077 · RAD RACER
This is no ordinary game pak. This is Rad Racer. Nintendo’s thrilling 3-D video game. Rad Racer comes action-packed with revolutionary 3-D technology and 3-D glasses (they’re free inside) that will have you really believing you’re in the middle of a cross country rally race – cruising along at 200 miles per hour! FOR MORE NESTALGIA as well as show notes and links check out www.NEStalgiacast.com
- Introductions - Espo
- Originally known as Highway Star in Japan
- Development History - Espo
- Square is back at it again with more 3D sim
- Square owner Masafumi Miyamoto wanted to demonstrate Gebelli's 3D programming techniques.
- In Japan, it is one of the few titles for the system designed for use with Nintendo's Famicom 3D System peripheral for 3D experience.
- Square is back at it again with more 3D sim
- First Impressions - Everyone
- Rad Racer is only the second “racing” game we have had. And I like the style! (Espo)
- Gameplay
- Players drive a Ferrari 328 or a Formula One racing car through a race course.
- Rally through a course and its checkpoints before the timer expires
- Even if time runs out, the vehicle can continue to coast for a while; if the vehicle reaches a checkpoint before running out of momentum, the game continues.
- Additional Thoughts
- OutRun exists, should this game matter? (Yes, because it’s on the NES)
- Rad Racer II
- NES North America only. Considered inferior by players
- These are the Square Games that will lead us to the creation of Final Fantasy
- EGL (Mike, Sean, Sam)
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Rad Racer, feel the awesome power of 3D rally racing!
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sam. And I'm Sean. How's it going guys? I'm doing good. This is an odd setup. We've never really done it like this. It's never been us three. Yeah. I'm glad you're here, Sam. Usually I'm the flake.
Are the expectations in line with everybody? Like, you know, like how we usually record a podcast? Do you feel like you're- I feel a little off. Okay. I feel like there's an intruder here. Do you think the listeners feel like there's an intruder here? I feel like now they do. Depends on if they're like listening to it like on a portable speaker in their bathroom and they're like changing in the bedroom and they're like, oh, that could sound like an intruder as well as Michael Esposito from Nostalgia. Three intruders. Yeah. That's our band. Cool. So today we are talking about Rad Racer.
Is Rad, like, is that still happening in the 80s? Is Rad a cool bird? Yeah, it's happening. No, I think so. Okay. All right. I'm just not sure if Rad was like 70s. No, it's more. If it was released today, it'd be on fleek racer.
I would play on fleek racing. I think that would be awesome. So Rad Racer, that's by Square. And we all know that Square is going to go ahead and do Final Fantasy stuff, but they've already done something for us on the NES. It came out just a month ago. Yeah. But for us, it was weeks and weeks ago. Yeah. And that was the 3D battles of World Runner. Which was less than expected from Square. Like, you know, from the future expectations of Square.
If you know what I mean. Yeah. And I think like in line with what the rest of the console was doing at the time. It was still behind. Yeah. Like, it still wasn't that great. It's like, wow, thanks for pretending to simulate 3D, but also you forgot the gameplay. Yes. And they tried to go about their 3D ideas in a different way with this one, didn't they? I think so. I think for at least for this one, because the other one was following. So something interesting about both these games for Square, in my opinion, is that they're both copying Sega games. So we talked about like Space Harrier being the game that 3D World Runner was copying. And that was a huge hit at the arcade.
But then also, Rad Racer is definitely copying OutRun. Sure. And OutRun is like the biggest thing ever. I never played OutRun. OutRun is like one of the most successful arcade games of all time. It defines an aesthetic. I've seen the aesthetic, but I haven't actually played the game. Yeah, you should check that out. Especially the arcade version. Only the arcade version. Well, I'm just saying, because that's like the one that everybody talks about. I think it would be a little weird if you played like, I don't even know which Sega systems it got ported to. I think it's on Master System. Yeah, that would just be bizarre. It's not great. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
And so, with this time, even though Square does things a little different, we'll talk about whether we like this game or not when we get into the gameplay thing. But I did want to mention one thing about Square, and that's this whole thing with like, wow, another pseudo 3D game. Why is that? And that's a big push from Square owner Masafumi Miyamoto, who wanted to demonstrate Nasir Jebeli, who was the programmer.
Yeah, Iranian programmer who Square acquired to do like a bunch of different games with them. He wound up doing a bunch of Final Fantasy games with them too, but he's kind of like this know-it-all programmer expert for those days where like, everybody was working in assembly, which was a really hard program to get your head around. And he was just a whiz at it and knew how to do this special 3D programming.
So they figured if they acquired him, they might as well, Miyamoto's thoughts was, I might as well have him make a bunch of 3D-like games and let's see what we can do with it. But to wrap that up with the Famicom, there actually was a 3D system peripheral that only for the Famicom that I can't find any details on, but I know that they did make 3D glasses.
But don't they just work like, you know, movie style 3D glasses? Well, yeah, like the old style, like the red and blue style 3D. But I couldn't find out if the peripheral was also something you needed to attach to the Famicom to get the 3D mode to play out on the video side of it. But long story short, that doesn't come to the North American version, obviously. But those glasses are now kind of like a collector's item because they made, they were made of paper or plastic. So it's like... But they did, because there is a 3D mode in the NES version too. It's just they apparently didn't need a peripheral for it. Well, there's no... I'm sorry, you know, it doesn't pop out of the screen.
Okay. Right? Like... Sure. When I think of peripheral though, I'm thinking like a piece of hardware. Yeah. Right. Whereas this game, you can put on 3D glasses and it'll pop out of the screen, so to speak, wouldn't it? Really? Yeah, you press select. Okay. So it has that mode still in it. Okay. I never hit select. I also didn't, but I read that in the manual. Okay. So this one made it over then. Okay. Because I remember in 3D World Runner it didn't have that, but that's cool.
I guess like any pair of red and blue glasses is going to work, but they never ship them over to, you know, like Square never shipped over copies of the glasses. So I guess it's just really lazy of them to be like, yeah, they don't need the glasses, but we'll include the 3D mode in case they just have red and blue tinted paper lying around. Hey man, I think this is the 80s that probably had some red and blue glasses. Yeah. We should get some.
I would like to try. I'd like to see how bad the 3D pops out. I mean, if you look at the game, even the 3D that it's trying to simulate, there's not a lot on the screen. Well, if we want to talk about the 3D effect, I think that as far as the 3D effect in NES games go, like so far, this is the most impressive that I've seen.
I think, yeah, I think it works. Like it actually has like rolling hills, sort of like you go over hills and it looks like it. I think that also though, if we're, if we're getting into it, which it sounds like we're getting into, uh, because of the 3D effect, it makes the signs really hard to read. Oh yeah. It's not always for the best. Yeah. So they kind of sacrifice, you know, and I think an important part of the gameplay there where the arrows tell you which way you need to prepare to turn.
And this is a racing game. Yeah. It's a racing game. Uh, so because of that, they're coming really fast at a distance. So they start off really small and it looks great. It looks like a real sign, but you can't really read it because you're going well past the speed limit. And I didn't mean to say that the 3D is lackluster. I think what I meant is if you look at the game, it's really just kind of like a background,
a road and a car. So I'm wondering like, what's the need to have that kind of stuff pop out of your screen? Like it wouldn't be this, I would guess other cars maybe to see the other cars, like it as they're in different, like as they're further away, seeing them be that's whatever in the into the screen. That's what I would guess. I did that 3D back then also only ever came out of the screen. It didn't do like today's diorama style. Like, you know, if you want to go into the 3D, 3 and 3D, it looks like a toy box, you know? Yeah. Whereas like all 3D back then just was like, oh my God, that dinosaur is going to eat my face. Like, yeah.
So we'll get into the objective of the game at least, because I think that's kind of important when we're talking about these racing games, because this one's not a race against other cars. It's not a three lap system.
It's specifically a, like a rally course where you have to hit checkpoints in a certain amount of time. So you have a timer that usually is somewhere around like 70 seconds. It counts down. And if you get to the next checkpoint in time, you get to go again to the following checkpoint. And then eventually you'll end the course and go to the next stage. I believe there's 10 stages? Eight. Okay. Have you read the object of the game description in the manual? Go for it. It's a great story. It's pretty good. I have it pulled up here. As the last traces of color leave the sky, you're hanging out by your new wheels, anxious for the race to start.
Transamerica. From the West Coast to the East Coast. Okay. It's time. You jump into the driver's seat, feeling the awesome power beneath you. Stepping through the gears, the cars around you fade into tiny specks in the rear view mirror. Look out! You're on top of a hairpin curve. Whoa. The tires screech. I like that whoa. Whoa. It doesn't even have like an exclamation point. No exclamation point. Whoa. The tires screech and your heart hits your ribcage, but you make it, laughing.
There's only a few more of these until you reach the planes. Then it happens. Another curve hits you in the face. It's too fast. You struggle for the shoulder, but the next thing you know, you're catapulting through the air, almost weightless, until your body tears up against the seatbelt. Then, all is still. Not a scratch on you. And the protective ceramic overcoating on your car did the trick. No major damage.
You let out a scream. Turn the car around and hit it. There's still time, but you've gotta be cool. Alert. You're headed straight for the coast and those glorious checkered flags, defying the odds again. Woo! I mean, damn. I mean, that's like Don Draper levels of, like, amp copy right there. You just painted a picture for me. Yeah. If I'm, like, doing marketing for this game, I buy commercial time, you know, around the same time that, like, what was that show with the talking car?
I mean, Herbie wasn't not cool, it's just that I feel like Knight Rider was a little cool. Yeah, I don't know why I want to directly watch that. You buy, like, 30 seconds of ad time during Knight Rider and you just show gameplay while you read what, like, whatever Sam just read, whatever it was in the manual, right? Yeah, right. Like, you just read that and you're just like, ah, I'm sold on this game. Yeah. Yeah, I'd buy a whole system over that game. Then I'd play it and realize, oh, that's really overselling it. Yeah. You know, there's no rear view mirror even. They make crashing sound like it's a good thing. That's the bad thing. It's a good thing sometimes.
Crashing? I haven't read it. Not in the game. Oh, okay, okay. Well, in the game, it's, yeah, it's bad. I think, like, they kind of expect crashing to be a part of the game because, to the point that I think Sam was making earlier, you can't really tell when turns are about to happen sometimes. Well, you could if you could read the damn signs. No, yeah, but you can't because they're going by so fast because your car is going, like, usually at least 170 kilometers an hour.
So, when you're going that fast and then you automatically have to start making a turn, you're either going to do one of two things. You're either going to break completely, so this way you don't have to go jet over to the sides, or you're going to jet over to the sides and hit, like, a tree or something like that. Or you could play this like an actual racing game and use, like, the apex turning mechanics that we all know and love because they work in this game.
They say that in the manual. Yeah, it's in the manual, and I tried it out. I tried to play it like I would like a more arcadey version of Gran Turismo, and I actually was doing pretty good. It felt good to play this game. And I think that's a great point because one thing that I was doing after I, like, crashed several times in a row was I think I was just trying to, like, beat the time limit by, like, too much. Like, if they give you 70 seconds, you're not supposed to, like, get to the checkpoint with 20 seconds to go. You know? Oh, I did. No, no, I'm saying in an ideal world, if you have 70 seconds, you should use all 70 seconds.
So you should be trying to, like, you shouldn't be, it's not a race to get there as fast as you can. It's a race to make sure that you get to the checkpoint. So I started slowing down and not trying to go, like, 200 kilometers an hour and actually adjust my speeds this way. If I did not see a turn coming, I could still brake and continue turning. Mm-hmm. Because otherwise you're gonna, you know, we'll talk about other obstacles, but just your car going that fast alone makes it very hard to make any kind of turns when you're trying to go 210, 220 kilometers an hour.
Yeah. Well, aside from the difficulty with turning, did you guys feel that there was a sense of speed with this game? Yeah. I think so. I felt a good sense of speed. I was actually surprised that you get to choose between a Ferrari and a Formula One car. Mm-hmm. Is the Formula One car faster? I don't think there's any difference. Right. It seemed weird that it was just an aesthetic choice because... Yeah. Because I'm always gonna pick the Ferrari. I know. I was driving the Ferrari and I was like, this is awesome. I can't wait to drive the F1 car where things are gonna be like 300 kilometers an hour. But I feel like 255 was the max?
Yeah. That's like a, that's the highest integer that this system could create. Right. Yeah. So they were like, cool, this is how fast you're going. Mm-hmm. And I was just surprised by that, but I definitely feel fast. And I think that's because of how fast the trees and the signs go by. If you don't have anything else going by. I think that's not, I think that's it. I think that's also the way that they programmed handling.
Um, the fact that you can't just go from one side of the screen to the other, uh, at will also adds to that sense of speed because you feel, uh, your traction give way. Yeah. Uh, it's, they also illustrate it with a kind of annoying, like, screeching sound for skidding tracks, but, um, I think that with the, how the actual handling is designed as well as the, how fast things are coming at you makes it all feel much faster.
And I think it also helps that there's, uh, four dotted line, uh, lanes. Yeah. Through each, each, each thing. So this way, no matter where you are, you have at least, I think all four actually stay on screen, no matter where you are on it. So you have four of these things just racing by you, which would be cool in 3d, I suppose. Yeah. Uh, you know, having a, just kind of jut out at your eyes.
But now I guess we should talk about the, uh, the, uh, the other obstacles, which are just the other cars. I found them to be incredibly annoying. Yeah. I don't know. I think that, that you need some kind of, you need some kind of obstacle to get around this game to make it feel like anything. Absolutely. I'm not, I'm not saying that they're annoying because they're the obstacle. I think they're annoying because it should work like bumper cars, but it, it works more like they have the force of like 10,000 tons and you are just like a, a little, uh, balloon next to them. I guess. Anytime I touched any of those cars, specifically even like from behind, I get like knocked!
Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go to the left or right. And I just feel like really like you couldn't just jump me over a little bit or make me go like off course slightly like drift that way. I mean, sometimes when you hit them, that's all that happens. Uh, I think that depending on how you hit them, it depends, it changes the way that you, your car reacts. Yeah. If they're going way slower than you, you're just going to get flipped off the road. But if they're going around the same, uh, around the same speed as you, then it'll be a more subtle difference. But I, I think that's the way it is. Hmm. Yeah. I think my problem was I just tried to go as fast as I could at all times.
Yeah. I guess I didn't really feel like it was that nuanced, but if that's the case, I think that's pretty cool that they programmed it along with speeds. I just kind of felt like it was touching these guys just sent me into not like it wasn't like I was instantly punished, but it just felt like, okay, I have to avoid these guys no matter what, but they can do whatever they want to me. It doesn't seem fair that whenever you touch them, they don't move. Yeah. They sort of stop rendering cars. If you pass them, like there's never a car that ends up coming up from behind you. Yeah. So I guess they got around that. I don't know. Which is something Mach Rider did. Mach Rider could have cars come. Yeah. And you have a rear view.
Yeah. They would come back in front of you. Yeah. One thing I was a little bit bothered by was that there's in the manual, it says that if you, what is it? If you go behind another car, what's it like? You can slipstream. I never noticed. Yeah. Because you're already going way faster than all those other cars. Maybe in some of the later levels that I didn't really get to, that's more of a thing. Mm-hmm. But I feel like I'm never going to try, like slow down to get behind a car so that I can speed up to go around it. You know? I think that, yeah, definitely the strategy that you take with this game, if you're going to try and, like how Mike said, just try and get to the end, you could, you'll be a little bit more tactical in how you approach.
Like there'll be like three cars taking all three lanes and you have to figure out like which one's going to go forward first. Right. Try to get around them. Maybe there's some acceleration boosts if you're behind them for a while, but I didn't notice anything either. I'm inclined to believe it though, just because there were some certain cars, even like in the relatively early courses, like three and four, there were some cars that I couldn't
necessarily get around and I didn't know about this slipstream thing, but I was able to eventually like by coasting behind them, be able to get in front of them. And that, you know, that's just probably, it's not, it doesn't have to do with like them moving over or me just accelerating in speed. I feel like it has to do with that slipstream mechanic. So I think, I think it works.
I just, I think a lot of this stuff that is like communicated in the manual, there's, there's not enough going on in the UI. Yeah. In this game, like, like there's just the time your score, which to me means nothing in this game since your score is how far, how many checkpoints you got, how far you got in the game. And then there's your speed and your speed is only like, your speed doesn't change when you're on like the snowy Alps course versus the, you know, like the speed is just a constant thing. And is that your RPMs in the top?
Yeah. I don't think it has too much to do with anything. Yeah. It might have to do with, it might help with turns a little bit, but yeah, I don't know. I really didn't look at it because the only difference to me was like, I'm just always in the yellow and if I'm in the red, I'm probably going too fast. Mm-hmm. But, uh, I thought, you know, like those things are nice. I would have just liked to see more.
Yeah. Like you mentioned Mach Rider had a rear view mirror and I guess you don't need it here because the cars never pop back up, but why not some more car like things to help? Yeah. Or even a visual cue with the slipstream or an audio cue, something just to let you know it's happening. And maybe this is just a complaint by it being like too arcadey, but I was kind of surprised that there was no gear system. Yeah.
I, well, they do have, so Mach Rider didn't have, uh, the capability to go into turbo, did it? No. But I mean, fourth gear was pretty fast, so. Yeah. Um, but this game uses all of its inputs already. I don't know if they could. Yeah, but it uses one just for changing the radio station. But isn't that cool? I was going to like rave about that. Yeah. I think you should.
I guess it's pretty cool, but. It's not perfectly placed because I often accidentally changed the station just by mashing on the D-pad to try and like counter steer. But I think that because it's there, I, I just appreciate that. I think it goes along with the aesthetic a lot. I think even if you do it, even if you do it on accident though, it's nice because it's like, at least you're not listening to the same thing over, you know, like how many times we complain about games where it's like that one level just has that one song and you hear it the entire time. It's like. Or you can listen to nothing. Yeah. That is a nice choice. And that is something that we would really like in a lot of games.
No, that's fair. But, you know, at the sacrifice of less mechanics, I guess. But to be fair, also the, the, uh, the mechanics that are there do feel pretty good. Yeah. You know, I think driving car feels good. I don't know how. It would definitely feel like a different game if there was actual gear shifting in this, like there was in mock rider. Yeah. Uh, I think you already have a lot to handle and a lot to manage with, uh, all of the, cause there's a lot more obstacles in this game. I feel at least moving obstacles, not so much. And you can't shoot any of them. You can't shoot them to get them out of the way. It's a grounded game. Yeah. It's grounded in reality.
Um, but yeah, I think it would be a very busy game if it also had that. So you're not rooting for any more obstacles to be added. You're comfortable with the trees, the signs and the cars. Just asking. I mean, I think that if this game could find some way to put other things along the side of the road, that would be great. But I feel like that was a, that was probably a hardware issue. Um, because if you look at the ported versions of Outrun, none of them have cool stuff. And when they do try and put stuff on the side of the road, you're dropping like 20 frames per second there.
And I think like, I maybe glossed over this at the top, but I think the backgrounds in this game are pretty awesome. They're great. Yeah. There's that one, um, the second level. Second level is great. The nice San Francisco city. I thought that was like so cool. I also thought that, um, like just color in this game is great for an NES game in the, I don't know if it's the last, uh, the last track of the second, last track. Uh, you are racing at dawn and the beginning of the, of the race, it's sort of, you know, that hazy, uh, twilight blue. And as you go farther, the sun rises and it changes, the sky changes colors. There's, there's more stuff that just looks like sunrise.
I guess I'm having trouble. And you start to even see like, um, I think at certain points, if you're up, if you go up on the hill, you can actually see the waterfront. Like you can see like an ocean and it's like weird because then you dip back down, uh, down the hill and no longer can you see the ocean part. You see grass. So it's like, that's a neat touch as if you're actually like racing to a destination.
So I, I think the backgrounds are awesome. I never really thought about the colors, but looking at the game now, I do think the colors are really nice for an NES game. There's actually like a gradient change too. It's not just here's one frame where it's dark blue and here's one frame where it's light blue. So yeah, there are certain games that I feel like try to use this same color palette and come off like cartoony. And this doesn't do that. Yeah. Um, one other thing before we, uh, this is going back to cars and obstacles. The one thing else, the other thing that I appreciated was that these are actual cars. Yeah. Like per track, like the night LA track has Corvettes on it. And, and another track later there's Lamborghinis.
Um, you can, you only see the back, the back half of them, but they're pretty, uh, iconic. Yeah. And they tried to go for like where you were in the world too, which I thought was like a European car in Greece. And yeah, they had the Lotus in one of them. Yeah. So, uh, some, actually I'm going to, I'm going to talk one more thing. Uh, the, the timer mechanic, one thing that I found interesting about that is that there was one time where the time ran out for me, but I was going like, let's say 200 kilometers or whatever.
And it doesn't like, as soon as time hits zero, it doesn't stop and say game over. Mm-hmm. You actually like coast. Yeah. In the car. And if you cross the checkpoint. Yeah. You get your time back.
Yeah. It's like, oh, cool. I think that, that also happened in, uh, mock writer. Oh, you get to coast for a little bit. I couldn't remember. Yeah. Um, I kind of want to go back and play mock writer now after playing this one just to compare the two. Yeah. I'm having similar thoughts because I'll, I'll get into it later comparing the two. Yeah. And then, uh, so this is my, like what I'm going to call unrealistic wish list for this game, but, and I'm not saying that this game was capable of these things, but just knowing like what I wanted from it as I was playing it, these are just some thoughts I had.
So one, if they're going to do this whole 3d thing, I would have loved a mode that puts you in the driver head. So this way you actually see like the steering wheel and you have like, I feel like that could be done. Yeah. In this style of cartoony. Yeah. You're really just changing. You're just giving it a layer in front of it that doesn't move. Yeah. And it, yeah, exactly. It would have almost like obscured more of your view. Yeah. Right. And so I feel like that would have been a harder mode, but maybe like a more realistic
simulation style for, for that kind of thing. And I think that would also, since there's only eight stages, it would encourage you to try them another way to be like, Oh, you know, it was one thing to see the whole city skyline, but now imagine if you can only see it from your, you know, the front view of the car. Yeah. I feel like it would, you know, it would take on a different, uh, type of 3d. Different perspective. Yeah.
And another, uh, thing on my wishlist was just like a different mode other than this, uh, race against the cars where, where the cars are only the opticals. I would have liked something maybe where there was like even just two other cars that you race against, uh, like kind of AI and you have like a, you know, finish in first, finish in second and finish in third, and you can choose your course ahead of time. Yeah. You know, another thing is like a two player mode where you can play with like a, you know, like a split screen, uh, horizontal view for each person and you can race against each other. And you, you preface this by saying like maybe not realistic, not realistic.
Yes, exactly. Just things that I thought would have put this game over the top for me. Mm hmm. Things that it was like, I mean, like for me, this game is, is pretty competent and, and sets out what it wants to do. I, I will still say that like, even though we said there is a way to work out the turns, I still think the turns are a problem because I couldn't always tell when that was going on. And I don't necessarily think that that's a player.
Yeah. It's more or less as a design flaw. A lot of the times. It does say in the manual to memorize the routes. So that's a joke. That was a joke. I was going to make to you early on was like, Oh, you didn't study now. It's 2d outline of the map beforehand. It tells you to, to memorize. I think that's a little different than memorizing like where you are in Metro. I agree. And I've been pretty high in this game, but I do agree that there should be a little bit more telegraphing. Yeah. How to go about those turns. But we, what were you going to say? I'm wondering if that's just them covering their bases.
Maybe. Yeah. Another thing to nitpick. Maybe this isn't a nitpick, but this is actually a genuine problem. As good as I think that this game looks, and I do think that it looks good, even though the sides of the roads are pretty bland.
There's a lot of flicker. Did you guys notice this? It was kind of hard. I think this contributes a lot. Maybe it wouldn't be so much of a problem to get around turns and to see when the obstacles were coming at you from a distance if there just wasn't so much flicker. And it's mostly a hardware limitation thing. Yeah. But even the cars, as they get like really close to the screen, they'll like lose like
half of the car. Half of the car. It's like, you know, it's still there. Like you can fill in the gap with your brain. But it is kind of like, it's weird to see. Yeah, no, it's as I'm saying. Because. Sprite limit thing. You know how it flickers when it. Yeah. And I think like, you know, that's easily solved nowadays with an emulator. You can actually turn on like unlimited sprites. Oh, it won't do that.
But, you know, obviously at the time, I think if the, if this whole thing is like driving 3D like never before and see all this thing, it's like the flickering thing and like cars half disappearing. It can't do well with like 3D mode. If, if you have sprites flickering and you're in that there and you're seeing and come at you, I think that's going to be even more disorienting.
Right. Yeah. How many, how many sprites is it that it can handle before it starts flickering? I'm not sure at all. No idea. I actually think it's dependent on the game too. Cause some games have more memory than others. I think it's the, I think it's the hardware. Okay. Of, uh, that's built into the. The NES itself. Yeah. Huh. Was there anything on anyone else's wishlist for this game?
Uh, maybe. I mean, I touched upon it briefly, just, you know, more stuff on the side of the road to give it more, uh, of a personality, but what were you going to say? Well, you'd said different mode, which I think, you know, you already have the F1 car. Just make, make something else for that. You know? Yeah. I think like. Have it handled a little bit differently. Have it handled a little differently. Yeah. Or even just like, if you're going to go through the thing to like include like just one different car, just include, that doesn't change anything. Just include a bunch of different cars. Let people, you know, like, like I don't think it's so much to say like, Oh, here's the consumer car and here's the dream racing car.
Have at it. It's like, what about putting in like a Volkswagen or like, you know, like just like a go cart. Or a guy running really fast. Man running would have been great. That would have fit. Right. What if the guy from 3D World Runner like was imported over to here? That would have been cool. Sure. Is that on our dream list? Yes. It is now.
So I don't know. The skier from slalom. Oh God. I don't know how, how true this is, but I believe what I'm pulling up here on NES dev wiki is that there is an eight sprite limit and a 64 tile limit for the NES. All right. I think that that is solved though. What I was trying to say was solved through additional cart mechanics later. Obviously nothing in 1987 is going to do it, but later on there is like better technology put directly into the carts to make the games run better. Even today is like modern homebrew stuff. Yeah. Isn't just running on like the, you know, like the bare bones default NES stuff. It's not like up to snuff with whatever Donkey Kong on the NES, but I'm sure some people do go for that challenge. Reach out to us.
A few additional thoughts that aren't necessarily about round racer, but we talked about out run existing and being like a great game. Uh, I know Sam hasn't played it, but does rad racer exist?
Like in a more, is it more popular in another universe where out run doesn't come out? Does rad racer scratch that itch? If, if out run never comes out, I don't, I know this game wouldn't come out because it's so it borrows so much from it, but let's say that this was just in an original thought that the developers had and out run doesn't exist. This game is, it takes the place of out, of out run. I think, I think that it has enough of the same, uh, feel, uh, that out run gives us. And it just like has that same out run vibe. Like it's taken on a new life now with like music that that's supposed to be out run and just the whole visual aesthetic.
Um, I think that rad racer would be the big arcade racer. Hmm. And another additional thought, I have to retract pretty much everything I said at the beginning now, because just looking at the back of the box here, uh, rad racer included 3d glasses with the original release in North America. Okay. They're really weird looking. Like they're really flimsy compared to like movie going 3d glasses at the time.
Like, but they're in a sleek black instead of that, that tacky white. Right. That's true. True. But I, I think, I think like, I don't, you know, I don't know how I oversaw that detail, but it's definitely like, and for some reason, no one talks about it. When you like look up this game, no one mentions like, Oh, play the 3d mode or, uh, you know, don't forget like the cool glasses they came with. So I guess that just says that it was probably a fail.
I mean, I did, but nobody talks about any of the 3d games from the NES. I feel so. I think that's just, yeah, it's a fail for this game, but it's a fail for the entire concept. Yeah, exactly. If the intentions though of a squares owner was to like, you know, we're going to make 3d focused games cause they're going to sell like hotcakes on the NES and Famicom. Um, and then no one proceeds to talk about them down the line. It's like, I wonder if it was like, it was big back in the day and then people just forgot about it. Or if it was always just like, let me try this game with these 3d glasses. Oh, the 3d is absolutely terrible.
Well, my question is, test it out. Is, uh, Jabelli or is it Gabelli or I think it's Gabelli. It was Gabelli's history of programming 3d, 3d like glasses, 3d, or was it the actual like parallax viewing of things? It's the parallax. Okay. Yeah. So I think that he's not to blame for this. No, no, no. I didn't think so. But I think that maybe, uh, Miyamoto was more concerned with just the 3d rendering. And I think in that case, maybe not a smashing success, but this was still a success when it came to at least the rendering part of it. You know what I mean? And I mean, kids are going to buy this because they see it comes with 3d glasses. Like that's a huge sell. That too. Yeah.
You don't think that that would be a big sell in 1987 that like, Oh my gosh, it comes with 3d glasses. Like I want to play video games in 3d. I guess so. I don't know. I would have fallen for it. I did fall for it. We talked about in the 3d battles of world runner episode, that dinosaur game that I had on windows 95.
Does anybody know? Nobody has reached out to you. Nobody's reached out to me about that. It's just a very obscure game. I guess. What can I say? I have great taste. I get, you know, your 3d thing kind of makes sense. I remember being really psyched for spy kids 3d. Yeah. That came out and I was, I had a Sylvester Stallone cameo in it, but it was pretty. That's enough. How did he look in 3d? Uh, you know, that scene was great.
And, uh, last but not least, Radracer two. It comes out. Uh, we will play it. It's actually NES only, uh, does not go to the Famicom. Uh, Radracer one did not, it sold extremely well actually. And so did 3d battles of world runner, but not as well as Radracer, but they both sold really well. Interestingly enough, I guess like whatever square invested in this technology though. And the 3d glasses didn't quite cover it because these are the games that lead us to Final Fantasy. You know, there's a, these were the failures. Exactly. These are the games that essentially are like, we're out of money and out of ideas. What do we do? I have a Final Fantasy.
Oh, seven. Yeah. One thing I'll say about Radracer two is also that it just looking it up online. It seems like they tried to add things without changing too much of the game and diehard fans hated it as a result. They were like, Oh, Radracer one was so great. I'm just going to keep playing that. So does this come out next year? I don't know when this comes out. Actually, this could be like 90 or. Oh no. No, this could be an after Final Fantasy world where they're just like, Hey, we need more, uh, more games that aren't just RPGs. Radracer two. It is 1990. So it is after Final Fantasy and maybe even after Final Fantasy releases in North America because Final Fantasy released in North America in 1990, but released in 1987, December of 1987 in Japan.
So. So you might hear from us about it in like 2024. Yeah. That sounds, that sounds about right. Yeah. You know, and this we're right now talking about, uh, Radraiser came out October 1st, 1987 and, uh, December of 87 is Final Fantasy. So these games must've performed really poorly in Japan for them to have to rush together. Final Fantasy. If the story is true. Yeah. Cause otherwise maybe these things did do well and they were already working on Final Fantasy cause they needed a big hit. And then they were like, Oh, what do we do with these other games that did okay? No, no more 3D. 3D Final Fantasy. I would have done it. Yeah. All right. Now it's time for the essential games list.
So we've been talking a lot about Radracer. Now we have to vote on it. We're talking about if it's still, uh, worth playing today, not playable today. Game seems okay. Playable to me. We're talking about if it's worth playing, Sam. Uh, so I think that, I think that as far as any as racing games go, this one feels really good. I think that the mechanics are all solid and the graphics are really cool. Kind of gives you this nostalgic NES feeling, uh, when you're playing it, you know, it's colorful. Uh, but there's not a lot else I can say about it. I feel like, um, if you play racing games in general, you're going to have a better time with a lot of other racing games than you will with this one.
And I think if you're a fan of racing games, especially these kinds of arcadey racing games, then you should give it a shot, but I don't think it's essential. So, okay. Sean? All right. I really, really like this game. Um, I think that it feels good for when, when we are in time, where in the NES life cycle we are. Um, I think that it has that same, that same like eighties new wave sort of feel, uh, that outrun gives you.
Uh, I do think that if you don't have access to an outrun cabinet and you're sort of writing writing off the, um, writing off the 2008 version that came out on Xbox 360 whenever this is the best way to play the game at home, like for probably the best play, the best way to play an outrun ish kind of game, uh, on a home console aside from, you know, emulating the arcade cabinet. Um, but that being said, it's not up to, I, I enjoyed this game more, I think than I even
enjoyed playing mock rider as, as weird as that is to say. So I have to think about mock rider right now because I'm not putting rad racer on the essential games list only because it is derivative. It's a derivative work. Um, it is the best way to play a racing game as of now on the NES right now, I think. Um, so I think if it existed in a vacuum, this would be an essential game, but it doesn't. So it's not.
All right. Uh, interesting analysis. I liked it. And I, I especially liked the point about rad racer being like the definitive home console experience at the time, because that was kind of like my question out there about like, well, outrun exists. So should this game matter? And I kind of came to the conclusion that yeah, it should, because this is on the NES and outrun isn't like if you're, if you want an NES in 1987 and there's not that many racing
games that have come out. I can think of mock rider and there was that breakthrough game, which is not a racing game. That's like a, you're in a car, but yeah, it's not a racing game. It's also Spy Hunter. Oh, Spy Hunter was interesting. Yeah. But that, again, like I wouldn't consider that a racing game. I would consider it like an action game. Yeah. There's speed skating in a winter game. Stop right now. Stop this instant. Uh, you also forgot all the track and field racing games then.
I'm a hundred meter dad. Speed skating. Yeah. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Knowing how limited it is. And then this thing just like explodes onto the screen. I'm not going to vote this thing essential, but I think it's going to hold like a new standard for me in terms of like racing games on the NES. This just sits right outside that threshold for me because I enjoyed it that much.
Yeah. If it did a couple more things, it was a little bit, you know, a little bit more content. I think it would be essential. I think the difference between Mach Rider and this is that I would put Mach Rider more in the, even though it is somewhat more of a racing game than all the other ones we mentioned in the Rad Racer lineup. I think that Mach Rider is also an action game that involves like a bunch of different ways to play itself. And Rad Racer just kind of limits you to just this arcade driving experience. And obviously like 3D arcade racing games come out and they're like, in my opinion, a lot better than these 2D adaptations of these games.
Maybe, maybe most of them are even better than OutRun. You know, I know that some people still hold a game very dear, but I think that knowing what I know in the future, I can't necessarily put like any 2D racing games on, on an essential games list, just because I think that you have a lot more to check out when it comes to like the burnout games or, you know, or cruising in the USA or Daytona, you know, you have like those things you have to check out before you ever check out like a Rad Racer.
That said, if OutRun was like your jam back in the day and you somehow missed this one, I think it is worth it to at least see like what the Nintendo example equivalent was for Sega's competition because they are, they are still somewhat fighting. Yeah. Even in this day. I say, when I said that it's the best home console version of OutRun, it's because I know I've mentioned this already, but if you look at the home console versions of OutRun, you've got a bunch of ports on, like there's an Atari port, the, obviously the master system port, a bunch of no names that we, I can't even remember the names of the consoles and they were all hot garbage.
So, uh, I think that this is still the best version outside of the arcade. Yeah. And one, one thing I'll mention too is OutRun does eventually come to the Genesis, which isn't out yet. And, um, I guess until, but no, but even seeing like the Genesis version, there is like a, a frame rate compromise. And so it's still like not necessarily worth it because you, you, you're required to, to have that work. Yeah. You know, like fluidness in these racing games is so important.
So I, I still think like Rad Racer does a great job of accomplishing what it wants to do. Even if I didn't try the 3d mode because I didn't care for like simulating 3d out of my screen on an NES thing. I think like the, the, um, perspective 3d was like cool enough to sell me on the game. So I definitely think Rad Racer is cool. Yeah. It's cool. It is cool. All right. Uh, that has been an episode of Nostalgia.
Uh, you guys can find us for more at www.nostalgiacast.com. All the other episodes are there. If you want to check out what we said about Mock Rider back in the day, check that out. I don't know what episode number that is, but it's definitely in the first like 20 ish first 25. So definitely go check that out. We have an episodes page where you can just click on all of them. It's really nifty. They're in like order. Yeah. Orders and stuffs.
Also, we have a little contact button on the website where you can contact us and let us know your thoughts about this episode, upcoming games, other games. I'm, I'm ready for it. Tell me about your games. All of them. I like it when people send us games that they beat. Recently, we got one for a gumshoe. Oh yeah. Guy beat gumshoe. And I was like, wow, that's very impressive, but more impressive that he remembered to send a screenshot of it too. Like I want to let the nostalgia guys know. We, I salute you, man. Like that's awesome. We appreciate it.
Also, if you don't want to use that contact thing, you can always just email us. It's a nostalgia at Gmail, nostalgia cast at gmail.com. Yeah. We downgraded to the Gmail. Yeah. We don't have the other thing anymore because they want 50 bucks a year. They stole it from us actually. Right. They confiscated it. And then I get this thing on my phone that says like, sign in to contact that nostalgia cast.com. And I'm like, I don't own that anymore.
I just, look, we're doing okay though. Right. Yeah. We're doing okay. If you want to supporting the good cause right to Google and tell them to, I'm sorry, who is the host right to our, our host and tell, tell them to give our email back. CC, CC Google on that email. It is Google. In that particular instance, it's Google business suite. Yeah. Tell them to give it back. Yeah. Honestly, uh, or just vote for someone in 2020 who's going to break up Google. Yeah. You know, the lawyers.
Yeah. Oh yeah. The just kidding. Email the lawyers. Yes. Them. Wait, don't email. See our, our audio producer is trying to signal to us that we are saying some, some bad things on. Oh, we're just kidding. Don't sue Google. Don't sue Google. Don't email them. Don't email anybody. Except for us. And I swear I do not have a gun to my head right now. This has been nostalgia. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito film on Twitter and I'll Google you soon.
Welcome to the post show.
in this post show, we're going to talk about how cars work. So I think a, there's like a piston. There's several, I think sometimes. Yeah. And it's just the act of like explosions, explosions, explosions, explosions. How metal are cars guys? They're a lot. They're a lot of metal. They used to be more metal, but now they're less. Yeah. Mostly plastic now. Yeah. Would you drive a Ford model T in today's times? I would. Yeah. Like down the street. Yeah. Why not? At 15 miles per hour. Yeah. That sounds safe. Maybe on the sidewalk. You would drive a car on the sidewalk? I would drive down the street. I'd have people honking at me and I'd just wave at them. I'd like to see a model T on a railroad.
Why? Why? Like they look like, they look like the fronts of trains, don't they? A little bit. A little bit. Like it seems like that's what cars were designed after. I feel like you'd get hit by a train if you did that. Yeah, probably. But you know what?
Does anybody remember the calamari desert in Mario Kart 64? Yeah. You can cheat it. Yeah. That train, you can go on those tracks and yeah, you can skip a head. It'll push you? Yeah. And you also run the risk of being flattened by a train. But if you time it right, you can skip about half the level. Everybody's always talking about games being like too violent and causing kids to be violent, but it never, no one ever talks about like, oh, but my kid just got ran over by a train in Mario Kart 64 and now he thinks he's going to be smooshed. Like, no, your kid's dead. I mean, to be fair, you should have a fear of trains when you're driving.
I'm just afraid of trains at all times. They can come out anywhere. Yeah, trains can wake you up in the middle of the night. Choo-choo. Yeah, that choo-choo, yeah yeah i've seen people i've seen people like discuss this before and it's not chugga chugga
chugga chugga chugga choo-choo chasing a burger yeah exactly maybe it's like um one of those picklebacks you know like you do the chugga chugga and then the choo-choo yeah like you just pretend that the pickleback itself is the train yeah okay one thing we didn't talk about in the episode because we were talking about rad racer but since it's outrun which was mostly like what we talked
about outrun uh no one ever talks about how like in that game if you ever crash you have straight up murdered not only yourself but this blonde chick who did not wear a seat belt and wait what yeah like that's the whole thing do you see the gruesome deaths you know that's a good question i didn't see the blonde chick wait yeah you drive with a with a passenger talking about outrun we're talking about outrun oh oh yeah i thought you're talking about rad racer we forgot to talk about what happens at the end of the game i know i wanted to talk about that where she takes the car wait what happens at the end of the game uh it's just like the car drives down down the road but it's more of like a
profile view okay and uh then you and your passenger i guess there's a female passenger in this game as well get out of the car and they sort of wave at you and then she sort of ducks out and he's still waving and she drives off oh that's sick like he like runs for it yeah it's funny um they get the wind knocked out of them when they when it crashes it's like they are both ejected out of the car do several sombersaults like flips in the air then they just like dust off yeah and get back in the car wow and drive away i mean more power to them yep so again another thing i don't think they need
any more power i think they're at maximum power yeah they're actually like super saiyan or whatever yeah it's gonna make a dbz reference as well you were gonna make a dbz reference yeah can we talk about dbz power creep no you see the thing is yeah okay first of all yes yeah it's ridiculous but also i just like i hope that anime becomes illegal anime should become illegal i'm gonna that's fair i think i'll write illegal anime to my essential yeah and also like hulu has like a monopoly on good anime right now so somebody's got to break up all these companies but i've heard crunchyroll's good right crunchyroll's good and if i wouldn't be surprised if hulu owns crunchyroll now
oh uh that means that i think that disney owns most of crunchyroll then yeah that would be the same um every company should be broken up yeah nostalgia is getting a little too big yeah i think that nostalgia should be cut up into nostalgia north east south and west and we each take a piece we should make which one am i that'd be great nostalgia cast east wait wait let's let's go by where we're sitting that's north right i'm nostalgia cast west this is south no way that's that's north for sure okay right all right i give up i'm gonna pull up a compass okay i think you're northeast right now
um i think i am i think i am north different corners we're taking the corners of the no like where i actually am in the world i'm north uh i don't think my phone has a compass because i don't have a phone no phone has a built-in yeah they do yeah they do wait what is it yeah okay yeah so you're north you're west there's no way this is making i'm east but welcome to the post post show here we go we're talking we're talking cardinal directions has anybody ever had flounder yeah it's
great what's that like is it chewy no okay so it's like it's flaky flounder is not a pokemon that was um you're thinking of the little mermaid there's sun she had a pet flounder named no it wasn't a flounder was it he was named flounder but he didn't have his eyes on one side of his body so okay yeah he was not a flounder but there was a pokemon called flounder no no but there is a flounder pokemon oh what's that called sunfisk sunfisk i like that unless it's not a flounder i'm just making that up but it's it's flat and it's got the eye thing cool favorite fish jumanji to eat or
could you describe to me what jumanji would look like as a fish uh like a board uh with dye okay for eyes the dire eyes no eyes um just describing jumanji you're just describing the board game oh i thought you said what's your favorite board game oh okay no no i was talking about fish
but that sounds awful fishy that you didn't hear me correctly i think you did i don't think you're trying to make a funny um and we only make funnies on the post post post show welcome everybody to the post post post show what's going on in post post post show world guys in what dimension does seven plus three equal 38 uh no that's ridiculous in the 13th dimension right you just said none is you could probably figure out some is none yes in the 13th dimension you know how we use like a base 10 system you can probably figure out some hokey way to get 38 yeah well i'm saying i'm not smart
enough to realize that but is it is it like hard for you guys to understand like base 10 as just like a construct for humans and that numbers actually mean nothing well they mean things like that the numbers refer to like two concepts that exist but i'm saying like i have one laptop right yeah but like how many atoms are in that laptop at least one because you have one laptop well the thing is that the atoms in that laptop could be divided by one damn do you want to do a math special i'm not a man not until the post post post post show welcome to
going you're going 100 meters in a race but before you can go 100 meters you have to go 50 meters but before you can go 50 meters you have to go 25 meters 175 but before you go 25 meters you have to go 12.5 meters but before you go 12.5 meters you can you have to go 6.75 meters and and on and on and on until before you can go one nano inch why do i have you have to go half a nano inch what is it crazy why do i have this handicap though no i'm just saying that you have to do that before where do you go that far why why is it just me when we're talking about numbers yeah right so we're
Let's talk about fish. We're going to do that in the other show, the next post show. Oh, okay. Yeah. So what's this one for? This is the one where we discuss what we're going to discuss on the next post show. I think that we should discuss macroeconomic trends. We just said it was fish. And lightning. I thought we were going to discuss what – it wasn't just going to be like somebody shouts it out. Oh, fish and lightning is a great idea. All right. That's cool. Hold on. Like Sharknado, but with other examples. Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea. Like weather and sea creatures combined.
So the thing is that most value comes from people's perceived value in it. But if it doesn't actually have value, then all we have to do is change people's perceived value and it drops. And lightning comes from the sky.
They've come from the heart. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. This has been Nostalgia. Thank you for listening this far. You are a dedicated fan. Achievement unlocked. Gamers, rise up.
That was all just the setup for that joke. Gamers, rise up. We're done.
