ones where the battles just play out automatically (like in "Military Madness") and generally the stronger unit wins. 

And then there's the other kind, where you actually have to do something during the battles and your actions will help determine whether you win or lose. 

In "Venus Senki" the battles are fought in, like, a little "Space Harrier"-type, uh, mini game. 

Enemies rush at you as you... and you have to, ah, shoot them down. 

Actually, you win by, um, a) not dying, and b) destroying ten of these special enemies. 

Lots of weak generic enemies come by you and, in between these will be, like, these more powerful enemies, such as these flying ships. 

You need to shoot ten of these special enemies, in order to defeat the entire unit. 

However, these battles only last one minute. 

So, if you don't manage to kill ten in that time period, the battle ends in sort of a draw. 

Aside from your standard weak laser gun, you have guided missiles, which kill most enemies much easier, but are very limited. 

Once you've destroyed all the enemy units on the screen, you win the level, and then it's on to the next. 

So, very very "Military Madness"-like. 

It's also not terribly sophisticated. 

The mechanics sort of encourage a defensive strategy. 

You have eight units, so you can surround your transports with them and then let the enemies come to you. 

And here's the reason why: the transports act as support units. 

Having them adjacent to one of your own units will repair it and refill its missiles. 

So, there's a huge advantage in... sort of ...in battles to, kind of, keep your units next to a transport at all times. 

Now, I admit there's a certain fascination with these odd hybrid games, like "Venus Senki" or "Maharaja". 

The problem with most of them is that the individual parts just aren't that interesting. 

The action sequences in "Venus Senki" would be like the most boring Space Harrier clone ever if they were released as a game by... by themselves. 

And there's virtually no strategy in the overworld sections. 

You only have one kind of unit, so there's really, like, no Rock, Paper, Scissors-type mechanics that you see in many of these strategy games. 

You never build more units and your own army never changes, so it's actually pretty monotonous. 

And weaving two uninteresting games together doesn't really create an interesting game, as it turns out, so "Venus Wars" is, at best, a curiosity. 



Holy cow! 

When's the last time we saw a FamiCom Disc System game? 

Well, I'll tell ya' the answer. 

It was "Magma Project: Hacker", back in August, so there've only been two F.D.S. games in the entire second half of 1989, so far. 

F.D.S. games will continue to [dribble] out sporadically for quite a while. 

It took a really long time for the system to die off completely. 

This is the second and final game in Nintendo's Famicom Mukashibanashi series of Adventure games. 

The first was called "Shin Onigashima", which came out around two years prior. 

Just like that game, "Yūyūki" was released in two parts. 

The first disc came out on October 14th and the second on November 14th. 

It was, once again, developed by Nintendo E.A.D. and Pax Softnica. 

The first Mukashibanashi game used characters and ideas from the stories of, uh, Momotarō and, uh, Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. 

"Yūyūki" draws heavily from "Journey to the West". 

The title "Yūyūki" means something like "Journey Record" or "Travel Diary" ([I'm] not really sure what the best way to translate that is). 

The game opens up with two meteors heading towards Earth. 

It turns out that they are Goku (who's based on Sun Wu Kong, the monkey king) and a bad guy named, uh, Gyumaou, an orphan girl named Chao (though you can give her and Goku different names when you start the game, if you'd like). 

Um... She frees Goku from the meteorite and they become friends. 

Just like the previous Mukashibanashi game, design here is meant to be very very traditionally Japanese. 

The text is displayed in these animated scrolls, and they read top to bottom. 

While this gives these games an instantly recognizable and distinctive screen layout, the window that displays, like, the actual graphics of the characters and whatnot is tiny. 

Lots of FamiCom Adventure games and R.P.G.s have screen layouts that use lots of bars and boxes and windows that take up space, but this must be the game with the least amount of screen space devoted to displaying the graphical illustrations of the game world. 

If we isolate it from everything else, we can see that it takes up less than a sixth of the screen. 

So, "Yūyūki" isn't that great of a game, visually. 

In terms of how it's played, it's actually much simpler than the first one. 

There's very little puzzle solving, and in some ways it resembles more of [an] interactive storybook than a game. 

Because the text speed has been, uh, sped up a bit, it actually moves quite a bit faster. 

Everything in the first game moved very slowly, for some reason. 

Supposedly, playing through "Yūyūki" takes about a quarter of the time that it did to get through "Shin Onigashima". 

It uses a lot of the same mechanics, such as switching between various characters throughout the game. 

Whereas "Shin Onigashima" has been re-released on the Game Boy Advance and the Virtual Console, poor "Yūyūki" has been pretty much forgotten (though Chao and Goku make a, uh, cameo appearance in a couple of the Kirby Dreamland games). 

Nintendo would release another two-part F.D.S. Adventure game in 1991, called "Time Twist", and then their odd little experiment with this format would be over. 



Alright, let's wrap this up, folks. 

"Hokuto no Ken 3". published by Toei, of course, and developed by Bear's (the same guys who did the first two FamiCom "Hokuto no Ken" games). 

You might recall; I did not actually care for those games. 

And, of course, uh, Shouei System's name also appears on the title screen (Shouei having some kind of connection to Bear's). 

Every "Fist of [the] North Star" game we've seen so far has been a super-basic Beat-'em-Up, uh, but now we finally switch things up a bit. 

You see, this one is an R.P.G. 

Holy crap! 

Look at this! 

Look at that purple person! 

What the hell are you doing!? 

Why [are] you waving your arms around like that? 

Uh... So, anyway, this is pretty standard R.P.G. stuff here, with a few eccentricities. 

The building on the left is the weapons shop, I take it, based on the teeny tiny sword hanging above the door. 

And, for some reason, all the shops are like this. 

It looks like you're entering a dungeon or something, but no; there's this long hallway and then the shopkeeper is all the way in the back. 

It's really pretty annoying. 

Wandering around talking to people, you'll find a couple characters who join you. 

Uh... This isn't like "Dragon Quest 2" or something, where you gotta' wander around for [a] couple hours, looking for them. 

Both these guys are, like, literally just standing around in the first tiny little town and will instantly join you if you talk to them. 

If you must know, these two are Lin and Bat (characters from the, uh, second "Hokuto no Ken" movie, I think). 

There's actually a few things in this game that deviate from the normal "Dragon Quest" formula. 

Um... First of all, you actually start with a decent amount of money (enough to buy basic weapons and armor for all three characters)! 

You also have an ability, found in the menu, to warp, um, to other locations that you've heard about. 

And Lin has a Heal command that can be used in combat, which is available right from the get go. 

Random encounters aren't super frequent. 

Um... I suppose it's either good (if you're tryin' [to] travel from one area to the other and you don't wanna' get in a fight every three steps) um, or it's bad (if you're trying to grind and you wanna' level up). 

The sprite work in this game is mostly pretty terrible looking, but the art, um, that appears during the battle sequences is actually pretty nice looking in a very, sort of, uh, primitive sort of way. 

I love the animation on the faces when they get attacked. 

It really looks like they're getting brutally beaten up. 

So is this a good game (one that you actually wanna play, one that'll get fan translated into English)? 

Uh... No, probably not. 

But at least it's a bit of a break from all the routine "Fist of the North Star" Beat-'em-Ups. 



Alright. What a fascinating train wreck of an episode. 

For Best Game this time, I'll probably have to say "DuckTales". 

While I'm not a huge fan, it's somewhat ambitious and well-constructed. 

Not exactly my favorite Capcom game, by a long shot, but honestly what other choices are there today? ("TwinBee 3", maybe?) 

Worst Game? 

Many of you might say "Back to the Future" (which I hated) but I'm gonna' go with "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". 

"Back to the Future" is crap, but at least there's less of it. 

"[Who Framed] Roger Rabbit?" is like a sprawling mess of crap. 

It's like the difference [between], you know, your cat pooping on the floor and the sewer main breaking and flooding your house with shit. 

"Back to the Future" I could deal with (I mean, sure it stunk, but it was controllable). 

"[Who Framed] Roger Rabbit?" was like the one game that psychologically broke me. 

I didn't want to have to play it, think about it, or talk about it. 

As a matter of fact, the voice-over for "[Who Framed] Roger Rabbit?" was the absolute last thing recorded for this episode (even after this, actually - as I'm speaking, it has still not yet been recorded). 

Anyway, next time, we have, uh, three baseball games, a Mahjong game, some T.V. game show games, a Dragon Ball game... 

And, on the other hand, the game that was translated into English, under the name "Princesstual Orgy" is coming up. 

And just like "Jesus... no Bio Monster", it is one [of] those games where you see that title and you go, "Holy crap. What the hell could that possibly be?". 

So at least I'll finally get to find out. 

Before then, we'll have some more non-Chrontendo content coming out. 

On "Dr. Sparkle After Dark", we'll cover the very difficult-to-comprehend movie, "Frozen Scream" (a film that was actually quite hard to see for years and years, until quite recently). 

Just like the Roger Rabbit game, I have no idea what I can even say about this movie. 

Also, there'll be some additional interesting stuff soon, so keep an eye out for that. 

In the mean time, thanks for watching and I'll see ya' later.