073 · WINTER GAMES

• Introductions - Espo
• September 1987 the 3d

The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner	Square	Acclaim Entertainment	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Deadly Towers	Lenar, Tamtex	Brøderbund	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Double Dribble	Konami	Konami	Konami	September 1987	1988
Lode Runner	Hudson Soft	Brøderbund	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Raid on Bungeling Bay	Hudson Soft	Brøderbund	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Ring King	Jastec, Neue Design	Data East	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Sky Kid	Namco	Sunsoft	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Spelunker	Tamtex, TOSE	Brøderbund	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Spy Hunter	Sunsoft	Sunsoft	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Sqoon	Home Data	Irem	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Stadium Events	Human Entertainment	Bandai	Bandai	September 1987	1988
Star Voyager	ASCII	Acclaim Entertainment	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Stinger	Konami	Konami	Unreleased	September 1987	Unreleased
Tiger-Heli	Micronics	Acclaim Entertainment	Acclaim Entertainment	September 1987	January 17, 1990
Winter Games

• Development History - Espo
  • Epyx
    • Makers of Summer Games, Summer Games II, and World Games
    • Made a ton of games for the Commodore 64
    • Went bankrupt in 1989 before finally disappearing in 1993.
  • Atelier Double with the NES port
    • A sort of Shadow Developer like TOSE
• First Impressions - Everyone
  • Opening Ceremony
• Tales from the Manual
  • Confirms this is the 1988 Alberta Canada Winter Games
  • Nice encouragement on page 19
  • History of the Winter Games on Page 20
• Gameplay
  • Bobsled
    • Let’s talk about that UI
  • Figure skating
    • Painful Music - Espo
  • Speed skating
    • What exactly is the rhythm
  • Freestyle skiing
    • more precisely, the aerial skiing discipline, called "Hot Dog Aerials" in the game
    • What was your best score? Could hardly get a 7
• Additional Thoughts
  • Modes not present in the NES version
    • Luge, Biathlon, Ski Jumping, Apline Skiing
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Ported to everything
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)

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

00:00 Winter Games, go for the gold.

00:18 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sam. I'm Joe. And I'm Sean. And today we're talking about the Winter Games. Not just games that you can play in winter, not just things you can do in winter. The Winter Games. Now is this the Olympics? This is what the Olympics are based off of.

00:44 I'll jump ahead for a minute. That's so funny. I will jump ahead for a minute and just say that the manual confirms that this is specifically the 1988 Alberta Canada Winter Games. Is the name, is the word Olympics like trademarked? Probably. Yes, I'm pretty sure. Okay. Yeah, that's why they probably didn't use it. But they do say that it is the Alberta Canada Winter Games. Okay. But before we talk about the game at all, we just hit a huge milestone, guys. We have, this is the last game of September 1987.

01:19 That sounds, okay. Yeah. Round of applause from Sam. Yeah, those claps probably sound very far away since clapping away from the microphone. Oh, this is going to sound way farther away then. Oh, okay. Yeah. Thank you for that. All right. It's sort of like a cherry pick milestone.

01:31 Okay. Because, you know, we've gone through a lot of months. But this, I guess it is like the busiest month. This has been several real-time months, though. Yeah, it's true. It's taken us to get through this specific month. So, what I would like to do is I'm going to read through all of the September 1987 games. And then maybe we can just like pick two of the games that you want to see like crossed over into their own new game. And you guys can describe like what that game plays like.

02:00 Don't make it too long, please. So, just for the record, that means that you're picking blank game A, crossover with game B, and then describing what it's like. So, the games up for nomination are The 3D Battles of World Runner, Deadly Towers, Double Dribble, Lode Runner, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Ring King, Sky Kid, Spelunker, Spy Hunter,

02:26 Schoon, Stadium Events, Star Voyager, Stinger, Tiger Heli, and Winter Games. So, with that in mind, Joe, would you please pick two games to see a crossover for? I'm thinking Star Voyager and Schoon. Ooh, okay. You get a nice little like submarine, but like in the, even though we didn't love the gameplay of Star Voyager, it would be interesting to see like in the gameplay of Star Voyager, you're underwater performing the story of Schoon. So, they're hunting down these, what are they, Jupiter aliens or whatever they are.

03:05 Neptunians. Sorry, of course. Wrong, man. And then. They're looking for the meat bags. Yeah, the Man-Ham. Man-Ham. I was between that and, well, I don't know, I don't want to take it. Yeah, don't take anybody else's. Okay, yeah. I would dig a first person submarine NES game, but with like crazy levels of like tasks you have to do in order to traverse the ocean. Okay. Sean?

03:31 I would put together Deadly Towers and Double Dribble. Now, take this. I was. Yeah? Ryan, go for it. So, this is a, it's an adventure game where you play as a basketball player for the New York basic basketball team. Yeah, because they didn't get the official rights to the Knicks. And you are exploring and dungeon crawling, you know, the Deadly Towers and you have to use your basketball as sort of like, it sort of behaves like a boomerang, but it's more like you're dunking on opponents and, you know, you're passing it to them, but they get blasted back by the pass. I think that would be fun.

04:13 Okay. Yeah. That's amazing. Um, even though we know that Deadly Towers is a terrible game. Well, you know, you make it a better. It just needed basketball. It just takes place in Deadly Towers. Why didn't we talk about that in the episode about how this game just could have used basketball to make everything better? Because it's a given about any game. If Space Jam proved anything, it's that basketball can make bad movies good.

04:36 Sam, I know that it was taken from you, but do you have another one? Let me go through my train of thought for this. So at first I thought, uh, scoon and double dribble. Uh, and then Joe said scoon and, uh, and the other one, the other one, Star Voyager. Uh, so I was like, okay, I'll try not to do that. I'll do double dribble and Deadly Towers. Uh, but then that was what Sean picked. So I'll go back to my original one, which was scoon and double dribble.

05:10 So the premise is that you're both, like, you play against someone who's in a submarine and it's more of just like a competitive, uh, scoon where you try and, like, score on each other's, like, uh, net or, um. Are you thinking, like, Rocket League, though, with the submarines? Yeah. There's no ball. There's no ball, just like 2D, like, you try and sink each other's, like, ships and, like, be the one to, I'm not, I'm not exactly sure. No, I do. You know what? You did a reach. Can I tell you it was a reach? One last thing? Yeah. Okay, so, again, double dribble and, uh, Star Voyager. That was what my other one was gonna be. But with the Star Voyager, like, HUD.

05:56 So it's the Star Voyager, HUD, but then you're. Basically, you're playing as a, uh, as something inside of a basketball player, and you have to control him as if it were a spaceship. I would like it if you could control the basketball, you know, like, be the first person view and you're trying to get to the net. I was thinking, like, if you wanted to get in a certain position, you have to, like, set the coordinates and then, like, charge to it and make sure you stop on time. Really, we just want to see different kind of basketball simulations. Yes. Yeah. As long as you cross double dribble with any of these games, it's gonna be great.

06:30 Yeah. And, uh, I will add to my pick, uh, Lode Runner cross Raid on Bungeling Bay. And the reason why I'm mostly doing that is because we kind of found out they're, like, a shared universe thing. But I like the idea of the Raid on Bungeling Bay, um, like, overworld thing. But then after you take down the bases, you go inside and raid them. Yeah. Against the people that are in there. And then, you know, it's more of, like, a, uh, how much money can you loot before you're shot down kind of thing.

07:00 Okay, I like that. Instead of, um. Do you keep, like, the whole, like, ladder mechanics going? I think the ladder comes out of the helicopter. Climb down. Yeah. Yeah, that's, like, half the battle, actually, is sinking the ladder to the base. So, you know, it's kind of like, remember Captain Phillips when those Somalian pirates are trying to get the ladder onto the ship? Yeah. And then, like, Tom Hanks, like, gets really into it and, like, starts crying. Yeah. Yes. He cries in the movie because I'm sure the guy in real life cried, too, because it was a very devastating thing. Yeah, I'm just saying it was a very real cry. Yeah. Okay. Great. It was a real cry.

07:33 Um. Well, since we just wasted a ton of time doing that for September of 1987, I wouldn't say wasted, but I think certain people here are expecting a product to be delivered to them and, uh, we have to keep our end of the bargain. All right. So we're going to talk about Winter Games now, uh, which was developed by, I want to say Epix. It looks like Epix. But maybe it's Epix. Who knows? I'm going to say Epix. All right, cool. Epix. E-P-Y-X. And, uh, I don't know why, but that looked familiar to me, like, that spelling and everything, but they didn't make much, okay? Mm-hmm. They're the makers of such hits as Summer Games, Summer Games 2 or 11, uh, because it's Roman numerals.

08:30 And, uh, of course, the big game, World Games. So after Summer Games, Summer Games 2, Winter Games, they decided to step it up and make World Games. Bit of a one-trick pony, though. Yeah. Um, and they made a ton of games for the Commodore 64. It seems like a lot of C64 guys, um, talk a lot about Epix on the boards and stuff like that. Were they mostly about, like, the Olympics? Yeah. The games that they made for the Comm- No, they made, they made all sorts of games, I guess. Oh, okay. But none of them were, like, outstanding. I imagine. They don't have, like, 130 different games about the Olympics.

09:04 But they never officially bought the license. Um, so they go, uh, bankrupt in 1989. And then they finally, uh, I have it in the show notes as disappear in 1993. Yeah. The studio itself just vanished in 1993. It doesn't disappear. It's kind of like somebody, like, took care of it. And I, I don't know this for sure, but it's listed online that Atelier Double, um, came in with the NES port.

09:32 And I looked them up, and all I could find out about Atelier Double is that they're sort of a shadow developer. So someone who does all the work for things but doesn't get the credit. Somebody's been disappeared, and there's also a shadow developer. Right. Well, you remember TOS, uh, T-O-S-E. And they did a lot of games, uh, for Bandai, uh, that weren't, like, you know, they didn't get to get credit for them. And they probably prefer it that way. Some of those games were bad.

09:59 Uh, but. Was it Atelier or, like, Atelier? I thought it was Atelier, but Atelier sounds nice, too. Uh, we'll never really know because I'm not. We don't care. Gonna look it up. Yeah. Let's do some first impressions on Winter Games. The game about the Winter Olympics. The game where you play some events in, um, that would be played in the Winter Olympics. The reason I say this over and over again is because I don't think we need to talk about how to play or the objective of this because it's pretty straightforward.

10:30 So instead, let's jump right ahead and get those first impressions in. Sean? Um, the, these, like, sort of mini-game compilations seem to be, uh, like, a theme for early Nintendo. Like, did this sort of happen, uh, every few months, it seems?

10:49 Um, but I, I just don't know how people paid full price for these. Like, you, like, there is literally maybe a dozen minutes of content in this game. I, I guess you could do it over and over. Um, and it's hard enough in some circumstances that, like, I could see somebody with, if this was their only game, like, playing this and trying to get more than one, a bigger score than one in some of these events. But I don't, I don't know. It's, it was odd. It was an odd experience. Good on you. Yeah.

11:25 Joe? Uh, yeah, so I, I mean, like, like Sean said, we've already played a couple of these that are just these little mini-games. So, with that in mind, there was a little more to this than I thought there was going to be, but still, I was not, like, like, to each event. There was, like, more, there was more rules. Maybe too many rules, uh, like, all in there, but maybe, like, too much to do where it, like, kind of loses you a little bit. We'll break them down. Yeah, but I mean, I, I wasn't, uh, it was kind of, other than the fact that there was more to it, like, as far as how much I enjoyed it, it was kind of what I expected.

11:53 Sam? Um, this seems like the kind of game that is so basic but frustrating that once you finally figure out how it works, it will just be, like, you'll just beat it every time. That was not what happened, that's not what happened with me, but I feel like it's just so, it's just such a shallow game. All the mini-games are really shallow and just felt clunky all the time. Yeah. Yeah, and I'll, uh, kind of reiterate my thoughts on track and field, since I think that's one of the ones that we're thinking of, but I'm sure we're also thinking of, like, stadium events, and, um, what was the one that came before that? The summer camp one.

12:34 Oh, yeah. Whatever. Who cares? Uh, those games are so forgettable because they run on the power pad, but, um. At least they had the power pad. Yeah, that's true. For track and field, though, like, I actually really liked that game, uh, and I know that that was, like, maybe not the popular opinion, but I thought those mini-games games were, like, fun, and, you know, nowadays they'd just be reduced to, like, tapping on your phone. Yeah. But I still enjoyed them as, like, the small little burst that they are. I agree. It was probably just a dozen minutes of content.

13:03 But for winter games, my first impression was, uh, okay, I gotta go to YouTube immediately because I couldn't play a single one of those games right. There, I didn't realize that. I went through each one of these, uh, I think we get, what, five? Yeah. I think we have, like, five games, and I went through each of them, and, uh, I sucked at all of them. I couldn't get any scores from the judges, so I had to go right to YouTube and figure out what am I doing wrong. Yeah. So, uh, my first impression was not great, but I was willing to maybe think it was my fault. Okay.

13:35 Cool. But I've, I feel like there must be, and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, but there must be some kind, like, someone must have figured out, like, oh, if you do this, these series of tricks, you get the most points for this one. If you do this, these inputs at this timing, you get the most points for this one. There's a list in the manual. Like, it tells you. It tells you how to do it, but it doesn't actually matter. But it also tells you how many points you get for each move.

13:57 Right, but someone's probably timed it out so they know exactly, like, which, like, how much time you have to do certain things. I would bless them if they did that. You know, and then once you figure that out, I feel like that's it. Yeah. That's what you do. So, um, before we go to the manual, uh, I just wanted to talk about that opening ceremony, uh, which I'm pretty sure. Oh, that's very cinematic. That's the best part of the game.

14:17 I'm pretty sure it's unskippable, right? No, you can skip the end of it. I think you can. But why would you? There's doves that fly out, you know? And fours just over and over again, the same four doves. For something that wasn't, like, allowed to be the Olympics, this thing took full liberty to say, Yeah, that guy just happened to have a torch. And he just happened. He's unrelated to the game. He just there. Yeah, that was just a... Well, there weren't... The, um, the Olympic logo wasn't there. So I guess they're in the clear. And, you know, you don't have a copyright on, uh... Fire. Yeah, fire. Fire. And it's also, like, it's weird, right? That, like, that's the only presence of fire in a game filled with snow and ice.

14:54 Yeah, totally. I would have expected a lot more fire. What are they really trying to say? I was expecting a fire-breathing stage, uh, you know, with people who put flame swords down their mouth. Summer games you're thinking of.

15:05 Where they put the flame swords down their mouth. I think you're combining two different tricks there with the flame swords. Got it. I'm gonna take this opportunity, now that we're in the opening ceremony, which is atrocious, um, to say this is one of the ugliest games in at least the last month... Yeah. ...that we've played.

15:24 Okay. I think that, um, there's, there's a couple instances, I think, uh, when I looked at the, uh, the skiing level, specifically, it looked like it was drawn in MS Paint. I got the MS Paint vibe even from the opening ceremony. Yeah, the opening ceremony, too, and I, I just keep thinking, now that Double Dribble is back in my head, that they could have, like, just done, like, three, uh, like, three, uh... Three close-up stills.

15:53 Yeah, just a guy. ...by lighting a torch and having them be, like... It would have been perfect. ...great pixel art, but instead we get, like, I mean, like, what was that guy's hair even? I don't know. It was, like, spaghetti. It was, like... Yeah. Can I, can I just say that when you just said, uh, that Stadium Events was, like, the, the, what'd you say, the ugliest game we've seen in a while? At least the past few... Like, I'm looking at the list.

16:13 ...you said, yeah. Yeah. When you said that, I was, like, I wonder if that's true, and I went to, like, look through it, like, to call you on it for some reason, and then I, when I got down to Stadium Events, I almost was like, oh, what about Stadium Events? Like, I forgot. Like, oh, no. Like, that is the ugliest game on this place. Well, I mean, Deadly Towers is up there, too. But, like, you know, anyway.

16:29 Right. Well, for Winter Games, though, I will say that the, um, the mountain background is very, like, in the, in the hot dog aerials, uh, is, it's very nice. It's a respectable mountain. That's what I'm talking about. Like, that, that was part of the MSP.

16:45 I liked it. Okay, good. I imagine that that mountain is where the events of slalom take place. These perfect triangular mountains. Oh, it's Mount, Mount Nasty? What was it? Mount Nasty. Mount Nasty was the, oh. Oh, yeah, that shared universe. That's a good game. It's an essential game. All right, so here's, here's the tales from the manual.

17:03 I don't want to, I already talked that they confirmed that this is the 1988 Alberta Canada Winter Games. But also, I wanted to point out that there's some very nice encouragement on page 19 of the manual. And I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it's basically a little section about going for the gold, uh, which is something that they keep reinforcing. They made me say it at the top of the, uh, podcast.

17:23 But I just like this last line of, like, so don't let go now. You're so close. Dot, dot, dot. Do it for yourself. And do it for the millions at home cheering for you. You are at home when you play this game. Like, who are the millions of people back home? Like, you know. But no, like, because you have fully engrossed yourself and you're fully immersed in this that you are in Canada now.

17:49 You're so immersed in the graphics. So you, so you have to think about, like, your countrymen back home that you're representing. Yeah. I mean, when I was doing the hot dog aerials and I was in the air. I did it for America. When I did the front, no, when I did the front flip. Yeah. I got so dizzy in real life because it was just so vivid.

18:06 You literally threw up. I had to throw up because I was like, oh, I've never, never seen, like, that kind of perspective before. It's not your, like, first person perspective. Right. It's third person. You just imagined yourself in his shoes because it was so, it was so realistic. Yeah, it was just so vivid. And then one other thing from the manual is that on the very last page, it has a history of the Winter Games.

18:29 Little note, the first Winter Games were officially added to the Olympics in 1925 in France. Since then, the Winter Games have been held at the following locations and then proceeds to list them all off. Yeah. I thought that was a very nice touch. Very nice. I had them acknowledging that they're talking about the Olympics right in the manual. It was, like, weird trademark stuff. Those were the Winter Games. Yeah, but they say the original Winter Games were added to the Olympics.

18:55 Oh, they said the word Olympics. Yeah, they did. Oh. They did say the word Olympics. Maybe. But they, like, snuck it into the end. Like, nobody's read it to the end of the manual. They didn't think anyone would get that far. We totally got them at the end. Let me bust it. Let's do the big swap ring. Until they hear this podcast and they're like, oh, we got to go for those guys. The Olympic, all the Olympic committee members that listen to this podcast are going to be like, oh, we're going to get those guys. Sam, don't look now, but you have a red dot on your head. But we're helping them. But we're on their side. No, it's the Winter Games development team.

19:27 I think it's time for gameplay. What do you guys think? I think that's a good call. Okay, cool. So I went out of order in the show notes here. And I'd like to keep it that way. We're going backwards then. Yeah. Okay. More going backwards, but not really, because we're going normal ordered if you play by, like, the actual version of this game. Oh, the actual, you know, the true lore. The true version of this game. Bobsled always comes first. Okay. So, Bobsled. That's one of the events that you can play in Winter Games. It plays just like all the other ones. It's a fact it's a mini game, essentially, that is unique to how you play all the other games.

20:09 Let's just, I don't even know how we would talk about this one. If you haven't played this game, Bobsled has a user interface that shows you. Too much information, but let me walk you through it. All right. So, let me paint the picture for you. I really need a picture painted. So, on the left side of your screen is going to be a big, it's the world map. It's the track. The course, yeah. Okay, whatever. No, no, you're fine. You're doing a great job right now. It's the course, and it gives you a little dot to show you where you are.

20:43 To the right of that is a first-person perspective of the Bobsled, and it gives you true 3D graphics as you go down the course. Makes you really feel like you're in a bobsled. Yeah. Makes you feel like Batman. And under that, you will find a couple meters. I think it's maybe just one meter. Yeah. Your speed meter.

21:04 And you have to, I guess, press up to go fast and press back to go slower. I thought you just go side to side. Yeah, you also go left and right to bob the sled. Yeah, you steer left and right to avoid capsizing. Yeah. And then you can't go faster. Oh, you can only go faster by tubing correctly.

21:28 Yeah. But you can slow down by pressing down on the controller. I was just holding up for no reason. Why would you want to slow down? Maybe for the turns to anticipate them more. The turns. Yeah. And I thought that at first, too. But once you kind of get the hang of it, you don't need to slow down. You don't need to slow down. And it's really just a matter of press the button opposite when it's time to press the button. Right. So, I mean, look. You got four different things to look at on your screen. All things that are important that you have to make sure that you're registering.

21:55 This is a worse UI than Star Voyager. I'll go ahead and say it. That, like, there's too much going on here. And none of it is extremely helpful. No, I actually found that I could just look at the perspective of the bobsled. The first person 3D view. Yeah. Is it first? Yeah, the 3D view. Is it first person? It's not first person. It's from behind the two bobsleds. But, like, the map, you can see the turn coming up in that perspective in the amount of time that you need to see it. The map just distracts you. Don't look over there. These are the, I'm going to write a guide for this. I'm going to write a guide for the bobsled. You should do a guide. I used the map.

22:27 I used the map to. I used it at first, too. For the turns. Especially that last turn where it kind of turns back. That's true. It is a little. That is a tricky turn. My favorite thing about this is that when you're looking at the map, there's, like, those little red gates. They don't mean anything. And I'm like, oh, what the heck is that? And I look at the tiny, tiny little picture of the guy in the bobsled, and I see the gates go over, and I'm like, oh. This is, like, a check mark. That's it. I don't do anything. You know that game Keep Talking and Nobody Blows Up? Nobody explodes. Sorry. I was playing the spinoff.

23:01 That's the game where one person has the bomb, and then another person has the manual, and they have to read the instructions to them. Yeah. I feel like I could do bobsled better without this UI, and instead, Sean would just tell me, all right, you can turn left, turn left. And I'd be like, okay, turning left, turning left. All right, now turn right. You know? I would be better off being given a set of instructions than ever seeing any visual cues. That's really what it should have been. It should have been on-screen instructions. No other visual cues. Just text that says lap left. Just press the left. You know what's funny? In the manual, it says that when you're in the bobsled that you should have both thumbs on the control pad to steer it.

23:38 I don't think that was for a bobsled. No, that was for the speed skating. Yeah, that's right. Oh, was it? Yeah, that was for speed skating. My bad. I could have sworn it was for the bobsled also. Oh, my gosh. No, you're right. Wait, really? Yeah, you are right. It's for both. It says here, to guide your sled with both of your thumbs, press the controller right and left. So you should really be keeping the controller down flat and then using your thumbs. Or just reaching with your right. That was just a joke.

24:10 Have your brother press the left button while you press the right button. I'm going to guess that that was just accidentally carried over from speed skating. A copy and paste of speed skating. Also, it doesn't tell me which finger to use to reduce speed. It just says press controller down. Here's your left index finger for that. Okay, thank you. I needed some guidance. That's why it wasn't working for me. Right. So I don't want to get too far off bobsled because I feel like we only just started talking about the UI.

24:35 But did anyone have fun with this one? No. I think I had the most fun with this one, which wasn't very much. Did you complete a course with bobsled? Yeah. Okay. I got like 40 seconds. I could do the most. Bobsled was easy, I thought. Yeah, what'd you get? No, I was capsizing left and right. I was at first two until I realized that. You gotta lean into the curves. Yeah, I think that was my problem. You were leaning away from the curves. Slay it to the professionals, Mike. Yeah. Okay.

24:58 I enjoy bobsledding a lot more in Mario Party 1 on the N64 where I can actually understand what I'm doing. Yeah. Which is weird that Mario and Peach can communicate to me how to bobsled better than an official Winter Games ever could. True that. But, um, okay, so you had some fun. Joe said it was the most fun he had. So I like that there's a variance here. I will say that, like, they tried, right?

25:22 Yeah. It was pretty in... Not intuitive. It's not the word. It was pretty involved. Yeah. They put most of the development budget into the bobsled. They could have just kept it as, like, a top-down view of the course and you just have to steer right and left through that. And that would have been pretty shitty and they could have gotten away with that. So at least they said, like, well, if we're going to make it complicated, we might as well just put all the chips in. Mm-hmm. You know, I would have preferred a compass at a certain point, right?

25:49 You could have a compass in the center. That is bobsled. And now we will move on to figure skating. Okay? This is something else. Now, figure skating is an event where a person will skate to music and then perform some tricks. Yeah. And then they'll be scored by the judges. It's a famous song. Do you know what the song is? I don't remember now. Is it the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy? Is it Tchaikovsky? I don't know. It could be, but I'm just going to say it now. It's painful in the NES version. Whatever it once was. Yeah. That's what it is, but it's no longer that.

26:30 Oh, yeah, you're right. Yeah. Right. You're doing a nice rendition of it now. Nicer than the NES version. You were half trying. I think that the music just underscores the travesty that is the entire game mode because I played through figure skating four times and the first three times I got zeros across the board. I could not land a single trick. Did you land something? Because I could start the move and then I would fall. Yeah. And I was like, what do you have to do? Then I was reading the manual between every run and then I finally got a 0.7.

27:04 I landed two tricks and I fell twice. I landed one trick in all of my attempts and I still got zeros. This is what I was talking about where I think there are just, there are too many inputs that you need on this. Yeah. Let's run through this for a second. So to begin skating, press button A. To skate forward, press the controller to the right. Note, you must be skating forward when your time runs out. Otherwise, you'll fall. Why? Then to begin a move, hold down the controller in the direction of the move you want to make and press and release button A.

27:40 Now the release is important there because then to complete the move, you release the controller and press button A again. It's a very convoluted control scheme that only makes sense once you've read it like five times. The pressing button A again to land is really weird. We also have to lift your left thumb up at a certain point.

28:01 Yeah. It doesn't say when the timing is. You don't know if you're supposed to press A as you're landing or right before you land or whatever. I only landed one thing, like I said. I don't really know how I did. Well, one's better than none and that's me. No, I didn't land a single move. I don't think I landed any either. So don't worry. I mean, score-wise, it wasn't better than none because I still got zeros. It is very realistic though because I probably also wouldn't have been able to land any moves. So. Yeah. Like in real life.

28:28 Oh, that's true. Yeah. Me too. But this is specifically what I meant in my initial impression when I was saying that there's just, there's too much to these games. Like there's more to it than I expected and it's a little too much. And now I just want somebody to imagine that in this game, you, somebody managed to do a camel spin into a sit spin and then land it because that's the maximum, that's worth 1.2 points in figure skating in the game. And that means that they jumped into the air, released the A button, had the, had the up arrow input held.

29:05 Then as they were getting ready to land, released the up input, pressed the A button correctly, but wait, in the middle of that, they also switched between the up input as they hit it in the air and then pressed the down input to go into the sit spin before releasing that one and pushing A to land the appropriate spin and then continue moving forward. Wow, what a nerd.

29:28 And just, both of those, camel spin and sit spin are both pressed up or pressed down, but there are also diagonal presses, which I didn't even know that you could do on an NES controller. I was doing the diagonal presses and they all did the same move. Yeah, I think they end up doing like an up or a sideways move. It's very hard for it to register that you're hitting both. So it looks like the same move, but actually the up ones are doubles and the down ones are triples. So a down to the right is actually a triple axle jump, which I thought was like supposed to be the most impressive thing, but I guess a camel into sit spin would be more impressive. Yeah, the camel is so, it is impressive.

30:08 Okay. I've never seen a camel. Yeah, so. It's just a camel. They just bring a camel out onto the ice. I've seen a camel. How was it? It peed a lot. Okay. Cool. Probably just like this game. Ha. This game wets the bed. All right. Anything else to say on figure skating?

30:27 Nope. Great. So then we're going to move on to speed skating. Woo. Okay. Everybody knows Apollo Anton Ono, one of the best speed skaters of all time. And I think he was on Dancing with the Stars. He was, but he was, I think people, okay, if anybody here is really into the Winter Olympics, they're going to get mad at me for saying that because he was on the short track, not a speed skater. Speed skating is for like longer distances.

30:51 Short track is like on an actual like miniature track where they do like 10 laps and they all go at the same time. So they don't, but was it, it's not called speed skating? It's not called speed skating. It's called short track. Oh. Yeah. It's the same thing though, but speed skating is like you and the other person never actually sync up with one another. It's like time trials. Yeah. Okay. So that's what this is. It's you against one other person in a, what is it, a 400 meter? I think it's a 400 meter dash. I think so. Yeah.

31:20 And the manual is confirming that. 400 meters. So for this one, you do have to use both your thumbs again. Okay. The game is not possible unless you use both your thumbs to hit the left and right on the controller, but you have to do it to a rhythm. And I couldn't figure that out. That rhythm is impossible. Yeah. I couldn't get that. At first I thought it was just, you know, like any other one of these like pretend to run games. And I just did it as fast as possible. And I was just sort of like trudging along while the computer was blazing fast. And then I started to like study the, uh, the sprite of the, uh, of the computer player.

32:07 And so I tried to emulate that and I went even slower. So I'm really not sure what they wanted you to do. I feel like I got it at the very end of mine where your guy automatically switches legs. And when you switch legs, then you have to switch buttons also. Oh. Um, but I feel like I tried doing that the next round and I went really slow. So I, I don't know. I don't know if there's like a leg per button or something.

32:33 Yeah, the manual definitely doesn't, uh, allude to syncing up with the legs. It does say that you should, um, try to be sure to use rhythmic movements while building up to your fastest possible speed. I'll say that I never even came close to catching the other guy, but I did get progressively faster in my own time. So maybe you have to like start slower and then you can speed up as it goes. Yeah, that's what I was trying to do.

33:03 But I don't know. Yeah. Someone just listen to that. Boom. Lots of dun-dun and boom, boom. Yeah. If you actually listen to that portion of the podcast while playing, sync up exactly to the booms, it'll be perfect. Yeah. You'll have a great run. For the first five seconds. So I am right now, I'm 0 for 3. I, I'm like doing anything in this game. I haven't beaten a single person. No, I'm, I. He couldn't finish a run. I couldn't finish a course. Really? Yeah. Oh, wow. I kept capsizing. So there's that.

33:35 Okay. It's also, it's not for everyone. I do have to apologize because I feel like we don't know how to talk about this game like we do the rest of them. It's structured a lot differently. I think that we were talking about this one just fine because it assumes that you at least understand like the original sport that it comes from. Sure. We can't, I mean like I can't explain bobsledding any further than they built a, like a tunnel that you put a sled on. Tunnel? Half of it. They built half a tunnel. Okay. They built a water slide. So imagine a canoe.

34:10 See, see how hard it is? That's why we're not even bothering because instead we're just talking about the control failures of this game. So what is the hot dog aerial? Well, it's actually freestyle skiing in real life. I don't want anybody to get confused and think that you're eating hot dogs in the air here. So why is it called that? I think that's a skiing term. It's a ski, yeah. It is, it is, sorry. It's both, okay? It did make me hungry. Freestyle skiing is the actual like winter Olympics term, but it's not. That's also trademarked. Yeah. It's also not bad to call it hot dog aerials. Like you can say that and people would understand what you were talking about. Okay. I don't. When you say hot dog aerials, I get hungry.

34:53 But this is the one where you just go off a cliff and do a few tricks and then try to land it at the end and get a score. This was the easiest one. Definitely the easiest one. Glad they put it up first, even though we're doing it last.

35:08 What was it? What was your best score on this one, guys? I got a 7.2 once. Wow. But I was mostly in the 6.3 range. Yeah. I don't remember. I think I got a 6-ish. One flip is a 7.2. So that would explain your 7.2. You did a front flip or something. I definitely did a flip. I definitely did two tricks, though. In one jump? If you do two stunts of the same kind, you should get an 8.7. Well, I guess I didn't do it. If you do one stunt and one flip or one front flip followed by a back flip, that's a 10. Wow. I couldn't get past a 6.7.

35:44 How physically, though, are you supposed to maneuver your body? I feel like the laws of physics don't allow you to flip forward and then backward. That's why it deserves a 10.

35:59 I guess you're right, yeah. You know, I think maybe that's what they were thinking. But is that in one jump or is that... It's in one jump. You get scored on each one. Okay. That's right. Yeah. I guess you could do, in real life, one stunt and then a flip or a flip and then a stunt. Yeah. Tony Hawk taught me that. Yeah. So that's a 10, too. So... Yeah. Not Final Fantasy 10, too, but that's a 10. Also. And then...

36:25 I don't really have much else to say about this mode because you're just kind of limited for time with it. So you can only do a maximum of two tricks. And since there's only... You know, the only tricks you can do are the Daffy, the back scratch, the forward flip, the swan, the mule kick, and the back flip. If that's all you can do and you only have two things, there's actually like a finite amount of things you can do in this mode. And none of them are particularly interesting. The animations aren't crazy.

36:55 No. So that doesn't help. Honestly, I thought that the hill would be bigger also. You know, I thought there'd be like a little bit more of a lead up to it. You're up and off that hill in one second. Yeah. I thought it'd be like, all right, here it comes. Or like perspective would be like maybe a little more interesting. But nope. It's just... It's worse than you're imagining if you haven't seen it. I do at least see like the beginnings of like SSX tricky in this, though. Get out of here.

37:22 I think he's officially out of here. Yeah. This one was definitely the most boring of these three, which is really kind of saying it's the most boring thing in the world.

37:32 Yeah. You know, it's like saying like this is the stinkiest thing next to this pile of garbage. So really it's the stinkiest. I don't have anything else to say about any of the gameplay modes. Does anybody have any gameplay thoughts that they want to share? I thought the edit mode was interesting. The edit mode? No, I'm just messing up. Yeah, you could change the size of the cliff or add a hole in the figure skating.

37:58 You could pick your team. We didn't talk about that. Yeah, you could pick your team and you can also pick like Soviet Russia, right? Yeah, which obviously I did the first time because I was like, when am I going to be able to play Soviet Russia? It doesn't change anything, though. No, it does. It actually does. If you get first place, it'll play your anthem. Yeah, also when you select it. When you select them, it plays your anthem also. Well, I know, but like let's get immersed, okay? You're going for the gold.

38:20 The only thing you're playing for in this game is to hear the anthem of your country. Wow. I love it. Well, it was before you could just download music. It was before you could just download the anthem. Yeah. You only heard your national anthem if you went to a sports game. So this was really like a game changer. Like you know how people bought their PS3s just to play Blu-rays? People would buy this game just to listen to the national anthem. It's not replays or anything, so people would just throw this game in their pocket, in the cartridge, in the system. It really is that sort of like interesting history. It's like this is some – I'm sorry. No, no, it's okay. No, no. This is great.

38:57 I also just wanted to add that it does matter which country you pick because if you – when you break a world record, your world record will now be displayed on the world record screen with your name and the country. Are there like online leaderboards? No. It's just the world records in relation to the current world records at the time. Oh, okay. They didn't send a patch out for this year's new world records. But maybe someday they will. I'm sure somebody made a ROM hack with that. But what's interesting is also that like as if you could break a world record in this game. Like as if anybody could find the finesse of using the controller in a way that they would be able to set a world record in any of these games.

39:41 Modes not present in the NES version, there's quite a few. Okay? A lot of other versions of ports of Winter Games got luge. What? Biathlon. Ski jumping. Wait, is biathlon the one where you shoot stuff after? Wow. Why didn't you put that one in? You go around on a little ski course and then you shoot targets. You pick up the zapper and then you – Yeah. Ski jumping and alpine skiing. So we missed all four of those and to be honest, I thought those sound pretty good. Yeah. Not that I would do well at them. I also just think that they'll find a way to make it boring even if we got this. Like I can't imagine luge looking any different than bobsled. And we already got alpine skiing in the NES Essential game.

40:29 Slalom. And ski jumping is kind of the same as hot dog aerials except for there's no real tricks. You're going for distance. So what would you do? Hold up on the NES controller? Just hold up. I can do that without the game. And then release it at the right time too though. Yeah. To get like the – You know what? It'll probably do some BS like they did with the ice dancing. Yeah. That's true. You got to hold A at the same time.

40:54 Yeah. But biathlon with the zapper would have been pretty cool. That would be cool. But I don't think that would have ever happened because I don't think that there was a light gun in the arcade version. No, no, no. You do – Okay. So you get the power pad for the first part. Oh, I like this. And then you get the light gun. That's fun. I like that. I'm already very tired though.

41:13 I'll just say usually we do a sequels and spinoffs section. Somehow, even though Summer Games got a sequel, Winter Games didn't. So there's no Winter Games 2 as far as I can tell. But this game was ported to everything. I put in the notes ported to everything because it was ported to everything that was possible until it became too outdated to port 2. So you won't find it on your Xbox One. Not even Virtual Console? Not even Virtual Console. But you can find it on almost any old system.

41:44 Huh. And with that – I have a stray thought. Oh, here we go. Okay. And I do apologize. It is not about a pause sound. Ooh. But don't worry. It is pause related. Oh, I know what you're going to say. Go for it. Because when you pause this game, you have to – just because, for no reason, just because, you have to hold pause for it to stay paused. I have to fix the purpose. So I'm just like looking at the manual. My finger's on the pause button this whole time.

42:11 It's just to be more annoying. The game was like, well, this game's not annoying enough. Well, you couldn't pause in the middle of the real Olympics, Joe. But you could if you held it down.

42:20 You have to keep your finger up saying, I need one second. That was something – It's a timeout. Something they forgot to mention in the manual is that you are not only a contestant in the winter games, you're also Thanos and have abilities of the time gem, but you have to touch it in order to use it. So that's how you're able to pause. Right. That was implied in the manual. I think it is crazy, though, that you have to hold that down because people pause a game to get up and do something else. They don't pause a game to hold on the button. All right. You guys just need to find something heavy and put it on your controller. That's true. Personally.

42:55 I bet they were worried about people cheating, and that's why they didn't let you pause in the middle of things because then you could pause, practice the next input, and then release it under other control. With your two thumbs and your left index finger.

43:09 I don't know why they did that, but it happened, and I'm glad you mentioned that because I thought that out loud when it happened to me, and then I'm sad that I didn't have it in the notes. So thank you for bringing that up. You got it. Because it's just another thing that I hate about this game. Speaking of hating this game, it's time for the Essential Games List.

43:30 Sam, I'd like to change it up and have you go first and just really, you know, I don't need an essay from you. You can give me a simple yes or no, or you can say a little, you can do a little poetry for us. No thanks. I'll go last. Okay. Fantastic.

43:45 No, okay. Yeah, this game sucks. It's not good. Every part of it isn't fun. What else is there? The best part is the opening ceremony and picking your character, and then it's just downhill from there. Yes. Oh, by the way, not essential. Not essential. Okay. I like slalom. Hey, I like slalom. No, no, no, no. Slalom's fine. Joe? It's more than fine. It's essential. All right. So we know what my vote is going to be. It's going to be no. Something else, just to add to the no, is that every time you want to play this again, you have to select your country, and you have to input your name again.

44:25 And you input your name, but you have to go all the way to the left. I forgot about that. You have four layers of letters, and you can't just go down from one to the other. You have to go all the way to the left. You just scroll all the way over to N, which is just the cherry on the not essential, I don't know, Sunday. Okay. You're giving a Sunday. Cherry on top of the non-essential vote. I get it. All right. Show him. I wouldn't even give it a cherry. With a game like Winter Games, I think it's important to ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.

45:01 Wow, that's really cool. You come up with that? I thought of that just now. And I think that in order for you to bring your country up, to be a part of the solution, you need to do well in the Winter Games, to show the world what an American or a Soviet or the Japanese can do. All citizens should be physically fit.

45:30 And that's why this game exists. And so does that make it essential? What did you say? What are we talking about again? We were talking about the essential games list for Winter Games. Oh, okay. Yeah, this is not an essential game. Okay. Thank you for that, Sean. Mike? Thank you, Sam. I never got an introduction before.

45:53 This whole podcast has been us talking about how terrible the controls are. So what makes you think that who stuck around for this part of the show? You knew the answer by now. Now, look, I'll admit that I'm bad at this game because I watched some YouTube footage where people actually performed okay. I didn't see anybody break any world records. I wasn't necessarily looking for that, though. But, like, I did see people land hooves in figure skating. I saw people successfully complete a course in bobsled. I'm willing to admit I'm bad at this game. But I also think that the, like, hurdles that you have to go through as a player to control anything in this game are just not worth it when it comes to playing a game today.

46:40 Like, this could have been... Think about how little buttons there are on the NES compared to today's controllers. And they still managed to make it complicated. This could have been simplified to just a few directional inputs and one button. But instead, they had to make you use two thumbs at the same time. Or hold A, but then release it at a particular moment. But make sure you're also hitting a directional button in a certain way. And then if you want to do bobsled, make sure that you only see it from their backs. Like, don't get a clear view. And let's just shade in the curves different colors. That'll represent that they're curves and not the outside portions of the course.

47:21 It's crazy. Can I just say, Mike, that, like, let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of the American national winter team. It's like people always say, Sean... Unless you play as a different team. Sorry. Yeah. Than that team. Of course. It's like people always say, it doesn't matter who you're with or where you're going or where you've been or what you're doing with anyone or anything. For any reason.

48:08 Butchered it. I know. I wasn't trying to do it verbatim. But I do think that not only did I butcher it, but I played it just about as well as I played this game. There you go. And so it's not essential.

48:21 I hate winter games. Track and field all the way. The Olympics are ruined for me. Yeah. I won't watch them next time. Wait, this is based on the Olympics? Yes. I didn't get that from you. And we're signing off. Yeah. That's the end of this episode. You can go to www.nostalgiacast.com for more episodes, show notes, weird articles, links to other things. You want to contact us? There's a little menu at the top of the website on any page that says contact. You click that button and you fill out a form.

48:50 And it goes directly to me. So it doesn't go to GameSpy or it doesn't go to the government. I don't sell people's information. I think I have that disclaimer in the website too. You actually never sell. It's suspiciously frequently. Yeah. It's weirder because in the footer of every page it says buy, buy, buy email addresses.

49:16 But seriously, if you're interested in buying an email address, no, I'm joking. Of course you will never do that. So please submit thoughts because we love hearing from you guys. We hear from you quite a bit. So I'd love to keep hearing what people have to do. Haven't heard from Dante in a while. So I'm going to do a check-in right now with Dante. We're going to get him on the line. Knowing him, he's probably really good at winter games. I do need to say, I think that we might be creeping him out a bit. We talk about Dante a lot and I'm sorry that we single you out. Listen, it doesn't matter if it's Dante or John B or Ben or, you know, Tamer Mafia.

49:55 Who's the guy from Milwaukee? Oh, yeah. Bruce? Bruce. Bruce from Milwaukee. It doesn't matter who you are. I thought he was fake. What? John. Bruce from Milwaukee? How dare you? I thought we made him up. I don't know. We don't make up our fans. We love our fans. And especially you guys for listening.

50:17 Whoever tweeted at me saying that I'm okay after the Metroid episode, you're a star. Because in that episode we put to let us know that you're okay. And then Sean had that call to action. And we got a treat back. I'm okay. That's great. Thank you. To all of our listeners, you're more than okay. You're awesome. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter. And I'll talk to you soon.

51:08 I got some post-show thoughts on Winter Games yeah okay alright are you recording? yeah alright so one my thing from before I thought of another one from the beginning the mashup games okay Spy Hunter but you face the bosses from

51:28 Deadly Towers oh okay oh okay so like after you upgrade enough then you or you know you just like drive enough and then you gotta shoot the bosses doesn't have enough basketball bam it's done yeah smashed it next one I thought that maybe they because they mentioned the Olympic Games in like with the word Olympics in the manual but they didn't say that their game is based off of the

51:53 Olympic Games they just said that this is a history of the Olympic Games maybe that's completely separate yeah that's a good point they're just they're just giving you the history of the Olympic Games I would say you know in case I don't know why you'd be thinking about this but if you like the Olympics this is a history of how the Winter Olympics happened and I guess like you could also say that a combination between

52:13 Lode Runner and Ring King could be pretty good because you could introduce ladder matches sure because ladder physics are very important in NES games I just want to say that I have noticed that if you take in order of like their alphabetical order for these games and you combine the titles you get some sick things like the 3D towers of Double Runner or just Deadly Dribble Raid on Ring Sky Spelunker the 3D towers no because then you have like look Raid on King Sky and then you have Spylunker then Scoon Scoon Events

52:59 and Star Stadia and Tiger Winter Tiger Games I like Tiger Games I play that game yeah sweet that's a good post show anybody else got anything else they want to talk about NES games we're gonna probably disband after this yeah we're done yeah no we're not though stay tuned okay well let's just loop back to we'll just do the first episode people have been asking me when are we gonna remaster the first the first season of Nostalgia if you print out like a transcript we could probably just read it off well I I still stand by that we need to do audio commentary over one of the episodes where we talk about like what was going through our heads this is where we're gonna talk about the audio I think oh yeah

53:49 that was when we talked about the audio your voice didn't make different well yeah but it had to differentiate for us to be fair I wasn't talking about better quality for the original episodes I was talking about like HD remakes from the ground yeah

54:03 do we wanna like are we gonna like film it well I don't even know if we should play ourselves in the HD remakes oh we get other people to just say exactly what we say cast oh okay yep so if we had like Christina and Jaina they get funny they just read all the lines having not played the game there's a free software that lets you do transcriptions so maybe I'll use that to get the there's one that does a speech there's one that does musical transcriptions also really that will sing what you type out that's amazing yeah huh alright well oh baby oh yeah