060 · DEADLY TOWERS

• ARPG
• Co-Developed by Lenar and Tamtex (owned by Irem) for Irem
• Broderbund published in NA (best known for Apple II games and Prince of Persia)
• Lenar involved with video game development, musical instrument production, mechatronics, and CG production for TV shows.
• Deadly Towers was called Evil Bell on Famicom. The Japan Cart had a red LED which lit up when turned on.
• The game was almost called HELLS BELLS in NA, but NOA refused.
• LONGEST PLOT EVER - it keeps going and going
• Basically in a nutshell - Rubas, the Devil of Darkness, is taking over the kingdom with the power of the seven magic bells.
• Non-Linear Gameplay - Does it work?
• At the top of each tower is a boss
• SO MANY SCREENS - The Tenth maze has 235 screens
• ON DIFFICULTY
• Weiss stated: "We did a lot of testing of the game and we didn't actually find it that difficult at Brøderbund, and I think we wanted something more challenging than previously published titles to round out our portfolio.”
• Items - https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Deadly_Towers/Items
• Stupid Dungeon Maps - http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/52
• Alan Weiss Interview - https://tay.kinja.com/talking-deadly-towers-nes-with-broderbunds-producer-a-1496594066
• Deadly Towers Box Art Tweet

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

00:00 You are young Prince Meyer, setting out to defend the ancient kingdom of Wilner. Rubas, King of Devils, has built a castle in the north and is preparing to invade your kingdom. It's Deadly Towers.

00:27 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I am Sean. And I'm Joe. Guys, that was a pretty epic start, right? We're going to have a great time. We've peaked. Surely this game is massive in scale and in towers it's tall. Tall. Tall Towers. But of course we're talking about Deadly Towers and ARPG, right? I think you could- I guess so. You could call it an ARPG, right? It's not like the same kind as like Kingdom Hearts. Right, right. But it's up there. I think it's pretty close. I think it's like the forerunner to Kingdom Hearts. The plot is just as complicated in Deadly Towers as it is in the entire Kingdom Hearts canon.

01:14 Let's stop comparing this to one of my favorite games. Sure, yeah. It's one of my favorite games too, so that's fine. And of course- Why don't you want us to do that? What's wrong? Uh, because it's making my favorite game look so much worse in comparison with how great this game is. You could argue Castle Oblivion was one of the Deadly Towers. Right, it could be. It's funny because this game, stylistically, at very, very first glance, gave me a little bit of a chain of memories Game Boy Advance. That is so ridiculous, Joe. Joe, Joe, I have to- I can't. I can't. We're not going to start there. It's the top-down view at an angle. I totally get where you're coming from, but I don't want to make any more comparisons.

01:52 Okay, so Deadly Towers, ARPG, co-developed by Lenar and Tamtex, two companies you've never heard me say on this show before. They sound like tax companies. Yeah, right? They don't sound like they make video games, but I have a theory on all this later. Never mind. So, Lenar, they were involved with video game development, musical instrument production, mechatronics, which I can't tell if mechatronics is different than like- Megatron? Well, no, or just like the things that you saw at like Chuck E. Cheese, like the animatronics.

02:24 Are mechatronics different? Maybe they're more like, you know, farm equipment. Yeah, okay, that falls just in line with musical instrument production and video game development. They also did CG production for TV shows. So, they're extinct now, by the way. They don't exist anymore. Jack of all trades. And then Tamtex is just like a fun name for another company known as Irem.

02:46 Oh. Yeah, remember from Kung Fu? Yeah, they tricked us. Wow, they took on a pseudonym for this. Yes, they took on a pseudonym for this, or that was just like another company that they kind of like was part of them, and then eventually Tamtex just became like Irem's other headquarters. I wonder if after like the final product, they're like, you know what, just call us something else for this one. Alan Smithy.

03:07 And Broderbund. Does that sound familiar? It rings a bell. Okay, Broderbund published this in North America for the NES, and they're best known for a ton of Apple II games, and also The Prince of Persia, the original one, not the Ubisoft trilogy, but the original one, which I actually have played before, and I think it's great.

03:28 Yeah, it's pretty cool. Cool. And I don't think it comes to NES. It definitely comes to Super Nintendo. That's where I made it. I thought it came, I remember playing it once like offhand, I thought it was on NES. It might be one of those that came out for both, you know? You know how like GTA V, right? Came out for like PS3 and then again for PS4? It might be one of those where it was like, oh, finally, next gen Prince of Persia. I think I played it as like a mini game in like the remake. Got it. So, Deadly Towers was called Evil Bell on Famicom.

04:00 Oh, wait. And then I know the other fun fact about the name. What's the other fun fact? For the North American release, they wanted to call it Hell's Bells. Yeah, the ACDC song. Yeah. And ACDC sued them and said, no, no, no, that's not what happened. Nintendo of America would never allow the name Hell in any of their titles. A little too religious and mean. Since we're talking about fun facts with the titles, though, true to the Evil Bell name,

04:28 at the top of the cart on the Famicom cart, there is a red LED which lit up when you turned on the game. Really? They added like a red LED to the top so this way when you plug it in and turn on your Famicom, the red LED lights up. It could be like the top of the tower lighting up. Who knows? Or just like a demon like watching you. It could have been scary if this game was competent in any way. Do we feel like, you know, because we haven't really talked about this at all on the show, but like Hell's Bells being like nixed. Do we feel like that's an overstep on Nintendo of America?

05:02 Are they doing the right thing? And like, let's look at it like from back then. I'm not like now. This falls in line with what like video game censorship. I mean, like the ESRB wasn't around yet, was it? They weren't. No, that's going to come be a whole thing after Night Trap. Yeah. So this is them, you know, being the goody two shoes that Nintendo usually is. Right. And I think like, yeah, you know, you're marketing this console as like a, the whole family can play. So I don't think you want like a game where like hell's in the title. Like a bunch of moms get upset.

05:32 Whether it's good or bad, it's going to evoke like other, like other, the thought, like other things of like. You're going to start thinking about the devil. And also just like music. And like, it's just that you're thinking of it's something as what it's not. I also think like, you know, the worst case scenario is like Deadly Towers. You know, like that's not a bad name for a game if we're being honest. Like I heard Deadly Towers and I was like, oh, this could be a fun game. I wasn't expecting an ARPG, but.

05:55 No, I was like just looking at it and reading the description. I thought that I was in for a treat. Like it sounds like on paper, like a cool little post Zelda adventure. Yep. And this is definitely post Zelda. This game came out like, you know, pretty much immediately after. And I don't know if they would have had much time, but I feel like you can kind of see some things that they tried to be like, oh, Zelda, let's do what Zelda did. And they just kind of missed the mark. Yeah. And the games did both come out in Japan too in 86.

06:26 So I wonder, you know, how much they saw each other. They might not have. Maybe not. I think. And I think Deadly Towers too is more CRPG. Like, you know, the computer RPG style thing. A little bit. Yeah. I'm not saying like it went all the way. Cause again, like to be a CRPG, you have to, you know, you mostly have to be a point and click with mouse kind of style game too.

06:47 So there's no like inventory management really or anything like that. But it's closer to that than Zelda. Yes, exactly. I think, I think I argued this on the Zelda show, but I really think like Zelda is its own genre. And I know that that caused some discussion, but that's where I'm going to stay with. I'm going to stay with Zelda being its own genre. In the same way that like we are closer to Beijing than we are to like Delhi,

07:13 you know, very interesting. Very far away. Huh? I didn't know that. And you know, Cleopatra is closer to us than the building of the pyramids. Wow. Yeah. That's, that's true too. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. Okay. Back to Deadly Towers. So the game starts up and then like, if you don't press the start button and immediately enter the game, you are met with like the world's longest story for an NES game. Yeah. Like it's a couple of pages. It just kept going and going and, and it doesn't like go slow either. It doesn't crawl. It doesn't really give you time to read everything.

07:45 If you don't, if you don't start like as soon as it appears, your chances are, it's like, you know, like in star Wars, right? When the title screen comes up and then they give you the scroll, everybody can read the scroll. You know, there's nobody who was like, Oh wait, wait, wait. The words are fleeting. Like this one. Okay. There were times where I couldn't read this. How old were you? You know, eight. Yeah, you're fine. Okay. You're fine. And that one went slow. Now imagine being an eight year old kid and you've got this thing going at light speed, but it's also like, you know, essentially like fan fiction for this world.

08:17 It just keeps, you know, it's like, they didn't really like fiction. Cause they gave so much detail and so much extra thought. And if I have to just like boil down what the plot is for the people listening who haven't played this game, I think in a nutshell, it's just that this rubas guy, I don't know if that's how you actually say it, but it's R U B A S rubas. R U B A S the devil of darkness is basically taken over the kingdom with the power of seven magic bells. Now I said that pretty fast.

08:44 I don't think that we needed like, you know, it took me four or five minutes to get through the whole plot that they programmed in there. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of like, you know, you're down by the river and then like your dad, like is an apparition or something. He's like, Hey, yo,

09:01 uh, this guy's coming. And he's going to hurt us, uh, make it stop. And then, then you go up and do the thing. And then you got to have that section. You, you, you skip that. So the, yeah, the seven magic bells of course are at each of the towers. There's, there's the bell at the top and you got to kind of take down the towers. And, uh, so you got to work your way through each tower.

09:23 There's collectibles along the way. There's, um, there's like money to be had. It's a looter, looter, letter, Okay, great. There's, there's definitely currency. To be exchanged for goods in this game. And then at the very top of each tower, there is a boss. And once you take down all seven, you'll be able to fight, um, rubos and take back the kingdom. However, good. Like, uh, sounds like a pretty good, like structure. Yeah. It sounds like a great structure. However, you start the game and then immediately, this is what I, I talked to Joe briefly about this. And I said, if I have to like, think about how like the problems with this, game and like what it is, it's like, if, if two people just got together,

10:07 bounced amazing ideas for a video game off of each other, wrote them all down, and then never tested the game that they created. Yeah. It feels like it's like a big pie in the sky wishlist. And they were just like, yeah, put it all in there. And they didn't decide like, almost like maybe they didn't even talk about each other's ideas. Yeah. They both put their ideas in there and they just clasped each other. And they didn't like, you design all the enemies. I'll put them all in the game. Everywhere, everywhere in the game. Sean thoughts.

10:35 I mean, it's a tangent. Like, so I think like there, there should be a time that we talk about this, but like, it's got terrible design in, in every regard. There's no pacing in this game. Yeah. No, from the very beginning, you're just kind of like thrown into a world where it's, it's immediately possible to get lost. Like you can just walk into the tower, go to rooms and then be like, okay, wait, but which way did I go? Like, here's a, uh, here's an example of the scale of this game. Like, okay, there's seven towers and the towers themselves are, uh, pretty, you know, they are designed by people.

11:13 Um, like there are landmarks in, in a way, like in a way. Yeah. It's not that like, oh, let's go to that room with that thing. It's like, oh, let's go to the room with that shape. But if you end up in like the underworld or something, uh, you get thrown into this weird, like, like every room is a box and it's a maze. Essentially. It's amazing. And it's, there are like 300 rooms total. I think the 10th maze has 235 screens, the 10th maze on its own. And you have to like, the game expects you to make, uh, like a grid map of this and like how you're supposed to know where you are in even like the grid that you created. I don't understand because there's nothing there.

11:54 Yeah. So that's like that. To me, that feels like they were like, let's try and make, let's, oh, they did these dungeons in Zelda. Let's just make that with no rhyme or reason. And no, like the game was about scaling towers. Now I'm in a maze. Like, I didn't know I was getting into a maze. So then once I go a few screens in, I'm like, wait, I would get out of here. Like, where am I? I don't even know like which direction to go.

12:16 Maybe this is just a game where they're just trying to tell you that like, Rubas will, will succeed. You know, like you can try all you want, but we've already decided who the winner is here. I, I have shown the guys this, but I'll link it in the show notes because it's worth looking at this. These, um, these maps that you have to make are just insane.

12:38 No, they're, they look like, like you created an expanded chessboard, but like, I don't really know how to explain it. It's, it's just a big mess. Sean, I'm going to cut you off right there actually, because Sam has just entered the room. how's it going everyone? Sam, uh, welcome to the show. Thank you. you were just, have you played this game before? I have played this game. Yep. And, uh, so, so can you just give me first impressions since, we kind of talked a little bit about the game? Uh, first impressions. Well, I left it on the, the title screen for a little while. So I saw that book that plays, uh, a little while,

13:12 just three seconds. Yeah. And it just, I started reading it. Okay. And it just kept going. I'm like, all right. And I just, it didn't stop. And I'm just reading this thing. Oh man, they really like thought about this a lot. It never stops.

13:25 Yeah. I read the whole, I read the whole thing and I still don't really understand what the premise is. Yeah. Oh, one thing I feel like I didn't need to know all that. Things were back on the premise thing though. I think it is interesting that like, they've kind of built like some backstory and stuff too, for like a potential sequel. And it's just like, that never happened yet. Yet. And we'll explain why. And so then, you know, I read all that. I'm like, all right. And then I see that there's the first thing you do in the game is you enter your name. And I'm thinking, Oh, this is serious. This is like, you know, this is going to be a long thing. This isn't like, you know,

13:59 and then it starts me off on the screen and I look at my guy's face and I'm like, uh, Oh, consider the, the box art. Like the box art shows like a pretty bad-ass dude. It's amazing. The box art really makes you think that you're about to play something kind of like, um, Conan the barbarian or something, you know, it's like, you really feel like you're going out there. Get in the game. It's basically just like a smiley face. They put like an eight year old pale kid into a knight's costume. I know they had like limitations and stuff, but I mean, even if you just had less detail, it would look better. Just make it all black. And this is consistent though, too, across everything in the game.

14:39 Snakes. They're like worms. Yeah. Well, even like, it's also like blue circles. Yeah. There's, there's some enemies that I think they just were like, they, they brought them into Microsoft paint and use the, the bucket tool.

14:52 Yeah. Let's just fill it in and have no, like they're just solid colors. And this is sort of what I meant by like in all around has bad design because I mean, we can go into the things that like require more finesse and care, like, you know, level design, but even like enemy designs, like literally is just a blue circle. You fight like a blue puddle and a blue circle. They're pretty tough for a circle.

15:15 They take a lot of things take a ton of hits in this game too. It's not like, I thought like, Oh, okay. Like two to three hits. It's like, no, can I tell you something that really bugged me about this? Uh, so this made me really appreciate games like Zelda way more where your characters just constantly in the center of the screen because you walk. And when you're walking towards a new, towards a new area,

15:36 you're like three quarters of the way to, let's say you're moving right. You're three quarters of the way to the right of the screen. You can't see shit in front of you. You can't see anything in front of you. So then when it comes, you have to like react really quickly instead of, you know, having just a little bit more. And they just litter the screen with enemies. And it's just like, they just smorgasys like dump them out. A salad full of every enemy that they have. Enemy salad. Yeah. A lot of, um, creatures wriggling eerily. Animalized men. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of animalized men in here. Yeah. Uh, there's a lot of animalized men in here. There's a lot of animalized men in here.

16:57 And so guys, like you, you go into the first tower, right? And like, let's be honest, who cared, who cared enough after like a little bit of gameplay to be like, I'm going to figure out what I'm supposed to do. No, not at all. I cared a little bit. I finished the first tower. The first tower. Okay. So what were your deduction skills? Uh, well, in what, like to get to the top of the tower, like, you know, cause there's doors everywhere. I mean, there's a couple of things that just trip me up. Like there's some parts where it's just like, Oh, this is a hidden area. Yeah. But it's just like you walk into an area that you walk into a certain like pixel and you get transferred into some alternate realm that it's like that.

17:35 Like what we talked about the, the grid maze thing. I actually didn't go to the grid maze, but I saw someone do a speed run of it. And so I saw that. And I'm happy. I did a speed run of the game. You can skip approximately 90% of the dungeons in the game. Like, and that's not even like through glitches. No, that's just like, if you know the path, you 90% of this game can be completely ignored. That's including like the 300 screens and everything.

18:02 Yeah. I know it's, it's definitely like, I'm kind of making it sound larger than it is. But if you think about it, it's just like, think about how much they designed of this game that you, that is just a waste of your time as a player. It's literally just fodder to get you lost. Like one thing, you know, the,

18:16 not the heart containers, but like kind of like the heart containers and it doesn't actually increase your health. It just boosts your maximum health that you can have. Yeah. But there's like nowhere where you can pick up health except for like defeating enemies sometimes.

18:28 Yeah. Well, I found defeating enemies sometimes like rarely gave me. Yeah. Hardly ever. So I keep getting these things and they show up everywhere and I'm like, Oh, thanks. That's great. Rewards in this game are few and far between. There's very little like rewards in this game. I think that's another big difference from Zelda is like with Zelda, you're, you're kind of like given the idea of like, this game is about collecting items. I never, I never felt like I had accomplished anything. Um, and a part of that is just because it doesn't feel good to play. Well, one thing about the combat in this game, um, is that you sort of have this, this basic attack, which is very similar to like when you have full health in Zelda,

19:08 uh, where you shoot, like you, you shoot your sword. I don't know why that was like, that was an idea. That was an idea in these early adventure games. Why not just have them shoot arrows? Yeah. Something that made more sense if it's, if it's going to be a range attack, but like, yeah, you throw your sword. Yeah. The thing about the sword and like anybody that's talked about this game has touched upon this is that,

19:27 uh, you don't get your sword back until it like exits the screen or it hits the enemy and your sword moves pretty slowly. So if you're on one side of the room, you have to wait until it crosses the entire screen. And if you are about to get attacked by an enemy, you're shut out of luck because you have, you are defenseless. And, and hit detection isn't exactly like perfect in this game. Oh no. Apparently the only place that you can get hit, which I guess is nice is your feet,

19:54 which makes sense though. Because if you think about it, another weird part of this that Sam kind of touched upon with is like, you're never in the full center of the screen is like when you're moving around because you have the eight directions thing, like enemies, if they could, if they could attack your head, you'd be like in danger all the time. You would just, you know, because the eight, the eight way movement thing is like one of those things that I thought I would appreciate more because like Zelda doesn't have it. of that, right? No, but it never becomes useful.

20:23 It's actually kind of a hindrance. I think I would say the only time it's useful is the boss fight. Okay, sure. I can see that. The one that, the one that flies above you and the centipede.

20:32 No, no, something cool, King cool or something, something like that. Okay. You know them by name. I only know them by look. The boss of the first tower. Yeah. It's not that like bat looking thing almost. That's like flying above you. No, it's like a big polar. It's like the polar bear guy. Oh, there's a polar bear. Wow. I think it's a polar bear.

20:50 We play this game. We promise. No, I mean, I played this game, but I'm, if I'm being honest, like this is one of the worst games we've played yet. And I just, I immediately felt like lost the moment I went into those towers and I didn't really have an urge to keep going because like it's defeating to feel that kind of lost. And I will say too, initially turning it on, like the, the sort of top down at an angle style and like just the look of the actual environment. I was like, oh, this could be cool. And like that, that feeling evaporated, like as soon as I started like moving around and the enemies were, yeah, there's no like intuitive way to avoid the enemies.

21:23 You know, like Sean was saying, when you, when you're close to an enemy, your, your sword disappears quickly. So you can just rapid fire your sword at them as fast. And if you miss one time, you have to wait like to wait like five seconds to get another weapon. The game sells a lot of ideas and I'll, and I'll give them some things like, you know, um,

21:41 there's, there's a lot of different layouts for the towers too. Like there, you know, it was like, I don't know if I'm going to praise this really, but there's like sections with ladders that you climb down. There's stairs. You climb up color palettes change. Like great, you know, glad that we have that stuff, but the actual like gameplay loop is just me getting lost. So I don't think that's fun. You know, like the other thing that I guess I'll praise them for is like, I hate when games like,

22:10 like the, Oh, it'll be a song that I like. It'll, they'll be playing a song that I like and they never like show me the beginning of that song again. Cause I really liked the beginning of a lot of songs. So every time you went to a new room, the game will be like, okay, no, I know that you want to hear the beginning of the song again. So it'll restart the song.

22:29 It restarts. Every single, every single time you change a room, the song just restarts. But luckily you only have to rechange the room every three seconds. So every three seconds, the music stops. So the same song can start again. It's excellent. I do like the touch of the last note lingering. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I do know what you're talking about. No, no, no. It almost like, and it does kind of like not play anything for a second before it comes back in too. So it kind of like takes it away. I did like that. I'm just kidding. You can have it back. I haven't seen that anywhere else before. No, I think that's something that they learned pretty quickly. I have a question.

23:09 Sorry, but is there, is it a challenge in any way to, to just have the music playing when you're switching rooms? Like no other game is. I mean, it's gotta be like that. They have to choose one way or the other. Like, I don't think it was like, if you, if you don't program it, I can't be, I can't imagine it being a memory issue either. It must have been programmed so that it just continues to restart. Yeah. I don't know. Sorry, you have a question. I had a question. Did any of you guys use items? Yeah, I didn't use any items. Okay. But like, I'm just bragging again.

23:43 I, I bought an item. I bought like the, because buying things is hard too. It's expensive. I bought the flame thing and then I like, wasn't sure what to do. I wasn't sure if I had to like equip it or something. And so I used it and then it went away and I'm like, oh, I guess I used it. And I have no idea what it was for. Well, there's, the game does offer like tons of items. There's, there's like offensive stuff, defensive stuff. And then there's just like,

24:08 I guess like stuff that buffs stats, like crystals and scrolls and necklaces and stuff. But like, I don't think that like, you know, so there's like, there's different swords and that's cool. Right? Like Zelda had different swords, but the, my, my overall complaint for this game, man, I'm sorry that I just keep going back to it, but it's like, if, if I can't find that stuff, like in an accessible, like fun puzzle way, it's not fun to just guess like,

24:34 Hmm, it's a random, maybe this time I'll go right. And maybe this time I'll go left. You know, it's like with Zelda, there was a constant reference point that you could get back to where it wasn't like, like I would go six screens forward. And then I'd be like, where am I? Yeah. Where am I? And how do I get back? If I wanted to, like, it's too large to find any of this stuff. You are also completely underpowered at the beginning of the game. Like in order to, because every, I think it's like every two or three towers,

25:07 um, the game actually ramps up in difficulty. Like you have more enemies and they're stronger enemies. Um, if you don't find the armors, um, you, you will die in like two hits from like, even just like a wasp, like, like flying around and you have to search all these random places. And even like in the underworld or something, just to get the stuff to make the game playable. And I just don't know if there's ever been a game that we've played so far that has such a hard coded,

25:39 steep difficulty curve. Yeah. Just like the numbers of it. It's such a, it's such a difficult game and it's, but it's not unbeatable. It's not, it's not that kind of difficult. It's difficult to have like the will to push through it. You know what? I, one thing that I thought was actually one of the easiest parts, that I wasn't thinking it would be really easy at all. Okay. Like every boss fight.

26:03 Cause I feel like for the, the, the minor bosses, you can just stand right next to them and stab them a bunch because you're, they get stunned and then you just have another sword. I was surprised by the stun thing. Yeah. I thought that was a weird design choice because that, that's like, honestly, just get close and go to town. It probably wasn't a choice. It was probably just like, Oh, that's, I guess that's how the game works. Yeah. So wait, but you, you battled a few bosses. Can you talk more about the bosses for us? So I think I faced, you don't have to give names or anything like that. Describe them. I don't really remember him to be honest. There was one that looked like Dracula.

26:40 Um, just straight up Dracula. It looked like Dracula to me. I'm not a bat, but like, no, like a vampire. Um, and he said, I am Dracula. How are you, Sam? And it was weird. No, I, no, I don't know. He just looked like Dracula. Uh, but then there was this one boss and maybe he wasn't a polar bear. Cause I tried to look a picture, look up a picture of him. And it's like the boss for the first tower, uh, who just launches tons of fireballs at you. Um, even though he's cold. I don't know. King cold. That's who I was thinking of. I'm not sure if it's king cold or something. I don't know why I can call him a bat. He's not really a bat, but he like, yeah. He's like, he's like,

27:17 he's got like a little, he's got like a little ball that follows him around. Yeah. The guy is, great burn is the first boss. Great burn. Uh, maybe if I say great burn or something. Yeah. It's great burn. Is there a cold one? Then there's beat plant, wheeler, centipede, great wing, death bear, and cold killer. Cold killer. Tower G. Oh, that was all the way to tower G. I guess so. I guess I got lost in the underground part. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. yeah. So that's the one I beat, I guess. Yeah. Uh,

27:50 oh yeah. And he does kind of look like Dracula, Dracula and don't even him. That's not even the one. He wasn't the one. Dracula and don't even coming together. There's one thing at pictures. There's a minor boss that like really looks like Dracula though. Okay. It's not death bear. Anyway, so what was that guy's name?

28:05 Uh, that guy was cold killer. Cold killer. Yeah. So for the big cold killer, I stayed all the way on the left side of the screen and just threw swords diagonally. And I found out that his fireballs will never reach me over there. And it just took a very long time, but eventually, I didn't have to, I mean, I didn't have to deal with the fireballs at all. Got it. Okay. I think you were referring to great wing as the Dracula looking thing. Cause it's, it's kind of like a bat.

28:30 Like I can't really, we're putting way too much thought into the, it's just funny how we like, now I'm starting to think if I was thinking of great wing, like it's just like how these bosses are so like not memorable.

28:41 They don't have like a cool way to beat them. They're just like have different, um, well, cause then you get Wheeler, right? And it's like, what do you think Wheeler is? Take a guess. A big wheel. No, it's someone who probably moves wheels. Joe? Wheeler. I don't know. Wheeler. The guy on a motorcycle. Yeah. It's another bat. As far as I can tell, this thing is just another bat. But his name is Wheeler.

29:04 So that's, that's boss battles. And I think like one thing that's very funny is that the final thing in the game, like it all leads up to Rubas, right? Like, yeah, you know, and so you go to, you go to try and like, you know, I'm going to challenge Rubas. Now I've defeated all the seven towers. You enter the Rubas gate. And then, uh, you got to have to do like, you got to go through one final pathway to collect, uh, the splendor, which I think is the final sword. And then you go through like a boss rush thing where you just do three boss fights. The first one is a dragon. That's very much like the centipede boss. Pretty easy. Then the next boss fight is two demon lime, two demon lions,

29:46 uh, that are just like, they don't really, I saw these in a speed run. They're pretty cool looking. And then Rubas shows up and he's like this frail old man wearing like a black hoodie,

29:59 you know? And he's just like, yeah, he's like this big. Like, it's like, what were they thinking with Rubas? Like they had such big bat enemies. It was a dead bear. It should have been another big bat.

30:12 Rubas. Have you guys seen the, uh, the final cut scene of the game? Yeah. Like when you're next to the king. Yeah. He's like, he's like, you just, every now and then you guy just like looks at him and smiles. And he like goes back to the facing forward and being stoic. And then he'll like look at the king again and smile. He knows one day he'll be king. You, you play as the prince. Yeah. So that, that kind of makes sense.

30:40 Um, yeah, I, I don't know what they were thinking with Rubas here though. Like they built them up to be this big, scary thing that you're like, you know, like think about it. There's another Zelda parallel here, but when you get to the Ganon fight at the end, it's this giant pig wizard. Yeah. Like that's intense. Like any, any teleports like, wow. And then you get to Rubas. What is Rubas like in the fight?

31:03 Um, I didn't see him. He just sort of walks around and you shoot him with your sword. He's actually just minding his own business and you're the attacker. Like, well, he has like, he has like the dragon again, but like it's the dragon's head, like, but like eight of them and they just kind of like float around the screen and they're very hard to, to dodge and stuff like that. But you just have to attack Rubas. And if you have that blue necklace, you can activate that and then you'll be invincible for a while. So pretty much just save it for the Rubas fight. I didn't even know it was in the game.

31:32 Yeah. I was going to say that, um, since Sam brought up the, the item thing, I think we should talk about that. Like just how cool some of the items in the game were, even if we didn't use them because you were, or have a chance to use it. I don't know. Cause you were talking Sam about, you had a fire one. I had some kind of flame fire thing. Yeah. There's a fire magic one. Uh, that will illuminate the door for, um, the, the dungeon that leads to the exit. So this way, you know, like which door is the, this way, you know, which door in the dungeon is the exit door to exit the dungeon. Oh, I don't know about the dungeon. You know, the mazes,

32:10 the maze. Oh, right. I didn't go there. Oh, okay. Yeah. So if you need, yeah, that's like a really helpful thing. Uh, then there's a cup that will, uh, refill your wallet with 250 Lutter or Lutter or Mudder. That's a pretty good cup. You sell the cup. That's a great cup. But then also you might've accidentally have been sold the evil cup, which drains your wallet of all your money. That's a not good cup. Yeah. And I think that kind of reminds me of like a kid Icarus item. You know, we had things like that with like clever items, like the credit card and stuff where you just like, I'm gonna pay for all this now and then I'll pay it back later.

32:45 Except it doesn't have any of the, the same, like, you know, uh, value strategically. Right. Or yeah, it doesn't have like, like it doesn't have the charm to the kid Icarus thing. Yeah. Uh, and then the swords, you have the short sword, the normal sword. Okay. This again, I need to, I need to cut you off there, but like another thing about how you're underpowered, the game starts you off with a, with a sword that does one like piece of health. When the things you're fighting have like 50 health.

33:13 Like that, that's, that's one of the, yeah, it takes, we haven't really talked about that, but it does take like forever to defeat enemies. Yeah. Any of them. There are some enemies that I convinced myself to are just invincible for the time being. Like, it's like, I could fight them, but I'm better off just going around them. Yeah. This game could just be a game where, you know, cause if you watch the speed run, it is just a guy who's like, Oh, I gotta take down the seven tower. Like, Oh, here we go. They're not, they're not high on this game in the speed run either. Yeah. But I'm saying like,

33:42 the character himself, the prince is just like walking through the, in the speed runs. He's just like running through these towers being like, everybody stay out of my way. I'm just trying to shut down the lights. Like, well, he also like burn, isn't he like burning the towers down? Yeah. The towers have to go down completely. It's not just like clicking a switch. He's actually destroying the towers. Could have had some better, you know, graphics. So Alan Weiss,

34:05 um, from Broderbund who published it in North America. Uh, he doesn't think it's all that difficult. He actually says, uh, we did a lot of testing on the game and we didn't actually find it that difficult at Broderbund. And I think we wanted something more challenging than previously published titles to round out our portfolio.

34:23 What a bull thing to say, you know, like he didn't play this game. No, no. And also like we, Oh, we wanted to add a challenging game to our portfolio. Like, no, you want to game. Like, yeah. What's he saying? Yeah. Add an ARPG to your portfolio. That makes sense. Right. But like we wanted to, we wanted to add a game that people were like, Oh, this is difficult. Like people would be impressed by our, I'm confused though. You said, first he says that it's easy. And then he says he wanted to make a difficult game. Is he talking about deadly towers?

34:50 he's saying, yes, he's saying that, uh, he's not saying that deadly towers is difficult. He's saying it was challenging. He's saying that there's a difference that he didn't find it. He didn't find it that difficult to like get around in the game and, and fight and do things around the guy who worked on the game around. Alan is still around. You're saying that the guy who worked on the game thought the game was easier than people who didn't,

35:14 didn't even work on the game though. He was attached to the game. Yeah. Uh, I'm trying to find some information for you about Alan. I'm calling it. I guess you want to stall for a second. Let's call Alan. Let's, let's phone him in.

35:29 Hello, Alan? No, stop. We didn't get him. Uh, he has his most recent credit was, uh, Lego alpha team where he was the producer. That was in 2000. So he hasn't done much. Yeah. But if we reached out to him and get back to us. Yeah. Sure. Uh, he also was quality assurance for playmaker football. 1991. Cool. Great. Hmm. All right, guys, any stray thoughts?

35:55 Uh, I feel like, uh, Joe, I really wanted to talk more about your, your graphics thing. You know, like your complaint there with the graphics. Cause I feel like we didn't, we didn't really beat down on the graphics enough.

36:09 And it's not like, look, graphics on the NES, right? Like who cares? It's, it's not, it wasn't a matter of like, Oh, the capability of it. It was a matter of like, it felt like they were like, all right, we have all these enemies. We, we finished like, I don't know, making the skins for these ones. And like, let's just throw the rest in there. Like as their shapes, like it's just the shape of the enemy. One solid color. And some, some things in the game aren't detailed. And some of those things actually kind of look, there are two solid colored blue things.

36:38 Yeah. There's like little sluggy thing. Slinkies, right? No, I saw them as puddles, but yeah, I see those too. Those are different. Oh, that's what I was talking about. there's like, uh, one of the elbow, elbow macaroni noodles. Yeah. Like kind of move a little like slinkies, but they're just solid blue. Yes. There's those guys.

36:57 Yeah. And they're the same shade of blue as the other blue. Yeah. You know, a bead, something different. Yeah. Well, that goes back to Joe's film, uh, paint bucket. And now that I think about the color, the color is almost like, you know, like in like early, like PCs, there was that blue background screen. Like that's the color. It's almost like the default, like, yeah. And the thing is plain primary blue.

37:21 Yeah. Some of the art isn't bad though. Like I think the backgrounds are all pretty good. I think that, you know, like your armor besides your, you know, your character besides the face looks cool. It looks fine. That's why turning it on, I was like, this game looks, looks like night, like the art is polished. So I was like, Oh, this might be good. Backgrounds of karate chant. Right. The sunset and the mountain. Yeah. And then I think about a really great game where like Castlevania, where like the backgrounds were awesome and the sprite work was awesome. And the game was good. Yeah. Man, that's an essential game. Speaking of essential games, why don't we jump into the essential games list?

38:00 All right. It's time for the essential games list. Sam, I might keep that version in just, just for this one. You are the creator of that song. Yeah. Sam did make, and he made the title track to the nostalgia music. So I feel like I say that every like 20 episodes, but people need to know Sam, Sam's done some stuff.

38:19 Uh, okay. We forgot that we were going to unfortunately vote about this game. Oh, okay. So Sean, I know you were leaning, you know, essential, but after our conversation, how do you feel now? I don't like you trying to, uh, swing my vote right there. Um, because if I was going to vote essential, I still would. Um, but you know, I, we, we really were not able to stay on track during any of this episode. Like we, we usually have a pretty good, um,

38:48 separation. I didn't want to focus on one thing for too long. No, no, no. I'm not, I'm not criticizing you, Mike. I'm just talking about like how the, the content of this game does not allow for that. Like there are too many things that will remind me of how bad another feature was. Like if we talk about, uh, a bad enemy design that I'm going to complain about the, also the bad game design and how you just keep falling off ledges. And I didn't even mention even walk straight, can't even fucking walk straight. And what I'm saying is there is nothing redeemable about this game. I, I know that you like some of the backgrounds, but that's it. Like I really think some, put that on the back of the box as a quote. Great backgrounds.

39:33 I, this game doesn't have any, yeah, it doesn't, okay. I'm just good. No, no, it's not. The underground song is pretty good. It's a great underground. I want to hear the beginning of it again. No, not that one. Um, yeah, I want to hear it again from the very beginning. No, every time we move from, from moon to room, it's like, okay, let's take it from the top. Let's take it from the top.

39:55 I actually would love to have that soundtrack like on, um, on my iPhone. So this way, as I'm like walking around the city, as I like enter the subway, it starts again. And then as I exit the subway, it starts again. I go into work. I didn't mention this before, but while we're on it, um, while I was watching this speed run, I read the comments and everyone was like, I, I muted the video just like I do when I play this game or something. Cause everyone apparently hates the music. I muted it after a while too. Yeah. I did not mute it. I listened. I want to take in the full suffering.

40:29 I plugged it into speakers and let my roommates listen to, no, I didn't do that. All right. Who else has, Joe, please vote. I have a thought. So we, we sort of said this earlier, but I think this is like the best way to describe it is that it really feels like there's a lot of, if you deconstruct every element to like the idea that was probably pitched, it's like, Oh, there's a bunch of like ideas that are, that can be cool. And just absolutely none of them work the way that like, that you would want them to. Like they, they just, they don't really come through at all. It doesn't, none of it's fun. And they don't, they don't work together with each other. Um, and I think that our,

41:07 the scattered, uh, nature of this episode perfectly parallels, just like the scattered design and enemy smorgasbord. This game did not have a design doc. No. There was never a moment where they said like, let's sit down and think of a cohesive thing for this game. Right. So needless to say, not essential. Like, uh, one real quick thing though. Uh, I feel like that Joe, if you went into teaching,

41:33 like if you were an English teacher, right. I have a feeling that like that people would write their creative essays or like their personal essays or something. And it would be, it would be dog shit. But at the end you would be like, I see what you were trying to do. Uh, none of it worked. None of it worked. F. Yeah. I like to, I would, I would like to be that kind of teacher that gives like a split second of hope. And then be like, but,

41:59 not essential essay, not an essential essay. Uh, Sam, you want to vote? Uh, yeah, we're not. Um, it still could be an essential game. Yeah, that's true. I don't know what you're thinking. It's not dead yet. Yeah. Well, people will be very angry. We already have complaints about slalom.

42:21 Hey, I like slalom, but we're not talking about slalom. we'll talk about that later. We're talking about this game. deadly talons. I forgot, I forgot the name of it. Well, it was almost Hell's Bells. I understand. right. So, this, I mean, we talked about it a lot. It's just, pretty much every aspect of it is flawed in some regard. You know, the art is like, okay, but you guys got a weird face. The movement, like, you stay on one side of the screen.

42:48 You know, the combat sucks. The enemies suck. The items pretty much all suck, and they're not really, like, they're hard to get. The health system is not good. The money system is not good. It has a dumb name. It has a dumb name, but there's so much stuff, though. You know, there's so much of it that's there, which is why this is going at the top of the jank folder. Nice. Tons of content, none of it delivers.

43:14 it's got to be the jankiest game. There's so much jank. Yeah, there's so much of it that it gives the illusion of a cohesive piece, because it's all, all the jank is, like, working independently of one another. I love this. But, in a way, that makes it cohesive, because it has a theme. It has an emergent jankness to it. The theme, the theme is that none of it works. But there's so much of none of it that works.

43:38 You're turning me around, in my opinion. Anyway, I think that this is a play it in my book, because I feel like people should experience this game. The frustration. And, like, just, like, try and do anything. Yeah, it's like you can't know what good is without knowing what evil is. Like, you have to play this game and know what a good game is. You gotta, like, play this, and then play Zelda, and you'll be like, oh, man. Yeah, this is on a lot of people's worst game for NES list, actually. Like, number one.

44:05 Really? Yeah. As much as we're talking about it, I don't think it's, I don't think it's worse. What is better than this game? Well, I think it's kind of going on to what I was, I think Stack Up is worse than this game. I think that what I was, it's what I was going into, though, because there's so much, I think that it's like an expectations thing, because there's so much stuff in this game. You know, you've got, like, all these bosses, you've got all these enemies, you've got all these collectibles, you've got everything. I bubbled it through the roof. And it's all bad, and that's just a shame. Uh, also, it's not essential. Yeah.

44:34 I'm going to echo something that, uh, Sam was kind of saying, where it's like, when I first, like, started this game, even just the title alone kind of got me, like, you know, rubbing my fingers together, and I was like, ooh, what do we have in store? And then, like, I started it up, that awesome story comes on, because, like, if you don't press the start button within, like, five seconds, it just pops up, so I was like, oh, might as well read the story, and I'm like, okay, I'm having trouble following along, but I think I get it. Like, this seems pretty intense. Like, this is going to be a very story-based game. And then I just got, like, right into it, and I'm like, okay, like, don't panic yet.

45:07 Something's got to give. And, fast forward 20 minutes later, I texted the group, what the heck is Deadly Towers? And, like, I'm so disappointed in this game, so of course it's not essential. And it's not essential for me, it's not essential for any of the other people here. If you think this game is essential, I'd love for you to write into us. No one's going to write that. Yeah, but, well, okay, yeah, definitely not essential. I mean, you've got Red Dead 2 out right now. Like, you'd much rather play like that. That old, ancient game. Yeah, even, even things like, okay, here's the thing. Even things like Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Rygar,

45:48 Kid Icarus, like, those games came out this same exact year. You better believe I'm not putting this on the list. Yeah. All right. Wow. That's, uh, that's it, guys. Uh, we were, we did it. We're through. Well, it's over. Where else would you go if you wanted more of this? Oh, uh, I think you could play. No. Nah, I'm just kidding. Uh, you could play, what's it called? Uh, there's a game.

46:15 Oh, wait, no. Yeah, I'm, I'm confused too because I think you're misunderstanding where Mike's going with this. Joe, where would you go if you wanted more of this show? www.nostalgiacast.com. this show. I thought you wanted more of this game. No, I don't, nobody wants more of this. I don't even want this much of this game. Yeah, yeah. If you want to wash out the taste of this game with some good games, if you go to www.nostalgiacast.com, I guarantee you, we will have some great stuff on there for you to check out. Uh, you ever wonder what Sean's thoughts are? In text form? Well, he's written them for every game so far. So definitely go and check out all of his thoughts on the games. Some of them are kind of poetic.

46:56 Oh, thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it. There's a tear to my eye. And, uh, I say he's written all of them, but you know, there are some that are coming that he hasn't exactly submitted yet. So who knows? But he has time. I, on the other hand, can always be found talking at Esposito film on Twitter. Uh, ESPOS, ITO. Yep. That's how you spell my last name. Film. Uh, and if you're just interested in general for more nostalgia content, I definitely think Twitter is the way to go. We, serve up a new post every day that will be something NES related. We're not, we're not. And if you're just tired,

47:29 like, you know, take some time off, like take care of yourself. Like, treat yourself to like a, like a night in or, you know, go out, go with your friends because you know, like when you play deadly towers, you can start to feel like you're losing a little bit of your soul. And I think like, you know, people have been asking us like, Oh, what other content are you guys? Like, you know, you thinking about doing Twitch again? Are you thinking about maybe doing some YouTube videos? And I was like, YouTube could be right for us if we did like nostalgia ASMR. Yeah. I, you know, to help relax people too. So just entering and leaving a room in deadly towers over and over again for eight minutes. Or just the sounds of the clicking of the buttons.

48:11 It's just like, we'll, we'll have the gameplay footage, but you won't hear any of the gameplay. You'll just hear Sean clicking the button. Every now and then you just hear like, Oh, come on.

48:23 Nice. Was that your Sean impression? That's Sean getting frustrated by deadly towers. Nice. Okay. Louder than that. Anybody else have anything else they want to plug? I don't think so. Great. Thank you for listening. You guys rock. Check back in with us next week for double dribble. Thank you.