047 · BREAKTHRU
Tried to run, tried to hide! Now play BreakThru to get to the other side! Or just enjoy a DOORS reference from us. For more NEStalgia as well as show notes, articles, and more check out www.NEStalgiacast.com
This was a two-host episode, just Mike and Sean for the first time since the Donkey Kong days. BreakThru is a Data East side-scroller where you drive a car across a war-torn country to get back a stolen PK-430 secret fighter plane. The box art makes your vehicle look like an armored tank-car hybrid; to us it was closer to a giant Hot Wheels car, and the whole premise (one guy, one car, an entire army, and a country whose bridges are already broken) gave us a good half hour of questions about army-wide field days.
What it gets right
- Jumping and speed. This is a shooter that borrows from racing. You need to build up speed to clear a jump, and the jumps feel great when they land. The first big pile of rocks, which stumped us at the start, works as a tutorial.
- Controlling the scroll, a little. You can't stop the screen, but you can speed up and slow down and change your position, which changes how fast it scrolls and how fast the enemies arrive. The bridge level, where you decide which side to jump to, was the favorite.
- Checkpoints. There are about three per level, usually a few seconds before a big hazard, so you can brute-force your way through. The runs are quick: the world record we watched was 6 minutes 47 seconds, against a normal time of about 12.
- A flow state. One run had Mike dodging every projectile, making every jump and picking up the spread shot, and it felt great.
- Close to the arcade. Graphics and controls are about the same as the arcade original (which could have been yours for $995), except the NES has flicker.
What gets in the way
- Cheap deaths. Everything is one hit, even though the armor suggests otherwise, and the rocks and missiles spawn right in front of you at any speed. Everything else is in a set spot, but those aren't, and the missiles give you almost no time to react. We disagreed about whether that is cheap or just a reminder of where you stand on the battlefield.
- Flicker and a firing cap. Sprites flicker, including bullets you are supposed to dodge, and your own fire seems capped no matter how fast you press the button.
- Pattern memorizing. The memorize-the-enemies style frustrated us, and we both felt it hasn't aged well. Next to something like Super Meat Boy, where you can see what you did wrong and play your own way, here the enemy is always just where it was.
- Short and thin. Tougher armored vehicles and a flamethrower car appear, and a helicopter with homing missiles took a few lives, but there isn't enough here to bring you back.
The bottom line
Skip it. With two voters, both had to say yes, and both said no. Sean called Data East lovable losers on their first side-scrolling shooter: lots of mechanics, not enough personality, too much frustration. Mike had more fun than expected and liked the twist, but said a game feeling good in a hot moment does not make it a good game, and that it is short and unpolished. We still liked a listener write-in that gave it a solid seven for fun and quick, with his first landslide jump as a favorite memory.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Breakthrough! Your mission is to retrieve the PK-430 secret fighter plane stolen by hostile renegades and fly it back!
NOSTALGIA And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. And welcome to a very intimate conversation between the two of us. NOSTALGIA Yes, I love it when it's just us two. Yeah, usually, I mean, this hasn't happened since the Donkey Kong days. Yeah, it's been a while. NOSTALGIA Yeah, which has been a long while. NOSTALGIA You know, I still feel good about Donkey Kong. NOSTALGIA The first one, at least. Yeah, no, I think that was quite the experience. I'm glad that we got to have such an experience together.
A series that seems to kind of like descend downwards as it goes on. Yeah, it's sort of like watching somebody get addicted to drugs and then like just be on them for a while. And then die. NOSTALGIA But we're not here to talk about Donkey Kong, are we, Sean? NOSTALGIA No, no, we're not. I... Oh, unfortunately not. NOSTALGIA We're here to talk about Breakthrough. You got the whole plot in the first two seconds of the episode. But that's what the back of the box wanted me to tell you guys. So I had to. The one thing they left out is that you are in a dune buggy. I think that's what...
NOSTALGIA Because that's when it came out in the arcade. NOSTALGIA But it's funny because you look at like, I thought it was a dune buggy too, but like I've seen different artwork styles for this. And a lot of times I just equate it to like a Hot Wheels car, you know? Sure. Like the generic Hot Wheels car. It kind of looks like one of those. You're actually just a giant Hot Wheels car in this weird like country. This is like the equivalent of like... By the way, Data East made this game. And we love them. Data East. We love them. But Data East made this game and this is like the equivalent of them wanting to be like a Hot Wheels style game, but couldn't get the license.
So they just made their... That's not true. Okay, I was gonna say, is that true? I couldn't confuse you any longer, Sean. But let's not confuse, you know, the listeners here either. Maybe we should start talking about Breakthrough. Yeah. So Sean, first impressions? Anything upon boot up?
My first impression for this game was that it's kind of cheap in terms of how it goes about killing you over and over. And I think like, yeah, it picks up and it gets easier once you learn the systems. But I'll go into why I think it's cheap later.
I had a very hard time jumping at the start. I just couldn't get... I was like, wow, how do you get over this pile of rocks? The first big pile of rocks. Yeah, the first big pile of rocks. But in a way, that's like a tutorial. It is. It's good game design in the first five minutes. Right, but of course, because it happens in the first like minute, I, you know, like that's my immediate impression.
But then I was just kind of like taken back by like the graphic choice or even like the enemy choices in this game, I guess I would say is a better way to represent like how confused I am about it. I'm riding a dune buggy and these guys are just like, okay, if we all just stand across a field and shoot at you, we will be able to take out your car instead of you running us over. Well, the thing about these games that we've been playing more recently, these like side scrolling shooters, I feel like the only way that these things could happen in real life is if we've just taken them. We've gotten the drop on them. Like we're taking them by surprise. They were on some sort of walk.
Like this was a an army wide like field day. It's really the only way like commando could have happened. You know, like when it's you versus an army, that's really the only way it goes down. It's like, okay, it's army field day. Right. I can understand like a ghost and goblin situation where it's like, you know, oh, your love interest has been kidnapped. So now you have to like, like it or not, go through this whole thing. But when you're like, yeah, when you're in the army, like it's no one ever like, who was the general who made that call?
Like, who are you to be like, okay, so our top secret fighter plane was stolen. So can you just drive a car through a and it is like through an island because you get this nice overworld map, which I actually thought was a nice touch. It's a nice map. Where it shows you like you're at, you're in stage one. It kind of reminded me of Trojan and ghosting goblins in a way where it's like, okay, here's where you are. Here's the final destination. So you kind of like are on one thing and then you have to go through like a series of bridges and then you get to the island. But it's like, this is a huge mission. And we're in a world where clearly planes exist because one has been stolen.
And apparently it was the army's only plane though, because you can only travel by car. So drive down, you know, 40 miles down to the Baja and go across that broken bridge. Like what happened to this, to this country beforehand? Like why is the infrastructure so destroyed? Right. Already? Yeah. There's landmines. There's rocks. There's soldiers who again are not afraid of you driving 60 miles an hour at them. Why is this a stealth mission with one guy in an RV? I'm sorry. One guy in an RV. Yeah. That's actually like a preferred ROM hack. I would like to see someone add that. This is already an active battlefield. But anyway, the gameplay itself. Let's talk about that instead.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So immediately for me, this one stands out a little than the other ones because it does take those racing elements as well. So it's not just like a side scrolling shooter. It's it also like involves like ramping up your speed to make a better jump because if you're just driving along at slow speeds, you can't make the full jump. Yeah. And the jump is awesome. I'm just going to throw that out there. It's pretty cool when it happens. And I don't mind that they kind of made like some platforming challenges out of it. Yeah, I think that's a that's what sets it apart in these kind of games.
The bridge level, for instance, does a great job of like being like, OK, you're this bridge is about to end. So jump and make a decision about like which side of the bridge you're going to go on to. And I thought that was nice. I actually enjoyed the bridge section the most in this entire game that I played. Yeah, I think that I can agree with that. But but another thing that is that says this one apart, too, is that even though it is side scrolling and you can't force the speed along, you you do have to think about your speed as a as a car. Because if you're just trying to drive as fast as you can through the level, you're going to be bombarded by enemies appearing at the very like top of the side of the screen.
Yeah. I mean, you can you have a modicum of control of your scroll speed just by virtue of like speeding up in your car, slowing down. You can change your position in the field and how fast the field scrolls, but not stop it, obviously. Right, right, right. Right. And they do play some tricks on you if you want to go too fast. Like one thing that I noticed about one of the features or I'm sorry, one of the mechanics of this game is every once in a while, either rocks will fall or missiles will get shot at you. The missiles are the scariest thing. Yeah, like you have zero reaction time pretty much to dodge any of these things if you're going at full speed. And I noticed that if you're going slow, the rocks will fall at a slower rate.
But whether you're going fast or slow, they will always spawn right in front of you. Yeah. So you have to avoid them. And that's part of the reason why I think it's so cheap, because everything else in this game is at a predetermined point. Like every time you run through the second level that those those trucks will show up at that specific spot. But the rocks and the and anything that's falling.
Look, I'm not going to say that that's good game design, but I don't think it's cheap. I think it's just a way of like reminding you of your place on this battlefield. Like, you know, you're not going to get anywhere. Just driving 100 miles an hour into into a battlefield. You know, sure. I guess if it was just the missiles, I could say, OK, they're aiming for me, obviously. But if but falling rocks, I don't know. You assume that they were heat seeking missiles. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Like somebody shot them. Yeah. OK, but I'm falling rock. That's just a that's just a force of nature. Here's another thing about the missiles in the game.
Besides the fact that they're gigantic, like like they're like three cars. They're scuds. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. In fact, actually, your car is gigantic. I guess all things considered the scope of the game in general, like size doesn't really matter in this. Even if you look at the front of the box, all of the like the scale doesn't make sense. Yeah. Would you like to talk a little bit about the front of the box? OK. So if everyone could take out their their booklets for this episode. Yes. I'll include it in the show notes. And turn it to page show note featuring the back of the front of the box. You'll see your car, which doesn't quite look like the dune buggy that was described in, I think, the manual.
That's it's got speed lines. It almost looks like a tank car hybrid. Yeah. That looks like a very armored vehicle. I guess that's why they thought it was a good idea to just send you alone.
Yeah. But then you've got you're obviously going at a speed at a sizable speed. But then you've got just guys just standing around as if you're just a you're just standing there. Right. Like that. Those guys to the left of you, they have like a very clear view of you, like like with their AK-47. They're just like, I have a point. Yeah. They've been shooting at you for some time, it looks like. And then you've got a helicopter hovering like five feet above their heads. Like it looks like they're on the same plane as these as these soldiers just standing there. And then over like one wall is this mini.
Like it looks like the tank is just about the size of your car. Right. I don't know. The whole thing is just like, how can we fit all this into one screen? They could have done something with perspective. It's just a mess. I don't know. You did remind me about the the walls, though. And that's like another platforming challenge in the game. So, you know, I'll be clear on this. I'm not like in love with this game. But I do think that like as a racing side scrolling like hybrid, I think it does some things right for a first attempt at this, like a first time us seeing this.
Yeah. On the NES. But, you know, there's still like a lot here that I don't like, such as everything being one hit kill, including including the guys with the guns. Yeah. Like when in what reality did the did a guy shoot a gun at a car and it just blew up on the first shot? One thing you didn't know about this game, Mike, is that the paint on your car is actually painted with nitroglycerin.
OK. So if you if you get a gunshot to the armor, it doesn't matter if it's armor because just going to explode. So that's that's what I would have to say. Gotcha. OK. And and just to go later into the game, you know, there's a lot of tougher enemies. There's armored. There's a lot of armored vehicles of different sizes that take like, you know, more than one shot. Yeah. To to get down, which I guess doesn't make sense in this canon.
But they do it anyway. And I found that the best strategy is just to be to dodge their bullets. Like don't even mess with them because you can just kind of get in front of them and be fine. It's got some bullet hell elements because they have strange firing arcs and everything. But the one thing that I thought I couldn't get past, I couldn't give it a pass for was because of the amount of sprites on the screen. There was flickering and that included like bullets are supposed to dodge. Right. Right. And also it would it seemed to affect my bullets as well that I would. I don't know if there was like a was there like a limit to how many bullets you can shoot like on screen at a time.
It was definitely like it didn't matter how quickly you press the button. I think that it would cap you at a certain rate. Yeah. And that's silly. Yeah. We don't need that. What? There was another game recently that did that. Was that Commando as well? It may have. Or no. 1942 has like a cap to how fast. Because even if you have a turbo controller, it won't shoot out like rapidly. No. Yeah. That's weird. And they should be, you know, I don't like that. And then there's that flamethrower car that is just a weird concept, like a tank that instead of shooting like, you know, powerful ammo at you, just like breathes fire. Yeah. It's like a dragon. This is definitely an exotic country that has a lot of different R&D projects.
Like that helicopter has got some quite quite the good armament package because every time I found a helicopter, it took me a couple of lives just to get past it. Like, I don't know, because it's got like homing missiles and they would they would do a U-turn. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no, I do. And I default the location of this to like Vietnam usually because like something about like, you know, it being in the 80s and like the most recent war being Vietnam. And a lot of games will just I mean, you look at games like Commando and Ikari Warriors, you know, it's not like they're explicitly in Vietnam, but, you know, it definitely takes over that kind of art style. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
So this game was first on the arcade. And we've talked a lot about how, you know, should essential games be games that were also on the arcade because you have access to them there and stuff like that, because usually they'll look better, they'll play a little better.
I'm a little surprised to tell you that I wasn't like there's not much difference. I don't want to say that the NES version and arcade version are bad, but in terms of quality, they're about the same for the arcade and the NES version. The graphics kind of look pretty similar. The gameplay controls kind of similar. So that's strange. It's nice to have. Yeah. I mean, at least like a perform it performed pretty well in the NES, too. So, right. Yeah. Other than that flickering, which is annoying. But, you know, obviously there was no flickering on the arcade version. But usually we get like the arcade version is like the high definition version of the game, if you will.
Exactly. The the next gen at the same time. And the arcade version of Breakthrough could have been yours for nine ninety five nine hundred and ninety five dollars. That sounds pretty cheap for an arcade cabinet during the 80s, I think. But I don't know. I'm not I'm not an arcade cabinet dealer.
So just one thing I want. You know, we had an anecdote submitted here and about Breakthrough and it goes on a bit of a tangent. But bear with me for a second. OK, I remember the days when I would go to the local pizza place downtown. Not to eat, but to waste quarter after quarter in the one or two arcade games they used to offer in such places. Shinobi, Arkanoid, Pac-Man, Heavy Barrel. And this classic were just some of the games. And obviously the classic he's referring to is Breakthrough. These classics were just some of the games that shaped my nerdy game lifestyle way back when. I got this for one cent on Amazon and played it straight for an hour.
He did like a leap there in time. Yeah, he's talking about like, I love this pizza place. I go to the arcade. I got this for one cent online. Not nine hundred ninety five dollars. I got it for one cent on Amazon. Played it straight for an hour. Doesn't have quite the atmosphere, but it's still pretty cool. The first time you jump over your first landslide memories. Memories. I'd give this a solid seven. It's fun and quick. A solid seven out of seven? Yeah, I mean, yeah, he didn't tell us what the final guideline was. This is a write in. It's a write in. OK. And I'll tell you this.
I was actually surprised at how short this game was. All things considered. And it's also it doesn't have the same padding of length that comes with games like this that are very memory focused. Like you have to remember the levels to get far without dying.
It doesn't have that because you can just continue from your last checkpoint and just brute force your way through this game. Yeah, I think we should talk about checkpoints for a minute because I think that's one thing that this game does like better than any other game. I mean, we were like really on board with Ghost and Goblins for having like halfway checkpoints. Yeah. And I mean, Super Mario Brothers had that, too. But this one kind of has like every, you know, couple meters checkpoints. I'd say that at least I think that every level has like three.
Yeah. Including like the beginning of the level. Right. It's just nice to have those this way. It's not like if you're at the very end of a level, start from the beginning or even the halfway mark, you get like, you know, two thirds of the way there. Yeah. But it always just to just to show you what you're doing wrong. It usually has the checkpoint maybe five seconds before like a big jump or a big hazard. And that's why I didn't mind like the missiles and the rock so much. I mean, like, yeah, it's a pain in the neck to have gameplay interrupted, but to be able to then just like go back just a little bit and be ready for the missiles and rocks again.
I'm not saying like I aced it the second time every time. Yeah. But I definitely like anticipated it and, you know, made the correct adjustments. That's true. I guess like the correct way to play this game is to just restart every time you lose all your lives because you're just going to get a smaller score if you continue from level two or level three.
But I mean, because of the way that I grew up playing games, I don't really see that as a big deal. But I feel like in the 80s, that was more of a punishment. Yeah. I mean, I guess score resets because then it's like, you know, at the time you would have wanted to submit your score to a magazine or to bring to your friends. And now it's like now I'm just like, look, I'm really just want to beat the game. Yeah, exactly. And speaking of beating the game, we mentioned that it was short.
I've seen like non speed runs. I don't even know if you could do a speed run of this. I watched I watched the world record speed run of this. Yeah. What was the final time? I think it was six, six minutes and 47 seconds. And the normal time is 12.
You know, it's just kind of funny that like I mean, and that's a no death situation. So that kind of makes me wonder, like, well, if Ghost and Goblins was a no death situation, how long would that game be? And it'd probably be like 25, 30 minutes. But like it's still like double the length of this particular game, which isn't. And I think it just comes down to the fact that it's not that hard.
Yeah, I didn't think it was that hard. All things considered, mostly because of the continue. But I was I've found a lot of frustration in this game just because I think that these games really aren't my kind of game. The the memory focused side scroller where it's just remembering patterns of enemies. And I do like the jump and I do like the the platforming that was introduced into this game to the genre.
But I just find this very frustrating. Yeah. I mean, like I see what you're saying. And to be fair, it's like people will tell you, well, that's the way those games were designed back then. But I have to answer that with, well, it's just not a very like it's not a mechanic that ages well. No, you know, we don't have that limitation in games today. And it's for the better.
Like nobody wants a game where you like I even look at it like a super meat boy or something like that. Right. A game that does have like some memorization aspects to it, but not on like a level where it's it's a random, you know, a random enemy mashup mess kind of thing. It's like, oh, that that time I hit the landmine. Oh, this time the missile. It's like, you know, you kind of know what you did wrong immediately and then go back into the level and do it again.
Exactly. That's not these kind of games. These memorization focused games hurt them as they get older because no one wants to play that kind of style because it's just intentionally dragging on the game. Yeah, I think that games like Super Meat Boy and the the more retro focused design, like indie games that have come out in the past decade, they at least allow for some expression in your play.
Like you. I mean, yeah, it's like you have to remember certain things about the level, but there are different ways to go about it. Whereas in this game, it's just like the scroll happens and the enemy will always be right there. And I don't know. Yeah, I think you're right. This hasn't it's a it's a feature. It's a design philosophy that hasn't aged perfectly. All right. I think with that, we will take it into the essential games list.
All right. It's time for the essential games list. And if you don't know what that is, this is the time where Sean and I will vote on whether we think this game belongs on the Nintendo Entertainment System essential games list. But we're not talking about NES games that were essential back in their day or even just for that system. We're talking about games that are still worth playing today. Usually it comes down to you need at least a majority of the votes. And so for this, both of us will have to vote for it to be on the essential games list. Oh, come on. Not 50 percent. I can't just put it on. No, no, no. It can't just be one. It must be both in this situation.
But I have a feeling of where this is going to go. So, Sean, take me through your essential games list vote. For the essential games list for me, for this game, I got to hand it to them. Data East are lovable losers at Data East. They had their first try at a side-scrolling shooter. They had a lot of fun mechanics to add. But it's just, it doesn't have enough personality. It gives me too much frustration for me to, in good conscience, put this on the essential games list. All right, Sean. So even though it can't get on, I will allow people to know my vote as well. And it was no.
And, you know, I had a little more fun with this one than I thought I was going to. There was one run through this game where it was like, you know, like that speed running moment where you're like, this is the run. You know, it's like everybody in the chat is like, the run, the run. And I just like had this incredible moment where I was just like dodging every projectile, completely in control of my car, making all the right jumps, getting the power-ups to shoot, you know, the widespread bullets.
And everything was just clicking for a while. And it felt really good. But just because like a game feels good during like a hot moment doesn't mean that it's actually a good game. And the more I go back and play this game and like evaluate the pros and cons of it, I think it's more what you said, Sean. It's a nice attempt.
It's different enough from the pack that we've seen so far that it's not like one of those side-scrolling beat-em-ups where we're like, oh, we've seen this before and we're going to see it again. It's like, no, this was pretty cool and a unique twist on an idea. But not enough. There's not enough polish to it. There's not enough to the game, frankly. It's a pretty short game.
And there's not enough that would make someone want to go back that I can say that this needs to be on our essential games list. And for that reason, I'm not going to put it there. Yeah. I do want to say real quick, though, that I do envy the fact that you got into that flow state because there were a few times while I was playing this game that I felt like just on the verge. I was like, oh, this is what it's actually going to start start rolling. And I'm still going to start feeling like this is happening. But it was always a false start and then I blew up and that was just a little bit more rage. Right. And I would say that there's nothing to love about a game when you're constantly being abruptly brought back. Yes. To just a few frames earlier.
It really disrupts the flow. And I don't know a better solution for that. I mean, some beat-em-ups will just have like your character dies, but then you flicker back in. And you reanimate to life if you'll do the Mock Rider thing where like your car explodes, you explode, but then like somehow all of the pieces of you come back together.
Quantum entangled back. I love it. But that is all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time for Kid Icarus. I think a couple people know that game. He's still around. Yeah. So be sure to play that one if you can before we release the episode. We release episodes every Friday. So make sure to subscribe to get them as soon as I think they become available right around midnight. So if you're really into it.
Stay up late. Yeah. You just want to like marathon the game Thursday night and then go right into our thoughts. That's cool. But here's the good news. We don't delete the episodes either. They're available to you. Just like our website's available to you. You can go to www.nostalgiacast.com. Spelled just like the episode with a cast on it as well.
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