078 · ZANAC

• Introductions - Espo (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)
• First Impressions - Everyone
  • ESPO - One of 5 games that start with Z
• Tales from the Manual
  • The Story
• First it was probably a tiny dot. A few thousand years later, it grew gigantic enough to cover the whole universe. The system created by an organic intelligence body a long time ago was still active even after the organic intelligence body perished. The system had a purpose: giving wisdom to those who opened the icon properly, and giving punishment of ruin to those who opened it improperly.
• One day, someone opened the icon improperly. The system started operation and started attacking them. Then, they opened it properly. The icon ordered the system to suspend the attack. The system however ignored this order and became a slaughter device. The human beings who opened the icon fell into crisis. The attack from the system overwhelmed the offensive power of the human beings. When they were about to perish, there was one hope - the system is basically a strategic machine and is equipped for fighting against a multitude. If a single object confronts the system by itself, the system might not be able to cope with it effectively.
• It was a risky gamble, yet it was carried out in hope of success. They
• produced the fighter model AFX-6502-ZANAC which took off to begin fighting alone against the system.
• Gameplay
  • How to Play
    • Vertical SHMUP
      • 12 Levels with fortresses to take down
    • AI that adapts to your playstyle
    • Known for fast speed and bullet hell
  • Control
  • Power Ups
  • Fortresses
  • Artificial Intelligence
• Development History - Espo
  • Designed by Compile and published in Japan by Pony Canyon and in North America by FCI.
    • COMPILE and FCI
      • COMPILE is the Puyo Puyo company we talked about in the Lunar Pool episode
    • PONY CANYON
      • Just a cool name. They don’t really publish that many video games
  • Zanac was initially released in 1986 for the MSX computer
  • Masamitsu “Moo” Niitani is the game designer, and also company president - http://shmuplations.com/rootsofcompile/
    • —Speaking of games ported from the MSX, Zanac was ported to the Famicom.
    • Niitani: The MSX version of Zanac was published by Pony Canyon, but it was the Famicom version that got really great reviews. It didn’t sell a ton of copies, but it raised Compile’s brand recognition a lot. I heard that people in the arcade world thought very well of it too, which made me happy.
    • —How did you get started making Famicom games?
    • Niitani: Pony Canyon, who had seen E.I., asked us to port Zanac. It took us 2 years to make—we’re slow. (laughs) After that we created the billiards game Lunar Ball, which featured unique pool tables. I don’t recall us ever making much money on our Famicom games, unfortunately.
• Additional Thoughts
  • Sound Test
    • hold A + B and hit Reset to access the game's Sound Test. This feature is US version only.
  • Area Select
    • Press Reset 13 times. Press Start to go in the main game menu. Press Left or Right to choose the level, then choose the "continue" option and press Start. To start at Area 11 or 12, hold Up on Controller 2 as well. Do the same if you want to continue the game after Area 10
  • Hidden Message
    • In the ending scene, press A + B on Controllers 1 and 2 to display "SEE YOU AGAIN IN GUARDIC". Guardic is another shooter by the same company for the MSX, released the same year as the original Zanac for the FDS. While there is a game named Guardic Gaiden on the NES released two years later, it has no relation to this message whatsoever.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Zanac X Zanac for Sony's PlayStation console in Japan on November 29, 2001
    • Contains the original AND the brand new Zanac Neo
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)
  • Where does this fall on your SHMUP chart?
• Criticism and Compliments - ESPO
• Game scrolls too fast
• No slowdown despite many enemies

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

00:00 Zanuck, the system was created by an organic intelligence body many millenniums ago and began attacking the human race. The earth was thrown into turmoil with only one hope for salvation.

00:27 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. I'm Sam. And welcome to a special... Sam is joining us remote via pre-recorded tapes tonight. Oh my god. Yes, you're real. That's amazing. He has recorded a large selection of tapes that... Do you guys have this on like a soundboard? Yeah, kind of. Sam and I worked together on this when he was not able to make it to today's episode. But to everybody else at home, they have no idea what we're talking about because that's going to sound completely normal to them.

01:04 I will include Sam's files directly into the tracks. Sam's here. They won't hear the crappy MacBook Pro speakers out of my microphone. Okay. Yeah. But guys, what are we talking about today? Zantac. I'm talking about Xanax. Xanax. Yeah, Xanax was like... That's what I immediately thought of when I thought of this game because I kept spelling it with an X at the end. But then I realized Xanax actually starts with the X in the front. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like Lil Xan. Yeah. But we don't have any experience with Xanax.

01:34 No. Right? No. Of course not. You told me, you told me Xanac, because I just asked you, I didn't look. I was like, what are we playing this week? And you said Xanac. And I looked back and I was like, you know what? I'll just remember which one that sounds like a medication. And then I'll look back and look through. I was like, okay, the only one nearby what we're playing is Xanax. I thought we were told to take some Xanax and we were just going to come in, like, you know, go on a flash. That's why you said, what are your thoughts on Xanax? I just feel so good. This is an easy to find game though, because it is one of just five games that starts with the letter Z.

02:04 Okay? Like, and that's cheating too, if you consider Zelda 2 to not have the legend of in front of it. Zelda 2 counts. Because technically on the box, it never says the legend of, unlike the first one, which does say. Because this one's real. The first one was a legend. This one happened.

02:19 Yeah, the first one is actually just the fairy tale from the second game that was like, relayed on. Right. It's just weird that it came first. That's right. Okay. Yeah. So I think before we go any further into Xanax, without even talking about what it is, let's do some first impressions. Sean? Um, so Xanax to me, uh, was, I did not like this game the first time I played it. I was, I was very underwhelmed. And I just thought it was too hard for its own good.

02:48 And even though it was hard, it was just bland. And then I played it a second time and I actually had a lot of fun. Like I, I started to learn what the numbers meant when you get upgrades and I started to find my favorites and I had a good time with them. So I, I had this reaction. I think I've had this reaction to other shmups that we played before. And also it was, oh, sorry. Go on, Sam. Sorry. Sorry, Sam. You're speaking out of order.

03:13 Go on, digital Sam. Um, no, I think I've had this reaction to other things too, that, uh, my, my initial thought was like, come on, like, I don't want to play another shmup. Like, and it's kind of unfair. Cause usually when I think that I end up like liking it more than I, more than my initial thought, which I, which I did, but this one never captivated me so much. I mean, I think I'm just, I'll be honest. Like I'm not a shmup guy in the first place and I'm just kind of burnt out on these things. Like we've, we've played so many of them.

03:42 Like that's, that's my initial thought, but it did, it did bring itself back a little bit. And it wasn't as bad as I initially thought it was going to be. Okay. Uh, Sam. So my initial impression was pretty much just, oh, Hey, I can shoot in all directions. That's kind of cool. And then I don't really know if it went downhill from there or just kind of stayed on the same hill or just kind of circled the hill. But we were on that hill for a while. Okay. And I don't know if Sam, uh, played the right game.

04:12 Was anybody else able to shoot it? Always with the B. It's your initial like power up before you get a power up. Yeah. No, now I, I don't know why I forgot that. Like that's like something that like this game. It would be weird though, for him to use that as his primary fire. Right. Yeah. Cause it's B button, right? Yeah. It's the B button. And like this game offers that to you, but it doesn't necessarily like come in. Well, I guess it does kind of come into play right off the bat because there's those, but we'll get into that. I'll just do my first impressions.

04:37 Uh, my first impression of this game is that it's very, very fast. Yeah. Uh, things were scrolling at like light speed. Yeah. The music came in hot, right? Like all of a sudden in the title screen, it's like one of the most energetic tracks we've had so far.

04:51 And then there's like these numbers floating all over the place in the game. And I was like, what are those? So I went to the manual and it turns out they're power ups. And I'm like, wow, power ups are like all over the place in this game. Yeah. They are in no short abundance. Like they're everywhere. I guess we're going to get, since speaking of the manual, we'll talk about it a little bit. And, uh, guys, there is a long story in the manual and I believe Sam has a little something prepared for this. Oh no, it's not worth talking about Sam. We're going to, uh, we're going to go into the deep lore of Zanac. Okay. So in the manual, this is what it says the Zanac story is.

05:29 First, it was probably a tiny dot. A few thousand years later, it grew gigantic enough to cover the whole universe. The system created by an organic intelligence, the system created by an organic intelligence body a long time ago was still active even after the organic intelligence body perished. The system had a purpose, giving wisdom to those who opened the icon properly and giving punishment of ruin to those who opened it improperly. And personally, I think that's a little bit harsh. Cause you know, how do you gain more wisdom if not by failure, you know, but anyway, one

06:09 day someone opened the icon improperly. The system started operation and started attacking them. Then they opened it properly. The icon ordered the system to suspend the attack. The system, however, ignored this order and became a slaughter device. The human beings who opened the icon fell into crisis. The attack from the system overwhelmed the offensive power of human beings. When they were about to perish, there was one hope. The system is basically a strategic machine and is equipped for fighting against a multitude. If a single object confronts the system by itself, the system might not be able to cope with it effectively.

06:49 It was a risky gamble, yet it carried out in hope of success. It was carried out in hope of success. They produced the fighter model AFX 6502 Zanuck, which took off to begin fighting alone against the system. And I don't know, but that, that just doesn't seem right to me. Like you're just one guy against the system. It's meant to destroy tons of ships. So surely it can't destroy one ship. Logic aside, Sam, I think one thing that I noticed as you were reading off that script was just, you pronounced Zanuck as the word, but you just said A-F-X. You didn't say affix.

07:29 Well, like, there's no vowels in there. I don't know. I think maybe it's like now I'm interpreting it as, is Zanuck just Z-A-N-A-C? Well, I had a lot of like thoughts about this intro because I went to read the manual thinking like, I'm going to read the manual this time. And then like after I read this, I was like, I'm not reading this whole damn manual.

07:47 But I read this and I was like, first of all, my first thought was this doesn't seem like it was written by someone who expected anyone to like have to read it. Like they just have all these like letters in here. Some of it, like some of the way the wording is a little weird. Like it doesn't seem like regular sentences. But also I thought this is actually one of the first times that they explain why you're one guy against like an entire, you know, whatever you want to call the system or whatever.

08:11 And that's why Sam don't respond. If you agree, but all the games that where you're just one man against an army, like you can't just, you can't just criticize this one. You have to criticize every game that does that. At least this one gave a try to explain it. Yeah. But that was one thing I was like, oh, I respect that. But, but that's all. Mm hmm. That's a good thought. God damn it. Yes, Sam.

08:38 So, I mean like getting outside of the story though, does any of that matter? No, it doesn't. Right? No. Like in Schoon, they at least set up like, like we did that radio drama at that time. Right. At least they set up like the understanding of like why those like nine people are like, you know, myself, you can only save nine people.

08:56 They explained a concept in the game. Right. This is literally just like one of those things that would like roll before a Star Wars movie starts, you know, where it's just like, you know, like the scrolling text. But it's also like a little bit of a ramble. Like even the first sentence. First, it was probably a tiny dot. Like they don't even know. They're just guessing. No, no. Okay. That is a, that's a, that's a storytelling flair. Sure. It's just a, it's just a bad story.

09:17 Okay. Also, don't forget the classic line. The system started operation and started attacking them. Then they opened it properly. Like, it's just like, well, what, what is it? Like they opened it in properly. Right. They opened it in properly. Then they get attacked and then they're somehow able to open it properly. It's like. They close it again. Like a, like a fridge, like a fridge. Okay. They open it wrong. That's the only thing I can think of that you open and then have to. You're like, if you jerk open a fridge, you might like pull some stuff out and then like you close it again and you open it properly. Right. So I think we've done enough talking about the manual.

09:49 Uh, unfortunately the manual doesn't really like, you know, do much else in terms of like, other than explaining how the game works. It doesn't take any other fun, like storytelling elements for it. Can I say one more thing about the manual though? Please. It does claim that this game, uh, that this game changes based on the way you play it. Like, like this, they say that they used artificial intelligence. The ALC. Yeah. The ALC to, to allow the game to adapt based on like how much you're shooting. And I don't know how much I believe that, but. I think it, I think it exists. It's just not as impressive as it. It's not like noticeable or like, yeah. Yeah. We're definitely going to talk about that later for sure.

10:29 Yeah. That's a big discussion because it's actually like the selling point of the game. Believe it or not. Is like, there's this whole section on the box where it's just like this exclusive power play feature Xanax ALC automatic level of difficulty control in case like you just, you know, cause so many people just shorthand automatic level of difficulty control to ALC. That was like, must've been an eighties thing. So I think like, you know, like in other games, right? No, I'm joking. I was like, nobody did that. And like level of difficulty is like, what is that one word? Like there's no D in there. It's not ALDC. Right, right. Difficulty control. That was interesting. I didn't pick up on that. It is the ALDC.

11:03 Right. Maybe they were afraid. The ALDS. Yeah. I think they were afraid either the ALDS or the ACDC were going to them. So they chose not to go that route. But I think we should start talking about gameplay because we haven't really even described what this game is. We kind of gave hints that it's a shmup. Yeah. And that it's not much different from the shmups we've been playing. But Sean, you want to maybe like walk us through like a little bit of the objective and gameplay? Sure. So like your objective in this game, like in any shmup is to shoot stuff before it shoots you. It's a vertical scrolling shooter. So you are not, this isn't, you know, it's not like you're going to go horizontally.

11:40 What is this? Another game? Right. So you go up as you would and you shoot stuff as you do and you pick up power ups as you would and you shoot fortresses at the end of levels and there's like 10 levels. Well, that's the big sell, right? Yeah. The big sell of the gameplay structure is that there's these fortresses that you have to take down. And the understanding that I got at least is that you can move on if you don't destroy the fortresses in time. You have to. It forces you to. Yeah. You can move on. But like the problem is, is that now apparently the game is harder because you did not defeat the fortress. And it's weird because I see the, this ALC or ALDS, whatever. Uh, ALC.

12:25 ALC. I, I, I thought that was just a way to make the game easier for people that weren't good at it. And so like a lot of adjustive difficulties in modern games where it's sort of, it realizes that you're having a hard time. So it makes it a little bit easier, but it has parts where it gets easier if you do poorly, but also times where it gets harder because you do poorly. So I'm not really sure what they were, what they were going for with this. And I'll be honest. I didn't really notice any time. Like I couldn't tell you when it was getting easier, when it was getting harder, what my actions were really affecting.

13:00 I'm sure it was affecting something, but it wasn't anything that like, I would know. Well you only have your, your play through to go by. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that's kind of like a little bit of like, that's a really cool thing, but like, I'm not, I don't really feel like I'm experiencing that because I don't know what it would have been like if I weren't the one playing it. You're supposed to play it over and over again because you own this game, but we didn't play it that much, I guess.

13:22 No, I think I played it enough to try a couple different things because it said, you know, we'll get right into the, I guess the artificial intelligence portion of the game because that's the cell. It said that a couple things determine how the AI adjusts to the difficulty. So it says that based on how much you shoot, so like rapidly pressing the fire button causes the difficulty to go up because you're kind of like just spamming your fire rates to produce more enemies. Okay. Then they said that how, how many you're able to actually kill versus like how many you miss affects the difficulty.

13:56 In what direction? Basically the more, the better you, the better you perform, the harder the game gets. Okay. So that makes sense. If you stink at shooting at actually shooting down the enemies, the game kind of tries to dumb itself down. And then the last thing is the fortresses that if you defeat the fortress, the idea is that the game will get a little bit easier for you. But that if you, um, if you don't defeat the fortress that basically like they were able to produce more troops. So the difficulty will get harder. That part isn't so much AI is just like a progression element.

14:28 It's a switch mechanic. Yeah. And then I think there was something about like death, but that doesn't really like make sense. Like basically the more you die, the easier the game gets, like it kind of resets it back. But I think that's just like in terms of actual game over, not like death screens within the actual game. It's just that of course it would always go back to zero. Well, I mean, if you have a bunch of lives, uh, maybe it gets easier across those lives. I'm not sure.

14:55 Yeah. And then, and then how did we feel about controlling the ship? I thought that while it was tight, like it definitely went right when I told it to go right and vice versa, it was a little slow. Like what the action on the screen is very fast, but your control of the, of the fighter jet, whatever the, the Xanac, um, is, it feels a little sluggish to me.

15:20 Yeah. There were definitely times where like I can see something coming at me and I just, it's almost like I'm, I'm pushing the button so hard, but even though it doesn't matter, but like just out of like, uh, instinct because I'm like, why isn't he moving faster than like fast enough to get out of the way? You know, I keep getting hit by these things that I just don't have the actual speed to get out of the way of. Well, everyone knows that Joe.

15:45 Wow. That's so specific, Sam. I mean, you're sitting right here. And, uh, and just to go off of that thought too, with the slowness, it's that, well, I did like that when you control the ship, it kind of moves it like the wings move a little bit. It's a nice touch. I mean, they didn't have to design those sprites and there's certainly been other games like 1942 where everything's just completely static.

16:05 Uh, other than that one move that you do the loop-de-loop for, but it doesn't even look like a loop-de-loop. So whatever. Xanak earned that. But Xanak, it's weird that your ship is slow because like I said, like I kind of said in my first impressions, this game is really fast. Like you don't really have time to like lay back at the bottom of the screen like in motion ups. You have to like, you're kind of forced to move forward.

16:27 Yeah, they'll push to the corners and all that. There's a little bit of an overload of like what's going on. Like I don't, I'm like trying to dodge two different things and there's a third, you know, projectile coming at me that I didn't even notice that kills me. That's the nature of bullet hells. I guess that's true. Yeah, exactly. And Sean, that's a, that's a key word there. Bullet hell. This is, this is kind of our first example and it's a very popular type of shmup. Actually, this isn't necessarily something that's some people would frown upon.

16:49 Yeah. I do think that I remember when I was watching scoon, I'm sorry, playing scoon, um, not scoon, the, the good one. Gradius. The other good one. Um, stinger stinger. When I was playing stinger, sorry guys, I was playing stinger. I did feel like, Oh wait, are we going more into bullet hell territory? Just because there were definitely a lot more bullets on screen. But no, I, now that I've played this, this is, this is another further step towards that bullet hell genre.

17:18 And, um, I actually really liked it. Like it's, you sort of get into that flow state, um, where you're not really paying attention to, you're not, you're not mentally, I'm sorry. You're not directly paying attention to one specific thing at any given time. It's just, you're sort of getting into your instincts of where to go. Yeah. I never, I never really like, even though I say the game is fast and it's a bullet hell,

17:43 like I didn't die that much more than I die in normal shmups. Like a lot was happening, but I still like progressed fairly well. And like, I didn't feel like the targets were impossible, but I, I just felt like, you know, wow, this is a lot to take in, but it's not necessarily that multitasking problem that Schoon had where it was like, it's expecting you to have a timer with a fuel and you gotta do, you gotta catch those nine people and you gotta defeat those sharks. And you know, it was, it was enough where it's still just like back to the roots of just blow up everything.

18:12 But at the same time, there's like a nice variety of power ups to kind of make sure that at one, at any particular point, you're not overwhelmed by the enemy design. Did anyone else get the fake power ups? There was this one time where I shot a six, which is the best one, I think, which is the one where, you know, you fire it and if it hits something, then everything on the screen just is destroyed, which I don't know why you would pick one of the other ones when you have that one. But anyway, there was one time where I shot a six and I went to go collect it, but instead of turning into a six, it turned into this weird little face and then kind of, I don't know if it laughed and went away or just kind of disappeared off the top of the screen.

18:52 Did anyone else get that? Yes, Sam. I, so I, first of all, I will say that I do 100% agree that six is just for me at least was by far the most useful thing, almost game breakingly useful. Wrong. Um, okay. Well, we'll, we'll hear about that. But I did get the face at one point. Um, I, and I got the face and I, and a couple of times I saw it and it went away, but then one time I shot it and I grabbed it and it's actually just like an extra life.

19:15 Oh, there was no real, maybe it was in the manual. I stopped reading the manual after that long story, but otherwise there was no indication of what that, I thought it was an enemy.

19:23 Okay. And then Sean, in terms of power ups, you seem to have a disagree. Do you have a better power up than six? Oh yeah. Um, well, first off, I will say that I did get the face. I didn't know what it did, but I just decided to touch it and I could not, I did not know what happened. You touch every face you see? I touch all the faces I see. When I, I meet you, I'll touch your face. Okay. Um, but in terms of the best, uh, power up, I will grant that six is good. I like using six, but if you miss, then you can't use it for a while. And I know that it's hard to miss in certain circumstances, but there's so much on the screen.

19:59 But sometimes it does get kind of empty. That's true. It has happened a couple of times. Um, I like, I don't know the number, but it's the power up in which you get a, like a power ball or like a lightning ball that just circles you at a very fast rate. And I thought that that just worked as a pretty good, like offensive shield because whenever I went near anybody, I just went near the target at, at the radius of the, of the circling thing. And I would just move around if it gets rid of, uh, projectiles, it gets rid of enemies except for the, the, the somehow invincible ones for a while.

20:37 Um, yeah, it's a, it's tile two, which appears right at the start of the game. Yeah. So it's definitely the one that most people would be familiar with. And I, I'm actually looking at the stats now and I'm actually shocked. Like even at level zero for, for tile two, a shield will appear for minutes and can, yeah, it can sustain 50 hits.

20:55 The very first power up in the game. Oh, the shield. No, no, no, not the shield. The shield. Yeah. The shield is a different thing. The shield's good. That is a circle. That's a solid circle that stays on like the nose of your ship. Well, as a level zero. Yeah. It does grow. It can become like a full bubble. However, he's talking about it. Like two projectiles that circle around your ship, like, Oh, the kill things that like are anyway, the circular or radius. Yeah. But yeah, it's like a lightning ball that goes like four or something or I don't know the number. Yeah. It's number three.

21:22 I'm looking at it now. I'm, I just have a cheat sheet in front of me here, but yeah. So that one, even at level zero of it, it's just one horrible circle around the ship. And then all the way to level four, two orbs will circle around the ship at a wider range too. And it's a pretty wide range. Yeah. I like that power. I will say, yeah, that definitely was like another one that almost felt game breaking.

21:43 Yeah. I still think for some reason I, I prefer the, what was it? Number six. Six. That was, yeah. It was just like everything on the screen would disappear. Like maybe, can something hit you when you have the, the circular one around you? Can they, you can hit it behind and stuff, right? I mean, if it gets past the ball because it is circling, it's not a, uh, it's not a solid

22:04 sphere. Right. Whereas six, I just felt safe. Like something gets close to me. I shoot it. Everything on the screen is gone. Yeah. And then I just wait more, a couple more things. If you've got something coming from behind, then it's not going to do much for you. But usually at least when I was playing, when something was coming from behind, there was at least anything in front. It doesn't even have to be an enemy. It just has to be a surface that you hit.

22:22 Yeah. And then everything explodes, which seems almost like, almost like I loved it, but it almost seems like kind of bad game design to me. Where it's like, it's like too easy. But you can run, you can run out of it. We need to talk about that. It's not like you get it and then it's like, I'm set for the rest of the game. But you're set for a while. Yes. You are set for, I think like 15 executions. Right. Like, which is insane. Which is like a whole level. Right.

22:44 Uh, but I will just say because these numbers probably mean nothing to someone who hasn't played the game. I'm just going to say something controversial and say that these are some of the best power ups we've seen in a shmup. They're probably too powerful. Right. If we're being real, like as long as you collect power ups in this game, you should fare pretty well. I think that. The right power ups at the right time. Yeah. Let's talk about the other ones though. Okay. Because the other ones are not as good.

23:08 Uh, I don't know. I kind of, I don't mind laser. Which one's laser? That's tile five. That's the one that shoots the purple line. It's just like, I never got that one. It goes through everybody. Everybody. So, but okay. But then where's the one that it's sort of a, a solid yellow ball that, that goes out from your ship at a very slow rate and then just stays up there and you can. And it moves back and forth.

23:32 No, no, no. There are two of them. There's, there's one that it's just, it's always right in front of your ship and you can sort of finagle it so that it can smash things on the way, but you don't have any true control over this object. Because what it does is it stays horizontally the same spot that you are. Yeah. It stays right in front of you.

23:49 And it's vertically in one spot. And, uh, it, it sort of has like a predetermined path and you can get some good hits in that way. But the fact that you can only use one at a time and it's in a useless spot for the majority of the time you're using it, uh, I didn't find it as useful as the, the, the circling lightning or the nuke. And then there is the one that will sort of oscillate, uh, in the same manner where it goes a far away from you and that either comes back or just stops. Yeah. The one that comes back to you is the second one that Sean was talking about. And that's called the rewinder. It's like a boomerang. It's a yellow ball that comes out and then it comes back.

24:29 So you control its horizontal plane or whatever. Yeah. And my problem with those is just the, the function of the power ups is that it replaces your, your shooter. So essentially if you had the rewinder and we're still able to fire normal bullets, I feel like these would be fine. Well, you are. For all of the power ups. Yeah. For the rewinder.

24:50 Right. Okay. Sorry. I thought for the rewinder, you could only shoot out the giant ball, but you would just die. Okay. Yes. That was going to be my point. But to be honest, for most of the power ups, not the rewinder, but for a lot of them, I just stopped using the primary thing and I was just like, I'll just shoot it. I just pulled both buttons down. Yeah. I guess that's true. Which made your difficulty harder, Sean. That's true. I didn't know. Yeah.

25:10 But there was a, so what I'll say to what you were saying about these being the best power ups, I think I agree that these are the best power ups as me. Like, oh, I'm on a ship and I want to kill as many things. These are the, some of the strongest power ups, although there are some bad ones, but I think, I don't know, I was getting kind of like a little bit of a feeling of like, this is a little unbalanced. Like either I was just drowning or I was just destroying everything.

25:32 Like if I had a good power up, I felt like I couldn't be touched. And then if I didn't have a good power up, I felt like, well, this is like almost impossible. Well, to your point, it's like number six, you know, once you have that, you can kind of chill out for like the next two minutes of the game and just be like, yeah, use these whenever people show back up.

25:47 And I also think that if you're going to give an actual like qualitative, like what's the best power up? I would also say that the creativity of the power up, the uniqueness of it should play into it. And I know it's not a unique power up. It's in a lot of these shooters, but I always really liked the, like the image of like when you get a duplicate fighter that follows you. Right. I was like, I just think that looks cool on the screen.

26:12 And I would say that that is better than half the power ups in this game, but not in terms of raw power. And something we see with power ups that we've seen in both Gradius and in, I think it was Stinger? Is that those... Twin B, right? I was thinking of a few, sorry. Yeah. Twin B is the Japanese. Yeah. Right, right, yeah, yeah.

26:30 Yeah. So, I think we saw in those games, definitely in Gradius, is that you stack power ups, you know? Yeah. You can't do that in this one. And so, I wonder like, you know, obviously we're already talking about it's overpowered just having the power ups alone, but which option do you prefer? Do you prefer it when you only have like one big power up at a time, or do you prefer to continue to like spec out your ship and have like this almighty powerful being? I think it really kind of depends on how the game's designed.

26:57 Yeah. Because in this game, if you were stacking the power ups, it would be not even a game. You'd be just watching your ship destroy everything. Just because of the way, because the game's not designed for that, it doesn't seem like it is. Because you can't do that, right? You can't get more than one power up. No, yeah. I think that it depends on what you're going for with the game design, just like Joe said.

27:15 It would, it's a lot more strategic to make it one at a time, so that you will try and avoid other power ups if you don't want them. Because yeah, now that you got a new one, that original one is gone.

27:28 And I think if you're just going for the raw, like adrenaline rush, then yeah, you should stack them. You should just make it a light show. Right. But one problem that this game doesn't have that an essential game like Gradius had was that there was a point in Gradius where we all kind of admitted, if you die on level six, right, and then you have to like play through level six back to the bare minimum ship,

27:52 you're in, you know, you're pretty much out of luck. You know, like it's going to be really hard to collect enough stuff to get enough power ups to get the ship back into a functioning order that's appropriate for level six. In this game, no matter what level you're on, one or 12, you're still able to always access power ups. I did kind of notice that the power ups didn't become as frequent in the later levels. They give you a bunch of them in the beginning. But yeah, no, but yeah, exactly. You still have the opportunity to always go back to like, oh, there's that tile six. I really want that. You know, I want to have the storm flash thing again.

28:24 So you always have a chance to like, even if you die, once you start the level over, you have a chance to like get your ship back up to the appropriate levels. Right, right. And I will say the only other thing that like helps, I think, with the balance of the power ups is the fact that sometimes it is a little challenging to get the power up you want, because you don't have a ton of time once you see that like, yeah, you'll see like, oh, there's the six, but I have like, but I'm already kind of hurtling towards it. And you have to hit it a few times before you kind of release it and are able to grab it. So like if I wasn't kind of lined up or ready to line up to start shooting it as soon as I saw it, I might miss the opportunity to get it.

29:01 Got it. And then the last thing we need, the last thing we need to talk about is the fortresses, because they're, they're kind of the bosses in this game. Yeah. If you can call it that, it's just a, it basically like the screen stops scrolling, which was a nice relief from my eyes. Yeah. And then you have this base or fortress depending on the level. And it has like an eyeball in the middle of it. I guess they look like eyeballs. It looks like an eyeball to me, but I couldn't tell for sure that the bases were sentient. You know, I just knew that they were. All of the stuff in this game just, they just look like stuff. Yeah. Like, like obstacles.

30:00 They somehow in some regards look like other ships, but most of the time they don't. There were some creative solutions though, like two pieces of a ship that started at the sides of the screen and come together to form one thing. It was nice to see something different than just ships attacking you.

30:17 And specifically like things that might travel in different directions other than just, you know, up to down or left to right. Like there was a bunch of different options. So I thought that was nice, but then those things show up plus the fortress. And I think you have like what? 60 seconds. It changes. It depends on which level you're on. And so you have like a limited amount of time where you should basically be focusing on shooting the fortress, but you have to also take down all the enemies because otherwise you're more likely going to die. You don't have any access to power ups within this part. If you didn't already collect them.

30:50 Is this like a, is this a jarring thing considering how easy it was to get to that point? And then all of a sudden the fortresses ramp up the difficulty? No, I think this is how it should like that. This was a good design choice.

31:02 You have your, you have your run up where you prepare for the most part. And yeah, this is where it counts. This is where whatever you better have the right power up that you want.

31:13 You had your opportunity. And I'll be honest. I didn't really know that the game was keeping track of whether or not I destroyed the fortress until you said it a few minutes ago. And I kind of just figured out pretty early on that like you can just not destroy the fortress and move on. And I just treated it as like survive for 60 seconds because destroying the fortress and killing all the ships and avoiding them. I was like, that's too much for me. I'm just going to try to avoid these ships. You can do it a few times. Yeah, but I was just, yeah, I guess.

31:37 You're missing those sweet high score points. Right. But you know how, that's the thing I've always said. I'm generally not a high score. No, I know. No, no, no. We're self-admitted not high score people. And that's just like, I think that that's normal, honestly. I think like if you didn't grow up in the arcade era, you probably, if you go back and play these older games, you probably don't care for your high score. Sure. But if you go into a, if you go into an obstacle like the fortress in any game, wouldn't you rather engage with the game?

32:04 No, you're right. Yeah, but I felt like I was engaging enough just by dodging and shooting the enemies. I was like, I guess I'm supposed to be killing this thing, but it's the game, at least to my perspective, the game wasn't punishing me for not killing the fortress. So I was like, I'll just keep killing the ships. I see. Okay. And I thought that was almost like an option.

32:19 Like there was, I didn't, I didn't understand my incentive to kill the fortress. From Joe's point of view, if you go, if the whole goal is to get to the system and destroy that thing, it'll just blow up the fortress itself after you blow up the system. So why even bother with those things right now? Just make sure you survive. And I did just assume you would get bonus points or something for destroying the fortress. I assumed it was like an optional like extra bonus thing, which I was just like, I just want to see where this game goes at this point.

32:44 And little did you know you were making it harder. Yes, I guess I was. Also, don't forget Sean, that there are crazy people that like play through the Dark Souls games and just run past every single enemy except for the mandatory boss fights. Yeah. No, I know that. I'm just saying like, I don't agree with that. I think that they're robbing themselves of an experience, but there are definitely people that like decide.

33:03 There are also speed runners. They've probably played the game the correct way before. Oh, no, no, no. I'm not saying for speed runners. I'm saying there are also like real players who have decided like, it'd be easier for me to go around these guys than face them. True. And I will say, I don't know neither of you are actually saying this, but I don't think me not fighting these fortresses is making me miss out on the same amount of things that I would miss out on. No, it's not.

33:26 I know you're not saying that. It's just a stain on your character. Sure. Of course. Yes. I'm a horrible guy. I actually have to wonder what else you opt out of in life if you choose to opt out of a fortress battle. So you're saying that when you sign up to a website, you opt out of their newsletter?

33:40 No, newsletters all day. I read. I'm just making sure you're not a monster. That's why I couldn't didn't have time to fight the fortress because I had all these newsletters to read from from websites I signed up for. And I'll just point out like random nostalgia fact. There are like four people signed up for a newsletter. We don't have one. I'm so sorry to those people. I never got around to writing one, but there is a sign up form for the newsletter. So we never sold your emails. Our annual newsletter. Our yearly newsletter.

34:08 Well, then I think we should go into development history. And usually that's not a very exciting thing as of late, but I think that there's some I think there's some good stuff in here. Okay. So let me just hit you with the facts and then you guys react. Okay. Facts react. That's what we're calling this segment.

34:25 All right. So Zanuck was designed by compile and published in Japan by Pony Canyon and in North America by FCI. Now, if those names sound familiar, compile and FCI. That was who we talked about in the lunar pool episode. Those are the Puyo Puyo guys. You love this so much. I mean, like we almost did a whole episode of Puyo Puyo in that lunar pool thing. I'm not here to talk about that again. I just wanted to remind everybody that the guys who made lunar pool essentially also made Zanuck. And Puyo Puyo. Puyo Puyo. Yeah. Puyo Puyo. And then Pony Canyon.

35:02 Great name. Right. Great name. Sounds awesome. Just a cool name. Unfortunately. They don't really publish many video games. What do they do usually? They usually publish like music and movies in Japan and stuff like that. So all publishing stuff. But when I looked at their video game stuff, it was mostly just like Famicom and MSX games that they were responsible for publishing. So it would make sense that they were doing it around this time, but they didn't really publish anything too noticeable other than like, I think they also published Pitfall, but just in Japan, not in North America. So that's just like a weird anomaly thing.

35:39 Zanuck was initially released in 1986 for the MSX computer. We've talked about the MSX like a lot just by calling it the MSX, but you guys know what that is? I only know that the MSX, the MSX 2 had the original Metal Gear on it. Yes, that's true. That's a good trivia stat. Yeah. The MSX essentially like, it's one of those like Commodore 64 like computers that was more known for video gaming than it was ever known for home computing. You know? So I think like we've been saying MSX a lot, but I just want to say that it is a very important console to like the Japanese market. Even if it's not a console per se, it's a home computer.

36:17 It was also like bigger in Europe, right? It was never really... I think the MSX was bigger in Europe, but also like, that's like saying that the Master System was bigger in Europe. Like the Master System didn't sell well here in North America, but it didn't sell like hot cakes in Europe. I see. It just sold better. So like people knew more about it. And then the creator of Zanac or rather the games designer, it was a team creation, but

36:43 Masamitsu Nitani, who goes by Moo, that's his nickname, M-O-O. He's the game designer for Zanac, but he's also the company president. Huh. I think that's pretty cool when you're the president of your company is also like, but I'm going to design the game. Very cool. Because we've seen that before with like Sakaguchi, who some people think is the president of Square, but is really just like getting the orders from his boss to like make 3D games. That sounds good. Like we want 3D. So this is a guy who actually says like, I wanted to make this game, so I did. And we as a company will make it.

37:20 It's a little intimidating that other people have to program the game that your president has designed. Yeah. But hey, I say when it's Compile, right? Like it's a smaller, it's not like a Nintendo thing. Yeah. So I'm okay with this. Four guys in a basement. Yeah. Maybe. Essentially. Maybe. But he was interviewed way back in like 97, I feel like this interview was from. Oh, I can't wait. And he was interviewed mostly about like some MSX stuff and just the history of like Compile's beginnings. So here's the interview for everybody to hear. This is the interviewer.

37:53 Speaking of games ported from the MSX, Zanuck was ported to the Famicom. Nitani responds with, The MSX version of Zanuck was published by Pony Canyon, but it was the Famicom version that got really great reviews. It didn't sell a ton of copies, but it raised Compile's brand recognition a lot. I heard that people in the arcade world thought very well of it too, which made me happy. The interviewer asks, How did you get started making Famicom games? Nitani responds, Pony Canyon, who had seen EI, another game that they made, asked us to port Zanuck. It took us two years to make. We're slow. Laughs.

38:35 After that, we created the billiards game, Lunar Pool, which featured unique pool tables. I don't recall us ever making much money on our Famicom games, unfortunately. He doesn't remember though. He's not sure. Yeah, the company president can't exactly recall the figures of the Famicom sales. But I think it's interesting to think that like, here's a guy who was working during the early days of the NES and the Famicom, making games directly responsible for all aspects of his company.

39:04 And he's just kind of like, yeah, we made this game. I don't really know if it made money, but people liked it. So I'm cool with that. You know, like you don't really hear people say that about like failure. Like he had another job where he's making all his money and this was just like a zombie. He's actually like a doctor. Yeah. Dr. Moo. Right. If they're going after his nickname. Oh, yeah. And so I thought that that was a sub, you know, like a... Like a thumbs up. Yeah, thumbs up interview in terms of the interviews that we usually get. Yeah, it was cogent. Yeah, which is good. We need more cogent interviews.

39:37 And then just some additional thoughts for you guys. This is back to the game a little. But there's a couple of hidden features in Zanac that we have never really talked about in other games. I can't confirm that these are the first time that these are happening in NES games.

39:51 I'm sure that they're not. But I just like noticed it in this one. And I was like, oh, this is really oddly specific. And back in the days where you needed like, you know, tips and tricks magazine to tell you how to do these things. Because you would never find them out on your own. But here we go. So to access the sound test in Zanac, you hold down A and B. And then you reset your game console. And then when you, when it turns back on, it just has sound test open on the screen. And then you can like go through each of the numbers.

40:24 Is this an intentional feature to like show people like, look at all the, look at the game development, like the sound development process. This was almost, this was almost certainly like just left in from a debug mode. Right, from a debug mode is what I imagine too. It, eventually so many games have this sound test thing that it is kind of added as like a, oh, people want this. Yeah. Because I almost thought, I'm thinking of like a precursor to like, if anyone's like a Ratchet and Clank fan, like the Insomniac Museum. Like a, like an Easter egg in your game where you can see like, this is how we developed the game. Because like they did have a really good soundtrack.

40:59 Yeah, we didn't really talk, this is a good chance for us to talk about that soundtrack because I, I like this soundtrack. I was being sarcastic, but it's not, yeah, you're right. It's not terrible. No, and the, the, actually the, the death music plays for a really long time and is really good actually. Well, that's the thing about all the tracks is that, you know, maybe, maybe they do loop in some way after like a shorter period of time than I'm thinking. But for the most part, like each of the levels had like a track that didn't necessarily like, it wasn't five seconds. It was probably 30 or more. And that's like pretty impressive for an NES game to have like that kind of length on its songs.

41:35 All right. I mean, if you think about the Super Mario Brothers, right? Yeah, it's iconic, but that gets annoying after a while too. I'd definitely start that game up now and I don't necessarily want the sound on. Other than to hear that sweet jump sound. Bing? I do like. It's a coin. Yeah. That was it. That's a, that's a, that's a coin in Sonic.

41:54 Oh yeah. Ring. Right. It's a, it's a ring coin. Well, everyone knows that Sean. Okay. You know, I could do without that. Okay. Well, he said the same exact same one. I thought there'd be, I thought there'd be a very, I was okay with it being to Joe. I, I, it's only to you that it's unacceptable. I thought for sure that Sam was going to do something different. Well, everyone knows that Mike.

42:17 Everyone knows that you thought for sure that Sam was going to do something. This is how we're going to do episodes when, when Sam is like is found mysteriously dead. Like, I mean, I'm not saying that he's going to die. I wouldn't say how he's going to die either. You better hope he doesn't soon because you're a prime suspect now because of that sentence. This is definitely post-show material.

42:37 Let's get into the next hidden feature in the game, which is area select. Ooh. Okay. This one is crazy. Okay. You press reset 13 times on your NES, which I'm sure some kids might've thought broke your console, but it doesn't. You just press reset 13 times in a row. And then when you press start to get into the main game menu, instead you're able to like, well, it still says like starting continue, but if you move your D pad to the left and right, you can actually select the area that you want to start on.

43:07 However, it only lets you go up to area 10. So if you want to get to area 11 or 12, you have to plug another controller into controller two and hold the up on controller two as well as you're pressing left and right on the first controller. This is some Kojima shit right now. Cheat code. Right.

43:25 You need like additional hardware to do it. They wanted to make sure that nobody cheated to get into the final levels, but if they were willing to do the work, it was like, well, you deserve a pass. Right. Nobody cheated unless they had a second controller. Right. Exactly. So I just thought that that was like a very neat thing that no one discovered on accident.

43:44 Wow. You know, this is something that somebody had to tell somebody that then got related to another person. And there's no way somebody was like, I can't get to 10 and 12. I wonder if I plug in a second controller and hold just the up button and then also continue to do the traditional level select thing. There's just no way anybody discovered that on accident. What a strange Easter egg. But there's one more, Sean. Oh no. And that's the hidden message.

44:07 If you do get to the end of the game and you see the ending scene, press both A and B on controllers one and two, and you will display a new message at the bottom that says, see you again in Gardik. Gardik is another shooter by compile for the MSX released the same year as the original Zanuck on the Famicom disk system. And while there is a game named Gardik Gaden on the NES, which came out two years later, it has no relation to that message whatsoever. So even though this is in the US version, if somebody did press A and B on both controllers to see that message, they would have no idea what that person's talking about because Gardik the shmup only ever came out in Japan. So, but it wasn't made by the same people? Yeah. Oh, okay.

44:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. No, I'm saying Gardik Gaden is the only Gardik title that ever comes to the NES. So it's like, uh, Iron Man will return in Iron Man 2 or something like that. But then Iron Man 2 never comes out. You know what I'm saying? It's like, that's the difference. I thought you said that Gardik Gaden did come out at a certain point. Yes. Just not in North America. Sorry. So Gardik is a shmup. Just Gardik. Gardik Gaden is a totally different game that only came out on the NES, but Gardik only came out in Japan. Okay.

45:26 I'm going to say this G word. I mean, there's no video here, but you should know that like my eyes are just glossed over right now. Gardik. I'm just lost and confused. Well, what's even funnier is I'm making it a big deal. Like how could they have afforded this blunder?

45:39 But at the same time, like, it doesn't matter. No one would have discovered that in the first place. Press A and B on both controllers. On both controllers. Is this even a two player game? No, it's not. Yeah. I was like, I don't even remember that option. So why would anybody have something plugged in? There would be no reason to plug in a second controller. This is like having Easter eggs in your really shitty like student film, like that no one's ever going to watch. These Easter eggs sound like like playground Easter eggs that like you would tell your friends like, did you hear that?

46:05 Like if you plug in a second controller, you know, have you, you know, I'm imagining like the Mew truck thing from Pokemon. Just things that like weren't true that everyone just told each other was true. I don't remember that. The Mew truck is that you use strength to push the truck that you can't get to. Like there's no way in the game to get to the truck. No, there is a way. Impossible. Yeah. There's a way to get to it, but there's nothing to do on the truck.

46:26 If you, I don't know, we want to make this a Pokemon Easter egg. Please do it. Please. No, I feel bad for getting it wrong. If you, if you don't get off of the St. Anne or the SS Anne or whatever it is organically, if you die and leave or some way of like getting off without actually stepping off the boat, the boat won't sail away and you can come back later, go to the spot where the boat is and surf. And if you surf, you'll get to the truck, but there's nothing there. There's no, no one knows why there's a truck in this game. Right. The truck is the important part because the truck looks like no other object in the game.

46:55 So it's like, what's that truck doing there? Why did they create a truck sprite? Sort of like if you're in, uh, uh, Saffron City and you just sort of like go into the tower. Is that Saffron City? No, you're thinking of Lavender Town. Lavender Town. If you go into Lavender Town and just, just, uh, stand in one place for an hour, uh, your character will die of old age. And then when you try to turn the game on again, it doesn't work anymore. I think that is an example of playground Easter egg. Oh, I just made that up. If that were not. Yeah, I definitely remember hearing that in first grade. Oh.irlerirlerirlerirlerirlerirlerirlerirlerirler!!!

47:29 !irlerirler!

47:48 !irlerirlerirlerirlerirler!!!!!!!

48:17 There was just one sequel for Zanuck, and it actually comes on Zanuck X Zanuck for Sony's PlayStation. And the weird thing about this is that, first off, it only comes to Japan. I have the date in here is November 29, 2001. That's not a memorable date or anything. That's the official release date. But the weird thing is Zanuck X Zanuck, right? Doesn't that sound like, wow, a compilation series of all the Zanuck games, right? No, it's just Zanuck and then Zanuck Neo, a brand new game just for this compilation

48:53 that is basically like a reworking of Zanuck, taking all of those mechanics and stuff, but applying it to PlayStation-style graphics. Interesting. And I got to say, I looked at some gameplay. I want to play it. I think that regardless of how good the game is, I think it's a missed opportunity that they didn't call this Zanuck the Z-quel. The Z-quel. That actually is a missed opportunity now that you mention it.

49:18 And I will say that part of the appeal for me when it comes to that Zanuck Neo thing isn't that I like this game so much. It's just that I have this thing for sprite work in 32-bit art because everybody loves 16-bit art, right? But you're more complex than that. Yeah, it's like a chance for, you know, rather than that awful like polygon stuff that was starting in the 32 and then like transferred over to the 64-bit era, those games like for me, they don't do it at all. Those early like polygon games. They did not age well. Yeah, they did not age well. But like 32-bit like pixel art games are just like magnifique. Yeah, I did kiss the listener right there. Which one? At least one.

50:03 Don't name any names. Sean, anything else? No, that's it. I think that's it. Well, everyone knows that, Sean. God damn it. I think with that, we will move into the Essential Games List.

50:19 So before we start the Essential Games List, which we just had the music for and I said we were going to do it, just a conversation about like the whole schmuck genre thing. I want after you give your Essential Games List thing, whether you vote yay or nay, and unfortunately I didn't tell Sam about this so he won't be able to do it. But I'd like to know where does this fall?

50:38 Like kind of just tell me, you don't have to tell me like exactly your schmuck order, but just say this is better or worse than and then another schmuck title, you know? Just to kind of give an idea of what people are thinking. Because you could say like, here's my thoughts, and I thought this was the worst schmuck on the NES so far, or here's my thoughts, and I thought it was like right up there with Gradius and Stinger, you know? That's fine. But Sean, walk us through.

50:59 I think that this goes, my order from top to Zanac is Gradius, and then a bit, and then Stinger, and then a whole lot, and then Zanac, and then a whole lot, and then everything else. Because, I mean, this is a pretty good game for me. I like it. But it's just like, it's not even touching the top two for me.

51:30 That's it. Okay. So, not essential? Oh, we're integrating that. It's also the same. I see. Yeah, it's not essential. Okay. Joe? Yeah, so I definitely say that, like I said, I've said this, I think about like most of the schmucks that we've had that I started out thinking, wow, this sucks, because it's another schmuck. And then I was like, oh, it's actually kind of fun. But this one is like, it's fine. There's nothing that great about it to me. It's a little unbalanced. I'll say it's not essential because of that. And also, as far as my order of schmucks, I agree with Sean that I go,

52:09 I go Gradius, then way further, probably lower than Sean, because I did not think it was essential, Stinger. And then below that was, is Zanac somewhere? And then I think Zanac is like far above 1942, because that's the only other one that I really can like remember. Like how, so many of them are just kind of fade for me. You may remember just a few weeks ago, we recorded a game called Alpha Mission. Yeah, I completely forgot about Alpha Mission. But like, it's just like, I don't remember anything about it. Like, I remember it being forgettable. I remember how forgettable it is.

52:42 So yeah, this is like a middle of the road thing. There's some cool things that are happening in it, but nothing that like, it's going to stand out to me. I'm sure I will, there will be a recording in the future where I'll be like, Zanac, which one was Zanac again? Yeah, so. Maybe. I can see that happening. Right too, though. Right. All right. And then here is Sam's essential thoughts. So kind of going off of what Joe was saying,

53:03 the game is neat, but it's nothing that we haven't really seen before, except maybe the, you know, shooting in different directions. Some of the upgrades are kind of cool, but I think Gradius does a way better job, really gives you more power with it. And the health system, I didn't really understand. It's kind of confusing. And to me, it just kind of feels like every other shmup, but you know, it's own non-mold breaking take on it. I think that the enemies are all over the place,

53:30 and it kind of doesn't feel, it doesn't flow very well. And speaking of enemies, there's that one enemy that just fires a stream of missiles at you, that that guy was the one that messed me up the most. I don't know why, but he would always follow me around to the bottom of the screen. And sometimes depending on my weapon, I couldn't attack him if I was in the top part of the screen. So I had to make sure that I could, I would get underneath him, but sometimes I couldn't get underneath him because he was just firing missiles at me. So I just, I couldn't deal with that guy. That guy really, that guy really bugged me.

54:00 But anyway, they say that this whole thing is this really super intelligent computer system, but doesn't mean that the game is very intelligent. And that's my, that's my hot take on it. So it's not essential, but if you're a really big fan of shmups or the NES or both, then maybe give it a shot. But if not, then skip it. Sean?

54:25 It's true. I did have something to say to you, Sam. Up until you mentioned the enemy with the missiles, I still thought you were talking about a different game. Because I don't know what the health system is that you're talking about. Or if the only power up that you got was the, the, the original one where you can shoot in different directions. Uh, because I don't know what you're talking about.

54:49 Well, well, no, good, good response, Sean. And I'm glad that you were able to respond to Sam. Clearly he didn't know the order, but he took a pretty good guess. Right. Uh, I will give my essential thoughts now,

55:02 but I just kind of want to start this talking about where it fits. So I, I try to do this thing where I rank all of the NES games and there's no science. This is just kind of a gut feeling. So I don't publish this list anywhere or anything like that. But he's now going to list them all. No, no, no. I actually don't even, I can't even necessarily look at this list and find like, Oh, there's the shmup, you know? Like it's just for me,

55:22 we talked about earlier how like 1942 was like the first thing we got experience too. And I definitely think Zanuck does a lot of things better than that, but also just like the fluid motion of everything compared to a game like 1942 puts Zanuck way above something like that. I mean, we didn't talk about this, but this game has no slowdown.

55:42 Yeah. You know, like there were so many other shmups that we've played that like, I feel like maybe they just didn't program or design the sprites. Right. But this game has a lot of enemies on the screen at any particular point and never has slowdown. You're right. I did. I did want to mention that at some point, but I guess we never had the opportunity to talk like it is, it is impressively a program.

56:00 Right. So I think like, you know, like great job to compile for that. And, you know, compile has proved themselves as some kind of like an interesting developer because they also did the whole thing with lunar pool where you can like mix with physics and gravity and stuff like that. And like, that was an interesting take on pool. So I'm, I'm excited to see what they wind up doing next.

56:18 I kind of believe that they become a shmup like machine house after this. They make a bunch of more shmups before they ever make Puyo Puyo. So that's kind of disappointing because I feel like with Zanac, they've done enough on the shmup genre. I don't necessarily know what I would want to see them add or be like, you know, that's why I was saying like with the Zanac compilation piece, it's like, what would the other Zanac games really like do differently other than just try to be like, Oh, well, Gradius was a great game. So we should just take some Zanac elements and apply some Gradius elements. Take some Zanacs. You know?

56:49 But then there's also games like Alpha Mission, which like at one point made you click the start button and then use the ship as a cursor to select your power up. Oh yeah. And thank goodness that Zanac didn't do something like that. So it's also better than that game too. Then there's a game like Section Z where, you know, you can shoot both forward and backwards, which I guess is neat. But in this game, you can shoot at all different kinds of directions.

57:15 Right. And you know, the Section Z had the diverging path thing going for it, but I kind of think the scalable difficulty in this is a bigger sell than the diverging paths, especially because the diverging paths ultimately just becomes a coin toss thing. It's like, did you choose right or wrong? Because screw you if you chose wrong.

57:34 So that's about where I'm going to place Zanac. I don't think it's up there with Stinger and Gradius, just like Sean and Joe. So, but I do think that it is like a more competent shmup release and feels more like an arcade experience than some of the other NES ports we've gotten. Yeah. I didn't try the arcade version for this, but I actually can't imagine it being significantly better considering that there's no slowdown. And, and oh, sorry, there is no arcade version for this. That's why there's, there's an MSX version for this. I didn't try the MSX version of this game.

58:05 But you know, all that to be said, I, I'm not going to vote it essential because you already have Gradius and Stinger to play. If you're looking at our essential games list. And I think that those kind of have like closed the door for me right now on like what a shmup does.

58:20 Unless it's a shmup that has insane personality and really great design. I don't see us adding another one for a while. Or does what those games do better. I would consider kicking one of those off and putting it on. You know, it's kind of like there are certain genres yet that we haven't seen great games from. So I'm still more open to like letting those in than I am to say being like, oh yeah, we definitely like Zanuck is so good that we just need to include it there with the other two. It's kind of like, man, I mean, if you're a fan of shmups,

58:46 I say, don't pass this one up. This was a game that I started and I thought was like, eh, whatever. And I just kept going back. To it as we were like, you know, getting closer to record. And I said, there is a lot here. Yeah. You know, there, there is a lot going on. They never, it never gets like other than the speed of the game, which I think is something that only I'm really complaining about.

59:07 There's never a point in this game where it's punishing in the way that like some of the other shmups that we've played, like scoon and alpha mission. Like those are just not fun for me. So at certain points in the game, because it just becomes an object of dodging and multitasking. In this one, I still felt like a powerful ship that had a stake in taking down the game. I didn't beat the game, but I felt like I always had a stake. If like, if I really wanted to play this one, I could play it through. So not essential, but fun. Yeah. I want to say something. I meant to say this actually. Um, and you were just reminded me of it.

59:41 that as much as this game wasn't for me, I do think that, like you said, that if, um, if you're a big shmup fan, I think this is a good, a good game to play. And I think it's a very, very fast paced game, not just in the way that the scrolling is fast, but in the way that like everything's coming at you. And like, if you're really good at this game, like consider me impressed. Like this is a, this is a game that I think it would be hard to get really good at because it's so random. And there's so much going on, but like, that's just the kind of game that like,

1:00:09 that's not my type of game because it's just so much like about your, like your reflexes and about your, you know, all that stuff, which is not my thing. But I think that that's, it's pretty impressive if you're really good at, at, at this game.

1:00:21 I think so too. It is hard. Yeah. Well, everyone knows that Sean. That was actually, that was actually you. Yeah, I know. Uh, I think that's all the time we have. Would you guys agree? I agree. I've got at least like 10 more minutes actually. Whoops. So here's where I'm going to go.

1:00:39 You were going to tell people about www.google.com. There's a great, uh, search browser called Google that I use all the time. And if you type in NostalgiaCast on Google. NostalgiaCast. Right. Specifically, add the cast. Um, we recently broke our leg. We recently broke our leg. I don't know what that, oh, the cast. Mike, do you want to take it from here? Yeah. It's www.nostalgiacast.com. I don't want you to leave. Uh, it's www.nostalgiacast.com. That's where you can get every single episode of Nostalgia.

1:01:12 Uh, you can see like show notes, links to other websites. There's, uh, at least me. I've reviewed every single game in text form. Look, we will get to that. That's a little bit of a shaming on Sean and I. Yeah, I'm just, I'm just throwing it out there. Uh, and I think by the time we release this episode, maybe I'll try and catch up, but don't quote me. Yeah, I think you said that in one of the other episodes.

1:01:32 I definitely said that too. But you know, if you don't want to read all those thoughts, but you have thoughts of your own, you can always click the contact button on www.nostalgiacast.com. And in that contact button, you'll get a little form. You fill it out. It sends an email back to us.

1:01:47 And, uh, you can tell us all your thoughts or maybe post a picture of you like beating a game. Just a picture of you with like with thumbs up. Yeah. A thumbs up. If you like the episode, thumbs down with a frowny face. If you didn't like it, I would love to see somebody post me a thumbs down. I'd be like, Oh, that's really sad. We'll get better. Uh, but yeah, if you beat Zanuck, I also like to see a picture of that. I'm sure Joe would be very impressed. I would be very impressed. I said it. I have to stand by it now. Yep. consider Joe impressed. But it's not just beating. You have to be like, you don't die the whole way through. You gotta be flexing like, like with one hand, like with one arm the whole time.

1:02:21 Yeah. One, one handed. One handed. Yeah. And you also have to have an SAT score of 1600. That's like, that's part of the requirements for beating Zanuck. Uh, I don't really have much else to say other than that. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito film on Twitter, and I'll talk to you soon.

1:03:02 And welcome to the post show. Hi, Sam. Hello. How are you, Sam? So I always thought that the shaped mac and cheese noodles were better than the normal ones, you know, like Rugrats or, uh, whatever shape they are, because those ones typically have more surface area, which means that the cheese can get in and around it a little bit more, you know? And so I always prefer getting those than just the regular noodles. Yeah, definitely. There's like a, there's a texture to those that, that makes it like, makes it a little, a little better. You're definitely, you're definitely onto something there. Yeah. And, and Sam, I think you're stupid. What do you think? Oh, no way. Why would you say that to him? Uh, I just wanted to see if he had anything prepared.

1:03:43 Well, everyone knows that, Sean. So everyone does, everyone does know you're stupid then, correct? Sean, stop fighting the soundboard. You're going to win the fight against the soundboard. I need to outsmart the soundboard. I don't have any opinions on noodles, except that any opinions. Oh, sorry. No. Oh, sorry. You go. Yeah. Okay. I'll go. Well, that was it really. It's all you. Oh, no way. Yeah.

1:04:08 Uh, Sam, uh, doesn't have many other thoughts for us. He has this thought, uh, which I'm kind of scared to play. So here we go. So it says in the manual that there are secret passages that you can find,

1:04:18 which allow you access to different routes, which I thought was pretty cool. Cause it kind of reminds me of star Fox 64, which is a great space shooter, but that's not what we're talking about. Cause that story actually, you know, it makes sense, but I couldn't find any of those paths, or maybe if I did, I didn't realize that I was taking one of those paths because it still goes level one to level two to level three. So I don't know. I, I bet that if you play the game a lot and enough to be able to spot the differences, you would, but I didn't. So do we think that Sam played the right game? I don't think he did.

1:04:49 a secret Pat's, but he did say about when you first start shooting in multiple directions, what are the odds he played another game where that's the first thing you notice? I guess. I don't know. Secret Pat's though. Was that in the manual? And he didn't, I don't know why my voice is so high. He said that that was in the manual. Yeah, he said that was in the manual. I definitely didn't see that in the game. Yeah, I don't remember that, but maybe it was something you shoot or something. I don't know. He is Sam the manual smith. Yeah. I'm not going to doubt him. Uh, and to be honest, the chances of him playing the wrong game are pretty slim considering he wrote the, he read the whole story of the manual correctly. That's a good point. Uh,

1:05:22 but, uh, we never really followed up on his mac and cheese thing. I stand on the Kraft mac and cheese stinks. Yeah, it does. board. I do not like Kraft macaroni and cheese. I barely like mac and cheese to begin with. See, I'm not a big mac and cheese person. I like mac and cheese though. Like real mac and cheese. I'm not a big mac and cheese person in general. Like I haven't had Kraft in a long time. Like when you go to a place that specializes in mac and cheese, I mean, it's always just a gimmick, but you know, sometimes it's pretty good. If you get the spicy mac and cheese.

1:05:49 I mean, don't get me wrong. It's, it's fine. I'll eat it. I like it. It's fine. But a lot of, I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I love mac and cheese. Like it's so, it's so good. It's like a, it's like a guilty pleasure for them. Like, it's like, I mean, it is a guilty pleasure. It's like really like high in everything. Right. But is it, but I feel like a guilty pleasure usually is like something so like,

1:06:07 like, like a cake or something that's so delicious. maybe they don't have the same taste as you. Well, that's what I'm saying. All right, Joe? Well, you know, I, apparently you're a big mac and cheese fanatic. Yeah, you went from, you went from like, you're like, but a lot of people are very, very, very into mac and cheese. And I'm just going to keep talking. I'm just saying that maybe, here I go, I'm talking, I'm talking. Maybe you had a little bit too much of an attitude when you said that. You can't understand why people would like mac and cheese. Well, you know what? Who would win in a fight? The, the dinosaur from Kraft Mac and Cheese or,

1:06:39 um, the Jeffrey the Giraffe from Toys R Us? I gotta go dinosaur. Are we saying that? He's a, he's a, he's a dinosaur. Mac and cheese? I think he's a long neck. I still think the dinosaur though. I don't know. He's that long neck. He looks like a human. Or is he like a T-Rex? I don't think that there's a dinosaur on mac and cheese. Oh, you are out of your mind. You gotta go to the secret passageways on the mac and cheese box. You're out of your mind if you don't know the dinosaur from Kraft Mac and Cheese. You'll know. It's the commercials all the time. Oh. Cheezosaurus Rex.

1:07:08 It's like, it's not even clever. They just replaced dino with the word cheese. I mean, giraffes don't do much. So I asked the wrong question. It's not who would win in a fight, Cheezosaurus Rex versus Jeffrey. It's Cheezosaurus Rex versus Barney. Right? Those are like two looking, similar people. Yeah. You guys ever see that gangster rap with Barney? I think so. Yeah, where it takes like, I think it's like LL Cool J or like somebody, and like they just take those words and put them over Barney, and like it's really funny.

1:07:39 Oh. Yeah. What? Barney. There's no Barney game on the NES, I don't think. There should be. There's no Kraft Mac and Cheese game either on the NES. Huh. There's a ROM hack called Barney Bros. Isn't there, is it like a Mario Bros? there's a Mario Bros ROM hack with Barney. Isn't there, is there a Sesame Street game? I think there are. Yeah, there's a few, I think. Let's see what we have for Sesame Street on the NES. Yeah, there's Sesame Street 1, 2, 3, and Sesame Street ABC. So I can't wait to play those two games. That would be great actually. Those are the games I'm looking forward to. What is their essential? They might be essential for children to learn. Right. And the lights went out.

1:08:21 And that's the end of the post show. No, no, no. Oh, okay. We're going to show these people that we're going to work in the dark. Post show after dark. Post show after dark, man. What if I played like another episode's post show right now? Like, you know, they just started. You could do that, but you could also let me do some slam poetry right now. You want to do some slam? I, I thought I was bluffing. I didn't think you'd want me to. I would love for you to do anything right now. Are you saying that I don't like participate enough in the podcast, Mike? Why are you so hostile? Yeah. I don't know. We all like mac and cheese. Maybe the Xanax round.

1:08:55 I like, I try, I'm coming down from Xanax. You've been on every episode, right? I am on every episode. That's pretty good. I'm on the episodes. I'm on every episode except when Mike does secret ones. Oh, right, right. But you don't know about this. I don't know about those. Oh, there's also Sesame Street countdown with featuring the count. Count Chocula. No, right. That's a different count. There's also big birds hide and speak. Wait, are these rom hacks? Clever. No, these are real games that we're going to have to play at some point in our lives.

1:09:28 What are like, let's see, like what are considered some of the worst NES games of all time? We haven't really gotten into the world of tie-ins yet. We've only had like that, that Kung Fu, which was weird. Yeah. Six different things. I think our first official tie-in is Goonies. Goonies 2, unfortunately. Oh, okay. I played a little bit of it. It's confusing. Wait, is there a Goonies 1? Where is Goonies 1? No, Goonies 1 only came out on the Famicom. Oh, okay. So it's actually a direct sequel. I thought it was the sequel to the movie. It was the NES game. So some of the worst games of all time include Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is a famous angry video game nerd episode.

1:10:04 Cheetahmen 2. Cheetahmen 2? Yep. That is worse than Cheetahmen 1. I don't know if Cheetahmen 1 exists. Okay. We have played one of the worst games on those lists though, haven't we? Athena, sure. Yeah. Yeah, Athena is awful. What about like the Rob games? Yeah, no, those are usually not on people's list because they're not games. Just take it for granted. Yeah. Yeah, I think like if you're asking me,

1:10:24 the worst games that I've played so far are Karate Champ, Tag Team Wrestling, Deadly Towers, Winter Games, and Athena. Deadly Towers, I feel like is on a lot of people's worst of all times. Deadly Towers is an MS Paint game. Yeah. So there's that. All right, we're done. Good night. Good night, everyone. This is, this is yet another episode. And I'm Joe, but I'm leaving. Okay. This is, this is, okay. I don't know why he closed the door behind you.

1:10:54 I mean, like he just, I don't know. It's very disrespectful. All right. So this is one mic without anybody. This is just Sean. This is where I get to make the podcast that I was always meant to make.

1:11:12 So this is what I've been thinking about. No matter how hard you try, you can never get music out of your head. If you aren't on drugs, you need to take epinephrine and methamphetamine in order to get music out of your head. There's light, light sockets, powers, powers in, in towers, Labrador, retriever, poodle, labradoodle. There's a man going around taking names and he decides who to free and who to blame. Red, green, orange, yellow. There's a nail. There's a screw. There's a hammer. There's a spanner on the table. MacBook Pro, baby. MacBook Pro.

1:12:22 So that, um, that was written today. Uh, that was my, I'm actually publishing this. Uh, I, I just hope that you guys understand that you are the first audience to hear that poem. And, um, yeah, I'm actually going to get it published. I have, I have a book coming out at the end of this month called poems for flow. Um, poem was for flow. uh, by penguin records. And, uh, did you like my, my poem, Chris? It was the best poem I've never heard. um, Thank you.