053 · ARKANOID
You are the commander of the Vaus! A spaceship required to hit a giant spaceball at enemy hats and aliens. Do I need to repeat? For more NEStalgia and show notes visit www.NEStalgiacast.com
- July Review -
- BreakThru
- Kid Icarus
- Mighty Bomb Jack
- Regard
- Section Z
- Solomon’s Key
- Taito - Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble
- Atlas - Now owned by Sega would go on to known for RPGS mainly Shin Megami Tensei and Persona
- Make up the Plot for the game
- Objective - One Player Pong. Maneuver the Vaus (board) at the bottom part of the screen to bounce the ball back to the top of the screen and hit targets.
- It’s a clone of Breakout but with Power Ups
- QUESTIONS:
- Is there enough to this game?
- Did the Power Ups help? What would you have liked added?
- What did you think of the patterns?
- How did the Vaus Control for you?
- What is this missing that a similar simple game like Tetris/Space Invaders do not?
- Why is the Final Boss a Moai? Is this a Konami game?
- Arkanoid Controller - limited turning radius. The faster the knob is turned, the quicker the Vaus moves.
- Arkanoid did get a sequel, Arkanoid II or Arkanoid: Revenge of Doh
- Let’s Build Arkanoid - https://foobar123.com/lets-build-the-arkanoid-code-with-me-part-1-4085a35ad8c
- Breaking Down BreakOut - https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1630/breaking_down_breakout_system_and_.php?print=1
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Arkanoid, it's a real blockbuster!
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. What's up, guys? I'm alright. How about you? How's everybody doing right now? I'm doing great. I'm feeling like a blockbuster right now. It is now, currently, August 1987 in this podcast. Oh. Okay? We have entered August of 1987, and I think we had a pretty hot July, guys. I think it was a pretty sizzling July.
Oh, man. What's going on? Let's do a little July review. I'm going to do a review, and you guys tell me if you, you know, like, give me a thumbs up, thumbs down, and also like, which game you would have bought out of that batch, okay? The boys of summer, speak right now. The July review, you got Breakthrough. Yeah. Kid Icarus. Uh-huh. Mighty Bomb Jack. Yeah. Rygar. Yeah. Section Z and Solomon's Key. All in one month. And Section Z and Solomon's Key rhyme, so that's pretty fucking cool.
Okay, so thumbs up, thumbs down. Sean? Is that a hot month? This is, I mean, this is a pretty solid month. Okay. I think that all these games have merits and demerits, but they were, like, this isn't the lowly days of the expansion into third-party games. Like, this is, these are games you can buy and play and enjoy. Okay, you can only get one, which game you take at home?
Um, I guess I'd take Rygar. I wasn't very high on Rygar, but I think it's the most well-rounded game. Okay. Joe, thumbs up, thumbs down on July. I think thumbs mostly up. Granted, I haven't played two of these games, so, you know, it's tough. Gotcha. And then what are you thinking, taking home? I'm thinking Rygar or Kid Icarus. Okay. They were both up there for me. Um, I really liked them both a lot. The only, the only thing that stops me from immediately going Rygar is that it's a lot shorter. Gotcha. But I liked it a lot. I, I think I would have gone Kid Icarus, um, seeing that Nintendo seal instead of, well, every game has a Nintendo seal, but, like, just knowing that it's made by Nintendo probably would have went for Kid Icarus instead of Rygar.
But, right now, like, Kid Icarus, you know, keep in mind, Kid Icarus is essential and Rygar is not. But, um, oh, it didn't get voted in? I thought it did. No, I just don't like Kid Icarus. Yeah. Oh, okay. I'm a big fan of the, of the kid. Don't count out the kid. And, um, I'm still, I'm still enjoying that game. So, that's why I'm going to pick that bad boy up. I'm also going to give July a big thumbs up. I like July in general.
I thought every game here had, like, a thing going for it, if you really think about it. Like, we got some platforming games. We got a race, we got a type of racing game. Uh, we got a, like, RPG mechanic game with, like, an open world thing going on and exploration. Of course, you remember Mighty Bomb Jack. Yeah. Well, how could you forget Mighty Bomb Jack? Uh, all right. That's enough about July, though. We are now in August. And it is time for Arkanoid.
Of course, Taito, the, um, the esteemed arcade developers are bringing this bad boy over to the NES. Uh, Taito, of course, made Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble. And, um, Atlas is going to bring over the, um, not Atlas. Atlas, I guess, right? This is an Atlas game? This is an Atlas game. This is just them, uh, programming it, though.
Yeah. For the NES port. It's still interesting. Uh, of course, now they're owned by Sega, and they're known, uh, mostly for their JRPGs, including the Shin Megami Tensai and Persona series. Yeah. They also, uh, made RPG Maker for, or at least, I don't know, port of it. I don't know if they still make it, but I feel like. To the PS1. Yes, okay, yeah. The original RPG Maker. The original RPG Maker, uh, which I'm sure you burned a ton of hours into. Oh, too many. Yes, uh, but Taito and Atlas are the names of the game here.
Uh, but before we go any deeper into Arkanoid, I gotta ask you guys, not about the actual plot to the game, because there is one, uh, listeners, but if you had to make up a plot for this game, what would it be? And also, for the listeners who don't know, who are out of the loop, if you've never heard of Arkanoid, it is Breakout. You know that game with, like, the paddle at the bottom and then the ball that hits the blocks to eliminate them, and then you have to, like, continue to use your paddle? It's like one-player pong.
Yeah. Uh, that's what we're talking about here. But there's a story. So, Sean, would you like to give me your plot for, uh, for Arkanoid? My plot for this game, and it's a current event, and, um, maybe this is too soon. I'm ready. You are in a device, and you are trying to break children that have been trapped in a cave out of this cave, and you have to use, all the blocks are the rocks. And you use this, uh, this superheated ball to break each block. And, uh, then at the, at the end, um, they escape.
Okay. Wow. I didn't expect you to just stop, but it sounds fine to me. It doesn't sound that outlandish. You were like, you were like, I'm not sure if this is appropriate. And I'm like, lay it on me. It might not be too soon by the time the podcast releases. Yeah, it's true. It'll have been a while. Yeah. For me, I'm offended.
Joe, what do you got for us? Well, can I first talk about the story, the blurb that it gives you? Please, please. Because that changes my idea. If you'd like to, if you'd like to. I would. It says at the beginning, because I probably would have had a different story if I didn't read this. Turn it on, it says, the era and time of this story is unknown.
After the mothership, Arkanoid was destroyed. A spacecraft, Vos, scrambled away from it, but only to be trapped in space warped by someone. That sparks my imagination. Who is someone? I would not have thought you were a spaceship. I would not have thought anything. So with that information, now I'm thinking that you're some lost in space style thing, and this someone is just behind this wall of colorful blocks that you have to break through, and it keeps elusively getting away from you.
I like to imagine that the someone is the game director. Ooh. You know? Yeah, he warped space. That's the someone who's, yeah, who's willing this to happen. But to be honest, that little blurb, just the word someone at the end, that intrigues me. So ominous. That intrigues me to play further. It almost makes me think that, like, okay, if this is space-based, you're playing this game just in the, one of the final scenes from 2001.
You're just in that, like, time, you're in that place between space and time, and the someone is just the space baby at the end. Right. Of course, we will eventually find out who the someone is if you play through the game. I will not. I didn't finish this game. I will find out on this podcast. Yes, you will find out on this podcast. No one really finds out, but I will reveal that later on. So continue to listen. I won't leave a chapter marker for it.
All right, guys. So as we already talked about, this is one player pong. You're maneuvering the Vaus, right? The Voss? What would you like to call it? I don't know. Vaus. It's called the Cursor. V-A-U-S. No, no, no. The Cursor. You can call it the board.
It's like the little paddle thing. Anyway, that's their spaceship, apparently. And you're maneuvering that at the bottom part of the screen to bounce the ball back to the top part of the screen, and you're hitting these brick-like targets that are all fancy different colors, but they don't mean anything. And sometimes if you hit the right bricks, little power-ups will fall down. And if you collect those, you'll get all different kinds of power-ups. We'll talk about if they're useful or not in a second, but the main idea is to keep the ball bouncing. If the ball goes below you, your spaceship will explode.
A cruel punishment. I would like to correct you real quick, though. Yes. There are some colored blocks that do react differently. Oh, yes, yes. That's true. The gray ones need two. The gold ones don't break. I thought of that as different blocks. I didn't think of those as the same blocks. Well, they're all blocks. Yeah. No, I just meant the silver ones are like titanium blocks, you know? Yeah. You know what you called those? What? Titanium blocks. Okay, sorry. All right, folks. Yeah, I get it. I get it. I'm going to take the listeners away for a little while, give you guys some space. Let's break down this game block by block, guys. Okay? First off, my first question for both of you, is there enough to this game?
Okay. For some reason, I like these games. Okay. There are so many different clones. I thought that the original was just this game. Yeah, okay. I can see how you might make that mistake, too. But then it's like, think back, and the original game didn't have the power-ups. Yeah, I know. I know. No, I know. That's crazy, though. See, to me, I had not expected power-ups. I never, I mean, I don't like this kind of game. But I, while playing this, I'm like, oh, this is better than I thought it was going to be because there's power-ups and there's little things you can do and stuff. So I was kind of pleasantly surprised with the power-ups a little.
It's like this game is, it's just like I want to fiddle with my thumbs for about five minutes. And, like, that's the amount of time that I can actually focus on Arkanoid. Yes, this would be the ultimate mobile game. Yeah. Like, on your phone, your thumb controls the vouse and you just, you know, hit the ball back and forth. Like, it's a great subway game, only requires one hand. I'm a fan of that idea. I'm not a fan of the idea that somebody picked this bad boy up for, like, 50 bucks and was like, got to figure out if I can even beat Arkanoid. Like, is this game beatable? Like, time to find out, kid.
All right. So, Joe, you kind of landed on the side that this is enough or this isn't enough? You know, it's hard for me to say because it's not a game I would have played anyway. I still don't think it's enough, but I think it's much more than I had expected from what I knew of this game. When I think Arkanoid, I'm just thinking it's just one player pong with different levels of blocks, like different types of blocks. Right. And, I mean, they even added the enemies into the game. Yeah, right. I don't know if you'd really call them enemies because they don't really do anything other than just, like,
put maybe... They do really mess it up. Right. They could put the block in a... And they could also, like, be in a bad spot so that your ball will come back down faster because you weren't expecting it to hit that fast and you're on the other side of the board or something. So, I think, like, there's definitely more to this game than Breakout. There's no denying that. But there isn't... For me, there still isn't enough in this game to justify, like, I don't know, like a full console experience. Yeah, I mean, I agree. But a lot of those early...
I mean, we're still in the midst of the arcade ports. And I think this has just as much to offer as something like Clu Clu Land. I mean, maybe Clu Clu Land is a little bit more, like, strategic depth. But I think it's... I would say Clu Clu Land, amazingly, does have more strategic depth than this game. And that's surprising because I hate Clu Clu Land.
But I don't hate this game. So, I guess I'm saying, like, the wrong things. I'm saying there's not enough, but it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. That's kind of where I am, too. It's really not enough, but we'll take it. It is fun. It is, like, you know, it's the kind of fun that, like, I have with a mobile game where I'm having fun playing it. And then when I'm done, I'm like, well, that was a waste of time. Yeah, that's why I'm not crazy about these games. And, you know, what's funny is, like, I suck at these games, too, for some reason. Like, it sounds stupid, but it's very easy to suck at this game, okay? I want everybody to know that right off the bat. Like, the ball does kind of act a little unpredictable.
Not in the sense of, like, bad game design, just in the sense of, like, I'm really bad at figuring out where it's going to go next. And so, a lot of times, it's like pinball for me where it's like, oh, there goes down the gutter. Like, I didn't do anything. You know, I don't feel responsible for that death, but it is my fault somehow because it wound up in the gutter. But I would, like, load up this game, lose three balls easy, die, and be like, I think I ain't got my fill for Arkenoid. I did play it more than that.
Let's talk about power-ups. Okay. Did they help? I mean, they add a little spice to this very classic sort of game. Yeah. Like, you can make it, you can turn your ship, I guess, into an actual ship with guns. That is the best part of this game. You just need to get that out of the way. It is insane that you can just all of a sudden make this game into, like, I'm just going to shoot all the blocks up and I'm going to get rid of everything. My ball is useless.
Because my experience with it was I was testing out the different power-ups and stuff. I was like, oh, this one makes your paddle a little longer. And this one, you know, makes it so you can kind of, you can catch the ball and throw it when you want. A very useful paddle. Which is a useful one. And then this one makes it so there's three balls you can juggle them. Multi-ball. Yeah, you don't have to, you can only, you can keep one. You can drop two and one's fine. Yes. And then you have the rapid-fire machine gun.
Which is probably, undoubtedly, the best power-up. Save for a power-up that would just skip to the next level. Which exists. No, it exists. Oh, really? You were joking? I was joking. Okay, so if you get the pink power-up, there's this little, like, force field. Oh, my goodness, you're right. Yes, yes, yes. And then if you just go into the force field, it, like, gives you 10,000 points and you go to the next level. You are right. Wow.
So that actually is something better than the rapid-fire machine gun. That makes sense, though, like, that I would subconsciously make that joke because it happened to me just once and I thought it was the weirdest thing because it looks like it's going to shock you or, like, it's like, oh, don't touch this, but really, like, touch it. No, yeah, go. Like, go through it because, you know, like, you just skip the whole stage. And to be honest, like, this is going to sound dumb, but as many stages I can skip, the better.
Yeah, it's weird that you get, if not better, this same amount of just, like, dopamine satisfaction just by going through that force field. Like, yeah, it feels like you beat it the long way. Yeah. Like, well, I earned that power-up. Yeah, exactly. And the power-ups are random, am I right? I think so. They're not, like, related to the color of the block, or are they? At least not directly.
I assume they were placed in certain spots, but I just assumed. I don't know. Well, that wouldn't make sense, though, because then that pink one would always drop, and you would always get the opportunity to. Oh, you're right. Oh, so it doesn't. I thought maybe you guys got further than that. I feel like they drop randomly. I do feel like they do that. Yeah. All right. What do you think of the patterns of the, like, blocks throughout the stages? Some of them were cute. There was a Space Invaders one.
Some of them are kind of like a puzzle, in that you have to navigate around some unbreakable ones, and then once you get, like, a certain path, it'll just, it'll almost play the game for you. Yeah. That's honestly, like, the stuff that was satisfying. Yeah. Those are satisfying. You get to a certain spot, and your ball gets trapped in there, and starts destroying things left and right. There were some that were a little cruel.
I think one of the early levels, the ceiling is very close to you. Yes. There's only, like, one area where you can get it up into the above ground. I don't know. Like, the behind the blocks. And so, if you miss on the first couple attempts, like, you just have to play, like, you're trying to clean up your own mess.
Right. And, I don't know. I think they're fine. I think that there's a good variety, but honestly, after seeing Breaking Down Breakout on Gamasutra, which is a great website for all video game-related news and in-depth things, Gamasutra is amazing, but they have a whole article about this guy, Breaking Down Breakout, and yes, it does go into Arkanoid 2, and all types of breakout games. It is a monster essay. Like, just, like, stuff that no real, like, fan of these games needs to know, but, like, if you are a game designer and you're interested in, like, game theory and game design theory, this was, like, a master class on just this one genre of game, Breakout, and just, like,
how to structure your patterns and how to deal with physics and stuff like that. It was, like, it was honestly, like, incredible to read. I'm going to read that. I will link it in the show notes, but after reading something like that, I realized that, like, Arkanoid is only just hitting, like, the very beginning of what's possible with the patterns. Really? Because this is probably the most recent version I've played.
Yeah. It's just funny because, like, you know, these more advanced versions that come later, they are very much, like, you know, the patterns always, they always start off with the same kind of things, but then they get more, like, you know, like, the block types are also different. In this game, we only have three different types of blocks, but in the other games, like, more blocks are found to do different types of things and change, like, you know, the level layout and stuff like that. Huh. So I think, like, there's just a lot more that could be done to this than I would have thought. Yeah. You know? I was satisfied with the machine gun.
I was like, wow, that's pretty cool for breakout. Then I read this article and I'm like, wow, there's a lot more to it. All right, guys. How did the Vouse control for you?
I mean, it feels one-to-one. I feel like I just have bad skill at geometry. Like, I just could not figure out where that was going to end up. I think it was all my fault. So I actually didn't play with the regular controller. I played with, there's an Arkanoid controller. When you say the regular controller, you mean the D-pad. I mean the D-pad. I mean the regular NES controller. Gotcha. Arkanoid controller.
Yeah. So the Arkanoid controller actually has, like, a little knob on it that it moves the, it moves the, what do you call it again? The Vouse thing. The Vouse, yeah. The Vouse one-to-one. So you can go all the way to the right and your controller will stop and you can slam it all the way to the left and it'll, that feedback will appear on the left. It'll just zip over there.
So it's like an actual, like, arcade style game. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I think, I didn't try it with the NES controller, but I think I would have had a worse time with it because I imagine you're going at a very, I don't know if you're going slow or faster. No, it's more, yeah, you're going at a steady speed the entire time with the NES D-pad. And this is a problem that you have to think about, like, as an NES fan, but even back in the day, like, the Arkanoid controller technically came with the game, so a lot of people would have had access to it if they bought it. Yeah, yeah. But not, like, later in its life. It was also sold standalone, I believe.
Oh, okay. So there was an opportunity for you to just buy Arkanoid and then have the NES D-pad steady rate. Game's not unplayable, but Joe, I do think your method of the Arkanoid controller is the way to go because here's the interesting thing about the Arkanoid controller. So it is just the circular dial, but it also knows the maximum left and maximum right for, like, the space on the board, too. So you can't even turn it any further right than, like, would hit the boundary of the NES itself. So you can have it all the way to the right, and then the quick shift to the left will immediately bring you over to that left side.
So this way, it's like, if you do that with the NES controller, you have to hold down the left D-pad button and wait for it to shift over. Here I am, like, playing like an asshole with this slow paddle. Because you have to time it, I imagine. Yeah, no, there's a lot of, like, anticipation.
This way, almost after a while, it feels like you get the feel of it, and, like, you know where to put the control to get the mouse to be exactly where you want it in the screen. Right. You can just do it instantly. Even funnier, on the Arkanoid controller, there is also a button, a single button, which is just for the blaster. The button, yeah. The machine gun button. And I'm sure, like, also to get you into the game. But, like, I just think that's funny that, like, you know, it's like, well, don't include A and B, just include A.
We only need one thing. We only need one button. There's only one machine gun in this game. Because they never wanted it to be used with any other game. Only Arkanoid. All right, so that's the Arkanoid control.
But, okay, so I don't know how we feel about this game. Like, it seems like we all like it enough, but not, like, crazy about it. For me, I'm trying to figure out, what is this missing that a similar simple game, say, like, a Tetris or a Space Invaders, like, has? Like, what is this missing that those more, like, you know, the same similar style of simple puzzle-like games has that this game doesn't, that doesn't keep me in long enough? I mean, one thing that I think it's missing that I don't think is necessarily a terrible thing, but I'm also, I mean, it's no secret, I'm not a fan of this kind of game. I'm not a fan of, you know, a big fan of Space Invaders either, or even Tetris. I'm not crazy about.
But, um, Space Invaders has that, like, impending doom, where the, you know, everything's coming down towards you, and you, correct? Am I? Yeah. And, you know, you feel, uh, you feel. The aliens are slowly encroached. Yeah. They're ready to attack. You know, you feel a little bit of anxiety. This, as long as you're, as long as you're keeping the ball up, you don't really get that, and maybe later level something happens where you get that, but you don't really get that, like, edge of your seat sort of feel. Yeah, I feel like, I definitely agree with that. The losses are immediate, you know, like, you see it, the ball come and go.
And, you know, in a similar point, I think it's all about the build, you know? Like, with Space Invaders, it is that slow burn of, like, oh, I better, you know, like, things are building up. It's the same thing with Tetris, you know? It's like, when you make a mistake, it's not game over. It's just like, I gotta deal with this, or I'm gonna face the consequences, you know, as I'm stacking up these blocks. Like, there's a reaction to it. Whereas the reaction with this game, it's either you reacted or you didn't, and you failed or you succeeded. There's no other, like, oh, well, I hit that block now instead, so now my whole thing is, like, that could happen, but it doesn't really happen that often.
Yeah, I think you got onto something there where it's not just a one or a zero of, like, failure or not failure with games like Tetris and Space Invaders. Like, because, yeah, you can have setbacks in that game, but still rally. Whereas this, you just fail. But I was thinking another way, whereas not so much in Space Invaders, because that is a very reactionary game. But in Tetris, like, Arkanoid just does not have the same level of, like, strategy than Tetris does. Like, you have to think a couple steps ahead in Tetris, and it's a little harder to think a couple steps ahead in Arkanoid, because just depending on where on the Vos that you hit the ball, you can't just, like, do, like, a shot.
You can't be certain you're going to hit the ball correctly every time. So I think that it doesn't, like, I think that Tetris and Space Invader has another thing. They're completely different things going. Yes. But it just has another layer of something that Arkanoid does not have. So Arkanoid feels like your absolute main objective by far is just keep the ball up. Yeah. And then your secondary objective is get it in the position. But, like, if you just keep the ball up long enough, it'll probably end up eventually hitting what you need anyway. Yeah.
Okay. Now it's time for the moment everyone's been waiting for. The final boss. Okay. The person who is responsible for this, you know, that's someone we were talking about earlier. Okay. The final boss. Doh. D-O-H. Okay. A moai head. Oh my god. I actually real life gasped.
This isn't even a Konami game. Konami. Okay. This isn't even a Konami game, guys. I, so. What are the moai heads doing in, like. What are you doing with the moai head? What do you do to it? You gotta hit it with the ball. You just hit him with the ball? Yeah, you gotta hit him with the ball. Is he made out of blocks? No, he's a moai head. He's just like a sprite. That's the someone, though? That's the someone who's doing it. That's like a sentient moai head? Yeah, like a sentient moai head who's responsible for this shit. Like. What?
What'd you just say? Aren't they all sentient? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I thought you were having, like, as panic as you. Yeah, they are. They are sentient. They're right there on Easter Island. They're behind you. We've gotta get them off.
No, no, no. I meant, like, maybe this one, like, got, like, from Gradius' like, you know, moai field instead of an asteroid field. The moai field. One of them just drifted. It became sentient. It was like, what am I doing this for? I don't belong to the Bacterian army. I fight for my own rights. And then, like. In a totally different developer's game and everything. Yeah, exactly. That's how powerful they are. So I'm ready for the moai extended video game universe.
Wow. So what happens when you beat Doe? Oh, that's pretty much it. It's game over. Congratulations, you know, and all that jazz. You beat the game. But later that same day. It's possible to not only beat the game, but there's also, like, a boss fight that's pretty cool. But you sounded a little shocked that he wasn't made of blocks. I mean. But don't you remember the hats, like. The hats? Whatever those things are. Those. The hell. They're not hats. They look like hats to me. But those enemies, they come down. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah, they're like. I could see hats, right? They're like blocks to break.
In that level? Yeah. I honestly don't remember, to be honest. It just seems like a huge, like, pivot. And, like. Like, maybe, for all I know, Moai, the Moai head was making the blocks. Doe was making blocks. So, how? You just have to hit him with the ball? You gotta hit him with the ball. What's unbelievable about that? No, I'm just trying to figure out what the gameplay is, actually. Because I was thinking that it almost, like. For some reason, I was thinking it's almost like. Now it's like you play Pong with the Moai head. You're trying to score on him or something.
But you're just hitting him a bunch of times. All right, all right. Hold up. We'll link to a video of the final boss. Yeah. And so then you get greeted after you defeat him. And the projectile things that he shoots at you. After you defeat him, you get this little message at the end that just gives a little more plot. If you needed it. Turns out, I was wrong. He's not called Doe. I guess that was, like, the name of the fort. Oh? Dimension controlling Fort Doe. Which, I'm not sure if that's just the area. Or, like, it's still the Moai head. Maybe his name is Fort Doe. Well, Doe is the only part in quotations. Oh. Doe has now been demolished. And time started flowing reversely.
Okay. That's scanner darkly. Yeah. So time is now flowing in reverse. The Vouse managed to escape from the distorted space. But the real voyage of Arkanoid in the galaxy has only started. Wait. Is this the beginning of a new game? Alluding? No. It just alludes to a sequel. And is time flowing in reverse now? Just indefinitely? Just forever? Yeah. I guess, like, yeah. But the Vouse managed to escape. So it's like, what?
Wait. If time flows in reverse, too, wouldn't the Vouse also, like, now there would be, like, a copy if he managed to avoid it, right? It would just immediately, he'd just be back. It would all start over again. All right. Well, I still don't understand why we have a Moai head in general. Like, the Japanese must have, like, a fascination with it or something in the 80s. But that's cool. I'm always down for more Moai heads in games. I guess so, yeah. They were in Castlevania now, too. And here we are.
Arkanoid did get a sequel, guys. What was it called? Arkanoid 2. Oh. In the NES. For the NES. Yes. But if you were cool, and in Europe, it was actually called Arkanoid Revenge of Doe. Really? Okay. They actually worked into the title. Yes. They worked into the title. And that wouldn't be the only time Doe would strike. The Doe is still just a fork? Well, I guess it would be the Moai. It's like the guy, then? Who knows? I really can't decide. Everything is very cryptic.
All the balls are up in the air. Okay. Oh, shoot. You know what? I like it. So after Arkanoid Revenge of Doe, they're actually, I think it goes to the Super Nintendo, Arkanoid Doe it again. No. Get it? No. Like, do it again. Are you serious? Yes, I'm being dead serious. Arkanoid, it has lore. It has, like, there's got to be a wiki page just for Arkanoid. So you just had a better dad joke than their name of their game. Yeah. Up in the air.
Arkanoid up in the air. Starring George Clooney. I love it. One more thing I want to mention before we get into the essential games list. There is a really cool website that I'm going to link in the show notes called Let's Build Arkanoid. And it will teach you, like, how to make Arkanoid. Oh, cool. Like, from scratch. Like, Java or something? In Java. I'm pretty sure it's JavaScript. I think that's awesome. Yeah. So why not learn a little something here and there? It's the ultimate course creator. The ultimate course creator. Design mode. Yes. Okay. So with that in mind, anybody's stray thoughts other than this whole entire episode? No. No, I'm good. Let's break it down in the essential games list.
Okay, guys. We have to have a big mission now. We have to decide if Arkanoid is essential or if Doe, the giant moai head slash fort, is going to find his way to us, enslave us, and reverse time on our bodies. Then it is essential. I don't want that to happen. Keeping in mind that that maybe won't happen, Sean. You can now vote. Okay. I mean, I think this game only exists so that, like, I don't know. This is like the equivalent of solitaire on your PC, I think. I mean. Why didn't we get a solitaire on the NES?
I mean. Did we not? Not yet. Did we not? Do you not remember? That's what Mighty Bomb Jack was, Joe. I know you missed that episode. It was just solitaire. I mean, yeah. It's a cool, like, time waster. Like, there's some really weird itch that this scratches, but it's not in any regard like an essential game.
It's breakout. It's so inessential. Sorry, Joe. I'm going to go first. That's okay. It's so inessential that you can still play a version of it any way you like via, like, 100 App Store clones on iOS right now. You know? Like, this game is findable, and it has been iterated on many, many times, and somehow all future games, too, managed to get the inessential vote from me as well.
What about Breakout? The original? Yeah. Like, the very first one? That one's no. That one's a hard no. Okay? Like, Breakout is, like, Breakout would be the equivalent of, like, to your solitaire point if, like, instead you were just presented with 52 cards and you just got to, like, you know, put them in the solitaire order. Okay. Physically doing that. Like, then Arkanoid says, no, play solitaire this way, like the actual way it's supposed to be played, and put them in that order.
Okay. I get you. But I have to agree. Why is this game on this console? Like, it's fun. I see that in a way. But it really just feels like, well, I mean, it would be really quick conversion from the arcade to get this thing on, so let's do it. It was ported to everything, by the way. Like, every... If you look at the Wikipedia page, if you can think of a console, it's got Arkanoid.
No. I'm not putting it on the essential games list. Joe? So, I know we've had the conversation a lot. We've all agreed that, like, just because better sequels come out or better versions of the game later come out... No. ...doesn't mean that, that doesn't mean that, like, oh, this game's bad. Right. But in this case, there's so many... The other versions of the game, they can't get worse. Like, they're the same game. It's like the same stuff, you know what I mean? How would you make this game worse, actually? Now, you've challenged me, so let's hear it.
Open world. The ball goes up into the air, and you have to search the whole open world for where it's going to hit the ground and stop from hitting the ground. Oh, I like that, actually. Oh, no, I like... Okay, how about this one? The physics are shifted so that, like, the ball, like, just falls back to the paddle before it hits any of the blocks. Yeah, like, or just no gravity at all.
Or you can make it a Rob game. Rob moves around. There's a real ball in real blocks, which Rob has. Oh, my gosh. I actually really like the idea of you having, like, Rob using the same things that he used for stack-up. He has those five, you know, things. And you have to tell him, like, okay, move it to position five. And he goes, okay. And he slowly moves over to position five, and then the board moves over while the ball is playing. It's just a real ball following the real laws of physics.
Oh, I have a different one. It's a different peripheral. You know that game in the arcades that is not an arcade game, but, like, it would give you tickets where there's, like, the top portion of, like, a basketball, and you would just pound on the basketball, and, like, a mini basketball would fall, would get, like, thrown into a hoop? Yeah. Yes, but it sounds – I've never heard it described, and it just sounds so stupid.
So the controller is just that basketball, and every time you hit it, it'll shoot a ball up at the blocks. Like that. Wow. Okay. I'll play any of these versions, to be honest. Honestly, this makes me interested in, like, a – You have a ball floating through something, and then you get to do whatever you want from there. In fact, the blocks are the worst part of this game.
My initial point being that – Yeah, do you want to vote? My initial point being that just the fact that there are – like you said, there are just hundreds, maybe thousands of other versions of this game. Like, it's not essential to go back and play it here on the NES. Like, you could probably find tons of other games that are better. None of them are probably that much better anyways, but – I could play this game in my mind right now.
That's the kind of game we're talking about here. We're being honest with ourselves. We've had like a 30-minute podcast now about a game I could play in two seconds in my head. Are you still failing? Oh, yeah. Not that quick. That actually is a scary thought, though, too. You know how people have Tetris nightmares? Oh, God. Like, what if you had a breakout nightmare where you have to, like, you know, try and figure out how you're going to receive the ball? As it's coming down. Like, and that's your whole dream. But you're only in your underwear. Well, the Tetris nightmare never involves me in my underwear. I know. This is Arkanoid.
Okay. That's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. I hope you had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun with this one. Get Arkanoid. Get the Arkanoid controller. Buy Arkanoid now. The Arkanoid controller is going to prove to be very useful when we play Legend of Zelda. We were talking about sponsorship a couple weeks ago. Yeah, and we are now sponsored by Arkanoid. Yes. So buy it. We are sponsored by Doe. The giant moai on board. Who has caused time to flow reversely.
Thankfully, he's allowed time to flow so reversely that we've recorded this episode long before you've heard it. But at the same time, at the very moment you're hearing it. That's a podcast. And you can subscribe to it. You can subscribe to it by doing however you're listening to it right now. Just hitting that big fat subscribe button next to that app. I'm sure that you are listening to this on an app. Or if you're that one dude, you know who you are, who's going to the website and listening to it there. Or maybe he has downloaded it and is now listening to it on Winamp or whatever you have.
Continue to go back to the website every week and download it. We'll be there. We like seeing the number. We got a hit counter. We don't have a phone number, but we do have a Twitter that you can reach us at. That's NostalgiaCast. An email, contact at NostalgiaCast, and a website, NostalgiaCast.com. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter. It might be August 1987. It might be September 2018. For you, it might be we stopped counting years.
Only a matter of time. Yeah. It's only a matter of time. Think of anything. Are we really going to be like, oh, what year is it? 5,030? Like, no one's going to count that. It doesn't roll off the tongue. For some people, 5,030's already passed, too. Just going to throw that out there. That's true. Recently. Yeah, recently. All right. And did they call it that? Yes. Okay. Okay, everybody. Good night. If you want to stay, we can hang out with you, though. Yeah, we could stay. Yeah. Did that one guy leave? Yeah. That's all we wanted. Now here's the rest of the episode. We'll be right back.
