039 · SLALOM

• SLALOM - HIT THE SLOPES OF MOUNT NASTY FOR THE CHALLENGE OF YOUR LIFE
• Slalom is a skiing video game in which the player races in a series of downhill slalom runs while navigating past flags and obstacles before time expires. It was developed by Rare and Published by Nintendo
• The game was developed by Tim and Chris Stamper and its music was composed by David Wise.
• Tim and Chris first formed ULTIMATE which primarily made ZX Spectrum games
• RARE is the shortened version of RARE DESIGNS OF THE FUTURE and focused on the Japanese market instead of the British home computer market
• The brothers flew to Kyoto to present software samples to Nintendo executives.Nintendo purchased the Stampers' Slalom, which sold half a million units, and made the Stampers into Nintendo's first Western third-party developer.
• David Wise composed for Rare from 1985 all the way to 2009 and is most notable for his work on Donkey Kong Country and Diddy Kong Racing
• Slalom was originally released in 1986 in the arcades as part of the Nintendo VS. System and was titled Vs. Slalom.
• Snowy Hill for Beginners
• Steep Peak for Medium
• Mount Nasty for Experts
• Remap controls
• Flags
• Moguls
• Obstacles (Skiers, Snowman, Trees)
• Freestyle Tricks
• If the player earns enough points, they may race the next level "solo" (without other skiers onscreen).

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Slalom, hit the slopes of Mount Nasty for the challenge of your life.

00:19 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Sam. And I'm Joe. Guys, today we are hitting Mount Nasty. Mount Nasty.

00:35 What up, boys? Alright, alright. For some reason they felt the need to call out that particular slope. There's other slopes. It's just me who doesn't want to play it now. But, yeah, slalom. Oh, I want to hit. Slalom. Slalom, I said. Slalom. It's a little tricky. It's the double L thing. Slalom. It's slalom. You guys will get it right every time. Occasionally I'll say something borderline bad. You can just say skiing. We'll know. Skiing. Well, that's good. NES skiing. For the uninformed, it is a skiing video game in which the player races in a series of downhill slalom runs while navigating past flags and obstacles before time expires. It was developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. Who didn't know it was developed by Rare at this point?

01:18 I mean, I looked it up. I think I'm... Maybe we talked about it. Maybe it rings a bell now that you say it. I think we talked about it. Yeah. But I forgot. We talked about being excited for it. I mean, like, Rare is exciting.

01:27 Not anymore. Yeah. But that's like a big... This is their first... This is their first, you know, home console video game. They were making other games before this, but this is like kind of like their first foray into the Japanese video game market. And is this the first Western made? This is the first Western made NES game. And also, like, Rare became Nintendo's like first... For two. Yeah, like, yeah, their first Western, like, second party developer, if you will. Like, in a weird way. They didn't make exclusively games. It was like second party in a weird way. But I just wanted to briefly talk about Rare for a minute here.

02:05 The game was developed... We're talking about Slalom. The game was developed by Tim and Chris Stamper, and the music was composed by David Weiss. Tim and Chris, their brothers, first formed Ultimate Games, which primarily made games for the ZX Spectrum, which is a British microcomputer.

02:24 And Rare came later when they wanted to get into the Japanese video game market. It was like kind of like... They still had Ultimate, but they figured Rare would be their way of branching off. Rare is actually the shortened version of Rare Designs of the Future. Wow. That was the full name of the company. Rare Designs of the Future. They thought pretty highly of themselves.

02:47 They didn't say good designs of the future. You gotta market yourself. They just said Rare. Yeah. And the brothers flew to Kyoto to present software samples to Nintendo executives, like unsolicited. Like, they were just like, hey, check out this game.

03:01 And Nintendo was like, well, we don't really want to work with you. And they were like, no, no, no, check out the game. And then they went to Kyoto and showed it to them. And Nintendo was like, wow, this is amazing. Because Slalom is the one there. They're like seeing like the 3D graphics in the style of like a Mach Rider like thing that only they knew how to do. So to see someone else pull it off, they said, all right, let's go for it. And they made, Nintendo kind of made them like their first Western developer.

03:26 And Slalom actually wound up selling half a million units. That's pretty good. It's pretty good for those times. Yeah. There were only like 700 million people on Earth. Yeah. And the Earth at that point was only 19, only 1,987 years old. So. Yeah. It's crazy. That's crazy. David Weiss. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. Yeah. David Weiss, who was the composer, he composed for Rare from 1985 all the way to 2009.

03:59 I think he's more notable for his work on Donkey Kong Country, all three Donkey Kong Country games. Oh, word. And Diddy Kong Racing. A lot of people like Diddy Kong Racing. But he also just recently did Yooka-Laylee. You know, that team, because the whole thing is based off of like, where's Banjo-Kazooie and stuff like that. They said, hey, come on in. So him and Grant Kirkhope, who did the music for Banjo-Kazooie, they got like together on a collab for Yooka-Laylee. So Man's Got Beats.

04:25 Yeah. Man's Got Beats. Yeah. Slalom was originally released in 1986 in the arcades as part of Nintendo's Verse system before coming to the NES. As it happens usually. Yeah. Well, I think like sometimes it's the, yeah, it's like you never know what you're going to get. You're going to find your way onto the Verse system at this point in the Nintendo lifespan.

04:45 But whether it comes before or after is like, yeah, it's like a coin flip. But I'm glad that they decided to take that chance with them because obviously this blew rare up and, you know, we wouldn't have the Donkey Kong Country games or Banjo-Kazooie without, you know, them taking a chance on stuff like this. Mm-hmm. So with that in mind, now we'll talk about the game. That was my little history lesson.

05:06 Yeah. Sean, would you like to walk me through first impressions? My first impression of the game was it did a semi-convincing job of selling me the, like the parallax. It was visually okay. Okay. Um, but other than that, I found it to be lacking in many, in many ways. I was sort of bored by it. Okay. It's fair. Sam? Uh, my first impression was that this game is polished. Hey! I think that, you know, you load it up, you boot it up, I don't know what I'm saying. Yeah. Load and boot are both good words. Yeah, you turn it on and the, uh, you plug it in.

05:52 You rev it up. Uh, you crank it, I don't know. Okay, so you turn it on and the, uh, just like the first screen that you see where you get to pick which mountain you want. Mm-hmm. Like, we haven't seen a first screen like that yet. You know, every first screen has always been just like some black screen with white text on it that says, do you want game A or game B? Or, like, one player game A, one player game B, two players, you know? Unless, of course, you're like revolutionary and you're Super Mario Brothers and you're like, we'll just show the actual game while you're, while you're, yeah. I guess, I guess. But it's still the same thing. You're right though, Sam. It's still the same thing where you're just selecting modes.

06:31 This one gives you a mountain to choose from. Yeah, and when you go, click to the different mountain, there's like a little jingle that plays and it's different depending on which mountain you go to and it's just, like, immediately it's polished. And then, like, just playing the game, I was pretty blown away at the effect of, like,

06:49 the, I guess, I'm not sure if it's parallax or whatever, but the effect of the turns on the course. Mm-hmm. And it, cause I'm, I'm used to playing Mach Rider. I'm still playing that game. Yeah, yeah. I love that game. And it was, it just was so much better, I thought, that, the way it looked. Yeah, and I think it's funny cause like, you're talking about the mountain select screen, and this is the first time I'm recognizing it too, but if you think about it, this is something that's just gonna, like, stay as, like, a part of, like, video game design for a long time. Like, a lot of, like, racing courses would then, like, show you the tracks change and stuff like that, or they'd show you, like, you know, what you're gonna be doing.

07:25 And I think that's really cool that, like, you know, in a way, I'm sure it's not the very first game to do it, but it's the first thing we're seeing on the NES. Yeah, for sure. And so it's our first exposure to it. That was a big first impression of it was that this is polished, it has this, like, just this first kind of scene that we've never seen before. Joe, what do you got? So, I had played this once before, but it's been a while. So, my first impression playing it again now was comparing it to Mock Rider, in which, how, I think this feels as good as Mock Rider, like, as far as the momentum and, as Sam was saying, and, like, just the turning and the looks of the turns.

08:03 I think it's, for me, it was, like, a combination of the aesthetic of the way it looks when you're moving and actually, like, the way it controls. That was, like, it feels like Mock Rider, but it also doesn't feel like I'm riding a bike. It feels like I'm skiing. It feels like there's, like, gravity playing a playing effect here.

08:18 Right, right. Yeah, I'll agree with that. I think my first impression was that, you know, this game is definitely fun and it offers a similar experience to Mock Rider, but I was kind of, like, before I looked at the manual to figure out what I was really supposed to be doing and how I was supposed to be tackling this thing, I was saying, like, wow, that's going to be pretty hard to finish these courses. Not even just, like, you know, the whole mountain, but just, like, kind of getting by because I'm really, like, finishing these courses with, like, two or three seconds left, you know? Yeah. And, like, what am I doing wrong?

08:49 And, you know, we'll talk about that in a minute, but, you know, I didn't mind the challenge so much, I just felt like, you know, okay, I'm learning the course, I've got to get used to the patterns, and I've got to figure out how to better control my skier. I didn't feel like, well, this game just controls, like, garbage. I felt like, oh, okay, I might have a chance here. Mm-hmm. So that was my first impression. Yeah. Oh, I want to add one more first impression. Oh, I love it. And that's the, this is, I think, the most clear buttocks that I've ever seen in a game They put a lot of detail. In this time period.

09:21 It's a big butt, and it gets even bigger when, after reading the manual, I realized that you have to, you have to essentially hold down the up button to get anywhere fast. Oh, we weren't doing that. I wasn't doing that at first. You got to just show it off. I had the opposite of you. I was doing that the whole time, and then it was hard to control, and I was like, I need to, like, let off on the turns a little bit. Yeah. And that's when I started, like, doing better. Right, okay. When I wanted to stop, put my butt in the air, or whatever he does.

10:03 Yeah, so if I can talk about something that's not about butts, I will say this, okay? Alright. I would remap the heck out of these controls if I had, like, a couple extra buttons. Here's what I would do, because I think this is exactly how it should be done. You change the up and the down D-pad buttons, and you make those, like, your X and Y buttons instead, and here's why, okay? If you're holding down X, you can hold down X all the time to be in the fast mode, you know, to be in, like, the, what would you call it? You're, like, leaning in. Yeah. So this way you go down faster.

10:39 Then you just have to slide your finger, your thumb down onto B to do the jumps and stuff. Right. So this way it's kind of seamless, whereas when you're moving left to right, and then you also have to hit the D-pad up, that's a little tricky. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Yeah, and I think that, like, that was one thing that helped, but then also mapping down to, like, a Y button would be really cool, because that would be, like, your trick button. It's really hard to be, like, you know, like, going around on the map, and then, like, you know, you all of a sudden are in the air, and you push on the down button on the D-pad. I like to better map to buttons. Like, the Y button?

11:16 What? No, I'm saying, like... He's saying if there were, actually. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you're playing on, like, a standard Super Nintendo. Like, I think this thing misses out on being too polished. I kind of disagree. I disagree a little bit. I think that, um, because I don't know that you're supposed to be crouching the entire time, you know, and leaning the entire time. So I think that when you're turning, the idea is that you wouldn't be... Yeah, but then you would just let off the button.

11:40 I guess that's what I'm saying. Yeah, I agree that it makes sense, but I do think that it didn't kill me to have to turn left or right, to have to let go of the forward to turn. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Because I feel like it's trying to show you, like, you have to lay off a little bit when you're turning. Okay. But I do like, I always am in favor of having the option to try and go a little crazier.

11:58 Right, yeah, right. I agree. I just think that in terms of how the game plays, I think that the controls that they have make sense. And obviously they didn't have a choice because there are only so many buttons. Yeah. But it's funny that you mentioned... I will defend it a little bit. It's funny that you mentioned extra buttons, because I did say at one point in my notes that I think it would have benefited, obviously this is like ridiculous, but it would have benefited from a joystick.

12:19 Yeah. Which is like silly to talk about with an NES game, but like, that's how good I think it feels. I feel like it could use a joystick. So what was your favorite part, like, of this game? What made you like this game so much? Because I, I'd say yeah, it's great polish and it runs very fast. Like it's smooth going down. I just didn't understand what was fun about this. I'm just trying to navigate between like the gates and not get hit by like sledders. Yeah, you get it.

12:53 That's it. You know, I'll jump in real fast. I think what I, what I wound up liking a lot about this game was that all of the obstacles are manageable. There's nothing that's like, like even better than Mock Rider in some ways. Like a Mock Rider on those turns, sometimes those rocks are really like, that rocks in the middle of the thing and I'm trying to make a full right turn.

13:14 It's never going to happen. And this one, you know, they give you enough leeway on the snowmen that you can even anticipate jumping over them. It is possible to jump over everything in the game. Not very good at it. But no, no, no, I will say this. I thought I wasn't very good at it either, but I realized it's just because I was jumping too late. There's one thing that's really cool about this game.

13:33 It's that you want to be at the actual maximum arc to get over things. I was wound up jumping like, you know, just a couple of steps away from like a snowman. And even though I was mid flight, it was like, you know, well, technically you're not over this thing. So you're going to crash into it. For me, the excitement actually did come from the poles though. Me too. I think it's really fun that you have to not only just tackle the course, but you have to do the course the correct way, like a real slalom event. And I just thought that like the little thing that they do, like, you know, kind of like sending you back to first gear if you miss the poles. Yeah. But that was like a neat touch.

14:08 Yeah. All right. And then I don't know if we talked about the poles, but yeah, but the poles, you know, there's two flags. You have to go between them and they can be any distance apart. They can be the whole course apart. They can be one skiers width apart where you have to just like kind of thread the needle to get through there. But, and I thought that was, you know, yeah, it had a good flow about it. Sam. Yeah. But as, as far as answering your question as to why, like, I like this game, I think it just, it just feels good. You know, I think the controls are really, really solid. And like when you, it has that perfect amount of like, like ice feeling, you know, like,

14:48 it's like just slippery enough that you press to the side and your guy kind of, you feel him push off his foot, you know? Yeah. I mean, like I'm constantly feeling myself when I'm playing this game. I'm constantly like in a state between the up and, you know, like, let's say you're making a left turn. I'm constantly in a state between the up and the left button where I'm kind of like zigzagging the whole way. And that, that looks really cool. You know, like it looks like how you might actually ski. I wasn't like I was making perfect straight lines.

15:16 You got to like go back and forth a lot. And yeah, there's a lot of close calls where you're like, I'm not going to make this object. Like I'm going to hit into this other skier. I'm going to hit into the snowman. I'd say that. Yeah. There's some, there's some feeling of friction or, or like frictionlessness, I guess. But yeah, I didn't feel a lot of weight to my character.

15:37 Were you leaning down a lot? I was leaning down. I was, I was trying to get that, trying to get that butt speed in there. Yeah. I wouldn't say I felt weight to my character either. And I think here's where I'm going to start saying a couple negative things about the game is that right off the bat, the first thing that took me out of this game was how like how much you get penalized, penalized for like hitting things.

16:00 Yeah. Like I understand a collision with a snowman on a, on a ski course is going to take you out. But the way that they handled even like hitting the poles, because like, you know, in real slalom, the poles are. They just kind of bend out of the way. They're like wire frames. They're not like, like giant sticks that would actually like impale you, you know?

16:17 Right. So it was like weird that they acted like that. If anything, they should have just like a collision with them should have just slowed you down. Yeah. And I do agree with the weight thing because I really only felt like, you know, there's gear one that you start in and then just like a hundred miles an hour. Yeah. Like a very, very fast, gradual buildup. And then once you're in that state, you're just kind of in that state. I don't know. I don't ski, but that's kind of what I think of when I think of skiing, like when you get up to speed and that's the speed you're going. Like, you know, you don't generally like when you're like trying to like, they don't slow down. Like what would the benefit be of slowing down?

16:50 I mean, unless they're coming around a corner or something. I don't know. When I, when I see skiing on television, I see this sort of, uh, this graceful jump from one side to the other when they're going down, like there's a rhythm to it and there just isn't any like rhythm to this game. I would say, and I guess you can slow down, but you're right. It's like slow all the way down. You already don't have enough time though.

17:10 You know? I think I can any, can everybody agree on this? Like it is, it is a very demanding game. I, yeah. I had this thought when I was playing this game, like I had heard the expression Nintendo hard before, you know? And I felt like when we played games before that were like, just kind of like, they're hard because they're meant to be just hard.

17:35 Time sinks. It's like the mechanic, yeah. And the mechanics are not. To extend the game. Yeah. And the mechanics aren't great and it's really easy to die or something. Uh, and I'm thinking, okay, maybe that's like Nintendo hard. Maybe that's what they're talking about. But to me, this feels like it because I do feel like every time I play, I get better at the game. And, um, I just wish that there was something easier in terms of like, so just to kind of give the listeners a sense of like how the game works is like you pick your hill and then you have to do segments from each hill.

18:07 And so like the first segment is probably the easiest for each one. And then it gets progressively harder, but also like just progressively different too. And then finally, the last thing you have to do is do the entire mountain in one shot. Like after you've done all the segments, you do the entire mountain.

18:24 And what kills this for me, and I don't really know a way to handle it, but if you get to like the third segment and then you miss the flag at the end, if you, you know, the end position by even like a second, you know, it's, it's game over. Yeah. There's only one life. And I just feel like it's like, all right, but now I have to get all the way back to that third segment. And so for me, it was like, I really wanted to like, even just snowy hill though, the hill

18:50 that's for beginners. I just wanted to beat that whole course. But every time I would get to the end, which would take a while, I would then have to like be, you know, frame perfect and not necessarily frame perfect, but for a novice player frame perfect to get through this course. And it just wasn't happening. So I was never actually able to beat any of them.

19:11 I do feel like the, this, this has like a, the feel of one of those games where it's where I would have, as a kid, I would have sunk a lot of time into like, I would have been like, Oh, I, you know, I got to level five on snowy hill this time, but I'm gonna keep playing it. And I'll, you know, you'd have my friend play it or whatever. And like, we'll get farther and farther. And like, I feel like this has got, I mean, I haven't played it enough to really say, but I feel like this is one of those things where you get really, you have a really satisfying feeling once you've accomplished like the course you were stuck on.

19:36 No, I agree with that. I think that this seems like the kind of game where like you would trade off with your friend and you'd see like, all right, we're going to beat snowy hill this time. Mm-hmm. And, you know, you'd get so far, like so far and your friend's like rooting for you. And then it's like, Oh, it's your turn. And then like, you both want to see the end of it happen, you know? And then you get your name up on that leaderboard.

19:57 And then whoever's game it is, like they're trying to, like, they're trying to make sure that their name is at the top of it. Even if their friend, I get out. Yeah, I understand. I see scenarios where like, if I'm a kid in the eighties, this would be a really fun game to have. That might be just like a little bit of rose tinted glances. Yeah, for sure. You know, I'm just saying like, looking back on how cool it might have been.

20:16 But I mean, like, I will say that it did feel rewarding. Oh, yeah. To continue to get through the segments and stuff like that. Like even beating the first thing. And I think one thing that they do a really good job of is if you actually run out of time, but you're near the end. Yeah. And you have like maybe a second less. This happened to me. It actually like lets you glide. Yeah. So Mike Ratter had a similar. I finished the end with zero seconds once. Sean, what were you going to say before?

20:42 I was just going to say that one thing to fix the issue that you mentioned, Mike, would be just to have a level select or a run select and to have a more in depth leaderboard for each because right now you basically have to be the time. Right. Like the record time for that's built into the game for each track until you get to the full mountain. Right. And that's the only way you're going to top the high score. Yeah. And I think that if you but if you do just do like a like a chapter select or a run select, like there's even for me, at least there's even less of a reason to play this game because like there is no feeling of progression.

21:27 But I think if you wanted to do like the time trial thing with you and your friends, like that would make it even even easier for you guys to get into that competitive swing. Like, oh, let's try this one. I guess that was one thing I was missing is just like, you know, because we're talking about the similarities to mock rider and fairly so. I mean, they're the only two games that we've seen that have like this, you know, fake 3D style graphics to them. Yeah. But I think like mock rider had like three different modes to it.

21:54 You know, one where it's like, you know, if you get the fighting mode, then another one where it's all about just like solo and then another one where it's endurance. And I think, you know, not that it should have had those same style things, but you should have been able to like kind of just play the course, you know, like just an option just for training mode, even, you know, like just a way to do that.

22:14 But I'll tell you something really cool that I never was able to successfully pull off in the game, but did see on YouTube. If you score enough points on a level, the next segment will have the skiers taken off. No, isn't that what the bonus time is for? What are you? Sorry. I thought that that was, if I'm misremembering from the manual, when you, you know how you can get, you do tricks during the level and you get that little bonus at the end and your bonus is your bonus is the time left on the screen.

22:48 Plus your trick score. Plus your trick score. I guess that's, I guess that's where that comes from then is that this guy scored so high that he was able to go through the entire level without the skiers. Wow. That's a cooler mechanic actually. If that's true. You said that's in the manual. I think it is. Yeah. I can, I can double check. That's neat. I guess I never really like, but for the record, I never scored any higher than like, I think 20 was like my highest.

23:20 Nothing like that for me as well. It's hard to score points on the trick. Yeah. Did anybody really try and take advantage of the trick shots? Yeah. I tried to get, and I think the highest ever got in like trick points and not just bonus time was probably like 14 or 20, like something along those lines. But I, I sort of disagree with like, okay, so you want less skiers and I'm just thinking that's part of what makes any of these levels interesting at all is to have. The skiers? I don't know. I thought it was the obstacles because in real, those are obstacles.

23:52 I know what I'm just saying. And like in real slalom, you're not going to like be on the same thing as like other skiers. I will say like, like you've earned those fewer skiers like by playing well. So it doesn't feel like, oh, now it's just easy. I was talking about my training mode where you don't have many skiers.

24:09 It's like, okay, let's, let's take this in a different direction. Like in a fighting game, however much health you have left is that equates to time that the fighter won't fight back or something like that. I just felt like that's just not a weird thing. I do feel like it's you versus the mountain though. Not you versus the skiers. You're not, you're not fighting for place. You're fighting to not hit those kids on the sleds. What are they doing in the middle of the sleds? The kids on the sleds are ridiculous. They're going horizontally across the hill. There was one.

24:37 Yeah. How do they even do that? That's impossible. And I think there was one segment where I hit each of them. Yeah. I could not get back up to speed. Just on purpose. No, no, no. No. I have the manual pulled up on the solo bonus points section. Okay. Your total solo bonus is the sum of your time remaining on the clock at the completion of the last run and your freestyle points from the last run. At the beginning of each run after the qualifying run, you receive your solo bonus points. These points are used for solo skiing.

25:10 Skiing alone without the bothersome drone skiers. Example. 50 points of total solo bonus would give you 50 seconds of solo skiing commencing with the start of the current run. It's actually kind of incredible that this guy scored high enough that the skiers just never showed up. Yeah. But this doesn't mean that the sled kids are gone.

25:29 They're still there. It's just the other skiers. Yeah. I think that's a cool little incentive. I like that. Yeah. Again, that's what I like about this game is it has a lot of little things to it here and there that really help make it stand out. I think it's a simple game, but the execution of it is done really, really well. I don't know how simple this would have been though for like, you know, a kid back then.

25:51 Like, like, let me put it this way. I don't think it's incredibly challenging to understand the 3D, but I do think that like certain times the way that you get introduced to the polls and stuff like that is just like, you know, you have to be very fast on your reactions. It's not perfect. It's definitely not a perfect solution. I think that it was a lot better in terms of perspective in Mock Rider. Like, Mock Rider had perspective down better.

26:19 In this game, it looked a lot like the actual gates would just pop out of the snow. Yeah, I think you, yeah, they, I think Chris and I, our audio producer and I were talking about how the, they, they come at you, they grow vertically, but not horizontal. They don't get wired. They get taller only. Right, right, right. And I think the reason they're going so fast is like, maybe they were trying to make it look more downhill. I think that's what they were trying to say. Cause you're constantly going downhill. It's not like you're like ever on a flat course.

26:48 Yeah. I don't know. I never really had a problem with it. And the fact that they kind of pop up and it's a little bit more unexpected, that kind of made it more challenging to me. And I do think that there's some, like to beat the later levels, you kind of have to memorize the course. Absolutely. Um, so I don't know. I kind of enjoy those, those things about it.

27:06 Okay. So there was Snowy Hill, which was for beginners. Then there's a steep peak for, um, I guess like medium difficulty and then Mount Nasty for expert. Nasty. Uh, anybody try Mount Nasty? I tried it. Yeah. I got it. And then went to Snowy Hill. I did Snowy Hill first. Then I went to Mount Nasty. I think I got like three levels in to Mount Nasty and then I gave up. Yeah. Joe, what would make you start at Mount Nasty? I don't know. The word, the name Mount Nasty, I guess. I was just like, what the heck is this? Like, but I was just- You were waiting for the boss.

27:39 Yeah. I don't know why that was just like my entry to it. But, um, especially just starting off there, I didn't even get past the first one, I don't think. Then I went to Snowy Hill and got a lot farther. Gotcha. Yeah. I did like that Mount Nasty was still like, if you played Snowy Hill, that it was like, oh, okay, I can, I can like get through some of this. Cause it wasn't like, you have to be the best player to even touch the first level of Mount Nasty. Like it's approachable. Yeah. Just the bullet hell of trees and flutters. Right. Great.

28:37 Can I actually go back to two things? Please. So before we were talking about the fact that you don't like how there's not like a level select, I think my perfect, just personally, my perfect happy medium there is I wish that there was, you have to beat the whole course, and then you can select the levels. Like, you have to beat all of Snowy Hill. Would it save? Yeah, I guess it wouldn't really save, unless there was a battery in this, but I don't think there was until Legend of Zelda. No, no, yeah.

29:06 Even your high scores only save until reset. Oh, really? But yeah, if they could do that. Your high scores. If they could do that, I think that would be ideal. Kind of drawing inspiration from the Kingdom Hearts Olympus Coliseum tournaments. Yeah. Not to drop a PS2 game in there. I think this game's just missing some modes. It's missing, like, you know, this would have been cool as part of, like, their design series, too. I think they probably, like, jam-packed this thing with a little too much stuff for it to fit.

29:33 But, like, Nintendo could have helped them out a little bit and been like, hey, let's shrink this down. Let's get a design mode in there and make your own, you know, ski course. That would have been kind of cool. Yeah, especially, I feel like this would have really benefited from being able to place the poles wherever you want. I don't know how they would have pulled that off, but that would make, I think, a good design course. Yeah, I mean, like, look, we're making a wish list. You know, these things clearly weren't in the game. You know, but it's nice to think about, like, you know, I want even more from this game. You know, I'm not saying, like, open world slow. Wasn't that the game with the abominable snowman on Windows 95?

30:07 The other thing I want to walk back to real quick, too, is you mentioned that you thought that it was too punishing when you hit an obstacle. Here's why, Joe, okay? Anyway, in Mock Rider, you, like, blow up and reanimate, okay? That makes sense. That's going to take a little bit of time. You get how many lives, though?

30:28 In Mock Rider? Usually it's, like, three, I think. But, like, on the first level, it did let you just land. I felt like I was actually, like, when I ran into something, I was like, okay, no big deal, because I'm just going to do a couple flips in the air, land on my feet, and keep going. So it, like, slowed me down a little bit, but I didn't think it, like, hurt that much. No, I don't. Unless you get the one where you don't land on your feet, and you land in the, uh, yeah.

30:48 Yes. Most of the time. But this guy, I thought most of the time, I mean, for no apparent reason, he just would do, he'd hit a pole or hit whatever, a snowman, do, like, six flips in the air and land back on his feet and keep going. And I wrote in my notes, like, this guy is the most competent at wiping out. I don't know. I was finding a lot of plunges into the actual snow. I don't know if it was, like, RNG, or if it was, if you had to be at a certain speed, it would let you do the, uh, it would let you land on your feet, um, and then anything slower. Maybe. Because maybe a lot of times when I ran into things, I had let off the forward button because I was trying to avoid something.

31:22 I just think it should have been different levels of punishing, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Like, the fact that almost every single thing that you hit is going to set you back and there's a lot of opportunities to get hit, you really only have, even on the very, very first course, you really only have the opportunity to get hit, like, six or seven times, period, to have a chance to make it to the end. Oh, yeah. You know? In the beginning, yeah.

31:44 And then later on, in the later levels, it's like, you really only have, like, you know, three, four, maybe five before you, you know, will have no chance of making it. I wonder if that is the case then, like, if I was not holding the forward button as much as you guys were, because I felt like, for no reason, I felt like pretty much every time I hit anything, he landed on his feet.

32:02 But, like, on no control of mine, it just would land on his feet. Yeah, you just have a really good game. So I looked it up in the manual. Okay. And there is, when you hit a pole, you will always land back on your skis. Yes. But if you hit one of the obstacles, like one of the, like, sledder, or the snowman, or another skier, or a tree, then there is a chance that you will not land back on your feet. Huh. So. So it is RNG. Yeah. We just have the wrong game cartridges. Yeah. I gotta go, you gotta check that serial number and get one of the earlier additions. Yeah, can we switch? Yeah.

32:39 Any other stray thoughts on Slalom? Music is dope. Yeah, the music is good. Yeah. This is good stuff. Yeah. It's good also because it's like, I don't know, it sticks with you for different reasons. Like, I couldn't sing to you the songs right now. Yeah, but. But they're, like, groovy, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They're different than the kind of, you know, and maybe that's just because they're Western-made instead of, you know, all the Japanese stuff we've been getting. But I feel like, you know, it's more about, like, just a fun melody behind everything than it is, like, you know, this constant, like, looping track. Yeah. I've got nothing else to say. So, with that in mind, let's go into the Essential Games List.

33:23 All right. It's the Essential Games List. So, we're going to determine if this game is essential in 2018. I'm not talking about if it's essential for the NES. We're not talking about if it's essential for 1987. I'm talking about 2018. Two votes is what it'll take to get this thing into the Essential Games List. Three is gravy. Four means that it's Super Mario Bros. level. No, no, no pressure, Slalom. Sean, would you like to open the floodgates? Sure. I'd say that this is a technically impressive game. I'll agree with Sam in saying that it has a lot of polish. It's not perfect. I still think that some of the way that things downslope render are a little muddied.

34:09 But overall, even though it's a smooth experience, I don't find enough there. Like, I just, it's pretty vanilla for me. And that's why I don't think it deserves to be on the Essential Games List. All right. That is one no. Joe? So, I had a pretty difficult time deciding on this one. Um, because I do feel like this is very much, like, felt very much like Mock Rider to me, which I did not vote onto the Essential Games List, but is on the Essential Games List. And I, the more I play this, I feel like I kind of like this more than Mock Rider.

34:49 Um, and I don't really know, like, what, like, what to attribute to that. I think just a lot of it is I just like the, the fact that it's just about a race and it's momentum and I'm not fighting and, I don't know, I just, I like the feel of it.

35:01 Um, oh, it's a game time decision. And I'm not actually decided at this very moment. Wow. But Joe, we need a vote. I know, I know. I think that I want to give it a vote for the Essential Games List. It has. I really enjoyed this game. It has a vote in the Essential Games List. So, uh, I will come on in here and talk about my feelings.

35:24 So, here, here's how, here's what I think. Okay, I've been pretty jazzed about this game, but I also had some feedback. I think where I land on this game is it's really cool. Like, this is a really cool game and a lot of fun. And, uh, out of the games that we've been playing recently, this is the one that I have been going back to a lot just because I really want to finish off that mountain. I think that there is something here for players today.

35:49 But my wish list for this game is pretty high. And even just, like, talking about, like, you know, well, I'd like to remap the buttons. I'd like it if there was a solo course. I'd like it if there was a joystick instead of a D-pad. Like, trying to think about, like, what works and what doesn't here.

36:04 I, I really like the game. I don't think there's enough here that works in a modern sense that I would still recommend to everyone to try this game out today. Now, that might sound weird because it's like, well, don't you think Mock Rider could benefit from a joystick? Don't you think Mock Rider's a little rough around the edges?

36:21 And to that I say, well, Mock Rider did it, like, first in a way that really blew me away and in a way that I think stylistically still holds up today. You have, this game is really just, like, skiing on a mountain. Mock Rider had, like, a story and a pizzazz to it that I really enjoyed on top of the gameplay that was also pretty tight and all the different modes. And it just also happened to let you design your own track if you were into that kind of thing.

36:48 Salam's not giving me that stuff. And so I think this is a very formidable entry for Rare. And I really, I really like it. And I kind of want to see what else they do, even though I did do a little jump ahead and saw a WWF WrestleMania game that they're going to make for us. So I don't think I'm going to like everything they put out on the NES. But I'll give everything a shot going forward. They have a vote of confidence from me, but not a vote in the Essential Games list. So I am a no. Sam?

37:14 All right. What are you going to do? What am I going to do? Well, talk us through it first. It's all on your shoulders. So immediately I was impressed with this game, like I was telling you guys. I think that it's got polish and it's got charm. And I think a lot of games, like, a lot of NES games just don't have both of those things. And this one has it in abundance.

37:36 I think that it's the kind of game where if I mess up, I'm not like, oh, this game is dumb. Like there's like something broken with it. It's like, oh, I just got to do better next time. I feel like this is one that encourages me to play again. And I really like it. This is it's like also just my kind of game where you can play it in short bursts, where you can just load up boot up.

38:02 Whatever. Crank it up. Like, just go like say, OK, I'm just going to see how far I can get for like, you know, and maybe it'll be maybe you'll be there for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes. This will be the big one. Or yeah. Or or maybe you'll just like fail at the second course. But you can play it in bursts, which I think is really cool. And I think that if this game were to come out today, it would translate to some kind of mobile game, a game you'd have on your phone that you can play in bursts.

38:33 And I think that to compare it to like skiing games, like something like I was thinking, like, what would I compare this to in a game that's out today? Like SSS, SSX tricky or something like that. I feel like is not really the right kind of vibe for it because you're not really trying to like avoid obstacles is the main point in those games.

38:53 And I was thinking that I I don't know games like this too much that aren't like just kind of like mobile games, but you're it's got like a whole physics aspect to it. And what I'm getting at is I'm voting for this for the essential games list. Oh, wow. Look at that. There it is. Yeah. I think if I'm if I'm a kid in 1986, this is a game that I would be playing a lot. But it's 1987. Oh, well, then I would definitely be playing this because I'd be a cool kid who has a future game. Nice. All right. Sorry. 1987. Yeah. Slalom is officially essential.

39:44 I think I think something funny about. Yeah. I think something funny about this is the first game for me that I didn't vote for. That's that's on the essential. Every other one. I believe I voted for even Excitebike. Yeah. We're no longer the magic touch. Yeah. No. So. Well, no. You also didn't vote for my rider.

40:02 That's stricken from the record. You had some sleep. Wait. Did you. I posthumously put my name back on that. I think I did, too, didn't I? Yeah. Even though I just said I didn't.

40:14 But then I definitely think Slalom deserves a be on your list. It's OK. No. You meant at the time you did it. But yeah. Here we have another essential game. I don't know which one this is now. Is this number six? Maybe. Something like that. Let's just count them off. I think it's number six. You got Duck Hunt, Super Mario Brothers, Balloon Fight, Mock Rider, Gradius, and now Slalom. Oh. Knack, when we get there, we'll be on the Knack list. When we just do Knack-stalgia, it's just one episode. It's just Knack. And we'll do Knack-stalgia. Anyway, as you can tell, that is all the time we have in this episode of Nestalgia. Join us next time for volleyball.

40:51 Another sport. Another Olympic sport. It certainly is a sport. Yeah. Whether the game is a sport or not, we will find out in that episode. But yeah, that's what this podcast is all about, is exactly what happened today. Playing these games, looking at them, voting on them, and getting them into the essential games list. You know? And that's all the time we have for this episode of Nestalgia. Thank you so much to our supporter, John B., for being our first supporter. Wow. Yeah. That's really cool. Again, not mandatory by any means.

41:24 Everybody will still get the feed. No, no, no. We are locking off this podcast so only John B. Only John B. can listen to it. Yep. As you guys know, there are currently no ads or no, you know, there's no, like, I hate those ads, first off. But there's also just, like, there's no Patreon for this thing either. Like, you know, if you want to throw a couple bucks our way, we're not going to refuse it. We took John B.'s money.

41:48 But, you know, we just want you guys to know that we appreciate all the support we get, whether you're a listener, whether you're telling your friends about it, spreading that love. Talking to us. We enjoy when you talk to us. Yeah. I love, actually, the email reception we've been getting lately has been fantastic. Okay? So keep that up for sure. And Twitter engagement or Twitter fights. Start a Twitter fight with us. That would be so funny. Please at us. I've said that before. I don't think anyone's added us before. We've got some ads. Oh. Yep. Like, malicious? Not malicious at all. Sorry. That is, like, the ad thing. Instead, we get really cool ads from, like, the Ghost Rider podcast.

42:24 They do, that guy tags us in a bunch of stuff that I think is really neat. All nostalgia stuff, not Ghost Rider things. But you guys are awesome. So, to be honest, I'm sorry if, you know, the Ghost Rider podcast is listening. But, like, I don't know if you guys actually have a Ghost Rider podcast because I don't, I can't find a link for it. I want to listen to whatever podcast you're doing, but I don't see a link. So, hook me up with a link. Yeah. We just plugged the Ghost Rider podcast.

42:50 If you can find it. John B. and the Ghost Rider podcast and Dante, who's emailing us. Dante. And anybody else who's emailing us, you guys are all great. So, thank you so much for that. And, once again, thank you, John B., for being our first supporter. By the end of the year, we're going to have so many games in the Essential Games list. And you're going to have to play them all because we're telling you that you must play them. Play the Essential Games list. But if you don't have a chance to play them, you should at least listen to us. And we upload episodes every Friday.

43:19 You know, usually, like, at midnight on Friday morning. So, it's like, if you work out at 3 in the morning. Yeah. Or if you, you know, have a summer Friday. Or if you're a kid who... Nobody knows what that means, Mike. Nobody knows what that means. I know. I'm sorry. I'm like, if you're a kid, ask your parents before you subscribe to this podcast. But if they say yes... There is harsh language. Yeah. Let them, you know, let them hit the subscribe button for you. Smash that. If you're over 18, smash that subscribe button.

43:46 Because we want your vote. We don't just do this, though. We do a bunch of other stuff, too. We have a Twitter page where we post, like, constantly our posting content. We all have day jobs. Yeah. It's like, so much... I have a Twitch channel where I just yell the Mock Rider theme song for a couple hours every day. Yeah, you started that, didn't you? Yeah. I did notice that.

44:05 That's great. And we also have a website, NostalgiaCast.com, that has every single episode available, as well as our thoughts and, like, some cool little reviews and articles, and also all the show notes. That's why you should always go there, because it takes you to other websites. Imagine that. A website you go to to take you to other websites. Who needs Reddit anymore when you've got NostalgiaCast.com? And all of our thoughts available for you to peer into right on your podcast.

44:30 Just, you know, highlight, copy, paste them as your own on Twitter, and now they're your thoughts. I'm Michael Esposito, and you can find me on atEspositoFilm on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon.

44:56 Bye.

45:06 Thank you.