063 · RAID ON BUNGELING BAY
Ranked #9 in our Top 10 NES Games of 1987 →
An interplanetary reconnaissance team has discovered that the tiny, but dangerous Bungeling Empire is creating an awesome War Machine. Their plan: to conquer Earth! For more NEStalgia as well as show notes for this episode visit www.NEStalgiacast.com
Raid on Bungeling Bay came out for the Commodore 64 in 1984 and reached the NES in September 1987, with Hudson Soft on this version and Broderbund publishing. It was designed by Will Wright, the SimCity guy. We came out of it surprised: a helicopter shooter that behaves like a small simulation, on a system that rarely does that. We liked it, and all four of us still left it off the Essential Games List. Our verdict is Play it.
What it gets right
- The world keeps moving. You fly one helicopter off a carrier, bombing factories before the Bungeling war machine is finished. Factories keep building tougher units and can rebuild, and radar satellites draw more enemies to you. It all runs in real time on a wrapping map with no loading screens or cutscenes. We called it the most immersive game we had played on the NES so far.
- A clear goal that keeps tightening. A factory takes several bombs, so by the third you have to go back to the carrier to reload. The carrier can be attacked and destroyed, and without it you are done. Late in a run it feels like trying to slow something unstoppable, especially when you see planes sitting on airfields and want to hit them before they take off.
- Offense and defense. You go out searching, an alert goes off, and you have to rush back. We enjoyed chasing off fighters while lining up a precise bomb run. The fighters bring the most pressure, the tanks were easy, and the boats mostly stay out of your way.
- Controls that click. The helicopter steers relative to its own facing, like Asteroids, which annoyed us at first. Stepped acceleration and the ability to hover over a factory make it work, and orbiting a target before swooping in is fun. A fighter jet would have made the precision impossible.
- Two-player. Player two works the ground turrets while player one flies. We liked the asymmetry, which beats squeezing a second helicopter onto one screen. We never played it with a second person, so we can't say how it holds up.
Where it falls apart
- It explains nothing. The game drops you in. Joe didn't realize the factories were the goal until he read the manual, and the satellites are easy to misread.
- The sound. Sean's biggest complaint: the music is a couple of low notes, and in a fight the effects peak and crunch like the sound chip is overloaded.
- Fatalism and memorization. Eventually the army outgrows you and the last move is crashing into a factory. Each retry came down to going a little faster and remembering where the factories are. We wished the map changed between runs.
- It stops short. Sam felt upgrades or some kind of progression would have made it essential, and we all left wanting a sequel with power-ups.
Beyond the game
Wright said he had more fun building the tools to place tiles and make islands than flying the helicopter, which is what grew into SimCity. He also drove around to the few publishers near San Francisco and chose Broderbund. That is also the Lode Runner publisher, which kicked off our fan fiction about a shared universe. The closest thing we could name is Luftrausers.
The bottom line
Play it. We didn't give it a pass for Wright's name, and by today's standards it isn't strong enough to be essential. But real-time simulation plus aerial dogfighting is a rare mix, and it is worth a try if you like SimCity, helicopters, or seeing where an idea started. If two-player turns out to be well designed, it might move us closer to Essential.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- Originally developed by Will Wright (SimCity, The Sims, Spore…) and released on Commodore 64 in 84. Came to NES in Sep 87
- Hudson Soft again for the NES version
- Broderbund published in NA
- GAMEPLAY
- Over time, the factories grow and develop new technologies to use against the player. There are also visible signs of interdependency among the islands, such as supply boats moving between them. In order to win the game, the player must prevent the escalation by bombing all the factories as quickly as possible, keeping them from advancing their technology. If left alone for too long, the factories create enough new weaponry to overwhelm the player.
- WILL WRIGHT on Publishing
- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134754/the_replay_interviews_will_wright.php
- A lot of people had spent years learning the Apple II, but the Commodore 64 seemed more of a level playing field because everyone was starting from scratch on that. So I bought my early Commodore 64 right when it came out and dove into it and learned every bit of it.
- I did my first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, on that, right around the time I moved to California. There were about, I don't know, maybe three game publishers near San Francisco. Brøderbund was one of them. I just drove to each one and showed them this game that I was working on. I really liked the people at Brøderbund, so I ended up working with them.
- WILL WRIGHT on GAMEPLAY
- I came up with the idea of this big scrolling window, and I'd always loved helicopters. So I just basically designed the end game around the technology, around what you could do on the Commodore that you could not do on the Apple.
- While I was making it I had to build other programs to help me build that program. I had to build a program that would realign character sets. Another one would let you scroll around the world and place these little tiles to build these islands and roads and such. I had more fun with that actually than flying the helicopter around, and that's what eventually evolved into SimCity.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Raid on Bungeling Bay. On a tiny, remote planet, the evil Bungeling Empire is creating an awesome war machine. Civilization as we know it seems doomed. One faint hope remains.
NOSTALGIA And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. I'm Sam. And I'm Sean. NOSTALGIA And today, at approximately one second ago, we learned that Raid on Bungeling Bay and Lode Runner take place in a shared universe where, as one helicopter is trying to destroy a galactic empire, another lone man is robbing their facilities.
NOSTALGIA I like to think of it in the way that Lode Runner failed. You know, this is the universe where he failed. NOSTALGIA And they kept all the gold and they invested it in military technology. No, no, you're wrong. This is a game that spans millennia. There's been a fight between the Bungelings and the humans for so long that they went from caves and gold to helicopters and war machines. NOSTALGIA No, no, no. You're both wrong. This is a game where these two things are happening exactly simultaneously.
While you're in the helicopter shooting at bases, the other guy's in one of those bases collecting that gold and has got to get out in time. NOSTALGIA Stay tuned next time for the fan fiction edition. NOSTALGIA You're all wrong because these two games are definitely not related and this is a stretch by Broderbund, the publisher of the games, to try to link them up on their own because these games were definitely created by two totally different people. Oh, and Santa's not real, huh? NOSTALGIA Yeah, Doug Smith. Whoa. Whoa. It could be little children. We got some new listeners listening to this. NOSTALGIA Sam's fine. Sam's Jewish, so he could care less if people found out the truth about Santa. NOSTALGIA And by truth, I mean false truth. I was saying like you don't believe. NOSTALGIA I was saying it like you don't believe. NOSTALGIA Yeah, don't tell me Santa's a false flag.
NOSTALGIA Alright, Raid on Bungeling Bay, we have to talk about that this game was developed by William Wright. NOSTALGIA Who is William Wright, Sean? NOSTALGIA Will Wright is the developer of SimCity. NOSTALGIA And this game was pretty much what made him make SimCity. NOSTALGIA Okay, yes, that is true. I thought you could just keep listing off some cool things he's done like The Sims. NOSTALGIA Oh, well, yeah, but that's less important. NOSTALGIA SimCity, The Sims, and most importantly, Spore. NOSTALGIA Wait, was that? NOSTALGIA No, that wasn't him. NOSTALGIA Yeah, yeah, William Wright was I thought that was Peter Molyneux for some reason.
NOSTALGIA The Tiger? NOSTALGIA The Connectimals game. NOSTALGIA I don't think he did No, Connectimals is a totally different thing, but I just want to hold him responsible for anything that didn't pan out on the Xbox 360. Like, it was his fault. NOSTALGIA He also had that game where you click on cubes. NOSTALGIA We're still talking about Peter Molyneux? NOSTALGIA Yeah. NOSTALGIA It was a game where you click on cubes and like eventually somebody was gonna click the last cube. NOSTALGIA
I'm not joking. NOSTALGIA Look all this up. It's crazy. NOSTALGIA He gets, he's a little bit too big for his britches. NOSTALGIA I admire his, his, uh, his aspirations. You could say William Wright is almost the opposite though, uh, up until Spore. Like, he just kept envisioning bigger and bigger things each time and they were succeeding. Like, first it was... NOSTALGIA Well, he kept getting small. Well, okay. No, you're right. In the beginning he kept getting bigger.
NOSTALGIA But it is a smaller scope. NOSTALGIA Smaller scope, but it's more personal. NOSTALGIA Yeah, I think it's more personal. NOSTALGIA It's a deeper dive. NOSTALGIA Yeah, but that's not what I meant. I think it's, but I think it's also just actually, it's more expansive than, than SimCity. It's just a house. NOSTALGIA Yeah, okay. Sure. NOSTALGIA Yeah, but there's emotions and there's... But you control everything about it and the person inside of you. NOSTALGIA You can go to a job.
NOSTALGIA We had it on Super NES. Then there was SimAnt. Yes. Which was... SimCopter can't forget the Sims large expansion packs for the original Sims there's a lot of expansions for the original Sims too and also we should start talking about Raid on Bungeling Bits I think it's important that we talk about William Wright though because I think we can't understate his importance Doug Smith, cool guy, developed Lode Runner I thought that was awesome William Wright is one of the
he's one of the original pioneers of video games so this game Raid on Bungeling Bay was released on the Commodore 64 first in 1984 and then came to the NES in September of 87 we're still on that long train of September I think we said something like 17 games which is weird because 17 games came out during the entire NES launch and now it's like that's just September
Hudson Soft again for the NES version which makes sense because Broderbund again for publisher for the North American version guys let's talk about the gameplay for Raid on Bungeling Bay before we go any further because if we try to talk about this game without telling the audience what they're doing I think like this one really surprised me so who wants to take it? I think I'll go ahead alright Sean so in this game you play as the single lone like agitator in a war you're the military yeah you are you are the military just like you in several other games you're the only person fighting for your side but you you're a guy who's based on a World War 2 era
aircraft carrier and you go and try to bomb factories before they build the war machine that will destroy Earth but in the meantime you have to deal with a slowly but surely evolving defense force that if you're not quick will create a battleship to sink your only hope of like just surviving yeah and and on top of that too I can't overstate the whole like
real-time element of this game which is like the coolest part of it is that time actually does matter because it's not about like okay now that you've defeated the first factory the game gets harder it's actually about time and that the factories will continue to churn out more enemies they'll churn out like tougher things they'll become stronger and it's interesting how time plays in this game and there are other factors that like surprise me too like there are little radar satellites that if you're near one it'll alert it'll draw more enemies to you because it's alerting the enemies as to where you are that's in the manual whether
whether or not like there are any like interconnected systems that are causing these things to happen just the scope of the game the fact that it's a 360 degree wrapping map that's pretty huge combined with at least like the illusion that everything is sort of working together like it it really creates at least the effect of a simulation yeah it's all happening in real time there's no loading screens there's no cutscenes there's no like when this thing happens like things will change things just change as they're like scripted to do yeah through time so you really do have to kind of like you know
rush to find these locations of the factories fast because if you're not fast enough in bombing them they're gonna be able to rebuild themselves too and rebuild their army so this way you won't be able to continue to take them down and I like even one thing that's cool about this game is that other than the helicopter which you control there is a carrier that you can continue to go back to get some health and replenish
your bombs but the interesting thing is that even that carrier is susceptible to enemy attack and can be destroyed yeah and if that carrier is destroyed that's kind of like you know now you're now this is what you have yeah you got those bombs and if you can't do it then you're done because you need the carrier to reload right uh so let's talk a little bit about just the real-time element
of things obviously that that was the gameplay mechanic but how much did you guys feel it personally I'd like to go around the room actually and just share experiences so Joe how much did like you know the factories building against you and like the army getting larger and larger feel in your gameplay experience at first almost not at all actually for a while I just thought the game was getting more difficult
I didn't read the manual at first I wasn't I was kind of figuring out my goal as I went I was actually wasn't clear that I was supposed to be bombing the factories because the game totally just drops you right in it doesn't explain a thing right but after a while I did start to realize that you know I noticed these satellites they weren't attacking me but I could destroy them so radar dish sorry apologies everyone
so they I started to I looked into the manual about that and was like whoa these are actually affecting things and then I started to realize like the amount of enemies that are coming at me and eventually something what is another battleship attacked my aircraft carrier and that's where I was like wow this game is like really attacking me now and then I kind of started to piece it together but it took me a little while to figure it out sure Sean um yeah it really comes at you pretty quickly after you've bombed a couple factories and it does feel like a natural uh like build up like I actually sort of it is pretty immersive this game uh when it comes to
uh watching uh things evolve on the ground um I was I really liked the fact that like in the midpoint like mid factory destroyer um section how many factories are there do we remember I think it was oh six or seven but yeah no you're probably right um well anyway you can actually like see on some of the islands or I guess continents whatever you want to call them uh full like airstrips or airfields and you could see the um the fighter planes or the bombers either like landing or about to take off and I just really wanted to get them before they took off um it did feel like you were trying to slow an almost uh unstoppable force yeah uh Sam anything dead um
not really I kind of just like I this is one where I looked at the manual after I started playing it and I was just kind of flying around a little bit not really sure what was going on just idly waiting for the army to come to you yeah uh and you know they did after I looked at the manual and realized it had to be destroying factories uh and
yeah I don't really have anything to add one thing you learned pretty fast too is that like taking down a factory isn't as simple as just dropping one bomb yeah we're talking about this like they take a lot right yeah that that I thought was a little bit annoying personally but um as far as like the systems of this goes I thought it was it was interesting once I got into it and you know I was like once I got an alert that was kind of fun yeah I think like one thing that's really interesting is if you guys remember Miyamoto talking about with Legend of Zelda how that idea that it would
just be like one world that's just kind of like things are just going on right and we know that that's not true because things just animate on when you get to the next screen but it does kind of feel like that this game takes that a step further while obviously reducing the scale just focusing on one particular mission but I kind of appreciate this game a lot yeah the way that it like the way that it set like a very clear objective assuming you've read the manual I think they could have done a little more legwork on like in the title screen or something to like also just the paragraph yeah exactly
but just like they do enough in just that one the clearness of the one mission and just like the fact that the goal always remains the same of how to defeat factories but they definitely like scale up in difficulty as time goes by not just because they're also building themselves but that you you know it takes more bombs and there's only a certain amount of bombs you can carry so by factory number three you must stop at the carrier to pick up
a second load of bombs because you won't have enough in a single drop to destroy the factory and so that like added to the pressure too and you have to you know it's easy to find your first factory I feel like because you can just kind of go off in any direction but in the later ones you kind of have to think about where have I been where do I need to go like what have I seen mental map line marks and I also think one thing that this game does well is
like switching between modes like offense and defense like yeah you'll be off on a search and then suddenly you'll get that alert and now you have to completely change your
perspective and say like okay I have to remember where I was and just get there as fast as possible I think this game had a lot of tense moments in there I tried doing both at some points where
you know usually I just go as slow as I can over the factories to make sure I hit it but there were some points where you know the planes are coming at me and I'm saying all right I'm gonna shoot the planes and then yeah precision drop to fly directly over the factory while I'm chasing planes and drop a bomb and you know those moments felt really cool yeah I definitely felt like the fighter jets put on the most amount of pressure like the tanks were kind of like easy yeah the boats don't really bother you yeah boats are just like kind of out for a nice boat
ride they might just be fishing for all we know yeah but they're fishing as the enemy yes yeah the enemy is fishing and we can't let them have food those are innocent fish yeah switching gears a little bit uh and correct me if I'm wrong but like just going back down to a more like micro level of this game the controls um the way that you control the helicopter is more of like a tank um is this the first time that we've had like tank controls in an NES game no I mean I guess it depends on how you look at it like we've had we've had similar things in uh what was it
ikari warriors had the tank where yeah but that was a little bit different I think because what you're getting at is like if you're facing facing any direction north is forward yeah if you're facing yeah exactly if you're facing north then east is you know to your right but if you're facing south like maybe I'm describing this in a really weird way if you're facing up on the screen you hit right to go to the right but if you're facing down you hit right to go to the
helicopter's right so it's like asteroids control oh gotcha okay yeah so no in that case I don't think we've really had a game like that yeah yeah and it it caught me off guard a little bit but once I realized what was going on it was you know it was great I thought the controls worked really well and there's also like several levels of acceleration too yeah you know if you're going the manual says like it increased oh sorry go ahead in the manual I think it says it increases in
30 percent increments or something all the way up to 100 and to the point where you're going to standstill too which helps when you're over the factory yeah because you definitely want to be hovering over those factories and also the reverse you have to hold down I think yeah you can't just go full reverse which I think is also convenient because if you're trying to break and then all of a sudden you're flying backwards you
know and to be honest I initially as soon as I started using the controls I was a little aggravated by them but like you said once I got the hang of it I think that's the only way this game works so well that's the only reason this game feels so good to control is like you the way you can kind of swing around with these controls and and after acceleration yeah you don't have to hold it down to go forward like you can you set your
acceleration to like one thing yeah I'll be like orbiting around a tank or something like going just out of reach and then coming back and swooping in it's it's fun to fly the helicopter expressive maneuvering I think yeah and what do we think about the choice for a helicopter as opposed to like a fighter jet like take it or leave it interesting I like the idea yeah I think it's definitely different like it's not take it or leave it because you have you have the
option to hover like you were saying and you have I think this game would be way too but I mean I know there is a lot of frustration in this game that we haven't really touched upon too much but this would this game would be way too frustrating if you had to go at a at a fighter pilot speed at all times it's like the precision that you need in this game can only be done with like a hovercraft or a helicopter yeah I think it works really well so Sean you talked
about some of the frustrations would you like to kind of crack open that one and talk a little bit about like what you didn't find satisfying um well I think the first I think the most glaring one is that the sound in this game is atrocious um what about that it's music it sounds okay the music track is the least uh the least offensive really I thought the music track was it's two notes yeah I know but it's just like very low bass tones that you can
sort of tune out after a while whereas if you are in a in a fight it it sounds like a nine inch nails breakdown where he just like smashes the the synthesizer um it it sounds like the sound chip can't handle it I guess that's true it sounds a little like it's peaking yeah yeah yeah the fighter jets especially I think are just kind of they're a lot yeah exactly but sometimes that's good though because it's kind of like this intimidating
sound it is an intimidating sound I think one thing that frustrated me about this game and and maybe it was like part of the game's themes you know was like there's a there's like a fatalism to this game where it's like I don't know about you guys but there came a point where I I was just always as soon as I was like well it was a good attempt but now the army has bested me you know like yeah there came a
point where it's just like too much like too much time has passed you really had to like memorize where all the factories were or else you know you're just not going to get to them fast enough and now you're kind of like overwhelmed by the army that they've built and the fortresses they've created it really reminds you that you're one guy against your planet's army yeah I think that one thing that really illustrates it that was
definitely intentional is you don't just blow up like in a lot of these a lot of games we've played like you have a good few seconds to just accept what's happened and spiral out of control you you are encouraged to try and like aim your crash at the factory right like just to suicide into it because all hope is lost yeah I think um one one thing while I was um while I was playing like my first round of it was just
kind of thinking like okay not not that bad but I just gotta do it a little faster and like the fact that that became the motto each time I tried over again I think there was there was a point where I kind of wondered like okay how much of this game is is going to be reduced to like memorization of locations and how much of it is going to be chalked up to like can I fight the army or not because I think there is just a point where you become
overwhelmed yeah by it and I don't know if there's a if there's ever a moment where plateaus like I don't know where it's like max capacity for the other and I'm not saying the game's impossible I'm saying that I just I think my biggest complaint is that in a game where it's like living and breathing world where things are happening it is kind of weird that it encourages like a memorization yeah and I almost wish that like this game like the map changed each time updates you know like like so this way yeah and just this way it was like you couldn't you never got a chance to get comfortable you know like after a few playthroughs I knew the
first three I was gonna hit because they were near each other you know I'd only have to go to the factory back to the carrier it doesn't even need to be doesn't even need to be like some weird algorithm that creates new continents you just move the continents right no exactly and I think like yeah there would probably be like some some that just offer like terrible balance but I mean we play the pandemic board game and that happens to us sometimes too with the luck of the cards you know so it's like okay just you had a bad run reset or oh this was an easier time but that's because in this timeline the empire sucked the
only thing that would kind of hurt is if I if if I'm competing against you for a better score than you then it's hard to it's hard to be true the game does have a score part two which I just thought was strange but I did like how it does reward like the quickness again like you do get a bonus if you defeat the things faster than you should and I don't know how it calculates that but I appreciated that and I think like yeah I think like at the end of the day I was kind of like I could care less about my score there's a mission here like that's really what I care about
gotta save the world yeah save which world I'm not sure yeah but you gotta save the guy who's collecting the gold and inside yeah you're just trying to stall so we can get all the gold you're just a distraction yeah that's the lore now does anybody else have any straight thoughts I wanted to talk about two-player okay now I didn't I didn't play with anyone but I just wanted to see what two-player was all about so I I gave it a try just to see what you're controlling you're controlling what player one is controlling the helicopter player two is controlling like the turrets and stuff yeah I like that asymmetric
multiplayer you don't see too much of that usually it's just like take turns or sort of like a messy co-op it was the best it was the best solve here for sure because if you think about it if you had a second helicopter how would you control the screen right like it would have to be like a sonic and tails situation where the secondary helicopter is just there yeah and we'll just complete yeah whatever happens to screw it like we care about player number one yeah yeah and I obviously since I was
just myself with two controllers I only played for like a second I'm not sure if you if you control anything other than the turrets or if you could ever control like a like a fighter plane or anything like that but as far as I know you're just controlling like the turrets I'm fairly certain that you only ever control the helicopter but I'm no I mean the player two yeah player two other enemies I don't think you control the other enemies I'm fairly certain you only ever control the turret
part of the helicopter but I think it's like a cool no no no you're controlling the enemy you're controlling the enemy like the turrets on the ground player one oh yeah yeah yeah okay I completely miss I mean obviously I didn't play two player but I completely misunderstood what they were talking about yeah okay can you attack the like the bad guys also well I don't think it would have to be all on the same screen so this is okay we're all just sort of like shooting in the dark
yeah but I do I like it though because we don't totally know what's happening but I I'm kind of more yeah we got to play this I really do want to play it I think I like that less than what I read into I read into the idea that like you were controlled like somebody was controlling the firing aspect of the helicopter and the other person was controlling the maneuvering of the helicopter and I kind of like that more as I don't know I find I find it more interesting
that you are trying to fight the play player yeah I think that's cool because it's it's different yeah and from what I gathered from my quick my quick test of this is that which whenever you're flying whatever turret is on the screen
you're the player two is just controlling that turret for me that that that was something that I was like kind of sad I missed out on but now I'm just kind of like and all he did was control the turrets like whatever I don't know really I feel like that would that would change unique yeah we've played yet like yeah I just now I really want to feel like that the play you know like when player one has the ability to just kind of like control where
they are in the environment and you're just kind of like I like the idea more of the co-op nature of it than just you're the turrets I don't know something something about that just seems I like the asymmetric style of it but to each their own I guess okay yeah all right cool if we don't have anything else straight thoughts any others no okay cool we'll go into some great developer quotes from the man himself William Wright
which one would you like first publishing or gameplay I'll take gameplay for 400 Alex all right this is William Wright on gameplay I came up with the idea of this big scrolling window and I'd always loved helicopters so I just basically designed the end game around the technology around what you could do on the Commodore that you could not do on the Apple while I was making it I had to build other programs to help me build that program I had to build a program that would realign character sets another one would let you scroll around the world and place these little tiles to build these islands and roads and such I had more fun with that than actually flying the helicopter around it's interesting that's what eventually evolved into SimCity
that's interesting you had more fun designing the world yeah part of it and then being like wouldn't everybody else would like to do this this needs a financial district I kind of get that though because there are a lot of like games or just stories in general that I like the lore or like the background world building more than I like any of the stories so I could see that coming from the creator as well yeah and then on publishing a lot of people had spent years learning the Apple 2 but the Commodore 64 seemed more of a level playing field because everyone was starting from scratch on that so I bought my early Commodore 64 right when it came out
and dove into it and learned every bit of it I did my first game Raid on Bungeling Bay on that right around the time I moved to California there was about I don't know maybe three game publishers near San Francisco Broderbund was one of them I just drove to each one and showed them this game that I was working on I really liked the people at Broderbund so I ended up working with them what an interesting time to just be like I'm just gonna drive like I don't have any connections there but I'm just gonna knock on the door and be like I made a game do you want to see it wild west time yeah and that's truly like every that's what I get from every developer too is
just like no matter who we talk to whether it's Japan or America or Rares interviews it's always just kind of like no one was doing this but we were doing it so we talked to people who were also doing it you know it's just weird to think that it was that easy to get into and now it's something that people will try yeah like well it's so hard to do anything to get involved yeah you know it's a small market yeah yeah and back there back then I mean like you think about the game industry now and just how much like think about just how much like one company like Rockstar is taking from from the pile you know and then think about like Nintendo Sony
and Microsoft too it's like it's such a huge industry it can't be understated I think like you know you think of it as just a $60 game purchase when you buy a new game but you remember millions of other people are buying that $60 game like those profit margins are huge compared to game you know like movies that sell at $17 a ticket cash cow $17 a ticket in New York I should say some people will be like oh my gosh that's unreasonable stay where you are you're lucky if your tickets only 10 you might complain about that but we have to deal with 17 welcome to New York kid and with that we will go right into the essential games list and that's a great segue into
the essential games list guys we're talking about raid on bungeling bay you know keep in mind that this guy made Sim City the Sims sport don't hold that against him you mind that he made those games you know I'm not saying that that doesn't mean that you can like give this one a pass or not but I really don't think we should hold it any more favorable because William Wright worked on it just like we wouldn't give Miyamoto a pass on Donkey Kong so with that in mind Sean Mike I first of all I don't appreciate you trying to color my response okay I'm not I'm not a
more I don't know what that that doesn't mean yeah it's a more a I'm not I was never gonna put this on the essential games list I am sort of in love with this game but I know that just by the way that I voted in the past and by what we're trying to do with it it's not an essential game
it's got a lot of cool features it's got a lot of interesting systems I think it's probably the most immersive game I've played on the NES so far I love just like what like just looking at this and seeing what all of the ideas turned into in the future and I'm definitely recommending it to anybody that's into any kind of like whether it's planes trains and automobiles or or you're you just like Sim City and you want to see what it where it came from or you just want to shoot down some shoot down some fighter planes just check it out but it's not essential all right I'm gonna go next since we're spinning up the order here and I'm gonna say that
this is maybe the first NES game that has surprised me I didn't even think that something like this could be done on the NES just to put it in perspective Sim City was supposed to come to the NES very late in the life cycle and they have since found like a beta version of it but of course it wound up going into like the early Super Nintendo launch but these kinds of games are not really like present on this system and so just to see something like this in in its wide scope performing pretty well keep in mind like I mean we had like a few things that like are definitely like knocking it down but I think as well as it performed this would have been one of my favorite games around that time you know like in 1987 I would have been all over this thing
definitely but we have like evolved in gaming in general like from that and I definitely think that like this is something that hasn't been copied that much like like we've seen the real-time aspect play out in games and we've seen the like aerial dogfight thing play out better in games but the two of them together not something you see every day I'm definitely not gonna put this on the essential games list like just because you know you don't get on the essential games just because you did something no one else has done but I definitely think like if you haven't if you're a guy who's been playing the NES for like a few decades or you're brand new to the NES I think that if you haven't heard of this game before
and you know what William Wright has done and you like that kind of thing this is gonna be right up your alley just like it was up mine and Sean's like I definitely give this a huge play it even if it's like for me incredibly difficult I definitely give it a huge play it just because it's something that you're not gonna see again I'm sure it had it has been done please point it out yeah because I want to play it right exactly I I just think like those two elements being combined is like a rare fusion that we that we don't see too often so I'm definitely not only has it piqued my curiosity it's a strong game just not strong enough by today's standards to get it on the essential games list Joe
we didn't we didn't really say our initial impressions I think that's important to know what my initial impression just from turning it on the first screen my initial impression was like oh god like it looked it gave me very 1942 feels just by looking at it so I was also pleasantly surprised actually very similar to the way I was surprised in last week's episode load runner
not surprised enough to remember the name but but yeah I think that based on a lot of the other things that we've seen on the on this this is on this system we've definitely this is definitely doing a lot more it was more fun than I thought it was going to be even before you found out that the world is like kind of reacting to what you're doing which is just an incredibly impressive
biggest negative for me is the music but that's not the reason that I'm going to say it's not essential I think overall it's not something that I'm actively going to seek out to play again I I've enjoyed playing it I'd also say it's a play it but not essential Sam I I'm kind of in the same boat as everyone else I thought that this was possibly the most unique game that we've played on this system I and I haven't really played anything like it on other systems I think that if it had some kind of progression system built into it you know where you can upgrade your helicopter or you know things change a little bit more than it would be essential if there were if there was more to it it would be but there
there is a lot going on there's like different systems taking place and I think it's definitely a play it but it's not essential I think it has an amazing foundation though and it could be it has potential but it's not you definitely have me now hankering for a sequel where there are power-ups like I think yeah I the ability to upgrade the helicopter and it's funny because we always think about like what what could this game have done we didn't touch that in here but I do think like you hit the nail on the head there like that is definitely something like yeah would definitely like sell me on a sequel like I'm saying doesn't even be in the original version but it should
be there the closest game that I can think of did that sort of like emulates parts of this game is sort of nothing like it if you play Luftrausers anybody no okay so Luftrausers is an indie game it's you play as a single fighter jet that you can customize with different kinds of propulsion and firing types and bodies types and you just sort of scroll around this this area where you can where you just do dog fights but it's a lot more like trance inducing it's it's a lot more fighting there aren't it's not as like much of a simulation at all but I think just like the movement style and sort of just like the chaos that can unfold in front of you in air combat is like the closest I can I can get to what I've played in in Raid on Bungeling Bay I think
that if this game and Gradius had a bit a get a baby game together I was thinking Gradius 2 when you mentioned up you know some reason I think if there were like like somehow like a boss fight where you know you fight someone else in a helicopter and you got like weave around each other or something and you know upgrade systems so you can change your weapons I think that would be an amazing game I also think that if we at some point play this multiplayer if that is you know as well designed and is and is as fun as I as I feel like it could be I think that could I wouldn't know I won't say that it would make me change my vote but it would definitely take it closer for me yeah we'll have to do that before the end of 87 show right all right
that is all the time we have for this episode of nostalgia a very surprising one I think Raid on Bungeling Bay is one of those games that I had never heard of before this episode so even as it was coming up I didn't like look at it and be like hmm wonder what that's about also should mention that the cover for this game the front box are is like terrifying yeah yeah it's like a big skull on it like yeah exactly yeah I don't know if we're gonna get any survival horror games on the NES I think there is one that's
been mentioned to me but it was Japan only so we'll have to yeah we'll have to go do that anyway we will do that one time soon hopefully go to Japan hopefully one day I'd love to and yeah maybe nostalgia goes to Japan the most expensive free podcast episode ever okay I'm Michael Sposito I make the website nostalgia cast calm go there for show notes and stuff I also curate the Twitter feed so go to nostalgic at nostalgia cast on Twitter and you'll see a bunch of things about Raid on Bungeling Bay you would have seen them this week but you can check out next week's game bunch of promotional art for that so that's cool
which is ring king so ring king get in the ring king if you think you're the ring king challenge us to a fight IRL find me on the streets of Manhattan put up your fists and I'll know what you're I'll know what you're communicating I think it's really cool that you're a listener of this show before I kick your butt now he's gonna kick my butt all right I'm Michael Sposito you can find me on at Sposito film on Twitter don't fight me there only in real life please thank you have a great day or morning whatever or go to bed yeah whatever time it is get eight hours of sleep please you
