007 · GYROMITE
Our buddy R.O.B attempts to prove his worth in the NES launch game, Gyromite. For more on GYROMITE and EVERY NES game be sure to check out NEStalgiacast.com. At our website you can find detailed information about every game we play, our ESSENTIAL GAMES LIST, and links to our Twitch, YouTube, and more!
Gyromite is the game where we stopped being polite. The box promises something so intense you can't play it alone, and you can't really play it at all without Rob, the Robotic Operating Buddy, or a second controller standing in for him. Sean, Mike and Joe were on this one, nobody had Rob, so we played with the second controller. We still doubt he would have helped.
What it gets right
- A decent idea underneath. The first few puzzles felt satisfying: open and close the pipes, collect the dynamite, get out. Game B, where the professor sleepwalks and you only control the environment, is the part we'd like to see someone rebuild with better puzzles.
- Rob is cool to look at. A robot in 1985, sitting unplugged beside the NES and reacting to the game, sounds great. It stops there.
- It can be finished. Playing through all 40 phases of one mode may make it the first NES game we could actually beat.
Where it falls apart
- A waiting simulator. You stand beside a blue pipe while Rob gets around to pressing a button. Each level gives you 1,000 seconds, a limit that felt like the "are you still watching?" prompt on Netflix.
- Nothing builds. The puzzles never stacked ideas. Every room was a new layout, which made the whole thing feel like a tech demo. Enemies only matter when you're boxed in waiting on Rob, and Game A hands you so much food to distract them that you rarely need it.
- Game B is worse. Sometimes it came down to guessing the wrong end of a maze you couldn't see. When it wasn't guesswork you had so much time you could have written the answer down first.
- Gimmick first, game second. Nintendo usually finds the game that fits a new idea, and this looks like the reverse: Rob was built, then someone had to find something for him to do. All he does is push A and B. We compared him to moon shoes, great in the store and no extra height at home.
- Odd detail. The title screen says Robot Gyro while the cartridge says Gyromite, and Joe briefly thought he had the wrong game.
The bottom line
Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. If you own Rob, try it and tell us whether he improves things, but we expect the answer is still no. This was the first game we thought was simply bad, not just primitive like 10-Yard Fight or Baseball, and we floated a "garbage tier" for the website verdicts. It's best kept for lists of oddball peripherals and marketing misfires.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Gyromite, this game is so intense you can't play it alone.
And welcome to NEStalgia, the only podcast that plays and reviews every NES game released in North America in chronological order. And in case you're wondering, I'm not really a huge fan of Gyromite, but as you might have noticed by now, we're kind of reading the back of the boxes as the descriptions for the openings of these episodes. So this is what Nintendo wanted you to get hooked on. They would say something like, so intense you can't play it alone.
I think they just forgot you can't play it alone or at all. Right. You will not be able to play this game alone unless, of course, you own a second controller because you totally don't need Rob. Like if you think about it, any kid who just realized, oh, so Rob's just pushing the buttons like my brother can do that. Okay. We're getting ahead of ourselves. You can do that. Who are we? Oh, yeah. I'm Sean, by the way. And I'm Mike.
And I'm Joe. You know what, guys? We're all like still original members of the podcast. Like that's beautiful in a way that like none of us have. We haven't missed an episode. Haven't skipped a beat. That's true. Some of us can't say that. Yeah. Some people who like to read manuals can't be with us. He's not even here to defend himself. But he's been busy. So let's move on. So Gyromite, huh? Yeah. Let's talk about Gyromite. I'm sure everybody who's listening played this game. If you haven't, I don't know who you think you even are. Right. Definitely grow a second set of arms and play this game.
Sean, initial impressions? I mean, I gotta say that like the fact that this game exists is beyond me. Like I didn't know anything about Rob growing up because he existed basically as like a marketing decoy because they wanted to market the NES as a toy instead of like a computer system. So it's like, no, look, this is an actual thing that we have in front of you. That's your friend. That's your friend, Rob. Like we're just going to. Robotic operating buddy. Yeah. Yeah. And he's going to play with you. He's going to play all these games with you. And then you've got two games, one of which is Gyromite and it is bad. It's I hated this game.
Joe, first impression. Well, my initial impression was what game is this? Because it says robot gyro on the opening screen. The title of the game when you put it in is robot gyro, but on the cartridge is gyromite. That's my initial impression. So you were worried you had the wrong game. Yes. And it was all downhill from there.
Yeah. Pretty much like Sean said. Just didn't have a lot of fun with this. And my initial impression is one that has stuck with me for a really long time that when I see Rob, like he is so cool. Like I'm like, wow, I can't believe Nintendo had this in 1985. And then when I see Rob do anything, I realized that is not cool.
Like Rob is not interesting. It's actually kind of pathetic. The three things that he's programmed to do. And it just sounds like when he's operating, it sounds pathetic. Yeah. Like you need to help him. It sounds tedious. Yeah. The only thing futuristic about Rob is the way he looks. Yeah. Like everything else is almost like by 1986, 87. It's like, I'm, I'm, this is a chore. Like playing with Rob is a chore if we're being real. You have to wait for him to push. That's the whole thing about this game. Let's just jump right into the game.
Okay. Real quick. The objective of the game. Do you have like these pipes that are in your way and you're the professor and you're trying to collect the dynamite, but really you try to clean it up essentially because you don't want it to blow up on you. It's a little confusing. And then there's also like these lab experiments that are running around. They're going to kill you. Uh, but you have to kind of work in tandem with Rob to open and close the pipes.
You basically give him the order and then he does it. Uh, and then you gotta like keep giving him the order. Yeah. Not only do you have to keep giving him the order, but the problem is, is like, you gotta keep waiting. Yeah. You have to wait until Rob, like. They give you 1,000 seconds to play a level that like, isn't even a, maybe like a screen. A full level of Super Mario Brothers would never give you a thousand seconds.
Yeah. Like at a certain point, there's really not a need for them, for there to be a time limit. Right. At a certain point. Yeah. Like who is the time limit for? Like the time limit is like a, I feel like the time limit is like the Netflix thing where it's like, are you still watching? Like after a thousand seconds, it's just like, all right, this guy's not even playing. Oh my gosh. Wow.
Like Rob is like Nintendo's first like failure. Like, you know, like, like they, and they really don't talk about him, uh, at all until very, like here's, here's Rob after the NES. He shows up in Star Fox 64. I don't even know if he's in the original Star Fox and Super Smash 64. And then he shows up again in Super Smash Brothers, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. Again, another like NES style thing that just came back on like Duck Hunt. It's like, is Kluk, is, um, Bubbles from Klukuland next to be in, uh, in Smash? That could, that could be a thing. Sorry. I'm getting in totally different tangents because this game is just, this game is all over the place. And at the same time, it's absolutely nothing.
Yeah. No, this is just, um, a companion to a totally useless product. I mean, yeah, it's definitely, if, if I were growing up in the eighties and you think you would have been tricked into buying this, I would have been tricked. I would have wanted Rob what one, because I just, I wanted a friend. Right. Um, the fact that it would interact with the game in some way and be interacted by with the game, like that, that just sounds cool. Right. Like the fact that this thing is not plugged into the NES.
You know, you know what Rob is? Rob is like moon shoes. Right. Moon shoes. I, I, I have to, this is personal, but like I saw moon shoes at Toys R Us one time and I was like, oh my gosh, moon shoes. Like I'll be able to jump over my roof. Like this is incredible. Like I want this right now. I spent the $40 that like a kid, come on, $40 for a kid. That's a lot of money.
Yeah. $4,000. That's right. And so I go to, uh, the store, buy the moon shoes, put them on. I think I jumped less high than normal. Like, I don't think I jumped any higher. It was like two pogo sticks on my feet.
Um, and that's what Rob is. He's like, you think he's going to be really cool. And he's just like, he's just, all he's doing is pushing the A and B button on the controller at the end of the day. I know. And like the game itself, we're really talking about Rob right now, but like the game itself, it has no personality. All of the things that make the game anything, uh, rely on just anything. Yeah. It relies on you sitting there next to some blue pipe waiting for Rob to move his ass and just turn that, the thing and that, that put the, the gyro on the big blue button. Right. And like it, like the actual, the enemies. If you play without. The enemies aren't a threat to you unless you have to stand still for like three minutes.
Right. And one, but once they're in quarters with you, you can't do anything to avoid them. You need to rely on Rob, which takes forever. Yeah. So they are going to, you can't jump over them. You can't, I mean, if there's, if you're closed in and you need Rob to open a door, you better have 30 seconds. Right. But, um, well, wait, for which mode are you talking about? Because in, in mode A, in game A, you do, you do get to like adapt and to give them some food so you can bypass them. That's right. You can pick up those. But like, no, I mean, like that's really not good enough.
Do you ever need to do that? They give you so much food in that, in that level too. Dude, here's the thing. The puzzles, the puzzles were kind of like satisfying in a way. Like at first, like just like, oh, okay, cool. Like doing it, feel good. And then like it never got any harder. It never got any more interesting. They never stacked like ideas on top of each other. It was just like, this is a new way to lay out this room. It's a tech demo. Yeah. It's a tech demo. I want to. Yeah. I think my favorite part was when I found out you could crush the dinosaurs by closing the doors on them. You can also crush yourself that way. You can also crush yourself. Yeah. So.
I want to say real quick though, that none of us have Rob. So none of us play the game properly. We were just playing with the second controller. I was playing with the second controller. So maybe we're not getting the full picture and maybe like just with him being there, like I'd be like, huh, this is a pretty cool experience. But I'm highly doubting that. I'm doubting it too.
So just from what I've watched of people playing Rob, playing with Rob, because yeah, I also just played it with the controller, but it looked, it was not even fun to watch. Like it looked tedious and, and it was exactly the game that I played that it just took a lot longer. I'll tell you what. If we get 200 total listens on this episode, I'll buy Rob and we'll do a Twitch stream with Rob. Okay. Sounds good. We'll do a Twitch stream with Rob where we play this game and torture ourselves for you, the listener. Okay.
Because I'm telling you right now, listeners, if you haven't gotten the hint yet, this game is boring. I think. It's boring. You're waiting. It's waiting. It's a waiting simulator. Yeah. This piece of software is better when you're not playing the game. You go into direct mode.
And you press left and then Rob will go left. Like it's better just as like a way to tell Rob what to do. Right. Just like giving his life some meaning. Yeah. I would personally, I just wouldn't put Rob through that either. And I would just leave him unpowered such as he wouldn't even know about his own existence. All right. So that was game A. Now I have to just give a quick shout out to game B where all you do
in game B is it's no real different than game A except for you're not collecting dynamite. You're just trying to get to the end of the stage, but you don't control a character. The professor is just sleepwalking. And you just kind of follow these paths to the end and you have to get Rob to open up the pipes at correct times. So this way you can go to the right path.
And to be honest, it's worse. To me it's worse because sometimes. Oh, Joe, do you want to say something? Well, no. I was just going to say I actually thought when I started like this could have potential. Like there could be some good puzzles where it's all about timing and stuff. And there just weren't. Sometimes it came down to guesswork.
Right. Sometimes it was like, oh, you went down the wrong end of the maze. Like, okay, but I couldn't see that. I don't feel like I should be punished. Yeah. And when it wasn't guesswork, you had so much time to react. You could, I mean, you could write it down before, you know, walk so slow.
You could write it down. It's true. So, I mean, and granted, I, because the game, because it was not fun, I didn't get to too high of levels. Maybe in level 25 it gets really awesome. I will say with confidence that I actually played, I played through all 40 phases. Okay. Because I think they're called phases in that game. There's 40 of each mode. And I played through all 40.
Like there was never a challenge. It was never not impossible to do it. Right. Like it was just kind of like, wow, I guess, you know, since this is kind of like the first, if we're being real here, it's kind of like the first NES game we could beat. Yeah. You know, it has like, has a defined limit. Like Klu Kulan, yes, had like 299 levels, but like that's not a game I feel like I could beat.
But this game, I did all 40 phases. It never, it never got like challenging or like, oh, that's, that's a new idea. Like that's a neat way to collect the dynamite. Like it never expanded upon itself. And honestly, for that, it should be, it should be a little ashamed. Yeah. As an NES game. It, it, it kind of felt like it was, you, you see it, you see the level and you're like, oh, here's what you have to do.
And now I can do it. Like there was never like an obstacle. It was never like, oh, but what if this happens? It was like, nope. And now I did it. Like everything was just do this, do it and it's done. I usually try with, with, with games like this to give a conciliatory, uh, Hey, at least they're trying different things. Something new, uh, with different input mechanisms and all that stuff. But I can't because Rob as a peripheral is, it's just like a, a cash grab. And I try to throw you off the scent of it. This is, this is not just a computer system. This is Rob. You know, you know what bothers me? It's it. And that's a great point, Sean.
It's Nintendo is so known for coming up with a gimmick. And then does like figuring out which game works best with that. Like we've seen that with like, um, uh, Mario and Cappy in Odyssey. And like, um, we've seen that with breath of the wild and stuff like that, where they figure out first, like what the game is going to be based around. And then they make a game. Uh, then they decide like which series and game it's going to be.
Gyra might really just feels like, okay, they made Rob first. And then they said, okay, now what do we, what do we get it? What do we do with this? And this was, this was what they could come up with. Like there was, they should have came up with the game first and then said, this needs a robot to operate it. Like, you know, there's, this is not this game. I'm not ashamed that I didn't play this with Rob. Yeah. Like, I don't feel like I would have gotten anything out of him watching the load times of him moving from one, uh, side using and just swiving his hands and stuff like that. And then pushing the button down and then it registering on the screen. It just looks, it just feels painful. Yeah. It's painful. And I do feel like having a hard time.
Right. And what I said before about the, about it not being challenging, maybe with Rob, it's more challenging, but I can't imagine it being challenging in a good way. I imagine it being challenging in like a, a way where it's like hit the, because of the timing of Rob, like it's just a frustrating, like, you know what you have to do when you're doing it, but Rob is too slow. Right. All right. Uh, let's bring it into our essential games list.
I'm actually gonna, I'm gonna put this on the, no.
Okay, boys. Uh, you got, you know, you got a PC at home, big backlog. Dark Souls 3 just came out and the Humble Bundle pre or, uh, you know, pre-order for this month. And it's like, huh, should I pre-order for Dark Souls 3 or should I go on eBay, buy an NES Rob and a copy of Gyromite and then never buy another NES game? Because this is the definitive NES experience.
Um, Joe. Nope. Uh, yeah. I mean, it's really, we kind of said, we kind of said it all. I mean, it's, it's, it's cool to look at like what they were trying to do. It's interesting, but it's not fun. I mean, that's. Right. Yeah. I mean, it might, if you, if you have Rob, try it out. See what it's all, see what it's like with Rob. Because we didn't. I'll have Rob. Yeah. And you're still listening to this. If you have Rob, yeah. But, uh, if, uh. If you feel forced to play a game with a robot buddy, maybe.
Right. I feel like, yeah, if you haven't tried it out, let us know if it's, if it's better with Rob. Because we didn't, we didn't play it with Rob. But, uh, I got a feeling the answer is also going to be nope. Like, no, this is not an essential game. I think this game was just, it's relegated to just existing for, um, for being on, like, listicles about peculiar things that have happened in, in video game history. Like, this is going to be number six on, like, the biggest, uh, marketing fails. Or, or the, or number three on Nintendo's, uh, most, like, rarest, uh, peripherals. Like, it's just, it's definitely a, a cool talking point to talk about these games because they're so out of left field. But the games themselves are, are, they're trash.
So, this obviously isn't making the essential games list. I'm a hard no. Here's my problem, though. Okay. On the website, uh, nostalgiacast.com, we have a list of every single episode and kind of like our verdict of whether it made essential, play it, or skip it. And we have games like 10-yard fight and baseball listed as skip it because, quite frankly, they're just very primitive versions of those games that, you know, the right person, like the right retro gamer could enjoy, but the general person's not going to enjoy.
This is the first game we've come across. And granted, it's an NES launch game and it's early, but this is the first game we've come across where I think that this is just a genuinely bad game. Yeah, this is, I've actually been meaning to talk to you about this, but I think there should be another level. Like a garbage tier. An actual trash heap pile. That, it's something to consider. Yeah. It is something to consider. I mean, you know, sooner or later, depending on when you're listening to this episode, you might have seen if I've gone through with it. But I, I just don't, I don't know anybody who would, who would fight us on this. And if you do feel strongly about Gyromite, please contact us at contact at nostalgiacast.com.
Yeah. And I do want to say too, like I, like I said before, especially with taking Rob out of the equation and looking at the, uh, the sleepwalking, the game mode B, I'd like to see someone make a good version of that. Cause that's kind of interesting where you're, you're not the character, you're controlling the environment, helping them through puzzles, but just the puzzles have to be good. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. The puzzles have to be something more than like something I would find in like one of those activity books that you find in like an airport or something.
And that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time for Hogan's Alley and be sure to play it yourself if you can. For more Nostalgia, please subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen and be sure to check out nostalgiacast.com. That's N-E-S-T-A-L-G-I-A-C-A-S dot com. There you'll find links to the show and show notes as well as our other platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Thank you so much for your support of Nostalgia. We thank you for spending time with us. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon. See you soon.
