074 · ALPHA MISSION

• Introductions - Espo
• Development History - Espo
  • SNK is back
    • Ikari Warriors and Athena
    • ASO: Armored Scrum Object in Japan
  • First Impressions - Everyone
• Tales from the Manual
  • Story
    • In the galaxy of Tetranova, a fierce war between seven stars has laid waste to their planets. Having destroyed each other's home, the seven stars have formed an alliance to seek a new home, where they can rebuild and regain their strength to go to war once again. The planet they have chosen is Earth! You must pilot the fighter ship SYD against the deadly fleet of the Seven Stars Alliance. The fate of Earth rests in your hands!
• Gameplay
  • Controlling the SYD
    • He’s slow
    • Shooting versus Missles
    • Energy
    • Shooting
  • Tremendous slowdown
  • Lots of items (not all good)
    • SLM and K
    • Warp and Reverse
  • Weapon Select
    • How could this be better?
    • Octo
    • Sheeld
    • Canon
    • Nuclear
    • Homing
    • Fire
    • Paralyzer
    • Thunder
  • Missing features?
• Additional Thoughts
  • No ending, just a loop.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Alpha Mission II
    • Only on Neo Geo so good luck (but actually also on PS4)
  • Alpha Mission is available on SNK 40th Anniversary Collection
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)

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

00:00 Alpha Mission, defend your home planet against the Seven Stars Alliance.

00:19 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. And I'm Sean. And there's a rumor that a certain Sam Smith might join us at some point in this episode. So don't be alarmed if you start hearing him talk. Yeah, he's somewhere around the studio. I have a blurry photo of him crossing the street into the woods. That's like a sign of seeing the ring tape, right?

00:46 Usually, like, if you saw the ring tape and then you took a photo of that person, they'd have like a swirled face that was clearly just like a cute Photoshop effect. Wait, was it actually like that? Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. In the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody who saw the tape would be like, oh, take my picture now. And it's like, oh, my God, something's wrong with him. We should make sure he's OK, then. We should do like a watch party.

01:04 We'll be right back. Why isn't the ring getting an NES game? Friday the 13th is going to get one eventually. You know what did get an NES game? Yeah, let me hear it. Some guy's idea called Alpha Mission. Alpha Mission did get an NES game, and it's brought to you by SNK. That's right. Do you remember guys' SNK? They're back. Oh, I remember.

01:25 What do you remember them for? Nothing. Great. Fighting games. No. But yes, that's how you can remember them now. They haven't done that yet. Oh, wait. They've made a game already? Yeah, they did. You might remember the classic Athena. Oh, God. They did something else, too, right? Yes, they also did Ikari Warriors. Oh, good for them. And so we know that right now in my book they're in 0 for 2.

01:47 Is anybody giving them a 1 for 2 or a 2 for 2? No. Not I. Yeah. I mean, anybody who's listened to the classic Athena episode, which was 10 minutes of gameplay, 40 minutes of sequels and spinoffs, will know that that was a very bizarre episode. That's definitely worth checking out. Yeah. I'll probably listen to it soon. But you're not wrong, Sean. SNK is known for doing fighting games, and they've even crossed over with other fighting game companies. There's Capcom vs. SNK 1 and 2. It's just weird to think of two game developers. It's almost like Nintendo vs. Sony on the same scale for third-party developers.

02:24 They should keep that in mind. I would love to see Super Smash Bros. All-Star Royale. Yeah. Oh, God. No. None of that. That was really bad. PlayStation Battlestar, All-Stars Royale, whatever that was called, was awful. So I'm getting an idea that we just don't want to talk about this game because... Are you talking about Alpha Mission? The game Alpha Mission. Yes. Alpha Mission, otherwise known as ASO, Armored Scrum Object in Japan. Which is odd. That's what it was called. Yeah, that's the game that we are playing today and talking about, if we so choose.

02:59 Let's talk about something else for a little bit longer. I like the idea that you have to keep segueing, finding ways to segue into... Yeah. But I think we should do first impressions because I think that's the best way to kind of enter in a game like this is just kind of give vague little clues as to what we're doing in this game called Alpha Mission. So, Joe, take me through your first impressions. I'm not going to lie. My first impression for this just unfairly based off the fact that it's like this shmup.

03:28 I'm just kind of like, ah, another one. Like, I'm just tired of them personally. So I tried to set that aside and like decide what I really thought of this game. And I don't know. It just didn't hit much for me that's different enough or better than any of the other games like this that we've played. In fact, I think it was significantly worse than a lot of them. But definitely initial impression. It wasn't... I wasn't impressed.

03:50 Okay. Sean? I am also getting some shmup fatigue. And the fact that this didn't really do anything fun or different or have any kind of originality did not help. I know this has its own deep lore that I'm sure we'll get into. But it's just another like, you know, where it's under attack. There's no real cool designs. It's just, you know, you're run of the mill shmup.

04:17 And knowing that it was a shmup. And if you guys remember, we had that conversation a few episodes back where I was like, could we ever get tired of shmups? The answer is yes. And you guys were like, yeah. I'm not sure if I'm there yet. You had fun with this game. Well, hold on. I never said that. Okay. I'm just saying that when I started up this game, since I'm giving my first impression,

04:37 I was like, oh, it's a shmup. I don't really need to read the manual. I'll just kind of like play through it once blind to see what's going on. And I played third blind. And I just remember that moment where I hit like the select screen. And all of a sudden, all these other ships popped up. And I was like, yeah, I'm probably going to need to read the manual to understand what's going on here. So going over to the manual, if we can do a little tales from the manual section. The first thing I want to talk about, which I don't know if it's apparent to you guys,

05:05 but it's in my version of the manual, but it's also the box art cover is a pretty awesome box art cover of the ship, which is, I guess, the ASO, the Armored Scrum Object. First thing, like there's giant alien, like wasp, bug looking creature. It's really cool. And so I'm always down for like great cover art. I think that's how people used to buy like vinyl albums is you would just like look at the cover. This looks like something I would sound good. That's how I used to buy games too, though. Yeah. When I was a kid. Yeah. And so I think like for this one, this one would have made me think like, oh, I'm in fighting big bees. Yeah. I hate bees.

05:46 I really do in real life hate bees. So I would have played this game and not have been scared at all because the graphics weren't real enough. Unlike in Banjo-Kazooie, that shark. Oh, that shows up in the water. Oh, that's a very realistic bee. Very real, very scary. He has like a speech bubble that pops up before you ever see him saying, borderline saying, I'm going to eat you alive. So let me take a quick step to the side real quick. If there was a shark that like said, I have bees in my mouth and then he opened his- I'd be terrified. Yeah. What if more so? More than bears in pajamas or?

06:19 No. And they don't know that about me and I don't want too many people to know that about me. So we'll just leave bears in pajamas at that. Okay. Getting back to the manual though, believe it or not, all NES games have a story.

06:33 Every single one. Every single one of them. We learned in Super Mario Brothers that the toads were turned into blocks and so you're killing all the toads. We learned in Hogan's Alley that you're actually just training for the FBI. Yeah. That was crazy. That was cool. Now we're learning that for Alpha Mission, you're in the galaxy of Tetra Nova. A fierce war between seven stars has laid waste to their planets. Having destroyed each other's homes, the seven stars have formed an alliance to seek a new home where they can rebuild and regain their strength to go to war once again. The planet they have chosen?

07:11 Earth. It just seems too out of the way. If they're from Tetra Nova and there are billions of stars with, I'm assuming, at least millions of planets that are hospitable to them, why come all the way over to the Milky Way and steal Earth? Because we're the best. Oh. Okay. That's where we're going? I was actually about to call on Joe for a different unrelated thing because he's our science guy. Is he?

07:33 You know, we need one. I guess I'll start doing some research. I was going to ask you how many light years away is Tetra Nova from Earth, but I like your explanation for why they chose Earth a lot better. We don't need to know how far away they will travel. We don't care how far away it is. Get us there, they said to their scientists. Yeah. I was under the impression that it was because we have life forms on Earth.

07:53 There's a lot of planets without life forms and they're not worth checking out. There are at least seven in Tetra Nova. So, I mean, I'm sure they're not the only seven. But I'm sure it's not also all one billion planets. Sure. You know what? Maybe they just look for a challenge. They're just like, all right, let's not do the least amount of work here. Let's do a little extra work and get Earth.

08:12 I'm past it. I've made amends with it. Well, I got good news for you, okay, because the story does continue. Oh. So, because they've chosen Earth, you must pilot the fighter ship SYD, otherwise known as SID, so not ASO, and you have to pilot that ship against the deadly fleet of the Seven Stars Alliance. The fate of Earth rests in your hands. It's a big responsibility for a child.

08:37 True. But you don't have to be a child to play this game. Well, you, but you're, but presumably because they're saying you must pilot the fighter ship, they're saying that you as the child are also the person in the cockpit. And I would like to prefer, like, you know, in Ikari Warriors, they don't say that's you on the battlefield. Are you role-playing as a child in this scenario? Well, no. Okay. Okay, so let's just drop that.

09:02 That's actually the only thing I have for Tales from the Manual, unless anybody else has anything. That's it. Yeah, not really. Well, guys, this is definitely not the end of the show. We've only just begun. We're going to talk about gameplay now, which is primarily what video games are all about. Wow. It sounds like this is our first episode. Like our first time with a video game. Or we've had, like, three robots just, like, listen to all of our other episodes, and they, through the concept of machine learning, they're trying to host the podcast. It's like that script. Like, we fed a black box neural network all of the NES Dalgit scripts, and this is what it's come up with. I think we should do that.

09:43 So let's talk about controlling the SID, your ship. I have a couple of things I want to bring up. Okay. He's slow. Okay. Like, incredibly slow at the start. The ship barely crawls. And even the scrolling of the level itself, we're used to kind of, at least I'm kind of used to from the other ones, getting a good amount of enemies and things on the screen, and then, like, you know, pacing your way through them and being prepared for the next round. This one, you start off at such a crawl.

10:13 Yeah. That it's like... It's not just the crawl of the scroll either. It's also, you can't even move across the screen with any sort of speed. Yeah. It's like I can't go from the top of the screen to the bottom. I have to actually think about my movement. And that's because there's power-ups for those kinds of things to increase your speed and power and stuff like that. So I understand that part of it. I just wish they would have started a ship that is going to take on the Seven Star Alliance a little more powerful.

10:40 Right? They wouldn't send, like, the most basic ship out to battle and be like, oh, but don't worry, we scattered a bunch of upgrades throughout the map. We also named it SID, so you know it's cool. Yeah. And then also I wanted to talk about that he requires, like, energy, which is, like, the new fuel system, if you will.

11:00 Oh, yeah. But you don't crash and burn if you run out of energy on, like, what usually happens with fuel. But instead, you kind of, like, use that as, like, to cash in on things. Yeah. Energy is worth points. And then you can use those things to cash in. But it's not entirely, like, clear how that works. Does it do either of you guys, like, explain that better? I mean, I thought it was relatively straightforward. Okay. Where they're scattered around the playing field are, I guess, little warehouses or little

11:31 sheds, but, you know, space sheds. And if you blow them up in the same way that you would a turret, which it's like an air-to-ground combat thing, so you can only use your missiles for that, they will drop letters. And these letters correspond with upgrades for speed and for energy. And there's a few other things, like warping, but we'll get to that.

11:57 And if you pick up an E, that's your energy. And you can use that to use special abilities that you go to the select screen for. But I thought that, like, you know, you pick up energy and then you expend it when you use your special ability. And that's that. Is there, like, a certain amount required, though? Like, I couldn't figure out, like, if there was, like, a maximum energy you're allowed to have, how much energy before you could unlock things? I think you can only have 24 because I always stopped. It stopped counting at 24 for me. Got it. But, yeah, no, I think it's relatively clear how that works.

12:29 Okay. And I think since you mentioned the pickups or the power-ups and the energy and the missiles and all that, I don't know if you guys felt the same way, but I kind of felt like they just not have time to, like, design, like, a sprite for those things. They were just like, let's just make it the first initial of what it is in a box. Like, I don't know. I felt like it felt a little unfinished to me. I mean, at least it's visually clear. Yeah, that was the positive to it.

12:52 But I wouldn't mind learning that, like, oh, that's missiles because it looks like a missile, like, taking a step rather than just seeing an M. I didn't like how everything was a letter. Right. You know, every single thing. And even the bad ones are just the letter reversed. You gotta be quick. Like, if you get the backwards E, which is the three.

13:10 Really, they just hated people with dyslexia. Yeah. If you get that one, you actually lose energy. It's weird that, I mean, I kind of like this. Because I think this is a point in favor of the game for me, that there are, like, bad power-ups. We haven't seen that yet. Like, where even your power-ups might be your enemy. Right. Well, I just feel like the sprite artist woke up the morning, he was going to turn in all his sprites, and he was like, oh, shit. Like, what about the power-ups? And he was like, all right, we'll just do, like, the letter, the initial in a square. Like, it just felt a little rushed.

13:41 Okay. And then we were talking about missiles versus shooting, and I kind of wanted to get back to that, because we have had that a few times now in Shmup-style games, where missiles are used for ground combat, and then you also shoot in the air at other things, so you kind of have to differentiate between what's something you can shoot bullets at versus what do you need to use missiles on. Yeah. And in this game, I actually thought it was very well done. I think it was very clear what was what. I think that at this point, though, and I'll let you finish, but I think that it's a pretty

14:16 codified game mechanic, where it doesn't, it's sort of, like, expected with the package now that there's going to be two different kinds of firing for if you're going from air to ground or air to air. So I'm not going to give it too much credit, just because it's doing what other games have done as well. Well, if you want me to give a shout-out where shout-outs do, I think it's back to 1942,

14:38 which did use the other button as a way to kind of dodge all combat for a little bit of time, kind of reset your location. You did a flip in the air, and for that point in time, you were completely invincible. Yeah. Wouldn't mind seeing, like, something like that return to the Shmup games again? We might not see that very often, because I think they kind of do need this differentiation between, like, tanks, which clearly are not in the air, but are present in war, versus, like, you know, other alien spaceships. Yeah. We'll be right back.

16:13 And not slow down for your ship. I'm talking about, you know, to Joe's point, frame rate drops. Like, I didn't know that could happen in these NES games. Not only are you just that slow and your power-ups don't even get you all that fast, but the game programming itself will make it even slower. It's not – I don't know if it gets to pass because we've seen games that do the exact same thing and perform perfectly. Yeah, Gradius had no difficulty emulating all that stuff and arguably looked better. Yeah. I mean, not arguably. Yeah. Okay. It just depends on your preference. I guess. If you like jank-looking things.

16:52 Well, there was like that – some of the alien spaceships looked like sea creatures in real life. Like there was that one that looked like the skeleton thing that you grab by the tail that's dead.

17:10 What the fuck? This is a real life thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a real life thing. It's – Can we put a picture of this thing in the show notes? Yeah, I don't – I know what you're talking about. Okay, you know what I'm talking about. It's that thing. Yeah. What is that? Can I see? No, no, no. You can't see. It would be too much of me.

17:27 No, it's fine. Look, it's not that I don't know the name, but like these things, they look a lot like sea creatures. So I thought we were fighting bugs based on the box art. Then I find out we're – in the manual, we're fighting like a different – like a totally different galaxy altogether. But then the ships come in and they start looking like sea creatures again. So who is this war really against? I think we're playing scoon again.

17:51 Okay. Oh, you're right. But in space. Shoot, I played scoon. Yeah, yeah. We've been talking about scoon this whole time. No. Okay. Let's get away from the slowdown issues and many of the issues that we have in this game. I will point out that if you do suffer from slowdown, it doesn't make you – you would think that that would make you better at this game because you have more opportunities to like time out what you're going to do.

18:15 But the slowdown affects you possibly even more than the ships. When things were – when I was having like flickering and frame problems, I was more susceptible to dying than I was shooting down the new super slow ships. Well, yeah, because like the whole rhythm has changed now. It's like you can't really – I mean they're going slow, but I can still see myself dying many times because of the slowdown.

18:39 It really throws you off your game. And we talked about most of the items, but we didn't talk about this warp and reverse. And so the warp one will bring you forward three like stages, which usually – Screens pretty much. Usually stages means like actual levels, but that doesn't happen really in this game. It's all just one kind of fluid experience, the game. And there's no story going on. Well, I mean there is a – it does get broken up a bit because there will be a lot of background objects when you're just going through a level. But once you get to the boss, it's just black space. Right. So you know where like the division is. Yeah, you know where the division is.

19:22 And there is like a – it does pop up that says like level one or something. Oh, really? Okay. I guess I didn't pay attention to that because I thought that was strange. I remember thinking throughout the game, I was like, what's the progression system? Is it just a high score? Like – Pretty much. Okay. But –

19:39 It's not beatable, right? This game isn't – It doesn't end. Yeah, it doesn't end and that's not great. Yeah. I don't like games that don't end. So – Pac-Man even ends. When it stops being able to compute itself. But that's what – you know, Pac-Man is a metaphor for like hacking, so it would make sense, you know. The whole – Yeah. Like it was meant to be. Yeah. So let's get into the weapon select because I think that this is something that is pretty cool. Mm-hmm. But then the execution is terrible. So with weapon selecting, other than like having your ship have like power-ups that continue to be added to it, we've seen in other games little mini ships come to your side. We've seen versions where like now you shoot lines of four instead of just two.

20:23 We've seen force fields and stuff like that. So instead of that happening and having that as like a permanent kind of thing, instead you get the weapon select option, which is this separate menu where you choose your new ship based on which ships you've collected in the levels. Yeah. And there's a lot of different options. Some that are really cool. But to select them, you hit the select button, are brought into like a menu.

20:47 Your ship becomes a mouse. Yeah. You're now a cursor on like a bitmap of just all of the different shapes of the ships. And I guess it's just – I don't actually know how else they would have done this to be as clear as to what you're choosing. I guess they could have just had press select until you get to what you want. But it's an inelegant solution to a problem. So I guess it's fine. For me, I did think of a solution for this. And I'm not saying that it's better. I'm saying this was my offering as like I think that that's a really clunky way to do it. It halts gameplay.

21:23 It's pretty much like a pause screen where you get time to now just decide what you're going to pick and you're just like roaming. It's almost like immersion in the game. If there is immersion in the game. It actually does break – it could be exploited now that I think about it because it does actually send you back a bit. If you're about to die, you could just press the select button, I guess. That's true. But I did notice too and I don't know if this was a lack of energy but there were certain times where I couldn't select stuff. So I don't know if that just has to do with like coming up on a boss now so you can't change or if I was actually just low on energy and unable to exchange it for power-ups.

21:58 But I think that if you made it so this way, the power-ups were actually just something that you collected, right? Like if you wanted the octo ship version which is a really cool thing where bullets spread in all eight directions, right? Who wouldn't want that? It's something that you pick up on the map. Your ship does like a cool little transformation slash fade maybe something simple into that new ship. And now that's your ship until you collect the next power-up or die.

22:28 Okay. I think that's one solution. Another solution if you want to keep it up to choice is that when you're hitting the select button, you can cycle through the options while the game is still going. So you see the actual ship change designs because I think that was one super plus here if we're talking about like the low effort sprites being the letters and stuff like that. At least the ship looks different. At least the ship looks noticeably different and pretty cool. There are some really cool ship designs in this one.

22:56 I would have liked to just like toggle through that. The downside of that one is that it probably would require you to know which shape was which one you wanted. Yeah. Like you might know octo because of the way it looks, but are you going to know the difference between fire and thunder? Maybe not. Yeah.

23:12 I don't particularly care for the inventory thing, but I think I still prefer it to at least in the way that way for what they're trying to do. I still think I prefer it to the other options. Like I would rather choose than have to cycle through while playing because then I feel like I would distract myself from playing. I would probably die doing that. How do you feel about it in Gradius where it was like, remember you were doing it all live and checking?

23:34 I liked it, but I wouldn't have, I mean, I don't think I would have hated an inventory system. Granted, it is like you're giving up the immersion a little bit to break in, but like, I don't know. That happens in games. You got to pause to select a power up. It wasn't just a random bitmap with these ships spread around, but instead it was sort of, it was designed to look like a screen in your cockpit. Maybe that would be better for the immersion. Yeah. I don't hate that either. And I think even, you know, and I'm sorry that I didn't notice this while I was playing, but to your point about like, there's almost like a thing that says like you've, after you beat the boss that you're in the next stage.

24:15 Yeah. If there's some kind of like docking sequence, we've seen that several times where you'll just dock somewhere and then come back up. And that's the only chance for you to pick your new machine for that level. Change the game up a lot, but that would be a cool gameplay element where it's like you have to plan a little bit. And then all you could, yeah. And then all you would need to do is press select and you would stop shooting like pew pew bullets and you could, you could, you could do your special ability with that. Which you chose. Yeah.

24:40 I think, I think one thing that I'm surprised about is that we haven't like, this is a creative use for the select button, but we haven't seen too many like super creative uses for the select button. And I'm not sure why, because like, yes, the start button should always be like a pause or a menu thing, but the select button should almost be treated like a third button in some cases, right? If you don't have anything else for it. Exactly. And it's kind of what this is. Yeah. It is like a third button to like cycle through menu.

25:03 So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. Instead of actually using it to select what game mode. Yeah. It's strange to me that that was like a lot of times that was like the sole purpose. One full button of the what, six buttons that there are is just to, is just to select game A, game B.

25:20 So let's talk about the different ships. I'll read off some descriptions and then I want you guys to tell me about which one you enjoyed the most. So we have Octo, which fired in eight different directions. It has the strongest lasers, but it's on a time limit. Then there's Shield, which creates a force field, which diminishes each time you are hit. So it's only as good as the force field lasts. Then you have Cannon, fires a powerful wide range laser, but has a time limit.

25:48 Nuclear, which fires missiles with nuclear warheads. Each missile fired decreases your energy by four. So that one's more about keeping energy up. Otherwise you won't be able to shoot nuclear missiles. Homing fires guided missiles against ground targets. Each missile fired decreases energy by two. So again, in energy game. Fire, which shoots fire to destroy enemies, has a time limit. Time. Paralyzer, stops smaller enemies by firing a sword beam so they can be destroyed by smashing, has a time limit. And lastly, Thunder. Shoots lightning to destroy all enemies on screen. Each shot decreases energy by eight. The largest energy decrease. So guys, which one?

26:34 I only use three. Okay. I played with Octo for a little bit. Got sick of it. I played with Thunder once. Thought it was neat. But if you're not using fire throughout this entire game, you're playing it wrong because it is so overpowered. It hits ships, ground targets, and projectiles.

26:57 When you blow up any sort of item drop, you can just pick up energy there and it's just slowly refilling as you're expending. I was actually able to play through one full level with the fire going the entire time. Wow. Including the boss. And that one's on a time limit too. Yeah. That's interesting that they made the time limit that long. It was just that long. And if you just keep picking up energy, then it just adds to it. So I thought it kind of broke it for me because the boss wasn't even a boss at that point.

27:27 But that was, I mean, it is empowering, I guess. Sure. Yeah. Joe, any thoughts on these? I mean, not really. To be honest, I didn't use a ton of them. I used fire and I used shield. I used shield, and I know I definitely tried a couple other ones, but... No Octo? I feel like everybody tries Octo. I think I did Octo as well, but nothing really stood out to me. I don't know, maybe it was also because I wasn't too high on the game anyways. Nothing stood out to me. It was like, oh, this one's perfect.

27:53 Admittedly, I didn't play super far into this game where I feel like I need more power-ups. I think Octo is the one that is definitely the coolest if you're asking which one's really cool. But it's totally impractical when the bosses come around. Yeah. It's kind of useful. I don't even want to say it's super useful, even on the regular parts of the stage. Because it's this idea that you have a 360-degree spread now, but that spread's kind of weak.

28:18 Yeah. It's not necessarily... You might be really close if you want to hit them with more than one. Right. It spreads out so far that there's a good chance you're going to miss most of the enemies. So I'm not saying Octo's actually the good choice. I thought it was the coolest looking slash working one. Yeah. Shield, I think it's a total waste of time. I think shield is maybe more of like a learning thing.

28:38 And then there's like a bunch of ones in here that are like tricks. I think cannon, nuclear, homing, and paralyzer are all completely worthless. They are things that sound really cool on paper. Like homing, for instance. If I told you that you have the ability now in a shmup to fire guided missiles, there's a chance that you're going to want to get that. Yeah. But then you've got to remember that doesn't mean anything really in this game. That's against ground targets.

29:03 They're not moving. They don't shoot very often. Yeah. You could hit them normally anyway. There are a few things like paralyzer or things like that that are cool in concept, but the game has to be designed in order for those to work. Very poor balance. Like the enemies have to, there have to be enemies that are like, oh, this is where you're going to want to use paralyzer. But like they really didn't, at least as far as I played, didn't like, there was nothing where I was like, oh, what do I need for these enemies?

29:25 Right. I mean, like I give them, I give them complete kudos for like including all these power ups. I don't think we should be like, like saying like, oh, well, why'd they even think to include paralyzer if they didn't design the stage around it? But no, it is a good point too, that like if it's completely useless, it's not necessarily great. But I do think it's fun to try different things if you've played the game several times. There could be a bunch of cool, unique weapons, but if there is one that is easier to complete the game with than the rest of them by a significant margin, then that's poor game design and poor balance.

30:04 So, I mean, yeah, but I still stand by bad game design. Okay. Not to talk anymore about gameplay. Let's move over to sequels and spinoffs because I'm sure you guys knew that there must have been a sequel to Alpha Mission. There always is. Yeah, I mean, it's made by SNK, so they got to make at least one. And they do. They make Alpha Mission 2, which is only on the Neo Geo. So, good luck with that. But actually, it's available on PS4, so you'll be just fine. I always say good luck to the Neo Geo stuff because Neo Geo things are like incredibly hard to find. And some people pay like $1,000 per game for Neo Geo stuff.

30:43 But Alpha Mission 2 is virtually like the same thing as Alpha Mission 1, but apparently more polished and more of like a fan favorite kind of thing. But it came in so much later. Yeah. I think it came in like 93.

30:57 So there was more than enough time to like figure out. What was wrong with this. Yeah, what was wrong and like how to make it better. And like the shmup genre in general had just evolved. But if you do want to try Alpha Mission, it is available on SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, which is I think now coming to PS4 or is already on PS4. It's on Switch. Oh. It's on PC.

31:18 It's like it's done by like a really cool group of guys. I know Frank Cifaldi like leads that group. Never heard of them. He runs the video game like museum preservation in LA. Oh, okay. He's like he's like a big proponent of that and like make sure the games are being properly archived. Yeah. So that people can play them in the future. I'm for that. Yeah. And he also does these like collections.

31:41 Yeah. He does these collections as well with like I don't know what his company is or his team is. But they also did the Mega Man collection for that. Not the X collection. Just the original Mega Man. But these also have like lots of neat little goodies in them too, right? Yeah. No, there's tons of goodies. There's actually like a lot of games that you can't even play in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection. Just look at them. But you can just like yeah, you can just see like interesting stuff for like they made sure to include a lot of good games.

32:11 But also like a lot of games that maybe people haven't heard of. And then also just like tons of I mean, like that's why I love these anniversary collections stuff. Just to go on like a small tangent. And my first exposure to any of that stuff was the Sonic Mega Collection on GameCube. And it was just like really cool because they actually included like the covers for every single Sonic comic. And I just got to like look through them all. And like you know, you can zoom in. They were high res art. It was on my GameCube. I was watching stuff on my TV.

32:41 Internet wasn't big at the time. And I'm like, wow, this is a really cool way to find out about history of these games. I wish more things would get collections. Sort of like the the trophies in Smash Brothers, but you don't have to unlock them. Yes. And I think a lot of people talk about the trophies in Smash Brothers kind of being their entry point to Nintendo history. Yeah. So more things more people should be doing that stuff. I think it's time for us to do the essential games list.

33:07 This is a little thing where we all vote on the game. Give it a yay or nay if it's essential. And that means if it's worth playing in 2000 and your year. Which, you know, I bring that up not because we don't know when we're recording, but because you could be listening in the future. Yeah. So I think without further ado, Sam, why don't you take us away with your essential games list vote? Cool. Sam.

33:32 Yeah. How's it going? Oh, wow. Hey, what's up, Sam? Sorry. I was busy fighting in the Alliance, which I don't really understand really because how they're like teaming up to defeat Earth so that they can blow each other up again. It doesn't really make sense. Anyway. They made like a peace treaty just to start war again. Just so that they can be like, all right, so yeah.

33:54 That's pretty much how the conversation probably went down, right? Yeah. They looked at each other angrily. All right. Yeah. So I think that amount of forethought into, you know, the story aspect of it alone is kind of telling in this game. Because my biggest issues with this game were power-ups. Like some of them just are not good. But there's one thing that I wanted to talk about specifically that was there's a boss fight that you need missiles to defeat the boss.

34:27 And at that point, I ran out of missiles. I don't think you can run out of missiles. I ran out of missiles. How did you run out of missiles? There's a button for missiles. Yeah. It's like a separate button. But it was gone. No, I pressed them, but they weren't. Really? No more missiles. I don't know about that. I don't think you can run out of missiles. Really? Yeah. Oh.

34:46 Maybe a defect. Might want to look into that card. Look at the controller. I had upgraded my thing, my ship. And so maybe I just didn't have missiles or something? Oh, that could be interesting. Maybe you upgraded to a ship that runs missiles on energy. I think that's what it was. Then my energy ran out. I was a homing, maybe? And then I couldn't defeat the boss because you needed missiles. Nothing surprises me about this game not having the foresight to think, through with boss missions. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's where that whole big roundabout thing was going.

35:15 This, it's like a very basic kind of shoot-em-up. It doesn't really bring anything special to the table except for that cool little upgrade thing. But that doesn't make, you know, it doesn't, it's not, it doesn't like push me over the edge to say that this is like a great game. I think it's a solid game, kind of. It's a game. But it is not essential.

35:36 Okay. I like that, I like that ending. Yeah. I wonder if they ever got feedback like that. I kind of talked myself down. Yeah. I wonder if SNK ever, like, as they were testing the game, somebody was like, yeah, it's a solid game. It's a game. Well, it's a game. Confirmed. I mean, like, don't get me wrong. I like playing through the level parts until the boss. I thought the boss fights were a little bit cheap, but, you know, it didn't, it wasn't really special. I just imagine the scientists at Konami, which is a throwback to Twin Bay.

36:02 I just imagine them like checking off, like they have like a bunch of boxes and they ask the kids like, well, what'd you think? And they're like, yeah, it's a game. And they have like game and then they have macaroni and cheese and they're like checking off. They're checking the box for game. Another one for the game, for the game pile. Right. What does that make? Karate champion. Karate champ. Karate champ is mac and cheese.

36:23 Joe, you want to take me through your vote? Yeah, I think my essential vote is kind of a reworked version of my initial impression, which is, first of all, yes, I was very skeptical because I'm not particularly interested in playing more shmups. So I tried to set that aside and give it a chance and it just didn't bring anything particularly good. And there were some things that were particularly bad and I didn't have a lot of fun. I'm going to say no.

36:50 Okay. Two no's. So we can't get into the essential games list, but Sean, if you... Oh, yes, I can. For now. By your rule. Oh, 50%? Yeah. I feel like we go over this every couple episodes. I know, I know. I think I'm just trying to change that. I'm down to change it. I think it should always be a majority. I think it should be a majority as well. I think it should be one. All right. So we got Alpha Mission here.

37:14 This is a... It's like you took a template for a shmup. You didn't add anything to make it different. You just have the template for a shmup. And then you added frustration. Just lots of frustrations because we didn't really talk about the boss fights too much until Sam brought it up. But the final boss, if there can be one, the last boss before this game just loops over on itself, is the most uninteresting boss I've seen in a shmup. Like, this is coming off after, like, Twin B, which had these fun little... They all had their own...

37:49 They all had their own gimmick. This was just five turrets, and it would literally take you forever if you didn't have enough energy for a power-up. So it would not literally take you forever. It's still inessential. Inessential. Okay.

38:06 Anybody else starting to feel a little nervous about SNK? You know, like, this is for me not essential, and that makes it 0 for 3 for me, along with Athena and Ikari Warriors. And I'm just saying that, like, I'm looking at, like, their list of SNK games on Wiki and seeing, like, what's coming to the NES, and it's just like, nah, I'm good, actually. Like, I don't need any of these. I mean, they were never really in my wheelhouse, I would say.

38:35 Okay. I thought Ikari Warriors was fun. Oh, okay. We got an Ikari Warriors fan. Yeah. Kill them. I just meant, in general, like, up to 2019, I was never really into SNK games, so... Which one was Ikari Warriors? Ikari Warriors is the... You jump on trees and stuff? You can jump on trees? No. Oh, wait, no. I'm thinking of the other one. Ikari Warriors is like Commando Plus.

38:58 Yeah. Where you can drive around in the tank. Oh, right, right. Because Commando was the one that I actually kind of had fun with, not Ikari Warriors. Interesting. Okay. Because I definitely think Ikari Warriors is just a more competent Commando. I do remember now, but I don't remember what my reasoning was, but I remember specifically having fun with Commando, and I know other people didn't. Yes. Okay. Well... We all have amnesia here.

39:17 I think the biggest problem with this game is, and I know we've said this a few times now, but I really just think that it's one thing to go ahead and, like, stick to a genre and say, like, okay, great, we've made the genre. Like, this is a shmup. And it's like, yeah, but I've got at least four other shmups on this system. Why should I play yours over something like Gradius or Twinbee?

39:45 And there was no reason. There was absolutely no reason. I might have preferred 1942 to this, but only because of the aesthetic. Really? You know? Like, I just... I'd probably put them side by side. Nobody listens to 1942. You always play on mute.

40:02 What were you saying, Joe? Actually, I was going to say I'd probably put them side by side, but as I think about it, no, I think I would still prefer this over 1942. Yeah. Me too. I definitely think, like, I'm the one making the leap there by saying that. But I guess what I mean is just that the more I played this game, the more disappointing it was that there was all of this, like, thought put into certain things with no payoff.

40:24 You know? You have all this choice to be like all of these other cool, crazy ships, and none of them really matter. None of the power-ups are really all that great. And if they are, it's like Sean's point, it's like the fire one, which is just a game breaker. Just lets you do whatever you want. You're invincible as long as everything's in front of you.

40:43 You know, that's not great. You know, going back to Karate Champs, since that was mentioned, and I hate that game. If there was a button in that game that just... Well, that's not a game. That's Mac and Cheese. Yeah, yeah. If there was a button in that game that just lets you automatically KO your opponent, I wouldn't want it. I wouldn't be like, oh, great. Give me some of that. Like, now I can finally play that game.

41:04 Because I was never able to successfully play Karate Champs. Yeah, there was I. But I heard the arcade version's okay. Anyway, that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Join us next time, because now we post episodes like way ahead on Twitter. Yeah. I'm like, hey, here's the next five games. And it's a pinned post. So always check them out to see what's coming up. You can write in thoughts. You can write in... Right on our wall. Yeah, right on our wall.

41:31 Go to our MySpace. Yeah. We got a really cool... You'll be in our top eight. We're at NostalgiaCast on AIM. We're selling our top eight. Like, if you want to be in our top eight, it's $500. Okay. That's a steal.

41:50 If they really wanted to access us, they would go to www.nostalgiacast.com. That's where you get the show notes and links to other websites, because we're just generous like that. We're like, spread the love. I'm sure you've always wondered, is A.S. Baseball haunted? Well, our website has the definitive answer on that. Nobody else has ever given a definitive answer. Some people have suggested it. Other people have mentioned the game, but never the hauntedness. Some people talk about haunted things, but never NES baseball. Are you saying people have mentioned the game and not the hauntedness? I just think it's a little crazy that the Ghostbusters movie would come out in 1988.

42:28 Baseball came out in 1985, and yet it's nowhere to be seen in that movie. That's a good point. That is weird. Baseball the NES game, not baseball the sport. That was 83. That was, I think, like 1835, like 45, 55, 65. It's one of those, it's 18X5 is when it was invented. Mike, what's your personal Twitter?

42:53 That's kind of personal. You say it every episode. I was trying to get you to end the episode. Oh, you're right. That's true. I'm Mike Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.