054 · ATHENA

• SNK - 2nd NES game (1st was Ikari Warriors) - How did we feel about Ikari?
• Micronics with the NES port - Ghost n'Goblins and 1942 BUT OF COURSE Ikari Warriors which SNK also made
• PLOT BEATS:
• Athena was princess of the heavenly Kingdom of Victory.
• One day, she opened the "Door Which Shouldn't Be Opened" in the basement of Castle Victory
• As she dared cross the doorway, it caused her to fall from the skies and to another realm called Fantasy World, which was dominated by the evil Emperor Dante.
• After her flowing dress was lost while catching the wind for her fall the game begins
• GAMEPLAY
• Many of the game's elements are inspired by Greek mythology or ancient Roman culture
• 8 worlds - Forest, Cave, Sea, Sky, Ice, Hel, Labryinth, World of WORLDS
• Final Boss - Dante awaits here deep into his stronghold, a huge sphinx-like creature that fights with sword and magical energy attacks. Only by defeating the cruel Emperor can Athena bring peace to this land and return to the safety of her own home.
• Toshiyuki Nakai Designer/Planner Interview - 1996 Interview
• On Design - Developing Athena was an unforgettable experience for me. I drew Athena herself and most of the other characters, so besides its popularity, it left a big impression on me.
• On Firesword - The biggest challenge during the creation of Athena was the Fire Sword. This humongous sword is one of Athena’s weapons. During the initial planning, we thought it would look cool to have these big flames coming out of it. But due to hardware and memory limitations, we simply ran out of space… After countless revisions, we finally completed a usable Fire Sword effect—and I know I’m patting myself on the back here, but I felt a huge surge of pride then. (laughs)
• On Graphics - In any event, I worked really hard on the graphics for Athena. As you can imagine, now that our developments were more team-based, a healthy sense of competition and rivalry developed between us. I didn’t want to be the weakest link, and slack off in my art. I really gave the drawings my all on that game.
• Athena Fanmail - We also received a bunch of fan letters sent to Athena, the game character, herself. Also lots of postcards with illustrations on them. It probably doesn’t seem rare at all today, but back then it was very new, and I remember everyone at SNK was surprised. As her character designer, it was a huge encouragement to me, and made me very happy. In an instant, all the exhaustion and pain I felt dissipated.
• QUESTIONS?
• WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT THE UPGRADE SYSTEM?
• WAS IT HELPFUL OR HURTFUL TO LOSE UPGRADES BASED ON OTHER PICKUPS
• DID SWIMMING OFFER ANYTHING DIFFERENT? WHAT ABOUT FLYING
• JARRING CUTS BETWEEN WORLDS
• HITBOX DETECTION?
• ART STYLE?
• How about the decision to be rude with Athena?
• Post-Game - From Interview with SNK in a 1993 Japanese magazine
• Having safely defeated the evil Emperor Dante of Fantasy World, Athena returns to the Kingdom of Victory and lives as a normal girl for awhile. Her tomboyish nature, however, remains unchanged, and she has many adventures (the details of which, due to a decree by the King restricting the dissemination of such information, I’m not at liberty to divulge). Eventually she marries, has many children, and lives a blessed life of happiness and contentment. Her favorite magazine is “suteki na okusan” (“The Perfect Wife”) and she loves to sing Momoe Yamaguchi at karaoke. The female descendants of the Asamiya family also have ESP power…
• …how’s that sound?
• Other Versions
• Bad news it still looks like shit in the arcade version
• Sequels and Spinoffs
• Her descendent Athena Asamiya from Psycho Soldier is a main staple of the King of Fighters series.
• secret Boss in SNKvsCapcom SVC Chaos - REALLY COOL
• NeoGeo Battle Coliseum as a hidden character - AGAIN REALLY COOL
• SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash trading card game series, as an SNK character card or as an Action/Counter card
• In the final Days of Memories (DATING SIM GAME FOR CELL PHONES) game, she makes a cameo as a foreign cousin of Athena Asamiya.
• ATHENA FULL THROTTLE in 2006 - This time she opens the Door Which Shoudn't Be Opened: B it was released for the i-mode on FOMA90x

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

00:00 Athena, a fantasy world of boundless adventure awaits you.

00:19 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. Guys, today we're playing Athena, the Greek goddess, but here just a princess, I think. Well, she... Yes. Yeah, you're right. She is just a princess. In this game, yes. Don't reduce the action of religion.

00:43 Don't be like, yo, but she's always just been a princess. I mean, but it is interesting to see like a hero princess. And they do call her the goddess of wisdom. I think they're still like trying to pretend that it's the same person, but it's not. But this, yeah, maybe it was her when she was younger. Maybe, yeah. It's her origin story. This is her origin story.

01:01 And yeah, Sean, I think you were trying to get the fact that maybe this is like our first female character. Yeah. Clu-Clu-Land. Okay. But that's a humanoid. That's a female like blob. We had that debate about Mock Rider, remember? Because there's that one screen where like Mock Rider takes off the outfit and it's like this, you know, chick. Yeah. Chick. Okay. Like, I didn't want to say girl because she's like, all right, she's a woman.

01:29 She's a woman. But like the thing was, it's like we weren't, you know, she's not even in the same pose. We're not sure if they were insinuating this is who Mock Rider was. Because you are Mock Rider. Right. That's right. But we also didn't see anybody else in that world. Yeah. So we could just assume that that also could be Mock Rider because people don't exist anymore. It's just you and the. Like cars. Like you're the last human before cars. And the buggies and all that. So that's a prequel to cars. This is a prequel to Greek mythology.

01:57 Yeah. This is like, which came first, Kid Icarus or this? Oh, yeah. That's a good point. You know, because chronologically, Kid Icarus came first. We already did that episode. But now we're here with Athena. So, okay. Yeah. It is our first, at least, adventure game where you know that this is a female character the entire time that we're playing. Right. Yeah. That's fine. I feel like it's a big deal. Yeah. Even though she's not the best dressed character to represent a woman in a video game on the NES. It's a little, it's stupid.

02:30 Like why, I mean like apparently you're just going to walk around. I mean it's 8-bit graphics so you can't really, it doesn't really look like anything. Yeah. She's wearing a red bikini. At least on like one of the covers. One version of the cover. It's a red bikini. I couldn't even tell while playing the game because I hadn't looked at the box art. The part that bothers me though is how they explain it. And if you, you have to play the arcade version to really understand it.

02:54 For those, for those cinematics, right? For the cinematics of like, well the reason why she has all of her clothes off at the start of the game is because she opened a door to that fantasy world and then she falls down and as she's falling all of her clothes came off. Yeah. But why, that doesn't explain why that happened. And if you're thinking, well okay guys, we can grant them all of that but it's still a pretty progressive move to, no. It's not because the only reason that she opened the door to chaos was because she was bored. And it's like, that's just what they think that women do, isn't it? Like, the only times that like, they have to be heroic is when they're, like when they're bored and they do some stupid shit on their own, right?

03:38 So, uh. They cause the problem, you know what I'm saying? I feel like, you know, I'd be, I wouldn't, you know, having this information I need to dish it out. We have, uh, Toshiyuki Nakai, uh, which was a complete, that's not his name at all probably, knowing me. Uh, but let's go, let's just call him Toshi. Uh, he was the designer and planner for Athena. And, um, Athena wound up being a pretty popular character for SNK. Uh, and so he answers a couple questions about it in a 1996 interview.

04:06 And on the design of Athena, he doesn't talk anything about the red bikini and instead just says, Developing Athena was an unforgettable experience for me. I drew Athena herself and most of the other characters. So besides its popularity, it left a big impression on me. And then follows it up with, we also received a bunch of fan letters sent directly to Athena, the game character herself.

04:32 And lots of postcards with illustrations on them. It probably doesn't seem rare at all today, but back then it was very new. And I remember everyone at SNK was surprised. Dear Athena, would you like to go to prom with me? Right. As her character designer, it was a huge encouragement to me and made me very happy. In an instant, all the exhaustion and pain I felt dissipated.

04:53 All right. Yeah. So, I mean, he's proud of the work he did. Good for him. Even though Sean seems to have some beef with Toji Yuki over here. I have no beef. I just think it's funny that it, like, she opened, like, that is such an origin story. Is that bored thing in the story in the manual? I'm sorry, what? Is the bored aspect of it? Yes, it is in the manual. She was bored. Okay, so just to take a step back for a minute, as I mentioned about Toji Yuki, this is an SNK game. This is their second NES game. Their first was Ikari Warriors.

05:26 Can we talk a little bit about Ikari Warriors for a second? How do we feel about that game? Do you have high hopes for Athena because of Ikari Warriors, or are you expecting, like, something mediocre? I'd say I was expecting not—I was not expecting the world from this game, and it still did not reach that bar. Gotcha. I also wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting more than I got.

05:49 And so Micronix did the NES port. SNK hasn't done either of those games, Ikari Warriors or Athena. They just did the arcade versions. But Micronix does the NES port, and Micronix did Ghost and Goblins in 1942. Those are Capcom games. But it also did Ikari Warriors. So it's kind of like, you know, you don't—I feel like all three of those games are recognizable even today, like, to a retro gamer enthusiast. So Micronix is doing a good job here in terms of making memorable games, but are they making good games?

06:23 I mean, the game itself doesn't seem like it was that well-programmed. Like, there's a lot of actual jank in this game where—like, one thing that I noticed and that I read and just, like, watched videos about,

06:43 there is no—there is no, like, buffer between when you get hit and when you can get hit again. Like, if you just end up in a crowd of enemies, you will just die in a second. Because every frame that you intersect with one of them is damage. Wow. Yeah, so if there's, like, those horse guys coming at you from both sides, you could just be, like, kind of squeezed into a position where you're just going to take a ton of damage. Yes. And there are other things with, like, hitboxes not working, and you can just get locked out of the game if you don't have an item on you. I got trapped. Yeah. I got trapped on the first level. The very first level.

07:23 There's a guy firing arrows with, like, a rapid-fire bow and arrow, and I went—there's two levels. You can go down or you can go up, and I went down, and at that point, the arrows were just coming in behind me. They didn't reach me, but they completely blocked me from going the only way back out. Huh. So I had to take a death.

07:43 They were going too fast. There was no possible way of avoiding them. Yeah, I didn't think the game would softlock you. Yeah. No, it does a lot. Wow. Okay. I didn't experience that during my playthrough, but I guess it makes sense because I was kind of just pushing through at all times, so I didn't really, like, take a moment to, like, let anything happen in the world that I was experiencing. I just kind of kept moving forward. Yeah. But also, if you end up in a boss battle with the wrong weapon, you can just not be able to do any actual damage. Oh, yeah, and that's a big problem in the final boss, which we'll talk about later. But let's just go into the plot beats for a minute here with Athena since there is a plot.

08:21 She was the princess of the heavenly kingdom of victory, and one day she opened the door which shouldn't be opened in the basement of Castle Victory. And when she crossed into the doorway, it caused her to fall from the skies into another realm called Fantasy World, which was dominated by the evil emperor Dante. After her flowing dress was lost while catching the wind for her fall, the game begins in the world of forest.

08:50 So I don't know a ton about Greek mythology. But that doesn't sound like any of it. And that doesn't, yeah, that doesn't ring familiar. It is weird that they even chose to, you know, talk about the Greek thing at all, considering that, like, even the enemies in the game. There's zero actual Greek influence. It's just the name of the character.

09:08 Right. Guys, how influenced are you after playing, like, Kid Icarus? Like, how influenced are you to not give this game a pass because you just had, like, a game that, like, was able to be fun and kind of modern while also having those same kind of, like, fun references at Greek mythology? I don't think I would be willing to give this game a pass anyways. But, yeah, that is just, like, just further, like, solidifies my thought of, like, this game did it right before you.

09:35 It did it right and it did it first. And, like, it's not like there's a right and a wrong way, but it's, like, it feels like Kid Icarus kind of did its homework. Well, again, I don't think that that's what they were going for. Just remove the name Athena. Sure. And just call her Bathina. And, I mean, it doesn't make any other allusions. It's not out of place. I guess that's true. But it does say in the manual Athena, goddess of wisdom, which I guess could be a different Athena, a different goddess of wisdom, and a different religion. But it leads me on to believe that there's – I'm excited because I know I'm going to open a whole can of worms later. So I'm very excited for when I open them.

10:40 And let's talk about the gameplay. Either one of you guys want to, like, walk me through just, like, kind of what you do in this game? I would like to hear what Sean has to say. Sean? I feel like you maybe experienced it more. Let me hear it, Sean. So you start off just – it's a typical side-scrolling action game. But you – and you have to find armor and weapons by either stealing weapons from downed enemies or digging into the dirt to find either helmet, boots, shield.

11:17 Do you actually get, like, chest armor? I don't know. Yeah, you do. You do have – yeah, there's a couple different – like, you get the helmet, the chest armor. I think you can even get, like – is there boots or something, I think? Yeah, boots. Yeah. Yeah, I mentioned that. And they all have different, like, defensive bonuses and movement bonuses. Like, if you have the helmet, you can jump into a block, and it'll break the block, which will give you some sort of pickup. But basically the entire game is trying to build your armor set and getting the best weapons for the situation and progressing through the game to the right or in some of the later levels into some, like, labyrinthine.

11:59 I mean, it's not that complicated. Yeah, I'm kind of inclined – you know, like, my immediate thought was, like, oh, is this one of those, like, Super Mario Brothers clones? And I don't think so. I think it's more like a chubby cherub, you know, like, on a similar scale. I guess. That's a comparative game that we've talked about in the past. I think that's the one that, like, rings most true to what's going on in Athena.

12:22 Yeah. I guess that both of those games do this thing that we've mentioned before, too, where it feels like the enemy placement and just the design of the level is just kind of – There is no enemy placement. There's not a lot of thought put behind it. It's just like, let's just put things wherever that can hit you, and it doesn't feel – Yeah, this is the same, like, whatever technique a lot of these games have been using of just, like, endlessly spawning, almost randomly spawning, infinitely spawning enemies of varying types that it can actually get to a point where you just can't progress because there's just a crowd of horse heads.

12:57 And the enemies wouldn't be so bad if, like, the hitbox detection wasn't so weird. Yeah. I didn't have a hard time necessarily killing things, but I also had a hard time figuring out, like, what registers as a hit, what doesn't.

13:10 Until Sean explained it just now, what registers as a hit on me even was, like, kind of confusing. There's no real auditory or visual feedback as to when you hit or when they hit unless, like, they just die.

13:24 And, like, that even extends to when you game over. There's no, like, animation, like, immediately after you get hit, like, your final hit. It just cuts to black. And it could just be, like, wait, did I unplug the controller or something? Power go out. It's, like, then there's an animation of her dropping down. I almost didn't want the animation, though, because for a minute, like, you know, because it is that long. It's, like, you know, the black stays on there for a second. I was, like, oh, she's dead. You know, like, I've completely lost consciousness. Like, she is dead.

13:54 The screen is black. You've got to return the game, send it back. Like, I was, like, whoa. So that was pretty serious. Yeah. You also mentioned the upgrade system, Sean, with the different equipment and stuff. Now, SNK refers to these as RPG-like elements. What do you think of the upgrade system? I mean, it's 87. I guess you could, I mean, RPG-like elements is going to be used very sympathetically to a lot of these games. Like, yeah, it's an upgrade system. Yeah. Sure, it's an RPG-like element. It's just not an RPG element. In the same way that, like, text in a box is an RPG-like element.

14:31 Yeah. Yes. Or just, like, being a video game is an RPG-like element. I also didn't think it was, like, very helpful when, you know, like, if you pick up the sword, the flame sword, for instance, and then, like, another enemy drops the club. And it's, like, the game can't differentiate for you that, like, oh, you probably want to hold on to the flame sword. No, I'll go back to, like, the level one club. Kind of like Ghost and Goblins where you've got to, like, avoid some of the drops. That isn't a problem unique to this game.

14:59 Thankfully, they do despawn after a few seconds. But, yeah, it is still a problem. Don't you think it's weird, though, that, like, Super Mario Brothers solved this problem already for everybody and, like, no one's decided to take them up on it? No. No, I'm just saying, you know, think about it. It's, like, once you have the mushroom, right, you don't get offered the mushroom again. It's, like, going forward, you're going to get fire flowers, you know? But they, I think the difference here is that, one, there are only two power-ups in Super Mario Brothers.

15:26 That's true. A big flaw of the game. That is not a flaw. No, I'm joking. It was just, like, the way that we're talking. But there's only two. Like, it's, like, that was a big deal. And while, yeah, nobody wants the Red Billy Club again, even though it keeps dropping, there are... Is that the official name? I don't know. No, I just like that. Probably. The Red Billy Club. I think that's what it's called in the manual, but I could be wrong. There are situations where you might want, like, the second weakest weapon, which is that hammer that just plows through the blocks a lot quicker.

15:58 There are situations that you want these, but not all the time. So I think that it's a hard problem to solve. And that is not... I mean, I fault this game for a lot, but that is not something I'm going to fault the game for. So, I mean, you know, there's eight worlds here. It's eight levels, really. It's not like there's multiple levels within the world. But, so, eight worlds. The world of forest, world of cave, world of sea, world of sky, world of ice, world of hell, world of labyrinth. I didn't think that labyrinth would come after hell. And then probably the best, like, final place ever. Like, the ultimate final destination. World of worlds.

16:42 That is the final level. World eight is called the world of worlds. What does that look like? What does the world of worlds look like? The world of... I mean, like, I could pull something up for you, Joe. No, I mean, it's not just describable. Yeah, yeah. I guess, like... It's indescribable. Well, here's the thing. It's like, they did a nice touch with all these things. So I don't want to say world of worlds isn't looking cool. I actually didn't mind the graphical style. They did, like, at least a different enough looking thing where I was like, oh, this looks okay.

17:09 It didn't look like... There were a couple times where I wasn't really sure what they were going for. Right, but I guess what I mean is it didn't just look like generic NES looking stuff. It looked like they actually tried with the design of, like, even just the backgrounds, like, with the trees and stuff like that. It had, like, a little bit of a...

17:24 I don't want to say this. Like, I don't know. I don't want to say painted because it wasn't nice looking, but it definitely, like, looked more... It had a style. Yes, an aesthetic to it that felt consistent across all the different worlds. Okay, I'll agree with that. So, you know, as I kind of said here, we had the world of sea and we'll have the world of sky, too. Those things add more gameplay elements because in the world of sea, you kind of, like... You turn into, like, a mermaid, right? And you're swimming.

17:50 And then in the world of sky, you also get wings. That's very chubby cherub-like. Like, did those things offer anything different enough for you guys to be like, hey, it's a whole different kind of game? Or, like... They really only exist to get past very specific points in the level. I think there's a specific, very tight squeeze if you choose one route in the water level that you can't get through unless you're a mermaid. But that's about it.

18:19 And you... So, I'll be honest. I did not get to the world of sea. Okay. Um, you... You don't keep the mermaid power indefinitely. You can lose the mermaid power up. You can lose it. In underwater? Yeah. I mean, you also don't carry it to the next level. Yeah, you definitely lose it there. And speaking of, like, just carrying things between levels, not... The weirdest thing is how the transition between worlds works, where it's, like, cut to black, cut right to the next world. It's, like, there's no, like, real transition or anything.

18:47 There's no... Well, here's the thing about, like, just the production of this game. Um, I... They either didn't care or they were way too rushed because, yeah, you would expect some sort of transition between worlds. But let's just go back to the very first cutscene where she is in some brick building or this brick room. Yep. And she just jumps into the middle of the screen and immediately it starts to do this, like, weird psychedelic, like, spiral out to black. Almost a little Pokemon-ish. A little Pokemon-ish, but it has no... That doesn't do... It doesn't say anything. She's not doing anything.

19:20 She just jumps and it cuts to black and then you go back to, like, the world of forest. In the arcade version I saw, there's a door there and that's the door of chaos. Yeah, the door that should not be opened. The door that shall not be opened.

19:34 Yeah, and that's, like, the only thing that is part of the story. Exactly. Why bother? Why not put the door there? Like, if you're not going to put any other cutscenes in this game and you still want to do the first one, like, why bother? If you're not even going to put, like, a sprite in there for the door.

19:49 Yeah. I agree with the abruptness of the whole game. Yeah. And then, like, you couple that with the lack of just enemy, you know, like, enemy variety but also just, like, the way that the enemies appear on the screen. Yeah. And one thing that we haven't talked about yet is that weird jump where, like, you press it once and it'll jump. And then if you just time it right, maybe on the second jump, you'll jump, like, really far.

20:13 Yeah, to my experience, if you don't stop jumping, you'll continue jumping really high. But if you don't jump for, like, one second, you're jumping low again. And the low jump is effectively useless compared to the, like, you know, the game-breaking high jump. Yeah. Well, what do you mean by game-breaking? Well, I don't mean, like, I guess I just mean, like, things that could have been in your way. Now you can just, like, jump right over them and onto the next platforms.

20:37 And it seems like a really jinky way to do a, like, just to try and do, like, Super Mario. Like, why couldn't they do that? Right. Like a memento. Like the run and jump kind of, yeah. Or just a hold button to go jumping higher. Like. No, yeah. That's true, too. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was weird because I thought that's what I was doing at first. It was like, oh, if you push down, like, really hard. Yeah. Yeah, and it's like, no, it doesn't register that stuff. All right. So after you get through all this stuff, the final boss is Dante, the guy who's, like, taking over the fantasy world.

21:11 And you fight him. He's like a sphinx-looking creature, but stands. Like a Cerberus. Cerberus? Okay. Doesn't he have three heads? A sphinx with three heads. That's pretty cool. But doesn't he have three heads? I didn't, I didn't, to be honest, I looked at the picture very fast. But I'm pretty sure he has a sphinx-like feature to him. I don't think I would have made that up, but. I think our viewers think that we're making stuff up now. Okay, all right. So you're, you're good. Wait a minute. Is this Athena?

21:39 I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because the only point, the only reason why I'm bringing up the final boss in the first place is that it's because it's possible to softlock yourself out of the final boss by not picking up the necessary weapon, the bow that you need to defeat Dante. And so you get to the end and it's like, if you didn't collect that bow, sorry kid, but today's not your day with Athena. Start over. He just, he's like impervious to everything else. There's nothing that, like nothing tells you that. There's no telegraphing that, hey, maybe pick up the bow.

22:17 There's no lore. If anything, the game is telegraphing. Try stuff. You know, like try out. No, no, no. I'm saying like try out everything. Right. So like when you get the bow, it's like that should be the very last thing you pick up like mandatory item pick up and now you fight Dante. It's stupid. All right.

22:58 So I'll take you through a couple of other things real fast. So on the graphics, Toshiyuki and his 1996 interview had this to say. In any event, I worked really hard on the graphics for Athena. As you can imagine, now that our developments were more team-based, a healthy sense of competition and rivalry developed between us. I didn't want to be the weakest link and slack off in my art. I really gave the drawings my all on that game. So just kind of, you know, enforcing that whole like crunch time momentum that we hear about with even back then now in Japanese game culture is just like, you know, if you're not working or if you're not working the hardest, you're seen as like the weakest link. Yeah. It explains a lot.

23:43 All right. And one other one on the fire sword, a little technical thing here that he got into. The biggest challenge during the creation of Athena was the fire sword. This humongous sword is one of Athena's weapons. During the initial planning, we thought it would look cool to have these big flames coming out of it. But due to hardware and memory limitations, we simply ran out of space.

24:06 After countless revisions, we finally completed a usable fire sword effect. And I know I'm patting myself on the back here, but I felt a huge surge of pride then. Laughs. So here's something that I was just thinking of while I was listening to that. And this sort of goes back to our shared experience as film students. Okay. I feel like this is when you're at, you're at like a forum where you're showing your films and there's a Q&A portion and somebody asks you what was the biggest challenge.

24:39 And they go into some very specific, like, oh, like this special effect just wasn't perfect. It took so hard to get that perfect. And then, but like this film that they're talking about, the sound sucked. Like there's terrible acting. But like they're going on and on about this one special effect. It's like you're totally missing the point. You're focusing on the wrong thing. You're focusing on the wrong things. Like maybe get the general ideas right. And then imagine ending it too with like, but I did manage to get this special effect to work and I'm very proud of myself for that. Every single interview quote I've read from Toshi Yugi so far has been, listen to this, okay? On design.

25:15 I, you know, I drew her myself on the fire sword. I sound like I'm, I know I'm patting myself up on the back here, but I feel a huge surge of pride on the graphics. I didn't want to be the weakest link and slack off in my heart. I really gave my all for the drawings on this game and on the fan mail in an instant, all the exhaustion and pain I felt dissipated. Wow. Okay. This guy has a Napoleon complex.

25:40 And that is really funny. I'm sure he's a nice guy. I think it's just really funny that we noticed that trend amongst him. And I do agree. This isn't a great game and he seems to really be hyped about it. And maybe like in Japan, it's a bigger deal. But in Western audiences, I feel like if you ask people about Athena. I mean, was it well received at the time? No. And that's the kind of like the weird thing is like a lot of people will tell you that Athena is one of the NES is like hardest games just because it's really hard to get through all eight levels. Like the idea of like you sitting down and being like, all right, I'm going to do this. You know, like nobody really says that about Athena. Ghosts and Goblins? Sure.

26:17 Right. There's like enough substance to that game that you're like, I'm going to do this. And it sounds enjoyable to have that challenge. This challenge doesn't feel like it was designed to be a challenge. Exactly. It's not like you're playing the game. You're just fighting the software in a lot of parts of this. So I know you guys are now wondering what's next for Athena, right? Like what happens next? And I am glad to say that in 1993, a Japanese magazine interviewed SNK. We don't know who they interviewed from, but just an SNK representative. And they were just spitballing like, what do you think happened to Athena? So here's what SNK came up with on the spot.

26:51 You can tell they never put any thought into this. So here we go. Having safely defeated the evil Emperor Dante of Fantasy World, Athena returns to the Kingdom of Victory and lives as a normal girl for a while. Her tomboyish nature, however, remains unchanged. And she has many adventures, the detail of which, due to a decree by the king restricting the dissemination of such information, I'm not at liberty to divulge. Eventually, she marries, has many children, and lives a blessed life of happiness and contentment. Her favorite magazine is Suteki na Okusan, the perfect wife. What? And she loves to sing Momo Yamaguchi at karaoke. The female descendants of the Asiama family also have ESP power.

27:38 So this is... They just came up with that. That was just like an aside at the end? Just an aside. Like, all the future descendants have ESP power. You know what? I wanted... A female have ESP power? I wanted to be like, you know what? Maybe they weren't like... Maybe she just happened to be a bored female character. It was a coincidence. But then they threw in that, like, the magazine. The perfect wife. And she got married. And she's like, she has many children. It's like, okay. She settled down and really... Hold on. She doesn't need to be a warrior. I thought there was a sequel to this game. Okay, so I'll get into that next, Sean. I was kind of hoping we could do maybe the essential games list first.

28:14 But since you bring it up, Sean, first, the bad news. Because, I mean, the arcade version is still bad. In this case, like, you know, like, I usually talk about, like, I played all the other versions. I tried all the other versions. They're all still bad, okay? Like, the arcade version is actually amazing how similar the NES version is to the arcade version.

28:35 So, don't go out seeking a cabinet of the arcade version for this one. So, sequels and spinoffs, I'm glad that you asked, Sean, because it's actually her descendant. Oh, one of those. Athena Asamiya from Psycho Soldier. Okay? And Psycho Soldier is a much more popular game that's recognizable. And I say much more popular, like, not that you should know it, but, like, way more popular than Athena.

29:00 And that is, she is a main staple of the King of Fighters series. Oh. Athena Asamiya. I may have played her before. Yeah, she's the one dressed like the schoolgirl. Oh. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Purple hair. I just can't get it right with this kid. Yeah, purple hair. Anyway, the cool thing about this, now that we're going to talk about this before we get into the essential games list, is that I can tell you all about all the other things Athena's been doing, too. So outside of just having a descendant who's incredibly popular, Athena shows up as a secret boss in the SNK vs. Capcom SVC Chaos game.

29:33 And so that's SNK and Capcom characters coming together. And there's two secret bosses. One, who you fight in hell, and it's the Red Devil. Of course. From Ghosts and Goblins. And then the other one. Let's bring the volcano back from Gradius, too. Upside down with the volcano. Yeah. Anyway.

29:52 Then you fight in heaven. The secret boss is Athena. Athena. And I think what's really cool about having her in this game is that they actually use all of her moves from the one game that they have to source.

30:02 And so, like... Yeah, like, no, but I mean, there's, like, a cool moment where, like, she slaps you with her mermaid fin. Like, she transforms really fast into that. Okay. And she uses her bow and arrow and stuff like that. Wow. She uses different clubs.

30:13 I mean, like, they really went all out here with, like, designing an enemy from scratch... An enemy. A character from scratch based on one game. I just can't believe, like... I guess in the age of Smash, like, it makes sense to put, like, a really obscure character in a game like that. But back then, like, it was just, like, why are you doing this? Well, it goes further, Sean. She was also in Neo Geo Battle Coliseum. And she's a character in that one, too. Sporting her red bikini. Of course. Because that's what separates her from Athena Asamiya.

30:47 Close. And she also shows up as a collectible card in SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters Clash. Which is actually... I thought it was, like, an actual real-life collectible card game. But it's, like, for the Neo Geo system. It's just, like, a... The Neo Geo... Not the Neo Geo system. The handheld system. The pocket. Sure. Yeah. Okay, cool. And then last... No, actually, this isn't even the last thing. Athena has such a history, guys. Anyways, in the final Days of Memories game, which is a dating sim for cell phones in Japan,

31:19 she makes a cameo as a foreign cousin of Athena Asamiya. So, just a cameo. You can't actually date her. You can only date her descendant. Oh, wow. Okay, there are probably going to be some people that wanted to buy the game. Yeah, but you can only date her descendant, Athena Asamiya, in Days of Memories, which is a Japan-only dating sim game.

31:40 And then finally, SNK said, you know what? There's so much more we could have done with Athena, so why don't we just make Athena full throttle? So, in 2006, Athena full throttle is released for the iMode on the FOMA 90X, which... Yeah, what are you saying? These things make sense to me. I have not understood half the words you've said for the past five minutes. This is a console, and that's a mode inside of it, and I guess, like, maybe it's a computer console or something. It's only available in Japan.

32:10 Anyway, it is a sequel to Athena, and I highly recommend checking it out. What? This is 2006. 2006. We finally get the sequel we deserve, in which she opens the door which shouldn't be opened B. I can't believe it. It was in, like, a service closet or something. This is such a deep cut into, like, Athena's... You know, like, it's like, I cannot believe I have this much information to dish out about a game we barely wanted to talk about. Yeah. No. So, with that in mind, let's get into the Essential Games List.

32:50 All right, guys, it's time for the Essential Games List. The thing I just said, like, four seconds before this, because the music's so short. I don't think we need to do any introductions here. Sean, give me a yay or nay. Nay. Joe? I didn't get very far on this game because I was not enjoying it, so I will say it is not essential. Sean, I didn't want to, like, take away any feelings you might want to dish out. I've expressed a lot of feelings already.

33:14 Yeah, I feel like we've said everything we need to. I think the fact that I have more to talk about the history of Athena after this game than we wanted to talk about the actual game itself means that it's not worth playing. Please do not seek this one out. In any regard. Yeah, I just... It's not worth collecting. I'm not sure what it could offer you. Unless you're, like, unless you're an Athena Asamiya super fan and you're, like, it's not enough that she's now becoming a YouTube virtual vlogger. Like, I need her also... I need to see her grandma, too, so... Is that actually a thing? That's a thing. I had to slip that in as well.

33:51 Athena Asamiya, Athena's descendant. I love how many times I will bring that up. She is now going to be a YouTube virtual vlogger. Like, this hasn't happened yet? It's about... It was announced, like, earlier this month. This month being September 2018, guys. So, bear with us. Sorry, we're a bit behind. Yeah. But I'm sure lots of cool stuff are happening in 2026.

34:18 All right. I feel like that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. What do you guys think? I think I can agree with... I can get on board with that. Want to get some pizza? Joe, real fast, though, before we eat pizza. If you were going to, like, seek out more Nostalgia information, is there a way you could do that? I've heard there's a good website that you can check out. You're absolutely right, Joe.

34:36 That is NostalgiaCast.com. www.NostalgiaCast.com. We got a lot of great things on that webpage. We got all of our reviews. We got all of our episodes up. You know what else we got? We just installed an order pizza button on the front page of this website. But it'll only be there today. So if you're listening to this podcast in the present, it's too late. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was actually on today. On today. September 20th, 2018.

35:03 But the good news is there's also articles up there. And hopefully by now there's some different articles. I have a bunch of cool ideas planned. So you guys can see how lazy I am if the story so far section hasn't been built yet. If that's not there, you know I'm really lazy because I've had now several months to put that together for you guys.

35:20 That's like a really cool feature that's just going to continue to build where we're just going to kind of dish out how the NES, like what's the story of the NES by month, month by month, breaking down like what has happened, how we've seen all these different game companies, what they've offered, and how that's kind of influenced their stories, but also the story of the NES. What are like the big takeaways from each month?

35:40 So I think you're going to really appreciate that. If you haven't been to the website yet, I'm checking that out. And that'll update monthly too as we finish the months of the game. So not like real-time months, video game months. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter.

35:56 Peace.志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志志