Game Freak, Before Pokemon | Forgotten Worlds

[00:00:18] Hello, Poke People. Am I allowed to say Poke People? Even though this isn't like a Pokemon podcast? It's your boy Dre, and I'm here with Steve. He will tell me if I'm allowed to say Poke People. I don't know. We like to call everyone our Poke Pals, and this is Pokemon Adjacent. Adjacent. Yeah, I guess it is, because today we are talking about Game Freak, but specifically all the games they made before Pokemon was released.

[00:00:49] They didn't make games before Pokemon, you lied. Game Freak only makes Pokemon, and then they're only shoved back in the cellar to make more Pokemon. That can't be right. Nintendo invented Game Freak for Pokemon. Yes, you got me. But yeah, they made many games before Pokemon was released in February of 96, in Japan anyway, Pokemon Green and Blue. Was it Green and Red? Yeah, Green and Red. Green and Red.

[00:01:15] And so we just thought we'd take a spin through all of them real quick. I mean, sort of like mini review style, if you will, but also just seeing if we could find any Pokemon vibes while we play these games. And Steve, I think there was a lot of Pokemon vibes. Well, yes, as we know, I'm the Pokemon fan. Andre doesn't know what many of the Pokemon are, so I found a lot more Pokemon vibes than I thought I was going to now that once that became the assignment.

[00:01:44] Yeah, because, you know, that's the interesting part to me is seeing what you can see before the thing. I think it's good to look at like you can see some Kirby hallmarks and actual Kirby characters and how laboratory games before Kirby, right? Stuff like that I think is super interesting. I'm sure this is super common knowledge and I'm just a big old dummy, but I legitimately did not know.

[00:02:08] So Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori made a self-published magazine together called Game Freak. And that's how this whole thing got started. Like in the in the 80s, I had no clue that was a thing. Yeah, that's used to be more common knowledge, but that that fact gets buried more with time. Yeah, they made a zine in the time where that was the thing. They Xerox the copies and gave it around and somehow they became an indie publisher.

[00:02:35] Sure. Well, what we would call an indie publisher in the midst of that. It's the word zine. I'm sorry. It just pops up into my head. I was just thinking like Japanese zines and European zines are always like these like super enthusiast like computer shit. And like American zines always seem to be like, here are some fucked up comics or like our zines were weird. I mean, we had a zine scene, but zine scene, but I don't know. There's were a lot more wholesome.

[00:03:05] Well, they were game freaks. They were video game enthusiasts. They like the video games. It checks out. Yeah, this, you know, the story of all that may or may not be where all my monotone games jokes come from. No additional comments on the matter at this time. I always thought that it was cool that they had the idea for Pokemon like first and they just tried to get this entire thing going for years and years before it finally came out in 96.

[00:03:35] And I'm sure they thought when it came out in 96, like this is too fucking late. The Game Boy is like already like on its way out. But then they revived the Game Boy. I always thought that part of their story to be pretty inspiring. You know, it's like we're just going to keep making these games until we get to make Pokemon.

[00:03:51] I am sure I can bro beat the Pokepals into doing a whole other podcast on trying to make Pokemon while before Pokemon was being made, because there is a lot of stories of things they could not quite get to work until Tajiri got super chummy with Miyamoto and, you know, help them out with different things. That's why your rival name by default in the Japanese version is Miyamoto.

[00:04:18] Maybe after Game Freak made Yoshi, they got all chummy chummy and then that led them to the road to success. That's my headcanon anyway. Oh, there was a lot of that because Pokemon took forever to make. And like I said, that's its own podcast. But what about the, you know, those other games along the way? All right, let's talk about the games. We're going to go in roughly chronological order.

[00:04:47] I say roughly, as you'll find out, because some won't be that way for certain reasons, but we'll get there when we get there. And let's start with Game Freak's very first game, Mendel Palace. Mendel Palace came out in June 89 in Japan, published by Namco. It came out October 90 in North America, published by Hudson Soft. And the key staff is here.

[00:05:15] The big three, as we will often call them or listen in the credits. Satoshi Tajiri, the founder and director of Game Freak. Ken Sugimori, game design and art on this game. And Junichi Masuda did the music. You're going to we're going to be seeing those names a lot throughout this. And we're going to note them as they come up. So I got this information from Wikipedia. I'm not sure what their source is, but I'm sure it's accurate. It says that Satoshi Tajiri marketed Quinty.

[00:05:42] That's the Japanese name of Mendel Palace, Quinty, to a bunch of publishers in America. So he came to America, got a rental car and drove all up and down the West Coast. This says to pitch it to everybody, because that's where all the publishers were out at that time. They all had offices in California or I'm sure he went up to.

[00:06:02] I wonder if he went up to Nintendo of America and just I'm just imagining him just going through the redwoods, just trudging and then just knocking on the door that says Nintendo. That's my headcanon of how he did it. I'm just imagining you and your I always forget the name of your arcade with the prototype, whatever, not the prototypes of the preview cabinets. I'm imagining him going with to a very young Andre like, hey, kid, you want to play Quinty? Get away from me.

[00:06:34] Yeah, so Hudson Soft finally accepted the game to be published. Most of the other guys rejected it as being too cute, the wiki says, and it sold about 68 K copies in America, which, you know, honestly, for an unknown like action puzzle game of its day, that's fine. Actually, you want to talk about that? You want to talk about how to I describe it as an action puzzle game, but what the fuck is Mendel Palace? Really?

[00:07:04] Um, it's action puzzly. You're a kid in a hat and your mission in life is to flip over tiles, not unlike a cartoonish Tatimi, Matt, you know, to smush your opponents against walls or other bad tiles. And it's that simple. They're all, well, they're not always just shimmying. Sometimes there's flying or swimming or throwing things at you.

[00:07:29] They think, yeah, the tiles and the mocks get more crazy as the game progresses, but that's what you're doing. You're flipping tiles. Sometimes the tiles flip back and you got to just out flip everybody. It's chaotic is what it is. It's a chaotic action puzzle or I think top down flipping them tiles. It's weird, but I like it. And I got to be real here. I have never heard of Mendel Palace until it appeared on Namco Museum Archives volume two, like a few years ago. I never heard of this game.

[00:07:59] I did hear of it, but I never got to play it until they put it in Namco Museum Archives two, because even in the time that no one wanted Nintendo games and they stuck them in the big lot boxes, no one was giving away Mendel Palace. Like, yeah, this is I want to maybe I'll hang on to Mendel Palace or maybe they just like only 68000 units sold. And, you know, however, however many still sitting in warehouses weren't necessarily found yet. I was not getting my own copy at the time.

[00:08:29] I'm sure they didn't print too many more than I didn't. I'm sure they didn't think it was going to be a huge success, but they they changed the name and they had those crack team artists that Hudson reduced the cuteness on the box. Oh, yeah. They put all the scary monsters up front. It looks like the title screen kind of does that. Well, the title screen looks more like the Japanese art, I guess. Oh, the title screen is very, very special. It's cool.

[00:08:58] It's fun. It's very game freak. We can we can say that much. I mean, to dip into Pokemon vibes just a bit, the title screen portraits of the guys are very much reminiscent of what Ken Sugimori would come up with in the original Pokemon games, especially the swimmer. Like that swimmer is almost dead on for what's in the red and blue. I mean, I know I'm not dissing on him at all. I mean this in the best way. There's a yes.

[00:09:22] The arts got more diversified over the years, but there's a rawness in those original art and that original art that we kind of just lost. Yeah. Yeah. I always say about Pokemon red or blue and people just think I'm being like a nostalgia porn, you know, gin one or whatever you guys, whatever pejorative you guys like to say about people who feel that way about Pokemon. But honestly, I think it's true. There's something to those original 151. That doesn't mean like they're the best ones ever or something.

[00:09:51] I don't even know enough about Pokemon to say that, but there's something to them. I think I've always said that, but you know, some people think, ah, you know, I don't know. Some of that can be attributed to eighties or nine being in the eighties or nineties, or maybe it was just them being the hungry young developers at game freak, just trying to make a buck. Driving around the West coast, scaring Andre in the arcade. I wonder what car he rented in 1989 or 90 to come market it here.

[00:10:20] Oh, he'll never tell. Yeah. I wonder what kind of car that was though at that time. I'm sure he still has the receipt. It was a, it was an 88 Honda Accord or something. I don't know. Did he even have Honda Accord back then? I don't even know. Oh yeah. I think that's at least the seventies. No. Okay. We're not, we're not the car podcast. I don't know enough about cars to do that anyway. This can't be car time. I don't really know enough. Is Mindale palace good?

[00:10:47] Like, I think it's fun, but it feels really frivolous. It feels like, you know what? It feels like one of those like cozy little games, you know, something you played at your friend's house at a weekend, uh, stay over sometime. And it's like, you know, you stay up some Saturday night playing it. It has fun tunes. It's cute. It has a, it's, it's very easy to understand, but whether it's good or not, I don't know. It's, it's fun, but do you understand what I mean?

[00:11:16] It also feels chaotic and frivolous. I think that for those reasons, you could call it like a hidden gem of the NES, not necessarily great, but you know, something everyone should try. Cause there's a lot of crappy games on the NES that, you know, aren't puzzly adjacent that aren't super good. Like, uh, there's the seven up game. That's just Othello, but with a red spot. What's that? Just Othello.

[00:11:42] I remember that existing, but yeah, the NES version was just Othello pretty much. Wow. I'm trying to think of another one. It might be called loops. It's got miserable music and not even a great hook. What I'm trying to say is you could do much, much worse than Mendel's palace. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I agree as an action puzzler though. I'm just used to that sort of tight kind of, you know, snow brothers or bubble bobble or something like that. This definitely doesn't feel like those.

[00:12:10] As a curiosity on Namco museum archives too, that is routinely on sale for $5. It's worth playing. It's worth it just for Mendel palace. For sure. You'll get a lot of bang for your buck out of that compilation, but definitely for that.

[00:12:43] Our next game is smart ball released in Japan in September, 1991 and March of 1992 by Sony image soft Andre likes this game a lot. I do. I like smart ball. I had smart ball. This is one of the few games on this list. Maybe the only games on this list that I, that I had. No, I had Yoshi too. Of course.

[00:13:08] Um, I try not to do flat out nostalgia porn around here, but can we please get wistful just a little bit about that Sony image soft logo for like a second? Because that was quality. You, you, uh, it was always a coin flip on whether the game was going to actually be good, but you, but it was pretty much a guarantee. The game was going to sound good. Oh, it's going to sound good.

[00:13:36] And smart ball sounds excellent. As of this recording, I am archiving, if you will, sky blazer. Ooh, baby. That's the good. You're, uh, you're truly living La Vida Loca. I must say. Oh, it is. It is. It's some good super Nintendo wing. If, if you ask me. So speaking of sounding good, Mr. Masuda was not with us for this game. He said, nah, nah, nah. You're all on your own for smart ball.

[00:14:04] But, uh, Mr. Tajiri and Ken Sugimori still showed up to, uh, you know, be the big two for, uh, this, uh, you know, game freak outing. Andre, what's going on here? We got, it's smart ball here, but Jerry boy in Japan. Jerry boy. Cause like in Japan, this game has like an entire story. Jerry boy has like cut scenes and stuff. Explaining like the story of how, you know, Jerry's jealous brother turned him into a

[00:14:32] ball, a smart ball, if you will, in some North America. But there's also parts of levels that have NPCs to talk to. So, you know, level one B, like the second thing that you do. And it's like that ruined town. You actually, it's actually a real town before that. And you like talk to people and then it gets destroyed. But in our North American version, we just show up and it's destroyed. So I don't know what's worse. So I, I don't know to us. It's just a backdrop there.

[00:15:00] It's like an actual like story thing. It's weird, right? They cut all that shit for us. I guess that's, I don't want to say common back then. I mean, like not every game did that, but if a, if a publisher here really didn't want to fuck with anything, that's what they would do. And they did. Yeah, I'm trying to think if, if anything Sony image soft did on super news was especially wordy. And I'm really having a hard time thinking of anything. I guess that that's your answer. Like, nope, get rid of it. The, the game with the blue ball does not need a story.

[00:15:31] I guess not. I mean, look at that face he has on our box too. Just that smirky, like, Hey, I'm so smart. That was very, uh, that's some Americanized smugness right there. It really is. I had that poster on my ball. I don't know if it came with a Nintendo power or if it came with the game, but I did have a smart ball poster and I had it on my wall for at least a few years. If it came in Nintendo power, maybe that's how, maybe, maybe that was how we got in.

[00:15:57] He, he was doing that and he was doing Yoshi's like, look, can you, can you help me make some pocket monsters? We're really trying to figure this out. But yeah, it's called Jerry boy in Japan. And I never really questioned why I was collecting letters in smart ball that spelled Jerry G E R R Y in the, like, you get a one up if you get them all. I never thought about that, but maybe in the American manual, it made sense.

[00:16:26] I don't remember what it said, or maybe that I just accepted his name was Jerry. I don't know. Prince Jerry. Prince Jerry. Of, of, of, of the jelly kingdom or whatever we're doing here. Jerry of the jelly kingdom. But yeah, see, obviously that's the rub, right? Jerry boy, jelly boy. We know how Japanese phonetics work. So I don't know. His name appears to be Jerry, Steve. So I really don't know.

[00:16:52] I guess what I'm really kind of dancing around here is, was this good or does Andre just like the, or is Andre in a very rare, very rare, rare sense of nostalgia sort of really wanting this game to be good for his own self? I mean, I think this game is good. I do. I thought it was good back then. Not great. This isn't like a crazy good platform or anything. It's good.

[00:17:22] And I still think it's good. Now. I think the same thing about it as I did back then still has a bang in music. No, I'm not letting that completely color my opinion, though. It is part of the game and I have to factor it in, but yeah, I think smart ball is good. This definitely holds up as a early SNES game. And I think, you know what I'm talking about? It has that sort of like quality to it where nobody totally figured out the hardware, but we're doing stuff. We're doing mode seven tricks.

[00:17:51] The music is going to sound SNES as hell. And you have a pretty decent platformer to go along with it. That's what I think of smart ball. And poor Masuda was locked in the closet. Like, I just want to play with the super Nintendo. No, nope. I don't know why they didn't let him in on this. It was weird. Maybe he really didn't want to work on that sound hardware. I don't know. I mean, I really liked the music a lot, too. And I was really enjoying the game at first.

[00:18:19] But then I hit level two. I guess two A. And it's done by letters. And it's just so the level was just very long. Like, we kept doing things for the sake of doing it. Like, can we just go right, please? Nope. That's long. That's an adventure. And then 2B came in and was like, let's do the Mario Brothers 2 log hop, but not time the logs right.

[00:18:43] Although I think that might have been a specific problem with my run of the archival device I was using. And because when I went back to try a second time, it wasn't as bad, but still not great. Yeah, you're being a zoomer right now, I have to say. And you're blaming emulator problems for your bad platforming on top of all. I'm just saying, okay? Look, I'd like to give these things on the original hardware, but come on, Sony.

[00:19:13] Let's start including the image softworks in the classics section, all right? What am I really getting? I'm like, and I kept going. I really wanted to see what wacky shit was happening next. I personally ended up giving up around the level seven before watching a playthrough online. Sorry, Andre. There yet we started having backgrounds that looked like foregrounds and the Poppy Brothers Juniors on balloons that go to mostly nowhere.

[00:19:44] I mean, it is a visual Super Nintendo feast, but it's just not that fun to play to me. Where did you think? Okay, first of all, where did you think the Poppy Brothers Junior was going to go? Did you think he was going to take you to some hidden level or something? Well, no, we're like, it's clearly we had to go up because going you weren't providing platforms, right? So I'm like, okay, we have to ride these balloons up. So how much longer am I going to ride these balloons up?

[00:20:14] Quite a while until the game says not. Until the game ends. Look, I get you, right? I'm not going to sit here and defend Smart Ball to you. I think it again, I think it's good. I don't think it's great. I'm not sitting here being, oh, yeah, this is game of my childhood. It's just, you know, it's a fun early SNS platformer with great visuals and great music. That's all I can really say about it. But one particularly inspired bit, and I know you're going to agree with me, is that moon

[00:20:43] level stage four, because first of all, it has great theming, right? You take the rocket up to the moon after you beat the boss in stage three. You get into like a Mario 2 ass rocket. You go up and then you literally land on the moon in the background of this very cutesy, like kind of, oops, I crashed this entire rocket into the moon with a cute sound effect. Oh, no, the moon's great. Mode seven is fuck. Oh, yeah. So you start. Yeah, it's excellent.

[00:21:12] Especially put yourself in my shoes at the time, seeing that in like, what, early 92 or whenever I got that game. Man, that was cool as hell. Yeah, I had Mario World and other stuff. It's not like I had never seen Mode seven, but that really hit. And the music on the moon. Oh, man, that's a moment, man. That's that's a really good thing that they did there.

[00:21:45] But it didn't really stand forever. It's not on Royale with cheese or anywhere else we could play a game today. You know, we had to archive it as we like to playfully mention. So why do you think? Why do we think this got lost? I don't know, man. I really don't know. Again, I think maybe for being like an early SNES platformer and there's that certain quality to it. It doesn't feel remarkable to anybody.

[00:22:15] And it's not. I mean, when you look at it, it's it's it doesn't look a whole lot better. And it looks like an SNES game. You know, I don't think there's anything about it that makes people go, whoa. Or when you play it, definitely doesn't make anybody go, whoa, it's just very standard in that in that way. And or I don't know, maybe Super Mario World was just that big and there just wasn't really any room for any other platformer.

[00:22:41] Maybe it was just too early in the SNES's life or stuff like that to make an impact. Why is Hyperzone lost? Right. Like we could probably say the same thing, even though that game is much more impressive. Yeah, I'm with you. I also think when I'm thinking about the 90s was mascot country, you know, Mario was, you know, grandfathered in and he came with your Super Nintendo. Sega had Sonic in his tune. Way past cool.

[00:23:10] Smart Bulls Jerry is a blue bean. The box art looks neat now. But back in 1992, you're passing by the shelf and games are 70 to 80 dollars a pop. You're going to get that? I mean, we did. You know, I don't know. I don't think it's too out of line to think that. Yeah, but OK. But by the time that came out here, Kirby's Dream Land came out for the Game Boy.

[00:23:39] It was cheaper, had marketing and was on something more people had. I think there's only room for so many blobs. I guess. But it didn't look and sound like that. People, not a lot of people, but the right people definitely played Smart Ball.

[00:23:54] The Super Mario Brothers Wonder game has a handful of levels in the fungi mines, which are very much a love letter to this game, Smart Ball, where you get the Wonder Flower and you're turned into a little green blob. And he crawls on walls and he sticks his little self out to get coins and things. They knew what they were doing.

[00:24:17] I would love that whoever, whatever the Mario staff is at Nintendo right now, it's like, oh, man, Smart Ball was like my biggest influence. People like Smart Ball. Excuse me. Jerry Boy was my biggest influence. They're like, yeah, I was having fun at first, but then I met those people in level two and then I watched their lives get destroyed. And my my own life was changed forever.

[00:24:42] This game, this game feels a little like Kirby is sometimes right with the amount of sub rooms you go into. I think so. Again, since you mentioned Kirby, it wasn't out yet at this time, but like, I don't know. I could see it. I'm not saying Sakurai played Smart Ball was like, oh, man, I know what to do now. But especially a lot of the sub rooms that just turn into very small rooms, many of us just have nothing. Some of us just have a power up and then you just go back out and do what you that's very Kirby. Yeah.

[00:25:13] OK. And like the stage eight music and like the whole castle theming. Like, come on. That's pretty Kirby. I think whatever. Something was in the air. That's all I'm saying. Well, we forgive that because Game Freak and Howe would be very chummy chummy as Pokemon development went on. Some other random bits before we get to the Pokemon vibes. I loved the sign after you beat, I think, to be and it says Oasis, but it's spelled with a Y. It's like OASYS. Did you catch that?

[00:25:42] Yeah, they're doing their best. Oasis. There was a weird amount of human enemies, huh? In this game. It's kind of strange. Yeah. Maybe if we had those cut scenes, we would know why they were there, but we don't. The bad humans. Yeah. Game Freak had an interesting relationship with humans to fantastical creatures for a while. We'll get into that further in, too.

[00:26:08] But here, it's kind of weird how they just kind of pop in and then disappear just as unceremoniously. If only we knew the story. If only. Speaking of things being in the air, this is more definitely when they were starting to work on Pokemon behind the scenes because there's definitely some overlap in monsters in this game and things we would see as Pokemon later on. There are these rock monsters in the level 2B that are very much Geodude.

[00:26:38] They can't be mistaken for anything else later on. They're absolutely Geodude. Well, there's that dinosaur in the second desert level. That's definitely. I mean, look at that guy. I think I put a screenshot in our notes. You see that? Look at this thing. He definitely bears a passing resemblance to the nondescript Pokemon statues they stuck in red and blue. Like they weren't any one Pokemon, but they stuck them in all the gyms. And yeah, that's definitely him.

[00:27:07] If he had a goofy face. Probably more than any other game we're going to talk about, except maybe Pulseman. I think this has the most Pokemon vibes. Yeah, I'd say so. You know, you got to have an identity in all that, right?

[00:27:38] Actually, we're not smartballed out because we're going to talk about the sequel Jelly Boy 2. That's right. Not Jerry Boy 2. Jelly Boy 2. I guess, Steve, at this point, they realized their English mistake. So I guess Jelly Boy was always the. Well, that makes sense. You are kind of malleable. Very. So we were planning to do these games in order of release date, as we said at the top.

[00:28:05] But we're putting this after Smartball because Jelly Boy 2 never came out. Not in Japan. Not in America. Not anywhere. So as the story goes, in 1994, Sony and Nintendo were on the outs with each other for very obvious reasons that everyone knows about. And Game Freak was already making Pokemon for Nintendo. So that sort of just led to an easy cancellation of Jelly Boy 2.

[00:28:33] So who worked on this game? Well, Mr. Tajiri and Sugimori are just slapped right on your face and you're in the boot up. Okay. Mystery solved. Did you just whatever me on my Jelly Boy 2 cancellation? I think you were just like, well, anyway. Oh, no, anyway. I mean, I feel like lots of games were canceled in this time. And I guess I've grown numb to it as a jaded millennial. Even in Japan, I don't know.

[00:29:01] I guess they figured there were a bazillion platformers and what's one more. But I don't know. I think they missed out a little bit. For sure. I mean, this is a wildly different sequel or would have been. There was an EGM preview of this game. I don't know what they called it there. Probably Smart Ball 2 or whatever. But they stated the game was planned to release in September 94. And obviously that never happened. But yeah, I guess that's the question.

[00:29:28] So, yeah, we played this game because obviously it leaked to the internet and it is very easy to archive these things. And the game is complete. It's done. You can play the whole thing. And we did. If this were to have actually came out, would this have been a success? Would you have enjoyed this? Would you have played this? I think the answer for me is definitely yes. Being a fan of the first Smart Ball, having a sequel look like this and play like this three years later is like would to me would be like, holy shit.

[00:29:57] But I don't necessarily think it's better than the first Smart Ball, though. I know you're going to flip me on that, though. You definitely think this is better than Smart Ball. You know, you're bringing up the 1994 release date and I'm remembering everything else that came out on Super Nintendo in 1994. I'm like, maybe canceling it was the right move. Really? Because there is no way you are going to stack this up next to Donkey Kong Country and have people buy it.

[00:30:27] No way. I mean, people buy crap all the time. Not that this game is crap. I'm just saying that, like, just because the best thing exists doesn't mean people won't buy something else. Yeah, I know. But, I mean, I'm just thinking at the time, the marketing hype they were drumming up for Donkey Kong Country and then you're just going to put this. I'm like, I can see why you wouldn't want to print the carts. I guess so.

[00:30:55] But it would have come out before if EGM said September 94. Donkey Kong Country came out in November for sure. So it would have beat it to the punch. But I don't know. I don't really think that's the same market. Although you could say you can't market this to kids. Like, Smart Ball, like, is much more kid friendly. This Jerry Boy 2, excuse me, Jelly Boy 2. This ain't easy at all, I think. I think the difficulty stepped way up.

[00:31:18] I honestly thought it was easier to play, even if it was a little stiffer, just because of the variety of play styles the Jerry's provide. I couldn't think of a better name for them. There's different kinds of them. I'm not entirely clear on what the one with the bow did or how the dog attacks and how I very much used Mint and the Fat Guy as soon as I got them for the rest of the game. Same.

[00:31:43] And also, yes, it's not as fun visually as the first, but, you know, it's hard to gauge. Yeah, I mean, it's better graphics for sure. I would almost say, like, this could be, like, an early PS1 game. I think it's that level of 2D. I think this game looks really good on a technical level. But there's just not, like, the fun, adventure-y touches, I think, of the first.

[00:32:10] It's like, okay, you know level 5 in the first game where it's, like, the water level? First of all, the music is stupendous. Secondly, there's that big cardboard shark that's coming after you, and you're like, whoa, what the fuck? And then you go in one of the rooms, and then you find out it is indeed a cardboard shark because you see the back of it. Like, someone was piloting it. That's cute, right? I don't think Jelly Boy 2 has anything like that. Which is weird because it's got this whole theme park theme going on.

[00:32:40] So you'd think they'd really be playing that up, but they really don't. They don't. But on a technical level, though, the graphics are stupendous. It just doesn't, I don't know, it doesn't have the same. It's not as fun to look at. Yeah. Also, what you were saying about Control, I definitely prefer the first game's Control. This one's a little springy and twitchy for me. I don't know. I feel like it's really easy to fall off stuff. And they give you a lot of little platforms in this game. But I don't know, fat guy charges across a lot of those, so.

[00:33:09] Yeah, okay, but before you get him, you still gotta climb shit. And it's wild. There's a lot of auto-scrolling, which is not something I usually complain about. But with something that twitchy and little platforms plus auto-scrolling, it sometimes gets to be a bit much for me. It is a veritable mixed bag. But, you know, we never got it. So can we really pick on it on that level? It was never a commercial product, so. I think we can. It's a complete game. That's why I feel comfortable doing that.

[00:33:39] If this was just like a few levels and incomplete other bits and bobs, then no. But no, this is a full front-to-back game. So, yes, I think that's fair to say. Speaking of, did you figure out what the Ribbon Girl did? Because I could not. Um, no. It seems like she was just smart ball, but pink in a bow, I guess. I don't know. Which is weird because, anyway. Okay. Well, how do you fight with her?

[00:34:05] You needed to fight boxes and things, but everyone else had an offensive maneuver but her. Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. Maybe it wasn't as complete as we thought. Okay, but if that's the only thing missing, I think that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, Pokemon vibes, basically the same as the first, the googly eyes are on steroids here in this game. There's, I don't think the critters are as Pokemon. I don't think there was any Geodude sightings or maybe you can tell me different.

[00:34:35] Well, first off, these kids are definitely junior, uh, jumbo trainer sprites before there was Pokemon. So that was still leaking in here for, you know, for about 30 seconds before they turn into the Jerry's. And real close to the end of the game, there's these hell carousels with the fiery horses. And those are very much akin to, uh, Ponyta and Rapidash from the first set of games. Fire horses. I'm like, Hmm, that, that's, that's, that's literally a Pokemon that exists.

[00:35:04] Yeah. I wouldn't have, I definitely wouldn't have caught that. So, but yeah, I don't know. I don't think I have anything else on jelly boy to hear. It sucks. I said it didn't come out. I think it deserved to, and I would have played it with my smart ball having ass. Yeah. We don't always miss out with canceling games, but I think here we did.

[00:35:38] All righty. The next game is a game you might've heard of. It's called Yoshi or Yoshi's egg. If you live somewhere else, it was released in Japan in December, 1991. And here in June of 1992, I know, uh, Suda wrote the music and I'm not too clear on the other ones. This felt like some, uh, contracted work, I guess this was on NES and game boy. I never played the game boy version, but I know, uh, Andre has.

[00:36:06] That's the version I had growing up. I had the game boy version. It's, it's identical, completely identical. Obviously it's going to sound a little different because of the game boy chip or whatever versus NES, but honestly, it's exactly the same thing. It's as, it's as one to one as something like that can be. So it's, it's a puzzle game. You're in a column of, uh, four things where things drop down and you match the, uh, Mario three enemy sprites and groups of two. And then everyone comes on the internet and says, Nintendo obviously wanted you to buy a

[00:36:36] super Nintendo because they made a mid puzzle game. Who says that? Nobody says that. There are a lot of children back when this came out on ambassador that did not understand this game, because what you're really supposed to do is stack the bottom has of eggs and then smush as many of the enemy sprites as you can in between.

[00:36:58] And then smack the top half of the egg in between and watch it cascade gently down satisfactorily into different sizes of Yoshi's, especially the big fat one. They still have that sound on game boy too. I mean, I think that's our first appearance of a fat Yoshi too. I mean, it's not Tetris. Nothing's going to be Tetris, but there is that degree of risk reward of trying to get that chunker by reaching the top and hoping you don't get the game over screen.

[00:37:29] It's a, it's a really fun puzzle game. It is. You described it perfectly and it's, it is satisfactory getting the chunker, but how, I'm sorry. How did the, how did people not understand how to play it? I don't, I'm still kind of stuck on that. The game doesn't include a how to play mode. So I just had to guess. Oh my fucking God. The kids are hopeless. I'm sorry. Jesus Christ. What is wrong with y'all?

[00:37:55] Anyway, as you mentioned, Masuda did the music Junichi Masuda and the mushroom theme. Steve legit. My favorite puzzle game song ever, ever. Maybe, maybe Tetris two type a on NES. Maybe that's like slightly better to me. Other than that, this is the best. I think he knocked out of the park and it's Pokemon as hell. You can hear it, right? Yeah.

[00:38:23] The most of the thing is Pokemon as hell, but the other two are also excellent puzzle themes. You can turn it on any of them and just get into it. I think. Yeah. They're all good. They're all good. I just have that, the mushroom one though, man. It just, that thing hits. Should I play it? I want to play it. Here's the mushroom theme.

[00:39:27] Goddamn. I love that thing. It's so good. My absolute favorite song in any puzzle game, but Yoshi is not necessarily my absolute favorite puzzler. It's good. You know, and it's exactly what you described, but I also don't really have a whole lot to say about it. It's just a fun nineties puzzler and that's kind of it. And I'm, but I'm glad it persists. I'm glad Nintendo never forgot about it.

[00:39:52] And, um, honestly, besides the music, I can kind of just imagine this being a Pokemon spinoff. Is this really too far off from Troze or something else like other Pokemon spinoffs? I don't think so. I think Troze is closer to Yoshi's cookie, but, uh, I'm honestly impressed. They didn't revisit this when Pokemon gold and silver had eggs. Yeah.

[00:40:19] Literal eggs where, but instead they called intelligent systems to make Pokemon puzzle challenge, which was Penelope pun with gold and silver characters. So puzzle league, which was the anime anyway. Oh boy. Where I'm going with this is like, yeah. Why wasn't there Togepi's egg for Andre? Togepi is the Pokemon smash brothers that does different things when it pops out. Oh, like the baby. It's like a baby, right? Okay. Yeah. I know what Togepi is.

[00:40:48] Like, like just have him be in a mascot puzzler and you're spinning those eggs around into like for game boy color. That would have been better than because I love puzzle league as we discussed on this show before, but it is not. It was not fun on the game boy without a shoulder button. Yeah. I'm, I'm impressed. I knew what Togepi, imagine fat chonker Togepi when you get the entire stack of, uh, I'm into it.

[00:41:16] Um, I never really thought about how they, um, were Mario three sprites, but yeah, that's a Mario three ass blooper, isn't it? Or Goomba or whatever. And Goomba and, uh, boo. Yeah. The mini piranha. You know what's sad in Yoshi when you get the top half of an egg, but you don't have anything and it just goes boink. It's like, oops. Okay. Sorry.

[00:41:51] All right. Our next game is magical. Tartaruto kun. Released in Japan in April of 92. As you can imagine with a title like that is never released anywhere else. Only in Japan. Um, the key staff here, the big three are here directed by Ken Sugimori. This time produced by Satoshi Tajiri music and sounds by Junichi Masuda. Gee, could you tell? Well, magical Tartaruto is a late eighties, early nineties manga.

[00:42:21] So this is a licensed game, you know, and this manga was published in Shonen Jump. There was also an early nineties anime series of which I can only imagine this game is based off Steve. And let's just talk about that now. I think you did some sleuthing last night and you've watched an episode or two of this anime. Because I was getting confused of about the game because it was a full disclosure. It was a while since I played the game. So I rewatched some of a playthrough.

[00:42:50] I'm like, there are some very human looking characters that we're finding in these rooms. What is going on with this? So I watched the first episode, which was very much a fan sub effort from the early nineties. I, uh, I walked away with more questions than I had before. So this was not what I'm going with is that knowing the material will not help you with your enjoyment of the game.

[00:43:16] It was also the stuff you were showing me was also astoundingly horny for like, astoundingly horny for a children's show. It was weird. It was so strange, but I guess that kind of humor was it back then. Um, but yeah, so the game we're talking about the magical Tarot Ruto game we're talking about today is for mega drive, but there was other magical Tarot Ruto Koon games were like super Famicom and other stuff.

[00:43:44] And those were all published by Bandai, but this particular mega drive version was published by Sega. And that's the version we're talking about today. I guess it was like a special case thing. Those Mendel palace guys available. Ooh, Hudson soft. Did Hudson soft publish anything for Genesis? I don't think they did. I don't know. Yeah. See, I think they left that to other people. I think they were too deep in Tempographic 16 lands. Like, yeah, we'll publish for Nintendo sometimes, but not, not for you guys.

[00:44:14] The theming is really great in magical Tarot Ruto Koon, uh, starting out in that school. And then you go to like a sunny flower field and ruins, and then you have like a forest or with big mushrooms and so on. I love that type of shit. And you go like into the darker forest and there's like bats and then you fight fucking Dracula at the end of it. It's straight up Dracula, which is a really annoying boss, by the way.

[00:44:41] All of it goes together real nicely and works together and gives you that platformer feel. You know, it feels like you're having an adventure when you're just, you know, moving to the right. And that's really important. I think in especially licensed games, Steve. Just one thing. I thought Dracula had a bit of a Frankenstein head. And, uh, you know, if he told me that he had, I couldn't read any of the text in this game, but if he told me that he had more love to give than we could comprehend, I'd believe you.

[00:45:12] That's a deep cut for, uh, diligent fine time listeners. But yeah, what did you, what did you think of? What did you think of magical Tartaruto Kuhn? Pretty good game. I say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You wave your magic wand. You pick up a thing and it gets a face that looks more pervy than intimidating, which makes more sense. And after I watched that first episode, like I thought it was that first thing he was just trying to be intimidating. But afterwards, like, yeah, I'm a box.

[00:45:41] The face he's making. But, you know, sometimes the items do things like sometimes you get it, like it'll fire a cannon or it'll operate other machinery. It's neat. If I was a magical Taruru can. We're keeping it. No, that's how we're pronouncing it. Yeah. Sorry. But if I was a fan of this and I was like, oh boy, a game. And I rented it. I rented this for the weekend.

[00:46:10] I wouldn't have hated myself for it. I've been on the show to say, oh God, that weekend where I rented a Beethoven second or whatever other nonsense. I've rented with a coupon over the years. But no, this would have been a satisfying rental. I think. I feel especially cheated by something. If I use a coupon and it still sucks. Yeah. More than if I paid for it. I don't know why it feels that way. Even though I didn't lose any money. I don't go well. At least I didn't spend any money. It's like, well, that sucked.

[00:46:40] And I spent my free coupon on it. Yeah. You're absolutely right. But why does that feel better? Why does that feel worse rather than spending your own money? I don't have an answer to. It does, though, for some reason. I don't know why. But yeah, I agree with you. There was an auto scrolling level from hell, though, after Dracula. Yeah. That was terrible. Licensed games. You know, they can't all be winners all the way through.

[00:47:10] Yeah, that was bad. I love the movement options in this game. Again, I don't know the lower reason why this happens. But the winged bat dive thing that you can get over large gaps with. You know, why do they have bat wings? I don't know. But you can do that. I think that's neat. Yeah, he had wings in the one episode I saw. I mean, why not use it? Well, I guess it's better that he didn't use it.

[00:47:34] What was in the cartoon that wasn't in the game was he had this tongue that he kept licking everybody with to say hello. And I'm surprised that didn't get more. Oh, no. Yeah. I'm like, Yoshi had a tongue. Yeah, this becomes more horny the more I hear you about it. What was with the Mario 2 wall mouths?

[00:47:58] Like, you step on a switch and then it opens just like Mario 2, like the eagle mouth or whatever, and then you go inside. It's exactly the same thing. There's that and the mushrooms and the smiling mountains in the backgrounds of some levels, a pool of fire breathing turtles you cross like two thirds of the way through. Like if we were if this was like Nintendo R&D one before Mario, this would be the Mario vibes section.

[00:48:25] But yeah, there was definitely Mario vibes. But before we get to Pokemon vibes, I do think, well, I guess this fits in, too. I do think the bosses were kind of Pokemon vibe. Again, this is a licensed game and they didn't make these characters. But I think the way they're depicted in here, especially like the soccer guy or like, you know, other shit like the helicopter thing. I felt like that was that could have been in Pulseman. In fact, it probably is.

[00:48:53] You know, like I feel like that stuff is very game freak. I don't know where that helicopter guy comes from. Again, bringing up the one episode. So he turns his toy helicopter into a real helicopter and it gets shot down by the military at the end for whatever reason. Okay, this anime sounds insane. I need to watch this. It sounds crazy. But now there's this other guy in a different helicopter that shoots us every few levels. This game is all over the place.

[00:49:24] It is. But I liked it. I thought it was good. There's a lot of voice bits, too. There's like the main character sings the Sega at the front of the character. That's it. That's good. But then there's like tons of other voice bits, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the one when he picks up something. It sounds like he's saying quickie, quickie, cookie or quickie. Yeah. Cookie. What's really weird is that there's a lot of I already brought this up.

[00:49:54] There's these very human characters that are like locked away in rooms for whatever reason. And then there's a lot of text that just comes on and they keep going on and on and on. Like, I can't read this. I'm doing this for a podcast. Can we just do what we're doing here? I read most of it, and it's not very consequential. It's just platformer stuff. You don't care. But you don't need the scenario. Just give me the platforming.

[00:50:17] But I did read more carefully when I played it a few times more about like after you get the bat wings. Like maybe I could learn more about that. But no, the game just tells you, hey, you could just use the bat wings by doing this. It doesn't explain how you get them. The bat wings were inside you the whole time. Yes. As far as Pokemon got, as far as Pokemon vibes go, the song in the ruins goes through like a few different movements. Right.

[00:50:44] But at one point, it's a dead ringer for a song from Pokemon Red and Blue. I don't know which one because I haven't played them since they came out. But there's no way in the world Masuda didn't straight up reuse that for Pokemon. He did. Speaking of songs, they definitely reuse for Pokemon. I guess you call them modern Japan segments. I feel like all the levels start off with you just walking around town or whatever. Yeah. They have music that was definitely reworked into the original bicycle theme.

[00:51:13] Also, you're punching a lot of baby Hitmonchan in the face. They are kind of Hitmonchan-y, huh? Hitmonchan-y. Is that a word? They're Hitmonchan-esque. Find time. Broadcasting worldwide.

[00:51:46] All right. Up next, we got Mario and Wario. It came out in Japan in August of 1993. And out here, never. Never came out here. All your usual suspects came out to play to work on this game because, you know, we've got a decent working relationship at Nintendo at this point, and we're called in to work on a Mario game. So, everyone's got to bring in their best. Yeah. Bring out the stops.

[00:52:14] Oh, we're doing another game after Yoshi. Masuda, you have to work on this one this time. You have to do Super Nintendo music. Fine. And music he did. So, why do you think it didn't come out here? I don't know, man. I mean, usually games that use weird peripherals don't come out here, but this used the SNES mouse, which definitely came out here because every fucking kid I knew had Mario Paint except me.

[00:52:42] So, like, obviously a lot of people had a mouse. I'm pretty sure people would have been into more mouse games that weren't 10 star or something. 10 star. Right? And that came out, what, in, like, 95? It came out hella late. I have no idea why this didn't come out here. I think they expected it to. The entire game is in English. And usually, I mean, look, it's not super unusual for a game from the 80s and 90s for a Japanese game to be completely in English,

[00:53:11] but they usually do that when they expect it to come out overseas, and it did not. I have a guess. Okay. They tested it internally with kids here, and they did what the kids do today with Yoshi. They were too stupid to understand what to do, and they hated it. They were handed the mouse, and they didn't understand why they weren't using the controller and why Mario was already walking on his own. They did not understand that with a damn.

[00:53:41] That's the only reason I can fathom that, from what I can understand and have played, and what you already just said, was North America ready? It's in English. And I am sure another discussion of whether or not they need different SKUs, including a mouse, just made them say, nah, forget it. Forget it. We're not doing this. I don't see... Man, I'm telling you, I don't see that. That shouldn't have been a big deal. Also, they didn't really repackage stuff like that back then.

[00:54:10] Yoshi Safari didn't come with a super scope. It just had... There was just Yoshi Safari on the shelf. You either had one or not. Yeah, but they weren't making a ton of mouse games. I mean, off the top of my head, SimAnt used it, but not very well. I know Civilization used it, but that came out way later. And they actually did. Anyway! SimCity 2000? I don't know. See, I don't know either.

[00:54:37] I had SimCity 2000 on PS1 with the PlayStation mouse. I did. That's how I played it, believe it or not. Did it work? It worked. It was laggy as hell, because the PlayStation doesn't have any RAM, but it worked. No, the problem with SimAnt on Super Nintendo was that it should have worked, but it was on these little... The cursor was on these little points, and you just kept dragging it across that like you were pressing the D-pad anyway. Oh, that's terrible. You can't do that. They might as well not have had mouse support.

[00:55:06] Yeah, just bad. You may as well just play with a controller if you're going to do anything. But yeah, it's... Mario and Wario is basically a... What would you call it? Puzzle game. Another action puzzle game where you just kind of place blocks in front of Mario that has like a bucket on his head so he can't see. So he's like a lemming. He's just walking. You could turn him around sometimes by knocking on his head, right? I think. Or, you know, it's that type of puzzler where it's like, oh, figure out the screen.

[00:55:35] They do get more involved as time goes on, though. And I think that's where the game loses me. I'm just not clicking that much. I don't know about you, Steve, but... Man, I was in here for some cozy single screen puzzles because like you just said, the further you go along, the much longer this takes and there is no battery backup. Yes, we're archiving and we can just take a break whenever we want. But back in the day, just sitting there all afternoon

[00:56:05] trying to click that much. Which... I don't know. I'm sure I might have been able to handle it as a kid if no one interrupted me for anything. But here, my emulator kept acting up and, you know, I'm getting old. I'm sure my dysgraphia has something to do with it, but I'm sure I'm feeling, you know, the carpal tunnel trying to click that much as levels going on. A lot of my references are borrowed from a watched video. I'm sorry, not sorry. I played as much as I could. I think I got through like pretty much the third level

[00:56:35] and third world rather. And then the fourth world came up and I'm like, oh man, I just... Like if you could just go to the last level and then finish the game that way, I could see that working where you could just pop in wherever you want. But if they make you sit there and do the whole thing in one shot... I don't know if I... Yeah, but there's stages where there's just these long strings of like click these 15 blocks while your character moves at a speed that is not always slow. I feel like this would have

[00:57:05] made a lot of sense today on mobile or even further back on DS. But you know, we got Mini Marios instead. You're still mad about those. Still mad about the Mini Marios. Yeah, I'm with you. I wanted like a cozy single screen puzzle game, you know, but it got way too complicated way too quickly. I just didn't want to work that hard. What I liked at the ending is like game level design Satoshi Tajiri. You're telling me he sat there and was like, yeah, you want some shit

[00:57:34] to do with the mouse? I'm going to make up some shit for you to do with the mouse. That's like, you know what? That makes sense because programmers can click like nobody's business. They're the click masters, right? Like, they made this game for them. I didn't really get any Pokemon vibes from this game. If you got any, let me know. They were mostly professionals here, but the sky level theme sort of sounds like the Professor Oak lecture music from the beginning,

[00:58:04] kinda, of Red and Blue. I mean, it's really hard to find actual vibes. Wanda in particular is also a humanoid fairy, but Game Freak never forgot this game. In Red and Blue, you can go to the copycat. She's an NPC girl's house and even in the remakes, you can go into her house and look at her Super Nintendo and look at her screen and it held a description that says, oh look, a game with Mario wearing a bucket on his head.

[00:58:34] I didn't know they did that. It's wild. They kept, they did that in Red and Blue. They did that in the GBA remix, but not in Pokemon Let's Go where she finally upgraded to a Switch and started playing Pokemon Cube. They do not want us to remember Mario and Wario anymore. I guess not, man. That's sad. I think it could come out today, do like Switch Pointer version or something. I think that'd be better than clicking or whatever, but I don't know. I try it again today. I'm sick.

[00:59:04] Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick. Head deadly. I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick. I'm sick. Alright, we got two more to go and one of them is Nontan no Isho Kurukuru Puzzle. This was released in Japan

[00:59:34] in April 94 for Game Boy, but we played the Super Famicom version, which was released in November 94. And this was designed by Satoshi Tajiri. He's the only staff, the big three staff that worked on this. And it's based on a children's book called Nontan, which I've never heard of, obviously, but that's what it's based off of. And Steve, I think this game is literally made for babies. Andre, this is a match to match

[01:00:03] to puzzle game with no real hook. What about Yoshi? Okay, you know what? I think remember how the company that was subtracted to make that Fallout mobile game got in trouble when they tried slapping it into Westworld. I think they already knew that was going to happen if they tried doing that here, so they had to make something else. There's no hook in Nontan. Anything resembling one doesn't really exist. I mean, the pieces have a front and back and those can kind of

[01:00:32] act as separate pieces unto themselves. You could sort of try to set up chains a la Puyo Puyo, but this is really baby's first puzzle game. Yeah, I admit what I said. I think this is literally made for like kindergartners or something, which is fine, you know, if that's your aim. It's just as a 41-year-old man here on the internet, probably 42 by the time this airs. I just don't think this is going to, I'm going to get anything out of this. It's so extremely basic. Like you said,

[01:01:02] match two puzzle game. I just don't really have anything to say about it. I guess it's kind of, I guess I like the character designs. It's kind of cutesy, right? It's not, I don't know, it's not bad looking, I guess, but maybe it would help if we knew the license property known tan, maybe we could talk about how like good it is to the license, but I can't really capture it from that angle. So, yeah, this just seems

[01:01:31] like a match two puzzle game again designed for literal babies. I think your niece could like own at this game. I think she's a little bigger than that now. Really? I don't know. I'd like to think so. But, Andre, I tried to find some Pokemon vibes and I couldn't find any worth for shit. I tried poking through the yard, which, you know, was useless because this is a licensed game. I looped through

[01:02:01] the music. Nothing. Sometimes you just take on work to pay the bills and that was this game for Game Freak. I mean, there's a game we're not covering because it was Japanese heavy and that smacked me with more stuff than this does. Yeah. I'm sorry to cut this one so short, but I really do not have anything else to say about Nontan no Isho Kudu Kudu puzzle. I'm out of stuff. How about we just

[01:02:30] go on to the last game? Let's find time. And that last game is Pulseman. Pulseman was released in July 94 in Japan and sometime in 1995 on Sega Channel. If anyone remembers what that is, that's a whole other conversation.

[01:03:01] That's probably a show on its own if any of us actually had that. I did not and I didn't know anyone who had it either. I only saw it at someone's house once. That is not enough to make a show out of. Yeah, for sure. But Pulseman was released later worldwide on Wii Virtual Console. I think that's how a lot of people played it. I didn't play it that way. I actually first played it for the first time on Sega Genesis Nintendo Switch Online. Yeah, that was me too. I was always going to get it on Virtual Console. Oh man,

[01:03:30] I could finally play this thing but then I didn't have enough points on my Wii at the time and I'd get it a little later and a little later and then one day the Wii U came out like, well, I guess I'm just not doing this anymore. Later. It's like me with Bioshock. I'll play that. I'm definitely going to play that. So as far as the credits go, the big three are here. Tajiri, Sugimori, and Masuda in their respective roles and I just want to say you were like

[01:04:00] a real hardcore nerd, a real gamers developer if you released anything exclusively on Mega Drive in Japan. You know, like Alien Soldier even though, you know, that's the game everyone keeps lying to us and telling us is good but Pulseman is one of those two. It's much better than Alien Soldier though. I'll give it that. I mean, maybe that was their plan all along to just get this trying to find that West Coast North American distributor. I know this guy

[01:04:30] in Vegas named Andre who really turned me down for Quinty but maybe he'll want to pick up Pulseman. One time I met a Japanese man in Portland, Oregon just driving up and down the coast he said, trying to sell this game Quinty. Yeah, I just met him all over the place in my travels. Surely though, they planned for this to be like a real release not just release in North America on Sega Channel. Surely that was not what they actually wanted.

[01:04:59] That's probably what happened though. Sega probably picked up on like man, we could probably use something to say is a Sega Channel exclusive and that's probably what happened. Probably. Can we talk about the voices right off the bat because I loved the countdown like the arcade countdown of like continue. Yeah. And then it was like game over. Ha, ha, ha. And like, yeah, it was great.

[01:05:30] Also, the news reporter had a good case of Genesis throat. Can we, if we can call it that? Is that what Marge has? Does Marge Simpson have Genesis throat? Oh my God. Is that what she's got? Yeah. Yeah. We figured it out after this whole time. We cracked the code. I think we should talk about Pokemon vibes first before we get into the game because I think that's really the lasting impression of Pulseman is that

[01:05:59] being the final game before Pokemon comes out, this is Pokemon vibes AF, Steve. Well, firstly, the assistant lady that talks to you throughout is Sugimori as fuck. She is. But, but more than that, there was just, it wasn't even immediate. It just, excuse me, immediate things that came up, just a lot of things that happened later. Like before we turn on the game, us older Poke fans

[01:06:28] are all sitting on the bar trivia knowledge that the Pokemon Road Tom is very, very much based on Pulseman's design and penchant for diving in and out of electronics and making them do things. Like they, that's not a, that's not a theory. They literally made the Pokemon around what Pulseman does. It's no, it's no question. That's, I've seen that Pokemon Road Tom before. I didn't really know the name, but yeah, that's what I thought of.

[01:06:58] I was like, oh, that looks like that other thing. Even I knew that it's very apparent. You'd think that would mean that this would get pushed out for more reissues, but no, somehow, at least until recently with the Sega Genesis Nintendo Switch online. Yeah, because before that, this game was really not available very much. Also, the Volteca, which makes up most of what you do in the game, literally became a Pokemon move in the game

[01:07:28] like years later. But of course, we would call it a Volteca, tackle here because you cannot call a move Volteca in an American video game. You sure can. That younger kids are reading. Nope. This move is also Pikachu's Final Smash and Smash Brothers. That's what he's doing. He's bouncing around. That's the Volteca, the Volteca. Do you have the pipes to give us that Pikachu he does when he does his Final Smash? No, I do not.

[01:07:59] Okay. Allergies are a little rough right now and even then I couldn't do Pikachu because that's a great read. I think that's one of the best voice lines in the game. Pokemon Horizons, the new anime series without Ash, we finally kicked that asshole out. Finally. It's a whole new set of protagonists and they're attached to a group called the Rising Vault Tacklers. Game Freak will do literally anything

[01:08:28] to acknowledge this game except make a new one. I don't think they, I mean, look, it would be cool today. In fact, I think it would be much better today. Think, I almost never say this, you know this, I think this is one of those games, Pulseman, that could be improved with a more indie style approach nowadays, the way we make indie games. Exactly. Like I said, at first you wouldn't think so, but then you look at Giga Wrecker,

[01:08:58] Tembo the Badass Elephant. Tembo's cool, but it's, you know. No, I'm just saying like their heart wants to make, somewhere in their heart they want to make the Pulseman 2, or at least Pulseman Remastered. Well, it ain't Little Town Hero, I can tell you that much. I didn't even play that yet. I've never played it. I have it sitting over there. I do want to say as far as Pokemon vibes go, that fake ass Dr. Eggman was definitely some two-bit thug

[01:09:28] from the Pokemon anime. Oh, yeah, there's the scientists and things with a hernia in the first game that could pass for this guy. Yeah, that was like, that was Professor Oak's evil uncle or something. That was for sure. Almost had Dr. Oak like a fucking dumb ass. What kind of Poke Pal are you? Not a very good one. You know what, though? As far as Pulseman as a game, though, I don't

[01:09:58] know about this one. This one is so hard to summarize because there's so much going on. Like your lightning ball move or now that I know it's called Volt Teca or Volt Tackle can like trivialize the first couple of levels because you can just fly so high up in the air and just do whatever you want. And unlike Mario 3 or like a similar game, there's nothing up there to find. You're just kind of going. I guess they just wanted to make it easy so you could just do the powers and just kind of speed through it.

[01:10:27] But that also made it be like, okay, am I missing something here with this wide open level? No, I guess it's just big for no reason. That's confusing. And then there's like I like the clever little pieces sometimes like, you know, like where you're writing the electrical wires as a spark. You know, that's cool. I like that stuff, but I can't say there's a whole lot of like honest to God, great action platforming going on. You know, I like a lot of the motifs early on, such as like I love the TV studio. That's great.

[01:10:57] It gives us this certain spirited 90s feel, I guess, obviously, since it came out smack dab in the middle of the 90s, but it has that feel and it's still good today. That's sort of like saving the city kind of vibe. You know, I'm a lot less taken with like the natural environments like the forest or whatever and stuff like that, that when they stick to like the cyber stuff or the city, I'm cool with it. But yeah, I don't know. I guess it's not much of an assessment, but that's kind of how I feel about Pulseman is that I really don't know sometimes.

[01:11:27] I think we accidentally hit it with assessment a few minutes ago. This just wasn't quite a bit before its time. Eventually, you do need the Volteca to navigate to different points in the later levels, like a thousand percent, like not even an option where you can jump through it or use. No, you need the Volt tackle and it's very unwieldy. There is a lot of the fun set pieces. Not all of them are great. Like, what are we doing in the forest where there's no electronics? We were just in the TV studio where there is electronics

[01:11:56] and now we're in the forest where there isn't. There's some fun bosses and there's a goofy ass ending where there was a lot of talking for the Genesis and it sort of made me think like they had a Sega CD dev kit just because of all the talking they had there. They're like, maybe they thought they had more to work with, but until they didn't, I don't know. I don't think this would have worked as a CD game. I don't think it could have supported itself. Maybe I guess they could have made real baller music. Masuda could have gone like nuts,

[01:12:26] right? But it's a mixed bag. I'm happy I played it on. It's the perfect game for Sega Genesis Nintendo Switch online and much like the other game I couldn't pronounce very well before the magical Tauru Toku. This would have been another game where if I picked this up for a week, a weekend's rental, I wouldn't have hated myself by the time Monday rolled around. Yeah. Again, I didn't hate this. I just thought it was, it worked out

[01:12:56] to being okay, I guess, because I just, I don't know, man, some of the, some of the activities and level designs just make me kind of go, this is weird and I'm not sure what they're going for. So I don't know. It's, it's a fine enough game and good vibes, good Pokemon vibes too. I think just good vibes for sure. I guess we can shut the fuck up now, huh? About Game Freak and get the hell out of here.

[01:13:26] Yeah. Don't forget to buy Zoop from Monotone Games and wherever you buy games. Disclaimer, we have no rights to Zoop. He does not own the rights to Zoop. Please do not buy Zoop because it will not go to us. That's the reason. Check the description of this podcast to see our names on social media. Other than that, we'll see you next time on Fine Time.