068 · SQOON
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When the rulers of planet Neptune find that they are running out of their main food source – man-ham – they invade the nearby planet earth and melt the polar ice-caps, thus sinking all cities. It’s up to Sqoon to save the day! FOR MORE NESTALGIA as well as show notes and links check out www.NEStalgiacast.com
- 1986 side-scrolling shooter game by Irem for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although published in North America directly by Irem itself, technical support inquiries for the game was handled in this region by Brøderbund since Irem didn't have an American branch at the time.
- Item is the company behind R-Type. This is Irem’s first Original game for NES.
- However, in the Japanese version, the message came from the United States of America's Pentagon
- Gameplay
- A lot going on
- What’s up with the sharks?
- Creative enemy patterns
- Freeing Man-Ham aka Humans
- Fuel
- Basically, you need to replenish your fuel to stay alive, and you can do so only in two ways: rescue nine men, or else get at least one gold ingot and one man (the single man is necessary to discharge the ore on the ship). The gold hidden by crabs acts therefore as a shortcut to get fuel if you aren’t able to collect enough men within 60 seconds, but you always need nine men to receive a weapon powerup.
- Setting
- Earth is underwater
- People are trapped in little cages
- Sqoon is expensive $60 for loose, 600 for complete
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Skoon, SOS, the world is sinking.
And welcome to NEStalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. And I'm Sam. Nice. Okay. Well, a little, you know, a little who's who here. I think it's funny that we even do this to begin with, because it's not like people know who we are. Yeah. But they have a name to our voice. Yeah. You're like the ether that is Sam, you know? And someone else is the ether that is Joe, and I am the floating voice, Michael Esposito.
And guys, we have a weird one today. It's very strange. Yeah. I didn't know anything about this game. Did anybody know anything about this game going into it? I've never heard of this game. I thought in your email saying what game we're playing next, I thought it was a typo. It was like, it must be Spoon. We must be playing Spoon. Joe, what would Spoon, like what kind of game would that be? I think it would be like similar to, you know, there's a lot of food games, right? There's Burger Time. There's definitely other food games. Absolutely. Well, Burger Time, yeah, Burger Time is like a nightmare game. So, I think Spoon is kind of similar.
But for the uninformed, it's a 1986, but 87 over here in the States, side scrolling shooter game. And this one comes from Irem, a name we've heard a few times, but this is the first game that Irem has like originally made specifically for the NES.
Wow, this is a special, this is a very special day, isn't it? Yeah, I just don't know if that means anything to anybody. I don't think so. It doesn't mean anything to me at all. Well, here's the thing. A lot of you guys probably don't know this about Irem, but Irem is the company behind R-Type. And does anybody know what R-Type is? Yeah, ish. So, it's just funny that like, you know, Irem is going to become known for the shmups, but here's like their first introduction into it with a game where you're in a submarine trying to, I mean, it's very complicated. We're about to get into that in a minute. I don't even want to spoil anything about the plot, but I'd love to hear some initial impressions from you guys.
So, Sean, you want to take me through your first impression? Um, yeah, I mean, I didn't know what I was even getting into with this because I didn't start the game without reading the manual. And the manual is just such a, like a clusterfuck of strange stories. And it's just a half-baked, like, middle school drama that somebody wrote between periods in class, I feel like. Like, I was very disappointed by the game once I read the manual and the story, the beautiful story that they introduced to us. Got it. Okay, Joe? Yeah, I kind of had a similar thing too. This is one of the rare times I went straight to the manual before I played the game.
And, uh, and yeah, granted it is a very, very poorly constructed story, but the fact that they put, like, they seem to have put a lot of effort into making it a story made me think this was going to be like an epic, sprawling adventure. Um, but as far as initial impressions playing the game, I thought it was interesting to have a, you know, a shmup. A shmup? This is a shmup, right? I'd consider it one of those. It's sort of a shmup. It's like an objective-based shmup, almost. At this point, having one underwater, kind of a little different setting than normally. Usually it's like space or something, but yeah. Okay, and Sam, take me through it.
Um, well, I think I heard about, I, before I read the manual, Sean was like, you guys gotta read the manual. Um, and so then I checked it out, and it seemed, you know, it seemed really campy. But when I played the game, I, I don't know, I enjoyed it. I, I had a lot of fun. I thought it was interesting. Um, you know, the graphics weren't great, but the gameplay I thought was pretty solid. I went through this game, like, pretty blind too. I didn't look at the manual, uh, despite Sean's best wishes.
Oh, okay. You know, and like, what was interesting was, is I, I loaded up and I'm like, oh, okay, it's a shmup. And then I was like, oh, but you're supposed to be like underwater or something. And then there's like cities. And then all of a sudden there's like, free these people. And then all of a sudden there's a floating island. And then I'm running out of fuel.
And it's like, this is a lot like to take in. So I think my initial impression was just that like, this game's offering like quite a lot. I think Sam put it really well when he was said objective based shoot them up because this is the first time I'm experiencing that where like, there's a goal and you also have to clear out all the enemies. Yeah. There's a lot of juggling going on that. I guess I didn't really give it as much credit for than you guys are.
Well, you have to like it too. You know, it's like, it's one thing to have a cool idea, but you also have to like that idea. That's true. All right. So I don't want to like get too much further into the game before we get into the, the deep lore, if you will, that is the scoon manual. So I think we're going to kind of do our best rendition of a like radio drama here for you guys. Not live. This is the story of scoon.
Swiss government TV. Planet Earth is in a state of emergency. Cities all over the world are sinking into the ocean. Even as I speak, my own city is sinking. The water is already up to my knees. I'm sacrificing myself for this broadcast. Earth Defense Army has announced that the Neptunians, an underwater race of alien beings, have invaded Earth and are melting the polar ice caps.
They are living under the sea and using humans for food. Six months ago at the bank tune, the rulers of the planet recognized that their world was dying. It was being turned into desert by falling meteorites. Man ham livestock, which was the Neptunians used for food, was being destroyed. To escape this terrible fate, the Neptunians were forced to move their entire civilization into the sea.
They knew they'd be temporarily safe in the sea, but would eventually die of starvation. The Neptunian government therefore decided that the only way to save their people was to invade Earth, where there was plenty of man ham. They constructed special spaceships with giant water tanks for them to live in during the trip, but only with the highest government officials and the beautiful Miss Neptune were able to escape before the planet was totally annihilated.
About the time the Neptunians landed on Earth, a pirate named Narkeen was mining gold under the oceans of the world using his submarine, Skun. He was a dastardly pirate and committed all kinds of crimes. When his Skun was full of gold, he would go into port and trade his gold for drog. But this time, when he tried to go into port, he discovered that it had disappeared. In fact, all the land was gone. Just then, a message came in over his radio.
Mayday, Mayday, Narkeen, come in please. This is the General of the Earth Defense Army. The Neptunians are melting the polar ice caps using hot water produced by their bio factories and all the continents are sinking. The underwater factories are also manufacturing additional warriors to help them capture Earth. Narkeen, help us. You are asking me to help? I am the evil pirate Narkeen.
If I help others, my reputation will be ruined. I won't be able to show my face in public again. Narkeen, don't say that. Thousands of people are captured in the Neptunian undersea domes. Are you going to allow humans to become Neptunian food? Ha ha ha ha. That's what you get for eating so much fish, General. You're not as smart as you thought you were.
Narkeen, please, we need you. The Pentagon has been destroyed by tsunamis and our entire Earth Defense Army is almost completely gone. You are the only one left who can save Earth. If you kill all the Neptunians, you will be a hero. Really, General? Well, if even I can become a hero, I'll destroy the Neptunians for the good of the human race. However, Scoon, my submarine, can only carry nine people at a time. I'll need to ferry them to the safety of my small motorized island.
And I'll need plenty of fuel to complete my mission. You've got it. The Neptunians are pretty strong. They won't be easy to defeat. Be careful. I'll send some enemy data that our intelligent forces have gathered. Study it well. And then the best part... Sorry, guys, that's the end. The best part is when Narkeen slowly degrades into Yoda. It's all a setup to get into the manual. It's like that... It's the preamble to the manual. The enemy data on the intelligent forces and all this study it well stuff, that's eventually the rest of the manual. It's very meta. It's so cool. And it's the coolest part of the game.
Yeah, that sucked me in. I'm not gonna lie. That sucked me in. The beginning of that manual story starting out with like a television broadcast, I was like, oh, this is like a story. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't really... I mean, we've had some pretty good like title opening sequences where I kind of joked like, oh, this feels like a movie. Or like, you know, like I'm gonna stick around for the whole credits, you know? But this is the first one where they really like got me like a story that I could believe in until they started specifying like ultra specific things like when Narkeen's like, my summary can only carry nine people at a time. Yeah. It's very heavy on exposition.
And I'm not sure if they thought that they were being like very, if they thought this is a good story or if it was sort of tongue in cheek. I have to imagine that it's tongue in cheek. Yeah, this has got to be a legends of localization thing. I feel like it's also one of those things that like you're a kid and you're like, this is an incredible story. This is a sprawling epic story. And then you get a few years older and you go back to it and you're like, what the heck is this? Like, so stupid. The thing that I like the most about this is that the pirate is concerned about his reputation.
And that's like, that's what's keeping him from saving Earth. He's like the last human. I love when he says, you're asking me? I am Narkeen, the evil pirate. Yeah. Everybody knows that. And so here's an interesting thing. In the Japanese version, the script is only slightly altered in the fact that instead of it being the general of the Earth Defense Army, it's the United States of America's Pentagon. Yeah, they mentioned the Pentagon already. So is the Earth Defense Army or I mean, I prefer Earth Defense Force. Is it just based out of the US, I guess? I'm yeah, I mean, I guess so. Because in the Japanese manual, it straight up just says like, this is all being done by the Pentagon.
Wow. Okay. Yeah. So I guess like why that couldn't get like maybe we're sensitive about the Pentagon and the Japanese aren't. But just a little bit of trivia there for you guys. Wow. Like maybe it sounds like more like more exotic. Earth Defense Army. That sounds pretty good. Yeah, that's what I mean. I think I think this might be a prequel to Earth Defense Force. Have you guys played that game? I have not played that game. It is campy. So I think that we've got we've got ourselves some deep lore crossover here.
I like that. I like that theory. Who wants to you know, we talked a lot about the gameplay having like a lot going on. And I kind of briefly touched on it. But who wants to try like a quick, like one minute summary of everything that you need to do in a in a single level of scoon?
I think I can get it. All right, Sam's got it. All right. I'm gonna give this a shot. So you have to rescue people probably as your primary goal primary goal by using your bombs to bomb which go diagonally downward to bomb the like containment facilities where they're being held. And when you bomb them, they all swim up into the ocean and you have to collect them with your ship before these. Hang on. Let me scroll in the manual. Let's see what they're called. Oh, mine's too blurry. I can't read what the name is.
It looks like a killer whale almost before they eat the people. So you have to scoop them up before those guys eat the people you can. Hold on. That's what no, no, no, no. He's talking about those whales. Is that what they were for? I think you had the same same thing that I did. I thought they were friendly dolphins for a while. I was like, oh, these things like help me or something. And after one, there was one point where I was like, oh, God, like they're eating my aliens. That's that's a killer whale. Yeah, it's an orca.
Yeah, that's how I know what you're talking about now. So you got to rescue those guys. And then once you get nine of them, your little floating island will appear above you and you have to go up to the floating island and tap B. And every time you tap B, a person will be released into the island. But you still have to be careful of stuff hitting you while you're doing that. You're not invincible. Meanwhile, there's a bunch of crap flying at you that you have to shoot with your weapon and upgraded.
And it gets upgraded by bombing this little crab that walks around the bottom of the ocean floor. Yeah, that was it took way too long to figure that out. But I'm sorry. Continue. And quickly as you bomb, you have to bomb the crab quick and then it drops a power up or it drops something. I'm not exactly sure what it is.
And then that makes your boat come or your floating island come back. And I think it gives you fuel when it does that. But sometimes it gives you a power up as well. Yeah. So I'll jump in for a second there, Sam, because this was the most confusing part to me was that, you know, you're limited with the, you know, with the fuel thing. It was like you have like a timer and you have to get it in on a certain point or else your ship just sinks.
And I was like, really, that's a lot, you know, like to go from a game where you're just supposed to shoot everything to then you're supposed to rescue people and then also make sure you have fuel. And your fuel timer is what, like 60 seconds? Yeah. Right. 60 seconds. That's like, that's not a lot of time. That's really not a lot of time to rescue nine men. You really got to be on the lookout for that crab. I think it, I think it's for the last 20 seconds of that 60 second timer gives you this screeching alarm.
Yeah. I forget what other game we played recently that, that had a screeching alarm, but I wish that, I hope that by 1987, we stopped seeing that because this was, it really made this game hard to play. Yeah. And, and I mean like, there's only two ways to get the fuel too. So you either rescue the nine men, uh, and then that island appears and you get the fuel. Or if you get one gold ingot from the crabs and one man, just one man, then you can also replenish your fuel. That's a gold ingot. Okay. I didn't realize that. Yes. Uh, but, but you'll always, um, you need the nine men to receive the power up. You won't get the power. Oh, that's how you get the power.
Okay. Yeah. So let's talk real quick about, um, like they've got, they've got this whole story going. And I think that one of their main, uh, focuses is, uh, the reality of the situation and, and realism. And I want to, I want to go over the fact that you are blowing up these, these facilities where these people are being held and you expose them to the incredible pressure of the deep sea. Yeah. Of the bottom of the ocean.
And they're just going to swim to the top. Yeah. They got the bends real bad. I know. Like, uh, I, I, I know that it's, I know I'm just nitpicking and, and, and being pedantic here, but I, I always thought that. Cause if you're going to be that literal and you look at the size of the sub, you can see the bottom of the ocean and the surface of the ocean at all times. So it's not a very deep ocean. And that sub can only fit nine people.
Well, if you, if you can see New York, which has been, uh, changed into a very Christian, uh, place with, with cross shaped buildings everywhere. I, I'm not really sure why that's New York, but if I can see. Does any place have cross shaped buildings in the whole world? Like, is there a single building that has been built like a cross? If you're, if you're going by how tall buildings in New York are, you can see that like, all right, it's a tall building. So that must mean that like this much space is equal to that.
That's true. I see. I was going a different route and I was going with the size of the people, which are now that we, now that we're talking about it, it's all very disproportionate. Well, I think I'm glad that you mentioned the New York thing though, too, because it's like, you know, each level is supposed to be a real place on earth. So you have like New York, Hawaii, China, India, like all of these places.
And I think one thing that's really interesting about that is like, it really like, it helps the story too, because like, think about this situation where it's like all of these humans who are now referred to as man ham are now like trapped under the bottom of the ocean working for the, you know, the evil fish people. And you have to like, basically bomb the factories, free these people, you know, or they get eaten by sharks right in front of you. So it's like, this is a pretty dark game for the time. And you know, they do not care about South America at all. They'll go to the North pole before they go there.
That's the last thing. They're pretty biased towards the Northern hemisphere. I'm not really sure why. Yeah. It's a, it's a natural route of New York to Egypt, to the North pole. Like, you know, that's just a normal North pole route. It's New York to Hawaii, to China, to India, to Egypt, to Greece, to England, to the North pole, back to New York. Yes. And the reason why I only said New York, Egypt, North pole, Sam, was this way we wouldn't have to walk our viewers through each level like that.
They're not sharks. Can we just, can we just drop the, uh, the shark thing? They are killer orca whales. And it really annoys me that you keep calling them something else. I thought they were dolphins.
I'm quitting. Don't quit because I want to talk about the, um, the enemy patterns in the game, you know, kind of like the, the different shapes that they form when they're coming at you and how they like, I guess like what I really like about this game is the creative enemy patterns because they don't just do like, okay, now we're going to just come straight at you in a line. And then we're going to go like each person dips down low. It was kind of like, they all had like arcs that were a little less than predictable and you'd kind of, you would get burned if you were like shooting where they were instead of anticipating where they were going to be.
Now let's, I think we need to, if we're going to talk about enemy patterns, we also have to, uh, speak about the terrible weapon you have. Um, I think that because these are very familiar patterns that we're seeing. Um, we saw them in, are you talking about Gradius? We're talking, yes, I'm sorry.
Uh, we, we've seen patterns like these in Gradius, but you have a weapon that is sort of, uh, useful. And in this game, you just have this pea shooter. And even after you get upgrades, it's just a slightly bigger pea shooter. And I think that's what, what creates most of the difficulty in this game is that it's, it's very hard to even, to even shoot these things at all. But then it spreads into three pea shooters. True. But it's, it takes a while to even get to that point. I think there were a lot more, uh, there were a lot more helpful in Gradius when it came to, uh, alternate firing patterns. You know what I mean? There was a point in Gradius where you would just became a beast.
Yeah. You know, you just had like everything and anything under the sun. Yeah. So with that, that makes any strange, uh, pattern that these enemies take much more difficult. I don't, it definitely made the game more challenging, but I did appreciate that, uh, you know, that there, there was a, there was already so much going on. And then they said, you know what, let's just send like a, uh, an unpredictable wave of, of enemies constantly at you.
So this way it's like, you got to shoot them with the pea shooter thing, but then you also have to use like your ice ball cannon thing and like things on the ground. Well, some of them, like the Nautilus enemy, whatever it's called. Don't worry about the names. I'm looking at the manual. It's just the one that's like, looks like a Nautilus. Oh, wait, it is a shark.
Oh, wow. You now have to leave the podcast. What the hell? It looks like an orca whale. I don't know, man. I can understand your confusion though, Sean, because it wasn't included in the radio drama. They never mentioned whales or sharks. So I can understand why you're confused. I'm just looking at the coloring. It's a, it's a very black and white shark. It's not like a blue shark. Hey, I respect that you, that you came clean about it. You could have just like kept quiet. No one would have known. I respect that you decided to admit that it was a shark.
I'm a man of honor. So how do we feel about the humans being called man hams? Is that like, are you going to do that as your new nickname? I think it's pretty cute. You know, I think, uh, I think that adds to the personality that this game has. I mean, maybe the developers weren't going to call man hams, but whoever was in charge of localizing this game definitely wanted to sneak in some man ham.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the story say that like the Neptunians had run out of man ham. So they had to enslave the human race to get more. So they had like another source of man ham. Like, are we just a, are we life seated on earth as a, as a secondary source of man ham and our actual home planet is Neptune? After they had used up all of the, uh, the Moai heads, then they moved on to people. I think it's worth thinking about. Does anybody have any more gameplay thoughts? I feel like we haven't done enough justice.
Like, like if you, if you wouldn't mind, could each of you tell me maybe like how long you actually spent with the game? I'll go. I'll say that I spent a good 40 minutes with this game. And that seems high to me considering how little I really like had fun with it. Um, I do appreciate, uh, like the added depth. It's not just shooty, shooty, shooty. Um, but I, I found all of the distractions, uh, to be, you know, quite distracting.
Um, as one does, as one does. And I'd say that I, I do like the idea of, of having to keep up your fuel and, uh, having to worry about the crowd control because you got to jump into the fray to pick up, uh, um, the people that you're rescuing, um, the almost man hams, if you will. Um, but I, I thought it was just a little too chaotic for, uh, for you to like get into a groove or at least for me to get into a groove. But then again, I'm very bad at video game. Yeah. I mean, I, I spent about a half hour with it.
If that, to be honest, I, I watched more videos on it afterwards to have a, have a good idea of it. But it's funny because even right now I'm watching footage of it and it looks fun, but I didn't have a ton of fun with it either. So I didn't, I didn't spend a ton of time with it. But, and I think a big part of it for me was the same, was a similar thing where that I think that 60 second timer is too, at least for it's too short of an amount of time for me to be able to be comfortable before I have to start finding where my next source of fuel is going to be. Yeah, I, I agree. And that's, this is also coming from me who was somebody that will wake up in a panic just because he hears his alarm.
So if you, if you give me an alarm sound, I'm, there's going to be some weird Pavlovian response. It's just going to put me in a panic. And then Sam, how, how long did you have? I played around the same amount of time, around 40, 40 minutes, I think.
But even though I wasn't great at this game, I still did like it a lot because I think that it's something that, you know, if you spend enough time with it, the second you see an enemy, you know how it's going to behave because they all have pretty unique shapes and pretty unique behavior. So it's something that I could see, like, this would be my jam if I was a kid in the eighties, I think. Yeah, I think, I think that's, that's true for me too. I think, um, you know, we'll get more into this in the essential games list, but this game in, I guess I would say it intrigued me, never really clicked with me.
And, uh, I do agree that like, if this was the game of the month, you know, or like, you know, the game of the six months, who knows how often you get video games when you're a kid now. Yeah. But like, if that was my game, I probably would have stuck with it. Whereas now it's kind of like, well, I mean, there's just so much more to play. I don't really need this, but I feel like I might've stuck with this one if I had that, um, if I had like that incentive of like, this is the only game you have for a while. So enjoy it. Yeah. I think even, I think I like him a little bit more than that. I think that, I don't know. I think this is one of my favorite games that we've played so far.
All right. We'll save it for the essential games list. But I, I, I feel like I need to point out that just because you're stuck with the game, I think we brought this, this point up a bit when like, you know, you don't have a 400 game steam library, or you don't have a streaming service like PlayStation now or something like that you had to find the most value out of the games that you owned. And I get that, but what, I don't know how that affects the quality of, or the perceived quality of a game. I don't think it's that. I don't think, I think it's just learning the game.
You know, we came into it, not really like, you know, we came into a blind for 40 minutes and I feel like. That's that, I guess I see that. Yeah. I think I'm talking more, Sean, I'm talking about like, I think it's not so bad that I would have just like grinded through it. I think I would have actually like took the time to learn the game and the mechanics around, you know, like, like it's not, it's not an incredibly shallow game. The real problem with this game is that it's just not, it's not polished.
Yeah. You know, like it has a lot of ideas that it doesn't fully execute, but I think I would have forgiven that if I was like a kid. Yeah. You know, I don't think I would have been like as hard on the game if it was like, this is the game you have. So enjoy it. I would have been like, okay, I'll figure it out. Yeah. And I think that lack of polish is just like what was par for the course at the time, you know? I mean, that's a huge statement about the NES.
That's just like games in general just, you know, sucked. So we should just take this as it. But you know what I mean? Like when we see it like as like a Zelda or something like that, or, or a Gradius, it's like, it stands out because every other game like that isn't like that. You know, that's like, I know what you're saying. I'm going about it in a very roundabout way, but I don't know. I feel like that once you can click with this game, I feel like it'll, it would be really fun. But I think that would take a little bit of time to really understand the kind of clunky mechanics. The meta?
Yeah. I think that it wouldn't be impossible. Like to this compared to other games that we played that seemed a little bit unfair. You know? I hear you. I, I, I guess I still felt some unfairness, but not, not so much as some of the more, the more recent games we've played. And then, uh, you know, we talked about how much time did you spend on it? Now, how much would you pay for it? Oh, that's, that's difficult. So we're talking about in 1986 right now. I think I'm talking about $2018. $2018. I would pay, is this bundled with anything or am I just paying for this game? You're just getting the game. 50 cents. Oof. Okay. Joe?
Uh, if we're talking $2018, uh, instead of $2019 for some reason, I would. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I didn't want to get people confused with the new inflation rates.
Ever since that happened, the incident. I don't know. Yeah. I probably wouldn't pay much for it. I'd pay probably a couple of dollars. Okay. And Sam? Yeah. Like $3 probably. Okay. Yeah. I think that's fair. I think, I think, I think $5 is kind of where I'm at with this game. Maybe 10, but I'm about to just, you know, let it be known that $10.
Skoon is expensive, guys. I'm just going to put it out there. Uh, Skoon is $60 loose. That's the same price as a, you know, like, you know, Kingdom Hearts 3 came out earlier this year. But that's 60 bucks. Are you saying like, you know, for collectors to buy this, they have to find it on eBay for 60 bucks. And that's just by itself, Sean. I should mention that if you want it complete with the box and manual, because the manual has the deep lore, you're looking at six, you're looking at $600.
$600. But these are prices that are driven solely by their rarity and only because collectors want them. Not because people want to play the game. Absolutely true. 100% true. It's like Super Metroid is a $40 game because people want to play it. It's actually not rare. People just dictate, like, if you want the right to play this game correctly. You got to pay $40. Whereas, like, with Skoon, it is completely just the fact that it cannot be found.
And I think that has something to do with, like, you know, we didn't talk about this at the top of the show. But this is another, like, Broderbun got their hands in this somehow. So just keep that in mind when thinking about this game, because we always think about the Broderbun games because they're weird. They're, like, kind of indie. And then they also produce some garbage, like Deadly Towers. So every now and again, I just, like, I hear Broderbun and it's like, that's a name I haven't heard since the last episode.
They just keep showing up. I still have to think it's just because we're going chronologically and they just dumped a bunch of games out at once. Is that not the case here? That is the case here. It's the September 87 Broderbun dump. They dumped now six games on us.
Okay, I think, does anybody else have any stray thoughts? I have one stray thought. I'd love to hear it. And here's the thing. I played this game maybe, like, two weeks ago, to be totally honest. So it's not quite as fresh what this thought is. But if I remember correctly, the pause sound is not a pause sound at all. Oh my gosh, you're right. It just changed. It's just a music change. There's, like, a different music track for the pause screen. Am I correct? Yes, you are correct. Yeah, so that was a new level for Joe's pause sounds. So I feel like if there is, there's got to be an historic document chronicling pause sounds through history. Or if there isn't, you have to write it. But if that's the case, then Schoon must have a chapter to itself.
Oh, yes. Schoon and the future of pause sounds. Schoon essentially invented, like, menu music. In-game menu music. That's true. And let me ask, Schoon, if I were to make a historical, you know, document of all pause sounds, like, when do you think it would begin? Like, what year would I start at? Oh. Like, what was the first pause sound of anything?
I think of Mario, like, da-da-da-da. No, I'm talking, I'm talking about, it's got to be, like... It's way before that, I know. It's got to be, like, before video, like, a movie paused and made a sound or something. Like, what's the earliest... Maybe it was, like, when the first video game on an oscilloscope was made, it's probably that, like, powered down, like, we turn off an oscilloscope. Joe, I'm not promising anything to our listeners, but I would greatly appreciate an article on the website about your love letter to pause sounds. All right. It could happen. I'll have to go through and remember all my old pause sounds. Yes. Okay. Guys, I think we've done enough here. Let's break it into the Essential Games list.
Okay, guys, you got 2019, but you're using 2018 dollars to buy video games in today's time, and you know that Scoon is 60, but you also know you could pirate it probably pretty easily. Point being, would you still consider playing it today, because that's what the Essential Games list is all about, would you still consider playing it today versus, like, Kingdom Hearts 3?
There's not much I would consider doing other than Kingdom Hearts, like, in exchange for Kingdom Hearts 3. Got it. Okay, so maybe that's too high of a standard, but would you play it in the year 2019? And don't count the fact that you did play it for this podcast. So, Sean, you're up first. All right. I would say that if I were not mandated by just the concept of this podcast to play it, I probably would not play it. But that does not mean that I don't think that it has something to offer. Like we've touched upon, this game sort of has you juggling, multitasking. It's not just shoot the stuff like most of the scrolling shooters that we've played so far.
It's got a bomb-ass story that I think should be adapted into a movie. And if nobody does that, I think I want to do that. But the game itself, while it has some ambitions, falls pretty flat for me. So I would not recommend playing this game. I would recommend looking at this game and going, huh. I love that. Huh. Makes you think. Yeah. I wasn't blown away by this game. While I was playing it at first, I think I was really turned off by the timer.
And I don't know, just something about it didn't suck me in. So I'm definitely going to not vote it essential. But I will say that I think just listening to Sam has convinced me to at least give it another try. And try and get a little better at it and see if I'm enjoying it more. I can't imagine a world that will make me decide it's essential. But I might have a better opinion of it after that. But definitely not put it on the essential games list. I think that this game is really interesting.
I think that kind of approaches a shoot-em-up in a way that we haven't seen before. In a way that you really don't see a lot of now. Where it is, like I said, an objective-based shoot-em-up. I'm going to put it out there now. I don't think it's essential. I think it's like, there's a lot of stuff wrong with it. But it has a main idea. And it executes it well, I think. Even if it's kind of unfair sometimes.
It's like a lot different than what I've seen in a lot of games. And so I think if you're interested in game design and how it all works. Then check it out. Because it might make you think of some other stuff. I thought you were going to go on a little longer thing. I'd love to hear, because I knew you were going to kind of say play it there. Can you go into a little about why somebody should play it versus watch a video of it?
That's a good point. I don't know. I think it's fun. I think that's what it comes down to. I think it's a fun game. I enjoyed myself when I was playing it. I'll allow it. Yeah, I will say that is one thing that I do appreciate. That it tries to be different than just everything else out there. It has obviously a unique story and different objective than most games of this genre at this time. So, I mean, I appreciated that.
I'd say we're very lukewarm right now. Yeah, it's funny because I don't really know, Sean, how I feel about it going into this essential games list either. And that's just been the whole reception of the episode, right? It's just been like, yeah, you know, I just think it's a... I mean, I appreciate it. If it was polished, it would be essential. I'll say that. I think if it was like... Okay, so what would the 2019 post-apocalyptic version of this movie be? I'm sorry. I keep calling it a movie because it's just ripe for movie making. But this game... Right, it really is. It's just like somebody should buy the rights right now. What's Scoon remake 2019 play like? Open World. He plays like Scoon.
No, no, no. Okay, I'll save Sam here for a second because I'll tell you right now, Sean. Yeah. Scoon 2019, like the remake, would not be a 3D open world game where you have to go between palaces and stuff like that. It would be like kind of like Hyper Light Drifter meets Submarine 2D Shmup. Okay. You know, like your submarine would be crazy.
It would have all these awesome extra add-ons. The entirety of like each New York level wouldn't just show you New York in the background for like a brief second. It would be like the whole thing is like you navigating in between the buildings of New York as it's underwater fighting off these like weird mutant mermaids. Thank you, Mike. This sounds like a great game. Okay. I kind of want to play Scoon 2019. But are there romanceable companions? Are you talking about the naked mermaid on the front?
I would never suggest such a thing, Michael. Well, they mentioned the princess, right? Yeah, that's the princess. She's naked. And she shows up on the title screen. Okay, we didn't touch upon this, but I think what Sam is saying, he's mentioning the Miss Neptune, the winner of the Miss Neptune competition. Like, is she the queen of Neptune or did she just win a pageant? You got me. I don't know. I think, no, I think it's like Miss Neptune's your name. It's like, you know, the queen of England. It's like you become Miss Neptune.
Okay. I prefer the pageant. I see it like a royalty thing. Well, with boobies like that, she probably won the pageant. Well, that's... It's on the front cover. I just don't understand what's going on here with Nintendo being like, censor this, censor that, but don't censor these, you know, these mermaid things because they're not really doing it. These mermaid things. Are you talking about the box art or the cover of the manual? Like, I'm... No, no, I don't see it anywhere. Oh, I see. The title screen, guys, of the game. Okay. Sorry, yeah, I kept saying front, but I meant like the first thing you see on screen.
Well, all right. Do you mind if I put in my vote for the essential games list? Oh, I'm sorry. You didn't say that. Yeah, please. I'm going to do it real fast. It's a no. So, and I don't even know if I'd say play it because I was thinking about that, but I don't know if I'm going to go back and play it. So, for me, it's more like, it's more like watch a video of it. And if that seems interesting to you, which it probably won't because it's honestly, it's like pretty dull on like the graphic side of things. But I would say that just like if somebody wrote this down on paper or even wrote it on the back of a box and I was at like a game store and I was like, wow, that sounds like a lot's going on.
I'll give that a shot. I think people would have given this a shot, but I don't think like after you play it or even after you see it, you'll be inclined to give it that shot as well. And I think that just comes down to the polish that we keep talking about. And it's like the polish isn't just like changing mechanics. I think the polish is figuring out how to balance all of the mechanics. Yeah. Something that they really couldn't do here. You know, there was like a lot going on and ultimately it just results in like that annoying alert that Sean hates so much when you get down to 20 seconds.
And I agree with it. You know, it's like that's how it is. That's fair. And we already have what I would consider two great shmups on the NES. So I don't think like scoon is like a desk, you know, like I would, I would say that that would be desperate to be like, I need another shmup. Take scoon. I'll pay 60 bucks. Like it's just not going to happen. Well, that's scoon guys.
All right. That's scoon. Um, I think that's the end of the episode. So I hope everybody enjoyed it. Uh, I'm Michael Esposito and we run nostalgia. Uh, all of the Michael Espositos in the world. So you just go on to Facebook. You go on to Facebook and you just have Michael Esposito, just friend him and be like from nostalgia. And he'll be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Um, because I'm not on Facebook, but I am on Twitter and you can find me there at Esposito film.
Uh, nostalgia is going through like a thing right now where the website is being updated and being polished. So, you know, if you like that, let me know. Um, but if you're going to email us, I just ask that you email through the website for the time being because I'm not so certain that we still have our Gmail at this point. Oh. That's something that, yeah, that's something I'll talk about, um, on another time when I actually know.
But it's okay because in the meantime, if you go through the contact form, which most people do. I know our boy Dante does that. Dante. If you go through the contact form on the website, you'll definitely get a hold of us. If you send an email to the old, uh, Gmail account, there might be a good chance you don't hear back from us because Gmail, uh, held our account for ransom. Mike, I really wish you would have told us this before we went live. I just think it's funny to like announce that in the show for realsies. Wait, so can you just give us a little bit more detail? Why are they holding at ransom? They want money. Oh. They want money and we're a non-profit.
We don't make money. We're trying really hard to bankrupt. Yeah, we're trying really hard to bankrupt ourselves. And some of you have been very nice to like give us money, which is more than nice, actually. Oh yeah, you guys are amazing. It's just beautiful. But like that's not, we're not saying everybody should do that. And I think that they just need to know why their questions might not be being answered. All right, we should send this episode to Google. Yeah, I'll send them a plea.
Or you know what? Instead of a plea, I'll just tell them that I plan to flood the earth and kidnap all their Man Ham employees if they don't comply. Man Ham. That's going to do it for this episode, guys. Come back soon. We've got another great episode coming up for you next Friday.
Is this the post show? This is the post show. So this is a shame before we get into whatever the topic of the post show is. It's a shame that this just came up right now as we're ending the episode. But like I said, I'm watching a video. And apparently after like level six, you get a message that says from Neptunians that says, we are not done for. Our reinforcements are arriving. Neptunians. It's signed Neptunians. Like we would sign humans. Like sincerely, all humans. Maybe they're all like a collective conscience. You know, like they have shared sentience.
And they just all think alike and do and act on behalf of the water. Yeah. We don't know too much about the Neptunians aside from like, I feel like they're every kind of marine animal. Like are they just every marine animal is originally Neptunian? That could be. I think they just got the. I guess they all like based on. Yeah. All right. I don't buy that. I don't like I get that there could be some sort of like parallel evolution or convergent evolution. But the fact that there's frogs and and shellfish and. Well, maybe it's like what you said, where they.
They seeded Earth. They seeded Earth with humans, but then also put some Neptunians undercover underwater and all sea life that we know are really just Neptunians. All right. I like that better. There you go. Well, this has better flow than the episode. Well, I think it's because. All right. This is our first completely remote record. And that's true. It's hard to to gauge when people are done. And we have a solution for that, though. Don't worry. OK. Are we going to give blink twice? I'm going to give shock collars to everybody. And then I have little buttons. I'll shock you when it's your time to speak. All right. That's a good idea. Yeah. That's a that's called shock cast.
Do we have to pay a subscription for a shock cast? I'll pay the subscription price. You just wear the collar. OK. Sounds good. Oh, this was a pink submarine. But does anybody know about the yellow submarine? Is that a reference to something? You know, the movie? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I was thinking about as playing this game. I was like, oh, I know the only other submarine I know is the yellow. That'd be what about that'd be a fun crossover. That was like Red October. Sean Connery. The hunt for Red October. That's true. Sam, I like where you're going, though. A ROM hack where you play as the Beatles.
Yeah. But it goes through like, have you seen the movie? Oh, man. It's like really trippy. All the man ham people that fall out of the. They're like the blue meanies. No, no. They are just, you know, like slightly changed sprites to make them look more like the Beatles. Yeah. And then the blue meanies would be all the enemies. How could you change those little tiny little stick-finger sprites to look like the Beatles? You make them a little bit bigger. And you give them British accents. Yeah. It's amazing. I'm pretty sure Broderbund's daughter drew those sprites.
Broderbund's just a guy. Broderbund's daughter sounds like a band. Yeah. Broderbund's daughter is cool, but I was saying Broderbund in the same sense that they say Neptunians. Right. You know, it's just the collective conscience of that company. We are Broderbund. All right, guys. That's it for the post-show, too. I wanted to ask Sam more really hard questions. Yeah, grill them at other of the central games. Just like really, really hard. Like in three sentences or less, describe the best way to improve the color palette of this game. Please restate the question. More muted colors. Sam, you have 20 minutes to open Unity and recreate Spoon in its entirety. Well, he thought we were asking him to create a music track on the spot.
I can't believe he thought I was asking him to do that. Oh, my gosh. All right, guys. Let's get out of here. All right. I'm pressing stop. And by get out of here, I mean just hit the stop. I'm pressing stop right now. All right, everybody. I'm pressing stop. up.
