025 · GUMSHOE
Mr. Stevenson is about to have a crazy 24 hours as his daughter has been kidnapped by King Dom...and be shot at by the player more than a thousand times. For more NEStalgia as well as the show notes for this episode, head over to NEStalgia.com
With Joe traveling, this one was just Mike, Sean and Sam. Sean was the hyped one, having pictured a detective adventure about hunting criminals on the street. What Gumshoe actually is: a Zapper game where your hero, Mr. Stevenson, walks right across an endless scroll, can't stop, and only jumps when you shoot him. The villain King Dom has kidnapped his only daughter Jennifer, and you have to bring over five "black panther diamonds" to get her back. It is also the first NES game we've covered that never came out in Japan.
What it gets right
- The concept is interesting. Someone read that it mashes up Wild Gunman's reflexes, Duck Hunt's aim and Hogan's Alley's judgment about what is worth shooting. Sean said he isn't as skeptical of "shoot him to jump" as the rest of the game makes it sound. He called it an abstraction that could add depth.
- A story in a light gun game. Pay phones ring with clues, a clock claims six hours but runs about six minutes, and Mr. Stevenson eventually breaks the fourth wall to thank you, the person who has been shooting him all game.
- It's fair about ammo. Balloons refill your bullets, shooting him costs nothing, and the manual says jumps use no ammo. We never got close to running out anyway.
Where it falls apart
- Too many things on screen at once. Bombs, planes, hammers, birds, bottles, sharks, a rhino you can't shoot, and squares that kill you instantly, all while you keep shooting your own guy to get over walls. He'll climb a wall in front of him but fall into a small gap.
- The light gun is almost beside the point. You have to hit a small sprite, and sometimes we shot him and he didn't jump, maybe because the Zapper's light flash lands on the wrong frame. We figured it would still be hard on a controller alone.
- It plays as a blur. The levels look the same, checkpoints send you back, and Sean's best run was about three and a half minutes with no diamond in sight.
- The boss. Sam finished it, but only on an emulator with a rewind button, hitting rewind after almost every hit. The monster in the jungle needs around 20 shots in an eye roughly two pixels wide while blasts keep coming. Sam also said nobody seems to have beaten it on a real CRT with a real gun, since every ending video online is emulated.
- A silly payoff. King Dom hands you a machine gun at a pay phone, you shoot his hat off with it, and the ending flashes black and white for about 20 seconds before cutting to "later that same day," with Stevenson still needing the same five diamonds.
Beyond the game
Sakamoto designed this, and we noticed that he never mentions it in any interview. Our theories for why Japan skipped it were the film noir subject matter, or Nintendo simply not expecting it to sell. We also floated a fix: one player jumps on a controller while the other handles the Zapper.
The bottom line
Skip it. All three of us voted no; Sean called it a mess and Mike said it was a no from him. The difficulty wasn't the reason, because we have let hard games in. The game is too busy to be rewarding, and Sam beating it didn't make anyone want to keep playing. We called it one of the early NES duds.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Gumchoo, you'll have to shoot fast to get out of this light gun game alive.
And welcome to NEStalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Sam. Nice. Three people today. Joe, you know, usually joins us remotely. He's traveling for real this time, so he will not be at this one.
Guys, today we're talking about Gumchoo. Hey, Gumchoo. This was a game that Sean was pretty hyped about. I was. It was a very good description of the game. Yeah. So, Sean, do you want to maybe like take us through the objective of this game? Okay, so I'm going to first start with what I thought this game was going to be, and then I'll tell you the objective of the game. Love it. Okay, so I thought this was going to be an adventure detective, you know, life on the street sort of game where you go and you hunt down criminals and then you find your kidnapped daughter. It turns out. Can I just say real fast? Yeah. Sam's already laughing, but that sounds like Grand Theft Auto meets Mario is missing.
Yeah. You know, like just imagining how that works, you know, like. Like, what if I was going to be a side-scroller shooter? Right, right. I mean, nothing too crazy. In Mario is missing, you ask questions. You're like a detective. I don't know that game. Mario is missing. It's an NES game much later on in life and also a Super Nintendo game where you're like Luigi in the real world, visiting like continents, like, you know, and famous cities. And you're like in Rome and you're like asking questions. That sounds fun. To people about have you seen Mario and stuff like that. Wait, is that the game where you need the cursor? We can't talk about this yet, but no, that's Mario Paint.
For Super Nintendo. Anyway, what Gumshoe turns out to be is a game in which it's an endless scrolling game where you have to shoot Mr. Stevenson to make him jump. And that's basically it. You shoot other obstacles. How do you shoot them, Sean? You shoot them with your gun, your light gun. Your light gun, the zapper. Whatever. Yeah, yeah. No, it's just, you know, the zappers come back. Yeah. Some, some things won't come back. It's true. Rob will never see the outside of the closet again. Mm hmm. Um, and then it turns out that you are a separate entity.
Like he, Mr. Stevenson will actually address you at a certain point. Okay. But that's like, that's like a meta note. I think that to get the full story of it is important as well. Yeah. So I, I think I was going to address that real fast. Oh, okay. It's like, here's, here's an easier way to do it, Sean. The objective of the game is Stevenson.
I've got your daughter. Bring the five black Panther diamonds to me within 24 hours or else come alone. Yes. Don't call me. I'll call you. King Dom. Mr. X. Yeah. Like, I mean, actually for being real for a minute though, Mr. X is just some punk ass kid. Like King Dom sounds pretty like that's a big deal.
Sure. So, uh, Sam, your thoughts on the objective of this game. Yeah. Okay. So the objective of this game is to just get to the end of each level where some, someone will either call you on a pay phone or, you know, meet you in like a, a shack somewhere or something like that and give you information about how to get to your daughter. But the, all these people and all of these messages are from the guy who has her, you know? And then at one point they even give you a machine gun.
So we can get there. Yeah. We'll get there. I think, I think like more important than anything. I got one more thing. Okay. No, let's hear it. And when they, in the, so I read the manual for this one. Okay. Perfect. And the manual man. Yes. Uh, and my favorite part of it was that it says that, uh, a Mr. What was it? No. Uh, King Dom. King Dom has kidnapped Jennifer, your only daughter. Your only daughter. Like that makes it more important. Yeah. It's like, I think the stakes are on there. It's like, you don't have another sister. Then it wouldn't be that big. Yeah. It's like, well, you know, you got everything to lose.
Your only daughter is in trouble. That was my favorite part of everything. I don't know why, but you saying King Dom the way you did made me realize that it's kingdom. Oh, like if you combine it kingdom. Yeah. Or it's like the King Dom. You're Steven sub, right?
That is so crazy. Uh, yeah, no. And it's interesting that Steven's son has a daughter. You get it? Anyway. Oh man. We need to talk about what you're doing in this game. Okay. You use the light gun. Yeah. But I mean like your own guy. We're not making it clear how difficult this is. It's the most difficult game that you could imagine with a light gun. Your guy is running all the time.
You cannot stop him if you wanted to. He's walking. The only thing he'll do besides walk is he'll go up platforms if there is one directly in front of him that is also a wall, you know? Yeah. So he won't stop for a wall. He'll just jump on top of the thing. But if there's like a gap, a small gap, he'll still just fall right into it. He's not going to jump gaps. He'll jump on top of walls though.
So you have to shoot him to try and encourage him to jump. Yeah. And if you shoot him, you don't use your ammo. But if you, but you also have to shoot other stuff that's around him that can hurt him like birds and like bottles. Virtually anything. Yeah.
Airplanes, bugs, cars, sharks. Yeah. Um, no, just throwing this out there. Is this, is this throwing any red flags to anyone yet about like, why are we shooting Mr. Stevenson to make him jump? Because he needs encouragement. Because they needed to figure out what to use the light gun for.
Right. It seems to me, I'm just going to throw this out there early. The light gun isn't needed. This game is pretty challenging with just a controller. Yeah. If you were to just control him, like say he was still like, you wouldn't be able to use the D pad. Like he still just was an auto scrolling game where he just continues to walk, but you had to time your jumps correctly. Still a pretty challenging game at that point. Cause you have to dodge the obstacles and stuff like that.
The light gun and using that as like, you must perfectly shoot Mr. Stevenson to make him jump. Like, sorry, this isn't like a wild gunman where, you know, if you shoot on this fourth of the screen and you get it, or if you shoot on this half of the screen, you're going to get it. You have to shoot the sprite.
Yeah. You know, it's, these are small. This is not an original thought of mine, but I read this somewhere and I think it brings really true how the old, and this is the thing that I think redeems gumshoe a little bit is that it takes the three things that like duck hunt wild gunman and Hogan's alley did as early light gun games and combines those elements into an actual game with gumshoe. You need your lightning fast reflexes from a wild gunman. You need your, um, your, you need your, yeah, your accuracy from duck hunt and you need your ability to discern like what you should be shooting from Hogan's alley.
Like you don't want to waste your time shooting targets that aren't necessary when you have to be focusing on the hammer that is launching from a thousand feet in an opposite direction or the airplane that got really low to the ground. Or the rhino that you can't shoot.
Yeah. Well, just talk about the difficulty one more time. Like when you were describing what happens at the end of these levels, I had no idea that those happened because I never got past the first level. So I thought that you just like, cause I, he says to pick up these diamonds. And so I, I hear that weird noise. It's a very mysterious music track that denotes a diamond being nearby.
And then I pick it up and then the, it just keeps going. And I'm like, I thought I did the thing that it wanted me to do. Diamond. And then I have to keep going until six minutes are up. Right? Right. No, what's interesting about that too. And I will get there. I want to talk about the time because it says you have six, it says you have six hours. Right. But really it's like six minutes. The time thing was pretty neat. Sure. You know, like how, like if you die, you don't reset the time. Like it's not, you know, that now you have less time and you have, you know, and then at the end of the stage, it'll tell you like, it's currently 12 Oh five. And it's like, is this ever going to be important?
Yeah. If as hard as this game is, if the time is something that got me, I would, I would lose it. Right. It's already frustrating. Yeah. Sorry. You didn't do it in 24 hours. And the only other thing in the game that matters other than the time is also like those bullets. You have like a bullet count. And I thought, yeah. And the top left. You know, I know. Yeah. And it's like the bull, you know, you're limited, but the balloons give you more. So there is like, who's putting bullets in balloons, right? Yeah. No, another red flag for this game. Right. Like the game design doesn't really make any sense. Right. If we're thinking about it. And, uh, I hate to bring it up here, but this is a Sakamoto game.
What is he doing? He just made an essential game and balloon fight. And then he's like, you know, it'd be cool. If a bunch of random things happen. It's like balloons. People love balloons. This game is not doing so well. Maybe if we have balloons, it'll make it better. Yeah. But we're also not talking about like how many things are on the screen at once. Like you're describing all these things. Can we just say for the record that there will be a time where a bomb, a plane, a rhino and a hammer will be on the screen at the same time as you. And there's also like these random squares that cause instant deaths. Yeah. You can't shoot.
Yeah. And you have to make sure that not only are you shooting all the best stuff to get out of your way, you are shooting yourself to get to the platforms. Yeah. So you have to be, you have to be really good to, to play this game, but you also have to like, I don't know, have like two or three light guns.
Like maybe that would help. I don't even, can you play it with more than one? I don't think you can. I was lying about that, but like, like even more. So like, you know, the old trick for duck hunt was putting the gun up against the TV. Uh huh. I don't think that works here because it just makes you jump when you do that. So it would make you jump. Would it, would it kill every enemy?
I guess it would kill everything, but then it would make you jump. It's the same way that like how Joe described during duck hunt, how it's a different, like all of the different, uh, flashes of light are at different frames. So if you just, if you just pointed it at your character, it would only make him jump. That makes really, that might make a good case for why sometimes I felt like I hit Mr. Stevenson and he still didn't jump.
Yeah. Because I didn't do it on the right frame. Yeah. I'm like, shoot. I'm like, boom, boom, boom, boom. So thank goodness the balloons, which are plentiful, give you those bullets. Yeah. Because to me personally, shouldn't have even been a limit on bullets. Yeah. No, I never even got close to running out. So I don't know. Imagine if you did. Imagine if you were at like the end and it's like, sorry, you're out of bullets. You can't jump anymore. Well, actually, if you read the manual, you'll know that you can still jump because your jumps don't take bullets. Oh. Oh, so even if you run out, you can still just jump.
Yeah. But do you really think you're making it to the end of the stage? No, you're not making it past whatever little part of the screen you're on at that moment. So Sean, I'll bite. You said that you didn't get past the first stage. How far did you get? I mean, it seems to kind of randomize like what comes next. Sure. Because there were a couple of times that I started and then not too long later, there'd be a diamond and then there were times where I would play it for about three minutes straight and get to some desert and there would be no diamond even anywhere close. So I don't even know like how far I was. How many minutes do you think you played? I think it was like three and a half minutes.
Okay. What happens is there are checkpoints in the game. Yeah. And so if you get to a certain point and then you still have lives left, but you but you die there, it sends you back to a checkpoint. But it all kind of looks the same anyway. Yeah. So maybe that's what that probably happened a couple of times.
Yeah. No, because I'll be honest here and just say that, like, I don't think I made it further than the first. I did get past the first stage, but I don't think I made it further than like the next couple panels. Like, like the game ramps up in difficulty. So it's already very hard from the start. Mm hmm. But even doing an honest playthrough, like it's so hard to get anywhere in this game that I can't even imagine doing anything like remotely close to getting to the end without losing all my lives. Like, yeah, I can't even imagine seeing the end of this game naturally.
Sam, how far did you get? Yeah. So I'm going to pull back the curtain a little bit. I wanted to see the end of this game. So I played this game on an emulator. I'm glad you said that because I also eventually had to play this game on an emulator. It was there was just no other way to like the mouse and the precision of it was the only obstacle. I, you know, that was the only way I could eventually play this game.
And there was no way I could have done it without the emulators rewind function where it just, you know, it sends you back a little bit. Right. Because near the end of this game, I mean, I could spend my options were either spend, you know, the rest of my life getting good at this game because that's how long it would take. Like, you know, it's like it takes 10,000 hours to be good at the piano. No, it takes 10,000 hours to be good at gumshoe. No, I don't think so. I think that I can put my effort into becoming like a maestro instead. But, um, and still, you know, I could take the same amount of time, put it towards this and still never beat the desert level. Right. Uh, but. Sean's like, there's a desert level.
No, so I got, I beat the game using this janky function. Now I'll tell you what's funny is I use emulator still couldn't beat the game. Like I was Prince of Pershing it, you know, like, uh, for those of you not familiar, like there's like a rewind feature in Prince of Pershing Sands of Time and all those other games where you hit like, you know, you hit the rewind button and you're able to like redo stuff and it's used for solving puzzles and that for this, it was just like the second I got hit by an object, rewind. And like, by the end of it, like the, there's so many things going on in the later stages
that I had to like get like frame perfect with it. And I'd be hitting rewind, click, shoot, kill, rewind, click, shoot, kill. That's exactly how it is. Once you get to the jungle, it's just impossible because you have all these bugs going everywhere. And I mean, not impossible because I'm sure people are good at it. Um, but we're not the final. I'll just, I'll be honest. Yeah, we're not. Uh, and actually, you know what? No, I don't think people are good at this game.
Uh, the final boss in this game naturally with a CRT and a light gun. Show me or I want to see a video that if you go on YouTube, everything is on an emulator for the ending of this game. No one is just capturing it. Now, you know, the natural way. Yeah. And for the boss, I know that the rest of the game seems like it's hard, even when you're in the jungle and there's all this stuff going on. There's bombs. The bosses, it's impossible.
So I'm glad you brought up the boss there for a second. But since you did get through the entire game, we, we did leave our readers on a hook here with the whole, like, you know, Stevenson, I've got your daughter thing, right? Yeah. You were talking about how you get information through pay phones and stuff like that. Right, right, right. What kind of information were you getting on your way to the boss? So on my way to the boss, I, a pay phone in the middle of the jungle started ringing. Natural. And so I went to it and it said, be careful. Uh, Zulo, Zuli. Zulu, I think. Yeah. Zulu, I sounds, I forget exactly what it was. Zombo. Yeah. It's okay. You know, actually it was, it was Bluto. It was Brutus.
Yeah. The, so the, whoever is the master of the jungle is near and the, take this machine gun because it's the only way that you can beat it. And you're given that in a, in a pay phone. Yeah. You're given a machine gun at a pay phone by the guy. Wait. Hold this. I'm sorry. The guy who kidnaps your daughter gives you a machine gun to fight this monster, to steal its jewels, to give him the jewels in exchange for your daughter. It seems like there's a real lack of foresight there.
Yeah. Also like, like what, what doesn't make sense to me here is like the kingdom, right? Yeah. Is doing this whole thing where he's sending you to get these jewels, right? And then he's going to give you back his daughter, right? But he just gave you a weapon. That's what I mean.
He gives you a weapon and he's like, all right, then give me the diamonds after you take this machine gun. So, so what's the final stage? So the final stage is there is this monstery pig kind of, he kind of looked like, like Bigfoot. Sorry. I meant like, where are you? Oh, you're in the jungle. You're in the, so you are in the jungle in the end. Yeah. Which would imply that like King Dom lives in the jungle. I, yeah, I think so. Okay. Um, of course. Um, so there's this monster guy and he's kind of on a, not a platform above you, but you know, those little, how you can jump up one level. So it's like, you know, one sprite.
It's, it's that kind of a deal. So he's can't climb up. He's one of those. You're not moving anymore. You are still. Uh, and he fires blasts at you from the jungle. You're in the jungle. And you can shoot the blasts, but, and you're also at this during this, you're also constantly shooting your machine gun. Right. Uh, but your bullets don't do anything unless they're hitting him or, or whatever in the eye. Okay. Yeah. So you have to kind of look like a cyclops.
Yeah. So you need to shoot yourself to jump up, to shoot it in the eye, but then it's also right in front of you. So you need to keep shooting, going back and forth between shooting yourself to get it right and shooting the blasts. So this way they don't hit you. So they don't hit you. But if one of them hits you, then it's over, you know, and it's just, and you need to hit it for so long. So much harder than Bowser. Yeah. It's, you really, really need to hit this thing.
Like, I don't know how many times. It's gotta have a million HP. It's like, it's like 20 times you have to hit it in the eye or something like that. And it's insane. Like two pixels wide. Yeah. It's, it's just really, it's really difficult. I was constantly rewinding the whole time. Otherwise I don't get it. And there was a point you came over to me and you were like, Hey, what's the deal with the final boss? Can you beat this guy? I was like, I don't know. Like, like you find out. And I think that would be funny if they programmed is that you always lose and your daughter stays kidnapped. But, uh, humor me here. Yeah. What happens?
All right. After you beat the boss. So you finally beat the boss during the final boss. Then it's the music of the jewel, you know, cause which is incredibly annoying. Yeah. So the whole time we're playing the boss that happens after you beat the boss, the screen flashes black and white, giving tons of kids seizures. Right. It's really bad. I mean, like he's, he's playing it up there for a second, but it's literally like one
frame and one frame of white, one frame of black just played simultaneously. 20 seconds. Yeah. Uh, and then you get the jewel and then just right behind the boss is the guy's house.
The cave. Uh, why didn't he do anything to them? The monster. He lives right behind his monster. And then you present him with the jewels cause they appear over your head. And then you shoot his hat off and he puts his hands up in the air surrendering to you, even though he's got a gun too. Right. He actually like has a gun pointed at you from the second you walk into the house. He's got like a little pistol. Yeah. What's he going to do with a pistol when he gave you a machine gun? Well, the thing is like, why doesn't he just shoot you and take the jewels? You know? Right. But, uh, yeah, you shoot him in the hat with the gun that he gave you.
And then, uh, he congratulates you breaking the fourth wall. Mr. Stevenson. The player that you've been shooting the whole game. Yeah. Thank you so much for all of your help. Yeah. He says that. And then it says, it says, but later that same day. And it read the game. And it just goes right back to Stevenson.
I've got your daughter. Bring the five black Panther diamonds. He's like, you have them. Yeah. They're saying later that same day. And the objective is still to get the same five black Panther. That's lazy. That's okay. It's that it's that might be worse than the, um, you know, then getting to the Superbowl and finding out you're on your way to the Superbowl because that we at least cleared up. It's like, oh yeah, you're on your way to next year's Superbowl. Like the Superbowl champs are always the favorites for the next year. So like, that's a justification.
That is not the actual. I know. But I'm just saying like that makes sense. There's nothing. Yeah. How did he lose those five black Panther diamonds so fast? Why is Cyclops back? Why did you lose control of your daughter so quickly? She's your only daughter. Only daughter. As he was leaving, as Mr. Stevenson is leaving with his daughter, the guy, you know, the kingdom's like, okay, you know what? You got me like, I'll be good now. And your guy says, sure. So he's leaving with his daughter. And he's like, hey, hey girl, come over here for a sec. You want some candy? Yeah. And then it starts. Stevenson goes all the way back to where he goes back to the city.
And he's like, oh, wait a minute. Not again. No, no. That's what I was thinking. It's like, he goes on the flight. And instead of being responsible for like 10 kids, he's only responsible for his only daughter. And he's like, he's like, you know, I'll have, um, I'll have a mimosa and she'll have, and he looks over at the scene. Oh no. And she's not there. And he's like, we got to turn this plane around. And she goes, sure. Okay. So the ending makes sense now.
Well, except for the five black Panther diamonds. Yeah, whatever. Anyway, that's gum shoe. Also, that's just a weird name. Black Panther diamonds. Yeah. Black Panthers were established by this point. Yeah. That's, I don't know. I don't know why they're calling them black Panther diamonds. I hope it's as obvious as the Hogan's alley thing. And we're just missing it. Yeah. You know, but a couple of things I wanted to call out here is like stray thoughts.
Uh, this game could just be considered a collection of stray thoughts, but this game is the first NES game that we're reviewing essentially that was never released in Japan. It is exclusive to North America. This is our first North American exclusive. Japan wanted nothing to do with this game. Yeah. There, there are definitely, I think there are two, uh, theories as to why this is an American exclusive. One is because of subject matter, like the detective thing, the whole, like a film noir thing. Yeah. Kind of like a film noir on LSD.
Um, and then the second one is just too bad. It's just like, all right, we tried to make this game and it's not going to perform well in Japan. We know that. So let's just dump it on America. Hey, I mean, it might've been bad, but it got the Nintendo seal, quality seal of approval. Hey, it's quality. Yep. Uh, and then another quality of some. Yeah. Quality. I was trying to get some Sakamoto goodness. You know, he's always talking about his games and stuff. He is crickets on gumshoe.
Okay. There is not a single interview that he's done. Even in the interviews about other games, he doesn't mention like, yeah, I was responsible for games like balloon fight and gumshoe. You know, he doesn't talk about it. So I think he also doesn't consider this game worth talking about. And he'd probably be blown away that in 2018, three kids talked about it for 30 minutes. Yeah. Kids. Yeah. We're all like 25. Wow. You're really young. Uh, oh, sorry, sorry, Sean. Anyway. Yep. Let's keep moving. Yeah. Let's keep moving along and maybe bring this into the essential games list.
All right, guys, this game is essential. Nice. You heard it here first folks. We got it. No, you can even have to justify it. All right. I'm sorry. Oh, okay. You're jumping right to the ending. That's it guys. Uh, the essential games list for those of you that don't know, we're just deciding if these games are still worth playing today. Uh, usually we spoil it by this point. Like, you know how we feel based on what we've been talking about, but I think we kind of surprised you guys last week with balloon fight. That's essential. It is essential. And not everybody was feeling too groovy about that.
So gumshoe, Sean. Okay. We spent the past however many minutes shitting on this game. Um, I'm going to say real quick that I am not as skeptical of the actual like gameplay conceit that they are pushing on us. I get that the whole shoot him to jump is an abstraction. Like it's just another way of interacting with the game. I think it adds some depth if it were executed properly and not just have the rest of the game be completely, uh, just a mess of other things like Donkey Kong three. Right. Um, I think it's similar to how that like that third mode in Hogan's alley. Was it Hogan's? No, no. Um, it was, uh, wild gun, wild gunman where you, where you shooting room. The shooting gallery. Yes. Yeah. That's Hogan's.
That is Hogan's alley. Um, maybe there, you are listening and you've finished this game, but I don't care. You don't exist. Um, so no, this isn't essential. This is a mess. Sam, uh, kind of going off of your point. I think that it is an interesting game mechanics wise, but it just needed a much better execution. And we were talking about this a little bit before that I don't think we actually mentioned on the podcast that if it had been some kind of control scheme, like one person controls the person and someone else controls the, uh, you know, the light gun, the zapper and is shooting the things while one person is moving around and jumping. I think that could be a really fun game.
I think that's really cool. And I, you know, I, we were talking about that before the show and I do think that that's something worth considering. I think they probably didn't want to go that route because it's a game that would require two players, but they, you know, they should have like, I think allowed for an option or something. Like you hold one controller in one hand and you press any button and it makes the character jump and, or maybe, you know, like press a, or you press something on that controller to make the character jump.
And then you use the light gun to shoot everything just so that you don't have to keep shooting your own guy. That would make it a better game. It'd be frustrating, but it would make it a better game still. But now this game, this game is just, it's cool that there's like a story to it with a light gun game. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah. But it's just not good.
It's not a, yeah. And I think an interesting point that Sean just brought up too, is like, did the people who made this game like Sakamoto and them, did they play it and were they able to get to the end? Because I just don't see it.
It's so hard. And, and look, that's not why I'm not going to put it in the essential list because that's like a bad barrier because some people are really good at video games and some people are really good at other kinds of video games. So the skill and difficulty should never have anything to do with it. We shouldn't just let easy to win games be in the essential games list, which I don't think we've really done. You know, Super Mario Brothers is challenging still. Yeah. And balloon fight is not a game that is like rewarding to beginners.
So we're not just letting easy games in and we're not letting games that are so difficult be like, no, they're too difficult. They're not getting through. What kills me about this game is that if you just strip down some of the, you know, like if you, if you didn't have so many objects on the screen at once, if you had a different way to control your character, if you, if you didn't have to shoot, like,
you know, if you didn't have like a limited amount of time and bullets and stuff like that, and you had like more concentration or ability to like, you know, play with the time the way that we did, you know, like if you had some kind of ability to less things on the screen, you could shoot less. I don't know what the answer is here. What I'm saying is, is not remove all those things, but there's, this game is too busy right now to be rewarding. Yeah. There's too much going on. We were all dying so quickly that we resorted to emulator versions to figure out what was going on. Like, like, like I need to talk about this game. So I got to do it some other way.
Somehow Sam powered through the whole thing. But the fact that even with the emulator and the cheat version, I guess you could argue of me rewinding time and stuff like that, the fact that that still couldn't hold my attention that I was like, no, I still don't. I don't want to play this game right now. I don't care how it ends. I'm not invested in this guy's only daughter. I was trying to get you to finish it.
Yeah, exactly. And I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that because this just isn't a good game. Uh, that's what bothers me about some of these early NES games. And we're going to see it a lot more later. But these early NES games, they're so important to developing like video game as a culture. And like, you know, this is what video games are like. And they're not like those old Atari 2600 games. But we've, we've got some big duds here right now.
And I think gumshoe is one of them. Uh, I'm really not fond of this game. And I think it's, I think it's kind of silly that Sakamoto would go through with something like this. And that Nintendo wouldn't have enough faith to put it out in Japan. But they were like, oh, our North American audience needs a game. So let's give them gumshoe. So Sakamoto, if, if you can hear me right now, uh, even 30 years later, people are still disappointed in you. Yeah. Uh, and that's not just because of other M. Uh, anyway, uh, that's a no from me.
And, um, that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time for Mock Rider. And be sure to play it yourself if you can. Uh, you know, I'm kind of ad-libbing here. So I'm just going to try to remember what I usually say, but maybe that's fresh for some of you. Maybe you're like, oh, oh, we got them. No, you didn't get me. Because if you want more, you go to NostalgiaCast.com. That's N-E-S-T-A-L-G-I-A-Cast.com. There, you can find links to the shows and the show notes, as well as some articles. Is baseball haunted?
What are the best NES launch ROM hacks? What's, um, what's Shigeru Miyamoto doing these days? What does Sean look like? Right. Uh, and just to be clear, there is, there is going to be a definite article about what Sean looks like. We're just going to like, you know, link to all of his social media, and we're going to put a big... What's Sean's social security number? Yeah, we're going to put like a pin on like where he used to grow up and stuff like that. Um, but also like, you know, the, you know, the articles are fun. They're meant to be fun. They're like lighthearted things.
The Miyamoto thing. No, that's like a real thing that I'm working on. That's probably out by this episode. But it's like, oh, you know, basically like looking at the early Miyamoto games and really determining like what was his contribution to those games. Sounds pretty cool. You listen to these retro podcasts. You might want to read articles about these kinds of things. So check them out on the website, as well as our other stuff like Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. We barely use them, but you might as well go to them because we have links to them. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on Twitter. That really was AdLift. You can find me on Twitter at Esposito Film, and I'll talk to you soon.
One pixel. It's challenging to deal with. No, I know I'm joking. There's more than that.
Headphones on. Knock, knock. Who's there? Me. Jambalaya. You're supposed to do gum and then gum who, gumshoe. Don't you notice how this works? Shut the fuck up. There hasn't been a single game that hasn't been two syllables. I quit the podcast. Name one game besides... Knock, knock, who's there? Balloon. Balloon who? Balloon fight. Super Mario Brothers. Knock, knock, who's there? Super. Super who? Super Mario Brothers. That's not a syllable. It works! Knock, knock. It follows the laws. Who's there? Tennis.
Tennis who? Tennis shoes! And welcome to NEStalgia! This is your old Sean Tresman. I don't care about the chronology of it. We're skipping to Metroid. Here it is. Be loud. We're talking about... Today we're talking about Super Mario Brothers again! Because we don't want to talk about gumshoe! Today we're talking... Thank you.
