072 · TIGER HELI

• Introductions - Espo
• Development History - Espo
  • 1985 this hits Arcade by Toaplan
    • Founded only in 1984
    • Known for shmups
    • ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
      • Zero Wing in 1989 for Arcade. Not NES.
    • Declared bankruptcy in 1994
  • In 1987 it comes to the NES thanks to Micronics
  • Acclaim published
• More SHMUPS, can we have enough? We seem to like em
• First Impressions - Everyone
• How to Play
  • Vertical SHMUP
  • A and B buttons
• Tales from the Manual
  • The Place
    • The Mega-Fortress of the Terrorist Regime
  • The Problem
  • The terrorist Country, Cantun has become power hungry and plans to take over the world. They’re planning their attack right now. Right as you read this page. So there’s little time left.
  • Tiger-Heli is the result of a billion-dollar defense project to create the ultimate stealth jetcopter. It’s turbo-powered.
• Gameplay
  • Missiles
    • Shoot half a screen length
    • If an enemy shot hits one of your bombs, you detonate the bomb instead of losing a life!
  • Enemies
    • Require quick response time
    • You seem to just need to keep shooting all the time
  • Powerups
    • More bombs
    • Little copters
  • Reptition
    • One music track
    • Only 4 stages. Stage 5 is stage 2
  • Comparison to 1942
    • This is worse - ESPO
      • People hate 1942 because of the music
• Additional Thoughts
  • Extra continue when game over:
    • Hold down A+B during Game Over screen.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Two Sequels
    • Twin Cobra
      • Releases on the NES in 1990
      • More helicopter goodness
    • Twin Cobra II
      • Released in 1996 for the Arcade and Sega Saturn.
      • Was developed by Toaplan, but they closed in 94 so Taito allowed the offshoot company Takumi to finish.
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)

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

00:00 The mission, shatter the enemy defense lines and destroy the military headquarters of a war-crazed nation. This is Tiger Heli.

00:23 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Guys, how are we? Wednesday. It's Wednesday for us. I don't know. It's Friday usually for the listeners. Depending on what day you listen though. You might not listen right away. But it's kind of like reassuring to know that it's Wednesday now and if they're listening, they made it to Friday. Yeah, that's true. Right? Like the world's still turning. Big wheel keep on turning.

00:52 As far as we know. I don't know the rest of the lyrics. We're talking about Tiger Heli, a game that Joe had confused with a Zapper game. Yeah, well, there's another game called Operation Wolf that I played and they both got animals in it. And I was like, Tiger Heli, that's Zapper game. Yeah, it actually like stopped me. And I was shooting at the screen for hours and nothing was happening. And you gave me that note of like, hey, just so you know, this is a Zapper game. So like I had everything ready. And I go in there and I'll, yeah. Dummy. I still had to double check. I was like, is it a Zapper game? Like I went online and thankfully it's not. This is a shmup.

01:28 Can we really have enough shmups? I think, yeah. I think we have. Well, we seem to like them though. I mean, yeah, I like some of them. It's funny, yeah, because I do have this like idea in my head that I'm not a shmup guy, but you're right. I have liked quite a few of the shmups we've played. Yeah, two of them are essential out of three that we've played. I, but no, there's more than that, aren't there? No. What about? What else you got? 1942, Gradius. Oh, wait, did we make that essential? No, we didn't. No, no, no. Okay, good. In what universe do we make 1942 essential, remember? Well, no, like our, I mean, there are games on there that I don't think are essential.

02:08 Well, it's obviously very memorable. Wait a minute, there was another, the jetpack one. Oh, section Z. Okay, so we don't just give them to half the shmups. Two out of five. All right. And that's the rating for section Z too. I'd give that a two out of five. Yeah. Yeah, you know, like interesting concept, performed horribly.

02:28 Oh yeah, we got more than enough, more for the whole family. So you are, you're like tapped out at the moment for shmups. I just, I'm just worried that the pace that we're going at, like, I don't even know what next week's game is, but my guess is it's shmup. Okay. Yeah. At this point, right. It's either shmup or platformer. That's all we get. Okay. Let's get into some development history for Tiger Heli here. So this game hit the arcade in 1985 and it's by Toplan.

02:56 I wanted to say like Toplan, but I don't know if it's like Toa plan, like a, like a hard Oh, Toaplan. Toaplan. There you go. No, it's Toplan. Uh, they were founded in 1984. So this game is very early for them when it comes out in 1985. So they're known for shmups, but they're also known for more importantly, all your base are belong to us. That meme that was like big when the internet like started having memes. I've definitely seen the meme, but I don't remember the story, the exact story behind it. Yeah. One of the proto-memes, I guess, of the generation.

03:30 It's really not funny now. Like, the internet has evolved a lot since then, but that was like... Or devolved, whichever way you want to say it. Yeah, I guess that is true. I just meant, like, the humor has evolved. Now we just laugh at, like, depression stuff, you know? Whereas this was just, like, it's a funny error. For those of you that don't know, All Your Base Are Belong to Us is something that the main villain in Zero Wing, a game that came out in 1989 for the arcade. Never on the NES. I think it came to the Sega Mega Drive, but the Genesis. Who am I? I'm not European. I'm called the Mega Drive.

04:03 Anyway, yeah, so the main villain says, like, you know, like, all of these threatening things to the protagonist at the start of the game, and one of them is, All Your Base Are Belong to Us. And it's voice acted. It actually, like, has it. Like, you know, like, All Your Base Are Belong to Us. And that's a clip, right? That's a bite right out of the game you just heard. Yeah, yeah, that wasn't even my voice. Yeah, that was. There was no way that was my voice. I think we should pivot to cultural history of the early 2000s and late 90s, specifically the internet. Because I think there's a lot of, a lot we can do with All Your Base Are Belong to Us and maybe the spinning baby. What spinning baby?

04:42 It was like, it was one of the things that would just get passed around in emails. Yeah, like the banana, too. The banana. The peanut butter jelly time. Yeah. What else was there? There was Spank the Monkey. Oh, God. The Flash game. Yeah, these things are. That's a deeper cut, I feel. Really? Interesting. Okay. If anybody ever went on UGO Flash Player, like, hit me up in the DMs or something. Addictinggames.com. Addictinggames.com was good, but UGO Flash Player was like a step above. And I always thought, like, Newgrounds was very childish.

05:12 Well, Newgrounds was the, it was the forum in which we congregated for all of the videos. There's a lot of porn there, too, though. There was a lot of porn, but. Anyway, this is way off base for Tiger Heli, so you can tell how much we have to talk about this one if we're stalling at the early points of it. Anyway, to get back to Toplan, so they make a lot of shmups. And they declared bankruptcy. Yeah, and then they declared bankruptcy in 1994.

05:37 So, not much going on there. They founded in 1984, the last 10 years, and that's about it. In 1987, though, Tiger Heli finds its way to the NES thanks to Micronics. They made a few games for us now. Yeah. I don't remember which. I don't either. I can't do all my homework.

05:55 But we definitely have heard of them, and they'll continue to do stuff. They do a lot of basically porting arcade games. Maybe that's just because they knew, like, how to use the arcade boards and ROM information on that and bring them over to the NES. But they do a pretty half job. Half-ass job, yeah. I don't think it's just half. I don't even know if it's ass. Just half. Half the word, half the phrase, half the job. I remember reading about one of the previous games that they had developed or ported and just learning that it was just some guy.

06:23 At the time, like, it was a very amateur outfit. But I could just be disparaging a very respectable company by saying that. Oh, it was everything. They've done everything. How could we forget that Micronics are the same people that did Athena, Elevator Action, Ghost and Goblins, Ikari Warriors. Oh, Ghost and Goblins? Yeah. Ghost and Goblins they did the port of. Which would explain a lot because I think that the arcade version of Ghost and Goblins is perfection and the NES version is just like a step below.

06:51 It's there, but it's still there. No, it's still there gameplay-wise, but the graphics is day and night. Like, the graphics on the arcade version are stunning. It's true. I don't know how they failed that one. But who doesn't like a nice red devil? Me. In their cereal.

07:06 All right, we are really getting off track, so let's bring it back. I'll just mention real quick that Acclaim also published this. They publish a lot of things. Yeah, they don't really do much other than just be like, we have money, so we'll finance the distribution. Yeah. So that's cool that they did that because now we have Tiger Heli.

07:25 Let's get some first impressions. You want me to start? I would love it if you... Well, do you have a first impression on first impressions? I do have a first impression on the game. First impression? I have the first impression. Okay, what was the very first impression of Tiger Heli? For you. My first impression of this game is that it opens up with you committing war crimes. The first things that you do is you fire your gun, and if it hits the roof of a house, it just blows up. And you get points for that. That's the first thing that maybe you did. Yeah, but you get points for that. This isn't just like... This isn't in Call of Duty.

08:00 It's encouraged to blow up the houses in this game. War crimes against a war nation. A war nation? Obviously, this is a very one-sided manual where it describes a nation that just wants to start wars. It doesn't talk about what war. It wants to rule the world, I guess, but... They're described as a terrorist nation. Yeah, but you can't be a nation and a terrorist at the same time. You know what I'm saying? It's true. One thing or the other.

08:28 And I think... Yeah, they're actually legitimizing this terrorist organization by saying that they control an entire nation. Exactly. So I'm saying that I think Tiger Heli has its agenda in the wrong place. Okay. All right. That's a great impression. Very fresh. Usually, we talk about the gameplay. So it was very nice of you, too. You know, it was cool. Okay, great.

08:47 I did notice right away that, you know, you're shooting, like, cars and houses, which is weird because I guess you're firing down. I guess you're firing down on everything because there's not many other flying enemies. But anyway, my first impression... How do you suppose that you're flying, like, that you're aiming down? I don't know. Okay, because I never got that. Because you're just firing forward, but you're hitting the tops of roofs of houses. Oh, and you're hitting, like, tanks and stuff, too. And tanks, and, like, most of your enemies are on the ground.

09:13 Maybe we could just assume that since Tiger Heli is, like, a stealth jet copter, as it's described in the manual, maybe we could just assume that it auto-targets. Yeah, that must be it. Yes. I would also say that in movies, or I guess in real life, I've never seen, like, helicopter to helicopter warfare, or, like, you know, helicopter to other air-based vehicle warfare.

09:35 It's usually just... Yeah, I guess that's true. I'm thinking more of, like, a plane. Yeah, helicopters are usually fired down. Right, right. I guess I just meant in the sense that it's not like the house has just gotten your way. Like, you're, like, aiming at the house. You're aiming at the house. But, yeah, my first thought was that it does... It scrolls pretty slowly. I feel, like, slower than a lot of the other shmups that we've played so far. It does. That was, like, the first thing I noticed. It was, like, the first thing I noticed. But, well, you're in a helicopter, right? Helicopters can't go nearly as fast as, like, the... Well, what about the Tiger Heli? Oh, yeah. Sorry. Come on. Stealth jet copter.

10:10 Jet copters are weird, because, like, is that a real thing? I don't think so, right? You can't have anything... Like, a helicopter can only go so fast, right? With most of these manuals, they just make up words. I don't think it's real. Okay. Great. So, Joe, that's your first impression? Yeah, that was the beginning. Yeah. Of my impressions. We'll get into the rest of it later. And I will just say, real fast, for my first impression was that everything in this game was just very, like, bland to me. Actually, this is the first time where I'm able to say that maybe it didn't even leave an impression on me. Like, I played it. I knew that it would be coming up, so I played it ahead of time.

10:48 And I went back to it, like, a week later. And I've completely forgot everything. I was like, oh, yeah. What is this? Like, you know, the first time I played it is now, like, forgotten. Because you weren't using a zapper. Yeah, that's true. I meant, like, once I actually sat down and played it. It just, I don't know, it's not remarkable to me. And that's just my first five minutes. Maybe that opinion will change later on. Stay tuned. Yeah.

11:13 Let's talk about how to play. And I don't mean, like, which buttons do what. But, well, actually, I have in the notes A and B buttons. But that's not what I meant. I meant more like, what do we do in this game? Like, what is the objective? So, I mean, you're shooting at enemies is the bottom line. You have bombs and you have just your regular firearm.

11:42 And to me, this game was like, think of what a shmup is. And that's what this game is. Like, there's not much more to it. There's a few minor power-ups. Nothing, like, too big. You're just scrolling and shooting. Yeah. That's kind of what I got out of it. It's just a typical.

12:02 No, there is a little bit of depth in the way that power-ups work. And how they interact with the world, I guess. Sure. But it's not immediately apparent when you start playing. So, it's just a vertical scrolling shooter for the most part. Right. Yeah. Not to say that there are no additional aspects to this game. But there are a few. You learn them pretty quickly.

12:32 And I feel like it doesn't really change much in that. It's not like a terrible way. It's not like terribly boring. It's just that you get it right away when you boot it up. You kind of get it from the first five minutes. And then it's not going to change too much more after that. Right. It's auto-scrolling. You're going through waves of enemies, tanks, other flying aircrafts. Sometimes you can pretend that the people in the houses are attacking you to justify your reason for attacking them.

12:57 And you're just going through that. And like Sean, either you or Sean mentioned, it's slow-paced. It doesn't move as fast as some of our other shmups. Joe said it first. Okay, great. I like the idea that you said either you or Sean. I guess if we're talking to the listeners, like either you or Sean. One of the listeners might have suggested that the game is slow. But then also it's worth noting that there's only four stages.

13:20 Yeah. Like four stages. Like, you know, it's stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four. And then stage five, which they do call it stage five, is stage two again. Stage two again? Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. It's not a – they don't want you to feel like it's actually a loop. So like stage five is two, then three, then four, then I think three, two, four. Like they change it up. Interesting. But it's always the same thing. Yeah, I only played as long as it could keep my attention.

13:49 But I guess it wasn't long enough. Yeah, so you didn't get through all four stages. I feel like I got four stages through. Yeah, and it didn't probably feel too much like a finale. No. Yeah. That's what I'm going to get at too. It's like the game doesn't want you to know it's ended. So it just keeps dragging stages. At least increasing the number of stages. If we could, like to talk about the manual for a minute.

14:13 Yeah. So maybe you guys break – We'll get into this propaganda. Yeah, break out your manuals. Breaking them out. All right. So there's nothing like exceptional about this manual. But I do like the scene that's page four and five where it kind of like tries to lay out like a – You know, this is the entire story you're going to get out of Tiger Heli. There's nothing in the game that really like alludes to anything bigger happening. So all of it is like in this small little story here. So they have the place, which is the mega fortress of the terrorist regime. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't get that vibe.

14:49 Yeah, it's just the – The mega fortress. It's a suburban area. And then you just cross into the water. And, yeah, there's ships and stuff because you've attacked them. Yeah, all those just like – All those like houses with like nice yards and stuff. Is that the mega fortress? That's the mega fortress. Maybe you don't start in the mega fortress. Oh, you're on your way. But it does seem weird that the manual fails to call that out, right? Like you start – maybe that's our home country we started. Oh, no. We're shooting our own. It's not good. It doesn't make sense why you're getting points. Do we have – they don't name our home country, do they? They don't. I would assume it's the United States. Hell, yeah.

15:28 So that was the place. The problem, though, is even worse, okay? The terrorist-run country, Cantoon, has become completely power hungry. They're out of line. Their aim to take over the whole world. What is up with this fantasy of taking over the whole world? Like – I mean it's what these games do. I mean that's usually what you're trying to fight against. And then like that's one thing, right? So they're going to take over the whole world. And then the manual like announces to you they're planning their attack right now. That's my favorite part of this. Right as you read this page. The fact that it's like the second person like – are we scaring you yet?

16:09 Like you better start this game up now. Yeah, like it sounds like it's like a scary story being told to you like right now. I really appreciate that too. Even like the – you know, right as you read this page so there's little time left. And it's like, okay, so why do I have like seven more paragraphs to go? Like I don't know if I should read all this. So now that we have you really fired up, let's go over the controls and what the pickups do. And also make sure you store the game cartridge in a very cool area. Don't let it get above 50 degrees Celsius. Yeah, and also this also has the whole like if it's on for two hours, pause for a little bit. Yeah, take a break, go outside.

16:50 No, no, no. You guys remember what I'm talking about. The one where it's like making up the go outside. Yeah, this is a high precision game. And so like, you know, pause for 10 to 20 minutes after two hours of continuous gameplay. Assuming somebody played this for two hours. Two continuous hours. I don't know. I don't know about you guys. But for me, it felt like if that's what helps this game perform, I should have maybe been pausing much more frequently. Because not to go off the rails, but my game was not. My game was glitching out a lot.

17:18 Yeah. I keep pausing and like it would fix itself a little bit. But interesting. We're going to have to get more into that. One more snippet, though, from the manual that I really appreciated. This one was cute. It says Tiger Heli is the result of a billion dollar defense project to create the ultimate stealth jet copter. Tiger Heli is turbo powered. It's like a sales pitch. Yeah, right? Like all of a sudden at the end, it's like there's the tagline. Does it have a Hemi? Tiger Heli. It's turbo powered.

17:48 That's all the manual stuff I got. Did anybody else find anything? It's deep lore. No. Yeah. That's probably true. All right. Let's get into the gameplay then. So if this game can be summed up into, you know, a couple things. There's missiles. There's enemies. There's other power ups. There's repetition.

18:06 And there's shmup. There's shmup. There's shmup to be done. What I liked at first about it was the power ups. Or if you call them power ups, you pick up a little. I would call them power ups. Yeah, I guess so. Let's do it. You pick up little mini helicopters. Little baby copters. And that's based on like a power up thing that flashes different colors. You shoot it at the color that you want. And there's like one. There's two options. Like one is copters that shoot sideways, which is nice, which I kind of preferred. Or two copters on the side that shoot forward.

18:39 Well, they're more than just one. I'm sorry. Yeah. There are three options because the other one is bombs. Right. But I mean, as far as the helicopter. Oh, OK. Yeah. And I thought that was like a really cool thing. It did like it did make the gameplay feel different and everything. But I feel like they're very they're pretty frequently available. And it just never just like you get those so early on and the game doesn't really change too much after that. Like those are like the final changes to the game is like, oh, now you got these power ups.

19:08 I liked it because like, you know, I was I was trying to get my little mini copters and I saw them as like my two boys. I wanted to protect my family. Did you name them? Lefty and righty. Great. Very original. Yeah. Which one was which the the gray one was lefty and the gray one was righty. I avoided the right facing ones. Those should never like I just don't have a use for them. I the only reason I like them is because when I in this game, I felt like anytime I did hadn't shot something and got past it, I was like you have no choice but to dodge everything that so at least if I was starting to pass something, I could still shoot it from the side. One thing I want to point out is I'm going to agree with Joe there on the side thing.

19:51 We always talk about how how power ups can be like great for these shmups. And I think like Gradius was the best example of that. But even like Stinger had some great options. Yeah. But this one does have a lot of coverage if you do get all the power ups and don't let anything get hit or taken down. I mean, you can have the copter shooting from the side, you can have multiple raise yourself of like double power ups. This way you could be shooting like four lines or whatever. And so I think you can get like you could really like get a wide spread.

20:23 And I like the side ones better because to Joe's point, like sometimes the tanks don't necessarily appear from the very top. They might come in from the side or something like that. So I appreciated like the option to do that because before previously we'd only ever had like shooting directly ahead or shooting behind you. That's true. But I just like my little children. Everybody has a preference. Yeah. OK. There's nothing wrong with lefty and righty. OK. They're fine. They're beautiful children. The bombs, though, on the other hand, not the best power up. But the one thing that was really cool about them was that if your opponents hit the bombs,

20:58 which are directly under you. It's like a free shield sort of thing. And also it'll trigger like anything near you to die. Yeah. It's like an explosion. Yeah. But you would think that if someone shot a bomb that was on you, you would blow up with everything. Well, it looks like it's attached to your wing.

21:14 Right? Right. Yeah. I like to think of it more as they are shooting the hinge that drops the bomb and they're like, oh, no. And then it falls on them. Oh, OK. Right. Very precise. Very precise aim, but it just didn't precisely. They precisely aimed at the wrong thing. Yeah. I like to think now, based on that, that we disguise our hinges to look like bombs and our bombs to look like hinges. So they shoot at what they think is the bomb, but that's actually the hinge. Wow. That's beautiful. I don't think the gameplay design went that far, but it should have. Don't underestimate that. Maybe it's in the manual. Who knows? The manual covers a lot of things.

21:48 And then one thing I want to talk about with the enemies, does anybody else feel like they require a pretty quick response time? I mean, there can be enough of them that you need to at least see ahead of time. Like you need to anticipate where these slow moving projectiles are going.

22:07 It's not like you don't need like the twitch reflexes, but if you start moving a little too late, you will end up running into a missile. Yeah. It's a lot of dodging. But like you said, you can plan out your dodging a little bit based on where the... And specifically, if you don't have the other helicopters with you, if you're just the copter by yourself, I think once those tanks get past you and now they're behind you, it makes the game like twice as hard. Yeah. Because now you have no option but just dodge until they go off screen. Right. And that's when they give up, I guess. Yeah, it's not very intimidating. Yeah, yeah.

22:40 Well, they have to give up at some point, right? I guess, yeah. It's like the laws of video games. Yeah, a helicopter will be faster. I imagine that's a tank. Right. Do I have anything? Oh, yeah. And then repetition. I guess what I meant by that was just the one music track. Well, this is just something that keeps happening. Like, all of these developers can only be bothered to compose one or two five-bar songs. They got four stages. You couldn't just design four tracks? Well, they do have two tracks.

23:09 One is like a very modified version of the original track when you have power-up. I'm glad you said that. I'm glad you said that because I didn't notice. Yeah. It's like the same tempo and everything. It's just like different. The notes are like changed up a little bit. It's a little bit more uplifting. Yes. But it lasts, I think, the whole time you have any side helicopters. Little boys. Yes. Or my boys. Right. Any of Sean's boys is what they're officially called now. My sons. What you shoot, you think that's missiles or you think those are just like ammo? Like guns? Ammo. You're just shooting raw guns at people. No, I meant like bullets.

23:52 I guess I would think they're missiles. I would say missiles, right? They come pretty infrequently. It's not like a machine gun. You don't destroy a tank with bullets either. You know, you kind of got to be shooting missiles. Well, technically, there are bullets that can go through tanks.

24:09 But I think they're missiles. Can you talk like that for the rest of the podcast? Yeah. Okay. And the only thing that was interesting to note about the missiles is that they shoot exactly half a screen. Well, because you're shooting them at the ground. And that's where it hits the ground. At exactly half. Like it takes half a screen for the curvature of the earth. No, no. You're going 45 degree angle. Okay. You don't have to talk like that anymore. Oh, okay. Sorry, Mike. I didn't want to. Yeah. But I don't want to. You didn't want to disappoint. Exactly. The thing I liked about the half a screen length thing is that it's very precise.

24:43 Like it was even mentioned on like game FAQs or something like that. It's like, when is that now it's going to become useful to me? Like, oh, I'm not. You know, like that guy is at 75% of the screen and I'm back here. Like. You mean in real life? No. Yeah. I guess you could think like, oh, I'll buy a longer TV. Like if I buy a more vertical TV, they'll shoot further. I thought you were talking about how this game would wrongly educate you to think that nobody could shoot you if they were more than half the screen length away. No, gotcha. No, I wasn't thinking that. Just like how I don't think that, um, like in Hogan's alley, that that's how they actually train the FBI agents. Wait, I thought they just use a copy of Hogan's alley. To this day. Yes.

25:27 Yep. Um, that was in Comey's biography, right? Talked about. Comey's alley. The sequel. Um, okay. And then, uh, so I think that's, that covers it for me for gameplay. Anybody else got anything on thoughts on gameplay? I mean, the enemies don't really change up that much. If there's one thing I loved about Stinger, the other episode we just did was that the enemy variety was like every single stage was different and there was like seven different enemies to go through. Coat hangers. Yeah. Coat hangers. Yeah. There were no coat hangers in this game. So there's no way it could be essential. That blue bubbles. Um, oh yeah. They're wearing saxophones. Yeah. It's disappointing.

26:05 Um, it's, it's a little too grounded in reality. There isn't enough deep lore. Yep. So my only thought about gameplay, which I don't think is going to apply to everybody, is my personal experience with gameplay. Uh, a lot of times I started getting a lot of strange graphical. Glitches going on. And I don't think any of them really affected like what was on screen, but it affected sometimes what I could see. Sometimes I disappeared. Like I couldn't see myself for like, for like five seconds.

26:32 Uh, and then other times textures, if you want to call them that, just like whatever you call them, the ground or whatever, like green or whatever, like just one color gray would just suddenly be numbers. Like, I don't know if you have like a pirated copy or something. It was just like glitching out. Like, have you ever, you've never had that where like, uh, you boot it up and then halfway through, halfway through like an NES game, suddenly weird.

26:58 Uh, yeah. Glitchy elements pop up. No, for sure. I mean, you know, yeah. So, I mean. So that happened and I thought I was going to have to start over, but then I just kind of kept like fighting through it and eventually it would just kind of like pop back into normal. Yeah. You might've had like missing no pop up.

27:11 Yeah. I mean like that happens with cartridges when they're like loose and out of place. Like you can do some cool stuff with, um, I think it's Super Mario World where you play around with the, that's Super Nintendo. I know. But like when you play around with the cartridge on that, like you can get graphical sprites to like pop up in the game. Playing with like half in, like on an angle. Yep. There's a lot of like, remember PlayStation 1. I mean, we're definitely not, we don't talk about that that often, but like. Take out the CD. You can just take out the CD. Change the music. Yeah. Change the music. It's like the game's still running somehow and it's like, what's going on?

27:42 Very confusing. Um, thought I dreamt that as a kid actually one time. It happened. It's Rizit. Um, oh. I dreamt that. Uh, also there is a way to get, um, continues in this game. Uh, you can get an extra continue on your game over by holding down A and B during the game over screen. I know that we always talk about like continue systems and like how they work and stuff. It wasn't that rewarding. It's not that satisfying. And I don't like the fact that it's hidden.

28:08 And is that just once or is that? I think it's just once. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's not that hard to accrue extra lives. Like you just, there are those bonus blocks that if you get 10 of them, you get an extra life. Yeah. And I think there's, there's a couple of other ways. There's like 20,000 points. 20,000 and 80,000. Yep. And that's like 20,000 is pretty fast. Yeah. So I mean like the game is generous. It's not, I'm not saying it's hard. I'm asking, is it fun? Like, yeah, but we'll get to that. Yeah. Bye.

29:04 Bye.!! Thank you.

29:37 We can talk about some sequels and spinoffs. Can't wait. Were you expecting sequels and spinoffs from Tiger Heli? I mean, I'm expecting there to be sequels and spinoffs of every game we play now. Like, apparently every half-assed game that we play has 13 further entries into the 2000s with anthology editions. And I'm just going to stop talking. It's okay, because I was surprised to find out that there were two sequels, only two, to Tiger Heli. Because they don't have anything in name with Tiger Heli. And they're actually pretty well-received games.

30:15 The Twin Cobra series is somehow connected to... And I guess maybe it's because they're just also made by Toplan. And they also feature helicopters as the main thing. They're really into helicopters. But, like, yeah, they're just loving helicopters. And I mean, like, look, I'm all for variety, right? So far, think about it. We've had a cartoon spaceship, a real spaceship, not to be confused with fake spaceships.

30:38 Wait, why didn't we talk about... Wasn't Scoon, technically, like a schmuck? Yeah, I guess so, right? Two? We've had a submarine? Yeah, I think they're... At this point, do you want to call Star Voyager a schmuck? No, that is not a schmuck. That is a simulation.

30:53 That's a something. Anyway, to get back to the Twin Cobra games, they're very well-received games. And so Twin Cobra 1 will come to the NES. We will get a chance at it. So if everybody can just remember when we finally get to 1990. We're currently in 1987, for those keeping score. If we can just remember Tiger Heli as we're playing Twin Cobra, I'm sure we'll be like, wow, look at how much advancements there's been in three years' time.

31:19 So that's just... Or not. There may be no change. Yeah. It's interesting to note that that one is well-received, though. And my understanding is that Tiger Heli back in the day was well-received on arcades. Not necessarily the NES port, but the arcade version. Yeah, I haven't really heard... Because I did look up reviews by people of this time, not back in the 80s. And it's still... People still like the game. Yeah, I saw a lot of positive reviews, too. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're just expecting a little something more. We've played some great games recently. And then Twin Cobra 2, which would obviously be the sequel to Twin Cobra, is also in that franchise. And it was released in 1996 for the arcade and Sega Saturn.

32:02 Maybe the PlayStation? But don't quote me on that. I think the PlayStation got a compilation release of the two of them. Anyway, that was also developed by Topeland. But they closed in 1994, if you remember from my development history. So Taito allowed their offshoot company, Takumi, to finish. So that's kind of cool that some of the designers from Topeland, after the company dissolved,

32:22 went on to still finish one of their products. Does Takumi still exist? I don't know. I never heard of Takumi. Yeah, they probably also declared bankruptcy at one point. They're like shoes that are from Adidas that have Takumi in them. Like, that's the name. They're like Onitsuka Tigers? No, they're not. But those are cool shoes. And there's a whole story about that, actually. We're going to get that later. Yeah, you'll get that whole story. I think if no one else has anything to add, we're going to go right into the Essential Games list.

32:53 Sean, you're on a desert island. You only get to take 30 games. They are the Essential Games. Is this one coming with you? Now, do I have a power source and a television set? No. You just get to look at them.

33:09 And they don't come with the manuals, so you can't vote based on how cool the manuals are. Or how much paper you have for starting fires. So they have to be just entirely based on the box art? Like, that's entirely on? No, no, no. Okay, okay, okay, okay. The Essential Games list is... Yeah, exactly. It's that thing we do where we look at the games no longer as they were when they first came out, but how they hold up today. How they look on a desert island. Right. No, no, no, no. How they play today. The desert island thing is just implied. Like, we don't usually say it, but... But we still don't have a power source to play the games. Right. It's always been about a desert island.

33:45 The podcast has always been... Basically, that's the whole plan, is that at the end of the podcast, after we do 716 episodes or however many games there are... We throw them all into the ocean. No, we basically, like, land on a desert island and live there for the rest of our lives with just the games we've considered essential. I thought you guys knew this. We signed a contract at the beginning. I just thought that goes without saying.

34:05 I wasn't aware, and I'm suing you. So what's your vote then, Sean, for this? Now knowing what you know. To be honest, like, this game isn't bad. It's, um... It does a couple cool things to at least keep it interesting with the way that the power-ups work, but it's been done before. I'm not a big fan of helicopters. I'm not a big fan of breaking the Geneva Convention. I don't know, like, why they couldn't make music for each different level, but, you know, I did like blowing up the houses.

34:40 That was a slip. I didn't mean to say that. That's okay. You've said some more questionable things on this podcast than that. It's not an essential game. We've been spoiled by Stinger and Gradius. I don't want to see more shmups. I'm getting sick of shmups. Okay. Joe? Yeah, I think... I can't remember what game we were talking about. I think I've said this before, that I feel like we were past this. Like, it didn't do anything particularly wrong, but I just feel like there's nothing wrong with a game being simple and fun, but I think this was simple and just didn't have enough to it to keep my interest. So I thought it was okay. I don't know if I would even really give it a play, to be honest.

35:29 Just because I'm also kind of bored with this type of game. Yeah. I think you both hit the nails on the head here. Sean, you said something that I was going to go off of, but then Joe said it even better. It's okay. Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. I meant like you said. No, I get it. You said it's not bad. Yeah, it's better than me with words. It's not a bad game.

35:48 It's okay. And that's not the criteria for the Essential Games list. I'm not telling you that if you like this game, you need to reevaluate your choices, because it's totally fine to like this game. I think the three of us took away that we don't like it, and we're never going to revisit it. Yeah. I like PsyOps on Xbox, but you don't have to like PsyOps on Xbox. No one gets that.

36:08 Okay. It sounds like some buried stuff for you, though. You know what? I like the game. Yeah. Did your mom question you liking PsyOps? She came in your room one time and was like, PsyOps? You're playing PsyOps? It's just like the deep psychological scar. They had a music video that you could watch. It was from the band Cold, and it was about the game. And the music video had footage from the game in it. Okay. The post show will be about PsyOps.

36:32 Okay. So stick around for that. In the meantime, the Essential Games list has officially been voted no for Tiger Heli. What will happen to Twin Cobra remains to be seen. We'll find out in a few hundred episodes. Yes, in 150 episodes. But that is definitely all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Don't leave just yet because I think that we have some great news for you.

36:57 Sean, take it away. So we are going public. We have an IPO in April of 2020, and we hope that you will buy our stock. We are doing an initial pricing of $21 per share. I don't know if that's how it works, but we're hoping that the SEC lets us do that. So if you don't have a brokerage account, get one. All certificates will be printed out on Crayola Paint. Yeah, we can send you physical stock so that people can't steal them. Yep. And they'll also come with a little mini message from Sean.

37:36 Yeah. Yep. Which is secret. Don't say it now. It's all personalized. Yep. Joe, any announcements? I just got to say, that was some pretty good improv. I thought I was going to throw you under the bus there. What do you mean improv? This is the point where most shows push where to find them, and here we are just posting made-up news.

37:58 Don't miss the Nostalgia Cover Band. They're the band that plays at a bar in your local neighborhood every Thursday. In every local neighborhood in the world. Well, each one of them has one, and they basically do impressions of us. It's a franchise. In fact, that's a good thing. We are currently not booked in Pittsburgh, so if anybody in Pittsburgh wants to start a Nostalgia Cover Band,

38:22 where you basically just go on stage, and instead of playing music, you just do an impression of us. Really, anyone who talks about video games is kind of impersonating us. If you have one of those in your hometown, we have the right to the talking about video games. I have sent IGN a cease and desist for most of the content that they've been putting out, because essentially they're not following the Nostalgia Cover Band rules.

38:48 So I'm waiting for Pierre Schneider to get back to me on that. Pierre Schneider? The co-founder of IGN. I don't know who IGN Man is. I thought it was Pierre Schneider. Is it Pierre? I thought it was Pierre Morgan. It's Pierre Schneider, but his name is spelled out like Pierre. Oh, I got you. So I like calling him Pierre. Like he's my peer. You know, we're buddies. We're colleagues. We talk about the same stuff, which he's not allowed to do.

39:08 Full circle. Perfect. See, yeah, we are fast here. We might as well just have another podcast where we never talk about anything. We're so funny. Yeah. And if you think we're funny, you can find us at NostalgiaCast.com. But also if you don't think we're funny, because I want to get that crowd too. Yeah. In fact, I would like to hear more from you if you think we're not funny. If you want us to stop talking at any moment, you can press pause.

39:32 Or resume. And wouldn't it be weird if the person who hit pause now hears resume? Unless they have Overcast. If you're listening on Overcast, you'll know that they have like a smart playback. So they'll actually like, if you pause it, it'll go back like just a little bit. That's thoughtful. So you get that. Yeah. Marco Arment. What? Another name that I'm not saying correctly, but Marco Arment or Armant or Armanti.

39:56 It's not true. Anyway, he's the guy who developed Overcast. Oh, thanks, Marco. Yep. He also did like a thing for Tumblr. He created Tumblr or something like. Okay. Designed it. Good for him. And Instapaper. I feel like that's not one of his hits. No, it was. Really? Yeah. Well, when he sold it. Yeah. I mean, like. You don't use Instapaper? I don't know what that is. Oh, okay. It's not Instapaper. It's not. Instagram paper? No. Is it like a quarterly magazine of Instagram? Are we at the post show now? I can't wait until we get to the post show. We can go off the rails a little bit. Okay. Real fast. If you're still listening somehow. NostalgiaCast.com. At NostalgiaCast on Twitter.

40:36 Email me. If you can just guess my email. Email me there. I don't think we still have an official email set up. So, we're going to work on that. Yeah, sorry about that. We'll get it back soon. Yeah. Twitter DM me or the show. We've been hearing a lot from people who have been like going back to the older episodes and catching up with their everything. It's really inspiring. Thank you guys. We're going to keep doing it. Hashtag blessed. Yep. And this episode was sponsored by the Buffalo Bills. Go Bills. The Buffalo Bills will be back to the Super Bowl by the end of next decade.

41:17 That wasn't even a clean exit. That's the post show. And this is the post show. Okay, yeah. I managed to slice the music in. So, now we're in the post show. It just like rushed in it.

41:29 What do you want to say about PsyOps? I really don't have anything to say, but you wanted to talk about it. So, what are your questions? Me? I didn't want to talk about it. You wanted to question me on why I would like a game called PsyOps. How many levels are there? I don't know how many levels there are. No, I wanted to question you on why you were so sensitive about liking it.

41:42 How much is PsyOps like Kirby's Avalanche? It's not. Okay. How much is PsyOps like Legend of Zelda? It's not. Link's Awakening? It's not. How much is PsyOps like a video game? It is. These are great. Wow. It's like getting closer. But wait, we're not on the podcast. Are we infringing on our own copyright of talking about video games? No, because it's us. It's us. We're allowed to do it anytime. We are the copyright holders.

42:09 Anyway, my birthday coming up probably when you hear this. Sometime this year. So please wish me a happy birthday. I meant to mention to you guys if we could stop like making time jokes. But now it's in the show. We're just like making it like so specific. This show is going to age like a sour grape. No. This show is like. No, because let's say like it's 500 years from now. Historians uncover nostalgia. The only video game podcast left. But Sean's going to have a birthday every year. Sure. I guess I just meant like they wouldn't even know when it took place. They wouldn't be able to pinpoint when we did the records. Well, I mean, we can't even. We can't tell when this was recorded either.

42:55 I can. It was recorded on February 27th, 2019. I looked at my watch just for the year. Is that the first time we've ever disclosed that information? What if somebody finds us here in this time? Here in this time. Yeah. What is time? If time travel existed, they would have came exactly at that moment and attacked me. Yeah. That's. Yeah. That's true. I'm living proof that time travel does not exist. Wow. All right. Well, that's all I got. Great. All right. Good night. Bye. You want to do room tone?