037 · TROJAN
Welcome to 1987! Capcom strikes again with a Ghost 'N Goblins style game that isn't nearly as hard. Think you're tough enough for the Post-Apocalyptic challenge of defeating the evil Achilles? For more NEStalgia, show notes, and articles visit www.NEStalgiacast.com
Trojan is our first game of 1987, and despite the name it has nothing to do with the Trojan War. You are a Trojan warrior in a post-apocalyptic future, wearing knight armor made from melted scrap, fighting your way through six stages to an evil dictator's lair. Mike, Sean and Sam played this one (Joe was out), and Sean's first reaction, echoed right away, was that it feels like Kung Fu. The difference is that this one has a sword and shield, a health bar, and a few ideas of its own.
What it gets right
- It feels like a step up from Kung Fu. The backgrounds have more flavor, the enemies have more detail, and nobody hugs you to death. Dying isn't instant: there is a health bar, and a hit from a glowing orb strips your sword and shield, so you have to fight bare-handed until you pick them up again.
- There is something to find. Kung Fu was a line to the stairs. Here there are sewer grates, keys in the later stages that open other grates, and an overworld map before each stage in the Ghosts 'n Goblins style that gives you a sense of where you are headed.
- Capcom is learning the hardware. Some people believe it was Capcom's first NES game developed in-house. Either way, there is none of the slowdown or sprite flicker that earlier third-party games gave us. The music grew on us too, with stage two getting special praise.
- A bigger finish. There is a repeat fight with Trojan, a boss rush, King Shriek (an NES-only boss who bursts out of a wall, twice, while you dodge falling rocks), and finally Achilles. Beat it and you get pixel-art portraits and names for every enemy, which is better than the usual text screen. You also don't have to beat it twice for the real ending, unlike in the arcade version, which says "probably" the first time.
Where it falls short
- Too many buttons, and jump lives on up. You can crouch, shield high or diagonally, and swing, and Sam found it overwhelming and stayed that way. Jump is on the D-pad's up direction, which kept messing people up, though the arcade version never had a jump button either. Sam also noted that you can often just walk up to a guy and hit him, which made the extra moves feel optional.
- The bosses are the low point. Armadillon rolls into a ball and hits you twice on the way past, and Goblin throws ninja stars, easier by comparison. Trojan himself blocks everything, and the only fix is to crouch behind the shield, let him jump, then hit him twice as he lands. We did not enjoy it.
- Two-player is an afterthought. A versus mode puts two Trojans against each other on the game's backdrops. It was Capcom's first fighting game, and not competent enough to earn bonus points.
Beyond the game
Capcom's Yoichi Igawa, for whom this was his first game at the company, said he worked hard on Achilles, and told of dropping the sprite ROM chips on an expressway on deadline day and watching them get crushed.
The bottom line
Play it. We all agreed it would have been a great pickup in 1987, and Sean and Sam both said they would have loved it back then. But all three hosts voted it off the Essential Games List: it plays too close to Kung Fu, and it does not have Ghosts 'n Goblins' level design to back it up. It is still worth a go for sword-and-shield fans.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Can Trojan and you successfully defeat the enemy and rescue the people of the world? You control their destiny.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Sam. And today we're talking about our very first game of 1987, guys. Happy 1987, everybody. Hey, what a great year. Do you have any memories of 1987? I have no memories of 1987, if that's what you're asking. Oh man, that must have been, it was a lit year. Yeah, totally lit. Yeah. All the kids were saying lit in 87. Yeah. Or Cowabunga, depending on how you look at it. It was a regional thing. I think the turtles actually weren't until 89, though.
Or were they 87? I think they might have been 87. Who cares? The turtles are just associated with the 80s, the turtles. But really, they have nothing to do with Trojan. Yeah. The Trojan War happened in 1987. That is true. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah. And this game is based off of that war.
No, it's actually, Trojan is a post-apocalyptic future where you are a Trojan warrior and you have to defeat an evil dictator who is also pretty easily accessible, I guess. If you're able to just march through his chambers to get to him. And also, everyone decided to take all the scrap metal around them and, you know, burn it down into metal armor. Because they're all dressed like knights. What else are you going to do in the future? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very strange. And some people are like centipede people also.
It's not like there's just a shop where you would just buy your armor, you know? Like they had to melt down the... Why... Like this is just the thing about like, I dig the post-apocalyptic thing, but why did they... They decided to smelt everything down into swords and shields when like there's enough melee weapons to choose from. Like you could use a baseball bat with nails and stuff.
Am I the other one also struggling to think that like in a post-apocalyptic future, future being the key word there, that people would not resort to melee weapons? Like they would have access to guns. They'd figure out guns pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean like guns will be laying around. We came over that hurdle. Were the fact that several Volkswagen Beetles survived the apocalypse?
Because they're like the only car in the background. Have you noticed that? I didn't notice that at all. But I will say that in general, it took me a really long time to find out that this game was post-apocalyptic. Like until I read the manual... I was just like, oh, it's a real bad neighborhood. Yeah. I was like, alright, whatever.
It's only really apparent when you play the arcade version of this game and you actually see like the more clearly defined skyscrapers being like destroyed and everything. And like actually seeing the buildings look like reminiscent of buildings in the 80s, but destroyed. Yeah. I mean, they still got that. I didn't quite get that. I don't know why. Obviously, I didn't think it took place during the Trojan War either, which hopefully our listener doesn't think anymore. Because you led them on, Sean. I'm very sorry. Sean, do you want to take us through first impressions?
Um, yeah. My first impression was, uh, I, this just feels like a much more polished version of Kung Fu at first. Um, which is really funny that you say that because that is my like exact first words. Kung Fu. Out of play. Yeah. Like just like Kung Fu. Like I felt this game right away and I was like, wow, this is just like Kung Fu. I don't know if I would have said more polished, but it was more polished in that at least the backgrounds had some flavor and, uh, the, the enemies had more, I guess, resolution in them. Mm-hmm. Um, and no one was hugging you in this one. No one was hugging. There was no serial hugging.
Um, but they did, it was still very much like the, the, there's going to be the, uh, the standard enemy that just bum rushes you that you can just attack. You can just hit once and they go away. And then there's the one that will walk up to you with, within like a couple meters and will like throw something at you. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, the AI was very reminiscent of it. Um, except this just had a lot more, not a lot more, but more things to do. I felt more prepared though, going into this game, having played Kung Fu.
Yeah. I felt like, oh, I know what to do. It almost felt like a mixture of Kung Fu and Ghosts and Goblins. I thought. Yeah. Maybe because you're in, and you're still in Knight's armor, but. That's a good way to think about it too though, because I mean, this is the same exact Capcom that brought us Ghosts and Goblins, not like two months before this. Yeah. And then another thing that they share is they share that, uh, sort of overworld map that they preview, um, before the start of each level, which I always like that to, to give context to what you have just played and are about to play. Like, I think that's a, that's a fun feature that they've introduced into it. Sam, any other first impressions?
Um, for, well, I have, I have like a couple, a couple first impressions that hit really quickly. Okay. One after another. Lay them on me. First is like, wow, this game looks really cool and it sounds cool. And so that's first, you know, just pure visual, then gameplay. It's like, okay, I can move around in many different ways. I can jump. I can crouch. I can shield. I can use my sword. This is too many things to do at one time. Um, you can like diagonally hold the shield. You serious? Yeah. Do up and to the right. I like, I got a little overwhelmed with the controls at first. Mm-hmm. Um, and then continue to be overwhelmed by them for the rest of the game.
But, um, uh, yeah. Then after that, it's kind of, like I said, it's kind of like a mix between ghosts and goblins and, um, uh, kung fu. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. I definitely agree with, uh, that assessment. Though I would say this wasn't, this didn't give me that like extremely difficult vibe that ghosts and goblins gave me. But for, like in the sense that, like guys just keep coming at you if you don't keep moving. Well, I mean, even that map, you see like, you know, you have like stages one through six, you see the map and it's like, that's very reminiscent of, uh, ghosts and goblins as well. Though the map isn't really like, doesn't really as detailed.
No, no. But at least it gives you a, a, a sort of idea. It lets you know that it's like, this is where the game is going to end over here. One, one gameplay feature that I would like to add to the comparison though is the, um, well, obviously the health bar, that's a very kung fu thing. And I feel like that that's just going to continue to be a thing in this genre.
Um, but it's nice that it's like also not a one hit KO or in ghosts and goblins gets a two hit KO. Like it is nice to have a health bar as opposed to like, you know, every other game that we've seen from Capcom so far in 1942, uh, Commando, those games were one hit death. Yeah. But like, uh, like ghosts and goblins, there are sort of are two modes, not, not two modes, but like if you, if you get hit with a certain attack, I think if you like trip over like some sort of orb and you lose your weapon and armor and it's similar to you've lost your, uh, you've lost your armor and ghosts and goblins, but you're not quite as helpless because now like the, uh, the fighting mechanic mechanics just change. Right. I like that there are like two, uh, modules.
Yeah. I was actually like kind of startled the first time that that happened though. Yeah. Uh, cause you're using your shield to block this. What is it? That's like a glowing orb. Something along those. Yeah. I mean, different things do it. So I guess like I was thinking of the, um, the generic red enemies, uh, they, they throwers. Yeah. But sometimes they'll throw a glowing orb thing instead.
And if you try to block it with your shield, you'll lose your sword and shield. And then you'll have to be like, you know, using melee combat. And I just thought that was interesting, but I do like that. They give you the option right away of like, Hey, here's an, here's like where your sword and armor are. So go grab them. Um, you know, it wasn't like you're screwed for the time being like play through the level until you find it again.
Yeah. Speaking of finding things in levels, uh, this, this one had like a really cool thing that Kung Fu never had, which was like actual like exploration of the levels. And there were like little secrets here and there. If you Mario, Super Mario underground worlds. Yeah. The sewer thing, which had incredibly hard boss fights that hopefully you would just grab the high jump boots and say, yeah, I mean, you, you don't really get rewarded with anything other than like a point bonus. And yeah, in these kinds of games, I can't stress this enough. Like a game like balloon fight, 1942, those you play for score, you know, a game like goes in goblins or Trojan. You, I'm not playing for score. I'm trying to beat those games.
I'm lucky to get close to beating those games, let alone thinking about like, Oh, I'm setting a new high score. Yeah. I do want to state though, that I don't want to to this game is home. I don't want to be torn too much as far as exploration goes, because aside from just seeing some clearly marked sewer grates or, or the, uh, the thematic equivalent in the other levels, um, you're basically just walking in a straight line the entire time.
Well, I mean, no, but there's, there's like keys to find in different, like in the later stages, there's keys to find that open up like different grates. This way you can like access the next part of the level. So like, I thought that was kind of like, it was interesting. Again, it is kind of like all in front of you. It's not like go in the shop, you know, like it's not that advanced, but it's still like, it's a little more thoughtful than just the Kung Fu line.
Walk to the stairs. Right. Yeah. Walk to the stairs. I forgot about that. And then the little 10 yard fight. Yeah. Let's just talk about, I guess, like some of the enemies. First off, I don't know why I thought this, but the generic enemies, like the ones in the, um, in the melted down armor, you know, like in the gray and red, I thought they were like, they all look like women to me.
Did anybody else have that? Like, no, I don't know. It was like they had like, they had chests on them. And I just didn't think that's just weird. That's like, this is weird. That's like an all female army with the exception of the bosses. But I mean, maybe they just have, maybe they're all just wearing breastplates. I don't know. Gotcha. Okay. So we'll disband that then, because I'm completely wrong. And I'm just for the record, I am completely wrong. If you play the arcade version, you know, which the graphics are like a lot better and kind of like a weird looking, like clay, like look to them.
Clay. Like it's still 2d, but the pixel art is done so nice that they look like, um, you know, claymation. Yeah. I don't want to say 2.5 D. It's not even close, you know, but it looks so much nicer than what the NES version is giving us. It's to be honest, I'll get to this later in the episode, but like the arcade versions of revelation, uh, for me at least. Yes. But let's talk about some of the, uh, you know, the more unique enemies in the game, the bosses, uh, there's, and you guys probably don't know these guys by names, but there's Armadillon. That guy sucks.
Yeah. The big man. The, no, Armadillon is the guy with like, yeah, he's a guy. He killed me a lot. Yeah. He's, um, just rolls up in a ball. He rolls up in a ball, but what kind of animal? He's like an armadillo, I guess. Yeah. No. I was like, what animal am I thinking of here? Uh, okay. It's an armadillo.
Uh, yeah, he rolls up in a ball and stuff, but like, I just thought, I thought he was very cheap. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well also your jump isn't great, you know? Well, yeah, your jump isn't great at all, especially cause it's mapped to the up button again. Yeah. No one has learned this yet. Uh, that's just the thing. I think that one of my big criticisms of this is that there's just not enough like intuitive buttons on. Well, the NES is missing a few buttons as well. If you have to have a block and a hit button, where do you map jump? Yeah. I mean, it makes sense, but it's just like, just not, I don't know. I guess that's right. But, um, I think that, I don't know how you're this like thrown off by the, by the, uh, uh,
control design. No, like I, I get the up is jumping. And it's like that in a lot of games, but I'm just, for whatever reason, it just messed me up in this game. I mean, I will say that I was not blocking like intuitively. I just didn't decide to block that often. Mm. I felt like I would rather just jump over these things. Yeah. Um, so I never really played the game correctly because I was only blocking when, uh, I was fighting a boss and I felt like I needed to.
Yeah. You know what would change the game though? That's mostly how I did. If you did like, let's say you had like an 8-bit do controller or something and, or like a Super Nintendo controller even, and you were able to like map, if you mapped the up directional button to like X or Y instead, you know, like assuming you had that, I think that would change the game. I think that would make it easier. Yeah. Because you wouldn't have to, I feel like because you can move and, and kind of like, you know, plan your strikes, it would be a difference to not have to like shift to the up direction and just be able to do it with an input. Yeah. I think you're right.
But you know, that's a, that's not an option here on the NES. Uh, and it was also just for the record, jump on the arcade version is also the joystick up. So it wasn't there either. There was no jump button ever in a version of Trojan. Oh, wow. Okay. That's, that's disappointing.
So, uh, that, that was Armadillon. I guess we were talking about jumping, but no, it's true because Armadillon is a boss that pretty much requires your timing of jumps. And so if it's going to be hard, cause you're going to take two, uh, two hits of damage. If he rolls past you, uh, he hits you twice actually, as you go by. So that's pretty detrimental to your health. And very much so. He only has a small window of opening before he goes back into the ball. So wasn't a big fan of him. Another one who shows up pretty early goblin.
Uh, that's the guy who, uh, with the blue hair and the red vest that's like torn apart. So he doesn't have like a, a punny name. No, he's just goblin. Okay. And, uh, he'll, he throws like ninja stars, I guess, or whatever that would be like, like screws. Yeah. No. Okay. If they can smelt armor and swords, they can smelt ninja stars. Okay, good. So it's ninja stars. And, uh, you know, to be honest, I didn't have that tough of a time with him. I, I, I actually preferred him over armadillo. Yeah, I think so too.
Uh, it's just an easier pattern. I think that you don't have to anticipate getting hit twice. Right. Um, but that, those are the only two that I beat. Yeah. Those are the only two that I beat. I don't think I beat armadillo. I did beat goblin. I had to look up goblin because he didn't, he just didn't sound familiar. But yeah, I, armadillo and messed me up. So wait, have you been able to see goblin? Like, are you recognizing goblin? Yeah. Okay. What'd you think of him?
I don't know. Nice guy. No, he had barbecue on the weekend. Keeps throwing, keeps throwing stuff at me, you know, so I don't like that very much. Tell you who I wouldn't have a barbecue with on the weekend.
Later on, as you go through the different stages, and I mean, there's some other bosses too that like, we're just going to gloss over really. But like, there comes a point in this game where you hit the end and then you hit the end and then you hit the end.
Like this game gets crazy on the back end of it because, uh, eventually when you get to stage four, which you know, isn't the end, you, uh, you wind up going through like, uh, this escalator, uh, elevator, sorry, elevator battles where like, you just pretty much like, you could fight everybody or you could just get to the other side, take the elevator down and go to the next path. You can just evade everyone. Evade, you'd have to kill at least the person directly in front of you, but then you take the elevator and go all the way down. Oh. And then at the end, you fight Trojan.
Do you, you fight yourself? See, that's where I'm confused, Sean. I'll wait, but the box said that you control Trojan. Exactly. And so, uh, thank you guys for this great segue where we were actually looking at the back of the box right before this. Cause I always read the back of the boxes to start. And I was like, how can you control Trojan if like the villain is Trojan?
And it turns out that no, he's like a rogue Trojan soldier, just like yourself. Who's now joined the, the, the, the evil dictator guys. So now you have to like, you know, take him down. That kind of begs the question, like, what do you mean Trojan soldier? Right. Yeah. Why is it called? I don't know why it's called Trojan. I can't tell you guys either, but, um, you know, that was, there's no development, uh, interview for why they went with the, the Trojan thing. But I guess it's like, yeah, it's world building. Yeah. I can imagine that somehow like maybe it's environmental storytelling, Mike. I love it. Uh, Sean, who's the guy in mass effect three?
Um, the Asian guy that everyone hates who just showed up in that game as like the boss. Kai Lang or Phy Lang. I remember Kyle. Yeah. I think it's Kai Lang. I think you're right. Yeah. This is what Trojan actually is in this game because you think he's like, you know, like, Oh man, this guy is like really tough, hard as nails. And then you get like one fight with him and he's just cheap. Remember how like with Kyle in, it was like you, you fight him in mass factory and it's like you just beat him. Yeah. And then the cut scene, he beats you. It's this crazy thing with Trojan where like in stage four, you fight him and he automatically blocks every single attack.
You can get him into the corner of the stage and just continuously strike your sword at him and he will hold that shield for eternity and run your clock out. It is unbelievable that there's a timer in this game with a mechanic like that in mind. Is it, is it just actually hard coded for, is it, you're supposed to lose this battle? No, no, no. So that would actually, that would be like the first example of like a battle you're supposed to lose in a game. But no, that's not, that's not what's supposed to happen. You actually have to like, you know, essentially what they're trying, the game is trying to tell you is don't strike first.
Okay. Wait for Trojan to attack. So I thought Trojan was like really cheap and stupid. I was like, this is, this is ridiculous. I'm going to run out of time. And I did run out of time several times. And then I got into this crazy strategy, which I think I talked to Sam about earlier today, which didn't sound fun at all. Right. It's just using this thing. You have to, you have to crouch.
Okay. Strike with your, um, you know, you have to crouch and shield. So then he'll, um, he'll jump at you. And as he's jumping in the air, you want to stand back up, strike with your sword twice, go back down and crouch with shield. And then he'll jump at you again. He'll always jump at you as long as you're crouching shield. And that'll be your window of opportunity to attack him. That's, that's how I fight people normally.
Crouching. I jump, I run up in front of them and crouch down. That really pisses them off. So they jump at me. Oh my God. That sounds, that just doesn't sound fun. It wasn't. Uh, and I'll say this from there. The game only like the bosses only get progressively less fun.
Yeah. I mean, I, I only played through the, the first two levels. I didn't get past the end of the second level. And I'm, I'm kind of grateful that I, I guess I just didn't waste my time on that. I spent about the same amount of time. Yeah. I bet like, you know, it, it, what's funny is, is like, after that, you kind of like, you know, you've seen the Trojan fight, you're only on stage four, you have to go do a couple more things. And I'll, I'll admit that like, you know, the designs got kind of cool.
Uh, the levels go on, you know, you start to get like closer to the, uh, is it a castle? I don't really know what to say there, but a lair. It's like a lair. Yeah. It feels more like a dungeon kind of thing. The, uh, the, the dictator's lair. Yeah. Every dictator has a lair. Wolfenstein. Um, and then you get to stage six and you fight the boss Trojan.
Same guy. He shows up again. Cool. The whole Kylan thing all over again. You're like, I, I killed you. No, he fled the scene and escaped and now you'll fight him again. And unfortunately it is the same exact fight. Uh, it's not yet. I don't even, I can't even tell if it's harder. Might've been easier this time just cause I knew exactly what to do with the Krabs thing, but that wasn't any fun at all. And, uh, this is when the game goes into like boss rush mode. Okay. Where like, you just keep fighting Trojan over and over. You've defeated Trojan.
And then the very next thing is you go to the next room and it's just like this, like, I guess like this altar kind of thing with like these, it's like a cobblestone wall and stuff like that. And Armadillon comes out again. I would, I would hate that. Okay. Um, but you go to the end of the wall and then like a man, like a man's body starts to like show from the cobblestone. Think of like, I'm talking like Kool-Aid man style thing, you know, where it's like, he's about to emerge and break out of the wall. That's what's happening here. The Kool-Aid guy. The shadow of the Kool-Aid man.
Okay. But instead it's King Shriek. Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. I mean, I don't know where this comes from. Uh, the crazy thing about King Shriek is that he's not even in the arcade version. This is an NES exclusive boss for Trojan. Maybe that was advertised. Yeah. Like, it's like, you know, yeah. Brand new exclusive boss. So King Shriek is breaking out of the wall and unbeknownst to the player, the rocks that he's like essentially destroying. Wait, this is his lair? This is like, yeah. He's breaking his own lair? He's breaking into his own lair. It's like, it's a surprise attack. He left his keys. He's like, oh, you didn't expect me to just bust out from the wall.
So he busts out of the wall and the rocks that keep like spamming all over the place, you have to dodge those. Oh no. Like, you're doing like a ton of damage to you otherwise. Is this another like Gradius lava dodge thing? It's kind of like that. I'd say it's a little more forgiving.
Um, if you're someone like Joe, you know, like if you know how to play that volcano level from Gradius, you're, you're okay. Okay. Because you can dodge the projectiles. This one, you can't slice away the projectiles with your sword. So you do have to kind of do a little for dangling, but he does that on the right side. You defeat him on the right side. And then he just like comes out of the left side. Wow. He burst through the wall of the left side too. So you gotta take care of him both times.
And then he's dead. For now. Because, oh wait, there's another boss after that. There's a whole nother level. And you go through that level. And then at the very end of that is the boss, the final boss of the game, the big bad. Anybody want to take any guesses? Uh, that was our audio engineer. I'm not even sure if we heard him. I can't see him.
Uh, the, the big man. It's close to the big man. Giant. It's a big, it's a big guy. Uh, thankfully not Trojan, but unfortunately another sword fighter, just like Trojan, Achilles. Achilles? Actual Achilles? Achilles. Uh, is the name of the big bad at the end. Uh, I guess really just to like, you know, build into that Trojan war style thing. The only other reference. Yeah. Uh, and it's Achilles and he's this big guy, all dressed all in red and, uh.
Does he have blonde hair? Long blonde hair? I don't know. Now that I'm thinking he has blue, but I might just be picturing the goblin again. I looked up the, uh, I looked up these guys. You know, like that's weird because it doesn't look anything like him. He looks like a grown up Trojan. Trojan looks like a little boy compared to Achilles.
Okay. So, okay. Yeah. He looks sort of like, uh, Brad Pitt in Trojan. Um, and, and he's just like, you know, he's like your final boss, if you will. Like, like, he's just a master striker kind of thing.
And, to be honest, I didn't really care for this fight. It wasn't as hard as King Shriek. You just had to like, use your shield a ton and, you know, you'd have no problem. I like the arcade setup a lot better, where there's like a pit at the other end. Like, you get, you have to jump over a pit. You get like eaten by the Nidhogg. Yeah. Just to like, get onto his throne room. Cause he essentially is like, this is one that is really cool. He's like sitting on a throne. Oh, that's badass. In the NES or in the arcade? That's a good question. In the arcade version, he's sitting on the throne. You're right. In the NES version, he might just appear.
Yeah. But, anyway, there's also no pit at the, at the, at the NES one. So that's like, cool. But, uh, yeah, you defeat him and then it's like, congratulations, you did it. Goodbye. Well, I thought that this was sort of like Ghosts and Goblins, where you had to beat it twice to get the actual ending. Funny enough that you should mention that, that, uh, that's not the case in the NES version.
Oh. But it was the case in the arcade version. The arcade version. The arcade version didn't have- The arcade version didn't have- The funny thing in the arcade version is that the first time you beat the game, including beating Achilles, it's not like Achilles is the secret final boss at the end. You defeat Achilles and then the arcade version says, congratulations, you did it. Things are probably okay now. Like, it says the word probably.
Implying that you should do this whole thing again. And then you do it again and it like reassures you that like, okay, we're good this time. So it's not even that drastically different. It's just- That's the only difference, yes. That's the only difference the second play difference. That's the only difference. Just like, prove that you can beat this game twice. Wow. But later that same day- It just doesn't equivocate at the end of the second one. Later that same day is a nostalgia meme. Yeah, because that's like, that's a thing that we see in these NES games. It's always the same thing. Like, but the NES game is nice enough to assure you the first time that you've done a good job.
Yeah. It's like, thank you for beating the game, you know. You're probably fine. Maybe that's because you, you know, you went through like six stages and a boss rush to beat the game. Like, that's really hard if you think about it. I would assume so. It was hard enough for me to go through two. Yeah, so, some people have said that for the difficulty level of the game, that Trojan's actually a little more forgiving in the NES version.
I beg to differ. Yeah. I think the NES version's very hard. Yeah. I mean, I felt, I mean, obviously, again, I mean, I found it hard too, but I also just didn't give it that much of a chance. Uh-huh. So, I think that- What, what, if you don't mind me asking, other than like, the fact that you weren't getting far, what took you out of this game that you said, like, I'm not gonna continue to go?
It felt- Because we talk about Ghost and Goblins, you know, and that like hurt, but we continued to play. Yeah. Let me hear it. I found that it was just too simple for like, I know that you have more range of, like, there are more angles of block and stuff like that. But I just found that the, um, that there wasn't a lot of verticality, at least. Uh-huh. Um, the enemies were, it just felt too much like Kung Fu.
Gotcha. And you are right about that, actually. If you think about the level design of Ghost and Goblins, that's actually a pretty good level design. I wouldn't say Trojan's on that level. No. I'd say that it was, it's pretty, like, I mean, it's got, it's got cool art. The music ain't bad. Mm-hmm. But I was unenthused. I felt, I had played this game before, but without the, the sword. Gotcha. Uh, Sam.
Um, yeah, I don't know. When I was playing, it, it was just, I don't know, the controls just didn't click with me. I know that's kind of, like, weird, because there's not that many of them, but the fact that you can just go up to a guy and then press a button and he's dead, you know, then I'm thinking, like, why do I need all this other stuff? Right. You know, why do I need to be able to crouch? Why do I need to be able to do all this? And, like, you can crouch or you can jump, and I get that there's variety and that's cool, but I felt like it wasn't, like, it, not that it wasn't well implemented, but it wasn't always essential that you have all these different elements to your character.
And when it was, it was kind of janky, I thought. Nice. Going in the jank folder. No, I wouldn't say in the jank folder, because it does feel like a very, like, solid, complete game. That's good. We haven't had a game in the jank folder in a while.
Well, um, I, I did, I wasn't here for the episode. Oh, you would've put those things right in. Uh, karate, uh, what, karate champion? Yeah, karate champ. Oh, karate champ. Yeah, that, that's, that's deep in the jank folder. Right in the jank folder. It's in the bottom of the jank folder. It's in the bowels of the jank folder. I'll say something cool though, uh, as a, um, as a reward for beating the game, other than not having to beat it twice.
Uh, one thing that's really cool about the NES version is when you beat the game afterwards, it gives you like the name of all the enemies and stuff like that, but also does like a little like pixel art, like portrait for each enemy in the game. Oh. And I would say like, this is like, it almost makes me think like, why aren't the graphics this good? Cause the pixel art is really well done for these, um, for these enemy portraits.
I'll have to show you guys later. Yeah. But for anybody who's, um, who's considering checking through the game, I think it's actually worth it for that pixel art alone. And if you don't want to trick through the game, just look it up. Google it. Yeah. I think it's a nice, it's a nice payoff other than just like, you know, so many things that we see now, it's just like text that says like, you did it. Congratulations. Like you probably won, but later that same day, probably won.
Oh man. So, uh, just a few more things. If you guys don't mind, just a little housekeeping here. So this, this is a Capcom joint. We talked about that. Some people believe that this is Capcom's actual, their first go at developing an NES game, uh, that the other ones were all like ports, uh, including 1942 though. I can't find any record that 1942 was developed out of house for the NES versions I'm talking about. Obviously Capcom was the developer on the arcade versions of all these.
Yeah. But apparently this is their first go at the NES version, uh, of anything. So that's a big, uh, step for 1987 in general is just that like, you know, a major third party company is learning to actually use the hardware. And sure enough, we're going to see a bunch of big games from Capcom on the system. So it's good that they're, uh, they're working on it.
It's good that they're learning now. So, so I think like with that in mind, you know, like there's not that many kinks. So I think that's like really, that says something for Capcom's quality. Yeah, no, I never, I never, like a lot of the games we played like that are third party so far have been, have actually had technical issues like slow down and, and, uh, sprite flicker or actual sprite, uh, loss. And it's, it's good to see, um, the third party kind of get it together already. Yeah. Or, uh, just have the same annoying song for the entire game. Right, right. I thought the music in this game was pretty good.
It was like one of those things where at first I was like, I don't, I don't know if I even like this, but I, but I did wind up liking it. Stockholm syndrome. Yeah. I did wind up liking it. And I think like that, that stage two one, um, the stage two is really good for some reason. I, I can't even hum it if I want to. Yeah, we'll probably just play it now. Ba dum bum, ba dum ba dum bum.
I just, I really liked that for some reason. Yeah. Sorry, I didn't play it right now, but. You didn't. We'll play it right. I played it. We'll play it right now. No, we can, no, only Mike can signal it. Okay, Mike, whenever you're ready. I'll, no, I'll signal this though. Uh, so I, I was looking like pretty deep into this game because I think it's pretty obvious because I've been talking the most. I, I kind of dig this game. Okay. Uh, I'm not in love with it, but I dig it. So I was trying to find something, you know, uh, about this game from the development side, like, you know, a developer interview or something.
And I wasn't having much success with anything and I couldn't find anything from the directors or anything like that. But I did find, um, one of Capcom's employees, Yoichi Igawa. Um, he was talking about Trojan and, uh, this is the only developer thing I could find. So I'm going to read it. It's actually pretty cohesive, Sean. So, uh, it's not one of those like Nintendo rambles. We wanted to make a game where you push buttons. Yeah. Oh, they got it. They nailed it. Uh, we like to, we like to hide pairs of shoes in the sewer.
Huh? So here's, uh, here's Yoichi. Here's what he had to say about it. He goes, this was the first game I made when I joined Capcom and being my first game, I hit the wall pretty quickly. There was one stage that gave me a ton of problems. And I remember getting its music stuck in my head over and over. Even when I tried to sleep, the character that gave me the most trouble was the final boss, the sword King Achilles. I put so much time into him trying to make him strong.
There's one other memory I have of Trojan. On the day of the deadline, I was riding my bike down the expressway to deliver the character slash sprite ROMs, but I accidentally dropped the ROM chips and they were scattered across the road. I realized it right away and stopped my bike, but this was a very busy road. And right before my eyes, I watched all those chips get crushed to pieces. Oh, it was a cruel scene. Now I can laugh about it, but at the time my heart was sunk.
That sounds like, I mean, that wasn't really about the development of the game. He just kind of, well, I think it was interesting that he was thinking about like, you know, he himself was playing, like play testing this game as the designer, but also just like, well, not the designer, sorry, I forget who the designer was, but like, just like, as one of the programmers in the game. And like, he's trying to like fight Achilles and making him as hard as possible while still beatable. And so I think that part was interesting that the ROM chip thing is just like tragic. I know. It sounds like he's not really over it. Yeah. I feel bad for him.
I mean, it's probably like his most memorable moment from the whole development period, you know? Yeah. And I think it's okay because he is now the executive corporate officer and director of Capcom Co. Oh, good for you. So he's doing okay. He's doing just fine. That's probably a nice job. Yeah. It is probably a nice job considering the CEO of Capcom. I'm just, oh, no, no, sorry. No, we don't have a CEO of Capcom position here. I was trying to find out compensations.
You're trying to figure out how much money he makes. Yeah. I was trying to figure out how much money he makes as this guy, but we can't really get that. But apparently if you're the CEO of a video game company in Japan, you can see like somewhere of like 100 to 400 million yen. So Mike is just idly Wikipedia-ing things over here. How much is that? How much is yen? I was trying to actually think that out too. Is it close to like a thousand to one?
Let's find out. A 400 million yen is $3 million. Yeah. So that's actually realistic. Thank goodness. I was like, this sounds stupid. I was like, he makes 400 million yen. It's like Michael Jordan's salary. You know, it's like you would think, but it's not. It's not. That's what I'm saying. Like when you hear 400 million yen, you would think it's one of those things where it's like, while he sleeps, a thousand people don't even make as much money as him. Like that's not true though. Video game designers, who knew? They don't make that much money. Who knew? No, they do. No, they do. No, they do.
on is the, you know, kind of the weird addition, other than King Sheik, King Shriek, the weird addition to this game. Sheik. You know what, though? I was only thinking like the Iron Sheik, you know, from WWF, so, but no, it's King Shriek, and he's actually the Kool-Aid man, so it doesn't matter at all. But one thing that they added was a two-player fighting mode. Yeah, and this is something that I only really read about because I did not have a second player. How sad. Yes. Me too. I did not have a second player. If Joe were here, he might have had a second player. Joe would have had 11,000 friends to play this game with. He is Mr. NES.
He loves to play NES games with his... His sister. His sister, his brother, his... And his friend Mark. Yep. Even when his other brother's playing Fortnite, he's like, I'd rather play Duck Hunt.
That is true. Episode four will tell you that. That's a callback. Anyway. So, the only reason why I really want to talk about this, it's not good, the two-player fighting mode. I mean, it's interesting. It's another thing added to the game that's kind of cool, but it doesn't get any extra bonus points for me from being in there because it's not competent enough. But we've got to talk about the fact that this is Capcom's very first attempt at a fighting game. Yeah. And we know how that went. Yeah. That was the last one they made, and they've been dissolved as a company since.
No, I mean, obviously... I thought they were pretty successful with fighting games. Yeah, yeah. They do a pretty good job. I mean, even some of the fighting games are so good that they have their title, like the company's title, is in the game. Yeah. So, it's like Marvel versus... Oh, I thought it was DC versus Capcom. Yeah, I don't think... No. I thought we were both playing stupid now. Not at all. No, no, no. Okay. No one here is stupid. We're talking about Marvel versus Capcom. We're talking about Street Fighter. We're talking about...
What else do they do? Tekken. No, they don't do Tekken. That's like our tribal. They were like dominating that scene, and then Mortal Kombat stepped in, and then... And then Mortal Kombat would just like, finish him. Yeah, exactly. And then just when Mortal Kombat was like, enough of their problems, then Tekken comes in and like, it was like, hey, what about 3D fighting games? They were like, well, we're working on Street Fighter 3, even if it's not 3D. But no, I just thought that was cool to mention. You know, it's just like a sword fighting game where you just like... You basically just fight yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were saying, yeah, it's two Trojans fighting each other. Yeah. Does it have any cool levels?
No, it's just the backdrops from the game. So nothing like... You know, if anything's unique, it's that there's a unique winning sound effect. Okay. That's cool. At least it wasn't like the stage complete thing. Is that just way too triumphant? No, I'm not going to do the whole thing. You got to listen to the episode for that. The episode you're currently listening to. That's weird. You don't get rewarded. Stick to the end. You'll hear it. But that's the fighting game aspect of it in a nutshell. Another aspect of the game. That's great. It's a great tangent. I love it. Yeah, that's a tangent. And this is Trojan. And we're going to do the Essential Games List.
All right. It's the Essential Games List. And you know what that means. We're going to vote on whether we like this game or not in 2018. standards, not in 1987 standards. Though I think because we've been kind of clear on our feelings about this game, I would like to hear your 1987 feelings about this game. Where is this for you? Is it a disappointment on the system at this point? Or would this be a nice game in your catalog? Sean? Okay. So if I had just picked this game up and it's 1987 and I have only really a couple games so far that are even designed like this, I would be very interested in it. I like the setting. I think it's very challenging. So I'll have some hours sunk into it.
And I would probably really, really like this game. But. But it's 2018. Yeah, let's hear it. And I can tell that this is going to be a trend. There's going to be a lot of games like this.
This is just the. Copycat's not the right word here, but like it's the first time that we're seeing something like this again. So it certainly won't be the last. Yes, exactly. So I would say that I really like what they tried to do with the setting.
And they do have a couple interesting mechanics in there, but it's not enough. It feels too much like a game we played however many weeks ago now. Yeah, it's been a long time now. It is, to me, inessential. Sam. All right. Yeah, kind of along the same lines as Sean. I think if I was a kid, I would be really stoked for this game because it has. I mean, it's like what? Like an action side scroller platformer kind of plan. Not really a platformer, but. Making it sound so exciting. Yeah. No, that's the thing. If I was a kid, I'd probably be really excited by this. Oh, my God. With armor and a sword and a shield. Like dope. You know? Dope. It's the 80s. Hey. Calabunga. Yeah. But.
Yeah. I mean, there's just so many. So many games are like this that I can't name them off the top of my head, but you just go into like I feel like any arcade and there's a game like this that you played or something like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games or like this. It doesn't stand out enough for you. Yeah. Like it's just not. This this kind of game is just so generic now as a game, but I don't think it would have been then necessarily, especially as like a home console game.
So it is not essential in my book. Cool. I'm in the same boat here. I think like and this is the in my opinion, the nostalgia difference is we're not talking about these games being good in chronological order. I mean, it's important to keep that context in mind when we're doing the show. But at the end of the day, it does come down to are these games still worth playing today? And so I think we're all in agreement in agreement that like this is a great game in 1987. I definitely feel like it's an improvement over Kung Fu in every way possible. Oh, for sure. And it's really cool.
I think it has a lot of charm, even if it is tough. It doesn't have that that Ghosts and Goblins factor to it where it's like so hard. But I think also Ghosts and Goblins was kind of complimented by its level design a little more than this game is. It's just like it's small little things like that where it's like if I didn't like Ghosts and Goblins in, I'm definitely not letting Trojan in. So for me, Trojan is also not essential. Yeah. All right.
That's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time for pro wrestling and be sure to play it yourself if you can. For more Nostalgia, visit us at NostalgiaCast.com. That's N-E-S-T-A-L-G-I-A-C-A-C-A-S-T-O-T-C-O-M. There you'll find tons of crazy articles as well as all the show notes for every episode, including some detailed thoughts and other little fun facts about the games and some screenshots, too, if you're into that kind of thing. If you're into that kind of thing. Sam, are you into that kind of thing?
Screenshots? Of the games? What games? All of the games we've played so far in chronological order. For what system? The NES. Like the original? The Nintendo Entertainment Sister. Oh, wow. Now I'm interested. I don't know why. I just said sister. I said Nintendo Entertainment Sister.
Wow, that's bad. But no, we're talking about the NES. And again, that's all the time we have for this episode. But feel free to contact us at contact at NostalgiaCast.com and let us know how you feel about Trojan or any other games that are coming up soon. We'd love to hear your thoughts and either feature you on the episode or write back to you. You know, anything. The sky is the limit, guys. We are currently a free podcast and we want to stay that way. Only if people continue to listen because then we'll have to charge the non-listeners. Just keep us alive, guys. I'm Michael Spazito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter. I love you. Let's talk soon. I love you.
