080 · GOTCHA! THE SPORT!
It's just you now... you're alone... no one to turn to for help. Sure the odds are against you, but this is when you can really show your stuff. You've got your Nintendo® Zapper® in your hand and a pretty good supply of paint pellets. FOR MORE NESTALGIA as well as show notes and links check out www.NEStalgiacast.com
- Introductions
- First Impressions
- Light gun AND controller required
- Tales from the Manual
- Game is over section - TYPO
- Gameplay
- Skill Levels - Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
- Weird selection of stages
- Forest
- Bronx
- Winter
- Let’s talk about Hitboxes
- EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
It's just you now. You're alone. No one to turn to for help. Gotcha! The sport!
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sam. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. I really gotcha guys, didn't I? I was very surprised. Is that how you would read it though? Is it more like, gotcha, right?
I feel like it's more like, gotcha. Yeah, that's what I got from it too. Gotcha! People in the United States call it paintball. Yeah. Is it called gotcha somewhere else? It's called gotcha the sport and I don't know if gotcha is like an actual sport or if it's just more like that they couldn't use paintball at the time or people wouldn't know what that was. So it's not just this game called gotcha. Someone calls paintball gotcha. Was paintball like popular at that time? Both are irrelevant to my knowledge.
Like, you know, like, gotcha I've never heard of before and paintball being popular. I only knew paintball like... Well, this game is what popularized paintball. I mean, I played paintball, but like, I don't think it was ever called gotcha. I think this is just them calling it gotcha. Right. So just the game is kind of... Because they could have also called it capture the flag, the sport. Right. Yeah. You know, or capture the flag with guns. But I do definitely think that every game should be followed by the sport.
Whatever the sport. Right. I'm actually going to... Baseball. The sport. I think, I was thinking about that and I think that it's to let you know that it's just a game and that it's not actually, you know, shooting people. Okay. That's my take on it. Yeah, that makes sense. Like it's for sport. Yeah, it's like they're all, everyone's okay at the end of this. That's a good idea. Yeah, I like that. I also just think like... We're just playing for flags. It's just necessary to have that be in the title because if you just call this gotcha, like that's weird. Right. Just picking that up on the shelves and being like, what do you got today? Well, I could play gotcha.
And they're like, oh, no, no, no, really, really. What do you have? I feel like it's just a bad title personally. It is a bad title. And that's how we're starting this episode. Because this is all about gotcha the sport.
And that is, as we were alluding to, it's a light gun game where you also get to use the controller, which is kind of neat. And you're basically playing paintball as you go through like only three different stages. But I'm getting ahead of myself. But anyway, yeah. Okay. Four? Maybe there's three. Yeah, I was going to say, I'm pretty sure it's three. And I think before we get into like gameplay and stuff like that, let's just do first impressions. Because I feel like our audience isn't really familiar with this one either. It's being a later light gun game. So let's just talk about what grabbed us right from the start. Sam? So right from the start, I thought this feels more like an arcade style shooter, you know, with a gun.
Where people just kind of pop out of different places and there's movement on it. Almost like an on-rails kind of shooter. But it's not on-rails because you're moving. But also that the art is really good, I thought, in this game. So those are really my first impressions. My first impression was, first of all, that I couldn't play this game the actual way. I had to emulate this because I don't have a CRT.
And I thought that it was going to be completely unwieldy. But it actually seems to be even more, it's a better user experience if you just use like a PS4 controller with a touchpad on the top. Because that's how I aimed.
But yeah, I mean, it looks, the art style is fine. It's an interesting concept. But you're saying that's a better user experience than doing it, emulating it without the PS4 controller. Than emulating it without the PS4 controller. Because I did end up being able to play it with the actual zapper. And I think that was what kind of caught my attention first. Using the zapper while using the controller at the same time is something that we haven't done yet. Yeah. I don't even think any of the other games you use a controller even like to select things. Joe, was it you or Sam who suggested that in like one of our earlier episodes? I was thinking about it. I can't remember. I think it was me with Gumshoe.
I said that would be a cool thing to do with Gumshoe where you could jump with the A button and just shoot with the light gun. They took your advice. Yeah. I guess they're fans of the podcast. Yeah. But yeah, I mean really my initial impression was just kind of, I was very intrigued by that because it was something we haven't done yet before with a light gun.
Okay. Yeah. And just to add in another way to play this game, I did emulate it because I also don't have access to a CRT in a New York City apartment. But just because there's no space. But I did try it with a Wiimote actually being able to hook up like the sensor bar and everything like that.
And that was interesting. I did also try it with just like mouse and keyboard. Yeah. That's always going to be terrible. Just to see what that's like. But I was actually surprised using mouse and keyboard that the hit boxes in this game are pretty weird. Yeah. It's not necessarily like if you get the guy right in the middle that it's going to register with a mouse click. I kept going for head shots and like I could see the blink for what the light gun is supposed to read.
And the head isn't even in the hit box most of the time. Yeah. So I think for me that was like my first impression was just like, oh wow, hit boxes are weird. I'll have to get used to that. Because I did feel like in every other game, even including Gumshoe that we played, hit boxes felt very spot on because they were just kind of like the rectangle of the sprite. So anywhere within the sprite that you hit, that would also register a hit on the enemy.
That's my thought on that. Real quick, I just also wanted to go over that this is an LJN game. Guys, any familiarity with LJN? No. Not really, no. Okay. Well, I'm sure NES, yes? No. Okay, cool. Thank you for chiming in. I'm sure NES fans know that LJN makes just a series of terrible games that Cinemassacre, the angry video game nerd, he has gone on a whole rant about LJN. Many people followed suit and stuff like that. Here's what I'm going to say. Okay. Because I looked through the list and I've only ever played like four other LJN games other than now this one. I'm going to give this like, I'm going to give them a chance.
Okay. I'm not ready to say that their entire gamography on the NES is shit. You know, like I'll play through each one and make that decision myself. I'm not just going to say like, oh, that's a bad company. Whereas like we've seen now a few times where Bandai just can't get it together. Yeah. You know, like Chubby Cherub and what else did they do? They did one of the wrestling games, tag team wrestling. Yeah, they did Muscle. I thought they did Muscle. Oh, Muscle, yes. Muscle, yeah. Because of the license thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, if Bandai got a chance from us, I feel like LJN should get one too. We don't judge. We should be judgment-free zone. Didn't you start this out by saying LJN is a company that makes bad games? I said that they were known for that.
Yeah, what's funny is LJN is defunct. Acclaim Entertainment, who also like was a subsidiary of them, they're defunct. So no one has any like grandstand against me on this. You know, nobody can fight me on this. But you're going to give them a shot. The LJN fan club. To be clear.
I'm going to give them the best shot I can. And, you know, similar to you give the best shot you can in Gotcha. The sport? The sport, yes. Not the saying. Not the word. Yeah. So before we get into the game, I was just, I was looking at the manual for this one. And there's nothing too interesting in there. But if you go to the manual section where it tells you like game is over and then gives you like the three scenarios. But it's actually four. Game is over when all blasters are lost. When the clock counts down to zero. When your flag is carried back to the opponent's base. And when all. Yeah. I saw that. It's just like when all infinitively.
When all anything happens. And that's like a bullet later on. It's like a weird format. Are we sure? It's not even indented in the same place. Are we sure that this isn't just like a bad scan? Because I feel like we got the same scan. I've looked at two different scans of this manual and it has both. So I'm not. Yeah. It's very clean. When all black have you around it. Yeah. I'm not above thinking that LJ and a company that I'm going to give a chance would not make a mistake like that. They just came into like the copywriting room and it's like, okay, drop everything. Pencils down. We have to ship this game.
Pencils down. I was just making a room full of like thousands of people all writing the manual with pencil. And they all make the same mistake. Because they're going in unison. So they're all at the same point when they get the pencils down.
I'm not.
Who thinks, and I'm gonna lean to Joe here, who thinks that they could explain how to play Gotcha the Sport? I can explain. Oh, great. I could have explained. I also could have explained. No, you couldn't. Not like this. You've never explained like this before. Man, I'm really nervous now.
So, Gotcha the Sport, you're playing with the light gun. So, it's very similar to any of the light gun games. You're shooting at your opponents. The only difference is you are scrolling to the right. Right. You're trying to get to the flag, which is all the way on the right. It's captured the flag.
So, you're running to get the flag. You shoot anyone that comes in your way before they shoot at you. And in the meantime, one of your opponents is trying to get your flag, which you can see on your map. So, you watch as they run by. You basically just gotta shoot them when you go by. It's pretty damn easy to make sure they don't get your flag. And then you run to the back, and then you win. You get their flag back to where your flag was, and now you win. And it all happens on a side-scrolling thing. Always in the first person. It's like first person, and you're strafing. You in real life strafing sideways. And you also don't have any teammates.
Thank you for bringing that up. That was the weirdest thing. I remember like... I was trying to simulate all the other real wars on the NES, where you're alone going in. Right. But because it's just a game where you move from left to right, and you don't have any teammates, essentially it's just a race for you to pick up the flag, and then head back to where your base is, and then somewhere in the middle meet the guy who inadvertently must have taken your flag by now, shoot him, and then just race back. Yeah. It's pretty much just moving right to left. There's no strategy. There's no guarding your flag. Well, you do go left to right later.
Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's true. That changes it up a lot. That is true. And you have... When you see someone on the screen, a little target will come up under your screen to show that they're aiming at you, and that's when you know, like, I better kill them, shoot them with a paintball before they shoot me. Is that also necessary? See, the thing is, and I don't know if we were going to get to this later, but this game is,
at least on the difficulty that I played at, I didn't have to shoot anybody. It takes so long for them to aim. I'm a beginner. I'm a beginner, yeah. I'm a beginner. You cannot die if you keep moving. Okay. If you keep moving to the right I'm a beginner, you will not fail, and that's just like a whatever. Like, I'm glad that they include modes like that, you know, for people who are bad at games. And then you can also try and rack up points if that's what you're into. But to Joe's point, yeah, by the time you get to advanced,
that's like if you don't shoot them within two or three seconds. I feel like it's less than two seconds. Wow. Yeah, I guess I'm over it. I could be wrong, but... No, I think I'm over it. Two seconds is a while. That's like one, two. Like, yeah, you got enough time to shoot down people. I guess just with my thumb on the touchpad acting as my reticle,
that was a bit more... It would have taken me a lot of skill to get everything in like less than a second. Right, yeah. But, you know, since we're talking about the skill levels, you have beginner, intermediate, and advanced, and I welcome things like that. We really haven't had... We've seen that the Japanese versions of games sometimes get the easy and normal mode. Most NES games that we've played don't even give you difficulty options. We get a lot of game A, game B, which is really just... Right. We haven't even seen game A or game B in a while. Yeah, yeah. That was like a Nintendo thing for the launch games. Yeah, yeah. You know, that really wasn't put into many games afterwards.
And I just... I welcome something like this at all turns because it's also... It's a game that isn't your typical game because you're using the light gun and the controller at the same time. So you might need to start off using something like beginner just to get the... Learn the concept. Because the hitbox is so weird in this game that I feel like if you jump right to advanced just thinking like, oh, I'm good at Duck Hunt, so I'll be good at this. It's like, it's not really the same.
Would you argue that... Yeah, I mean, there's definitely... It definitely feels... To me, using the light gun, I didn't notice what you guys were talking about. Maybe because I'm not aiming as precisely with the light gun, but I didn't notice that the hitboxes were off. For me, it felt like if I missed, it missed. And if I hit, it hit. But again, like I'm just aiming for like the chest because it's like the biggest target and I just assumed it didn't matter.
But yeah, for the most part, I felt like that, you know, that aspect felt as good as Duck Hunt, but then you're shooting with one hand and you're controlling with the other. So that was like what made it a little different. And how did that feel with like using an actual, you know, using the actual setup of the NES controller and the light gun? How did it feel to control both at the same time? Honestly, I mean, since the controlling on the actual like paddle or whatever you call that is literally just left and right on the D-pad, it was very...
It was pretty simple. It was not like it got that complicated, but it was kind of weird to have like, I don't know, even with, if you've played other light gun games, you're probably used to using two hands, kind of like, you know, like you would hold like a rifle or something. It was a little strange using one hand, but it wasn't... You got the flag in your other hands. That's true, yes. But what if you don't yet?
Sam, did you prefer being able to control when you were moving throughout the stage rather than clear all the enemies in this panel and then we'll move you over to the next panel? I kind of did it in chunks. So I would kind of wait until there were a bunch of enemies in the screen and then stop and kind of focus up on them and then keep going. When I bet if I'd kept moving, it probably would have been better, but I think aiming was a little bit easier when you were stationary. At least I found that.
So... And it sounds like, Sean, your strategy was just more like keep moving forward. I mean, not saying that's what I did. I just realized that after playing that, oh, I could have just let this all happen and just keep going. But no, I stopped every once in a while when there were a bunch of enemies or I see the flag getting ran back to the other side. So yeah, I kind of did it the way that Sam did. And one thing to give this game credit for is that even though there's only three stages, they got pretty creative with those stages and where enemies land and stuff like that. Like, I was really surprised in the forest when the first guy who killed me was hidden behind a waterfall.
You don't see that coming. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, they can be anywhere on the stage. They don't have to just spawn in the usual places. Some of the people that are laying on their stomach are kind of hard to see at first two and then someone's aiming at you and you're like, where is that guy? Yeah. But I did laugh, speaking of the stages, I did laugh a little bit at the level of specificity. Yes, yeah. Well, that's what I was about to get into. So please get into that. Because the first stage is forest. You're just in a forest.
You don't need to know exactly which forest. Then the second stage is Bronx. The Bronx. But they also call it the ghetto, which is really like a backhand to the Bronx. Oh, wow. Where do they call it that?
On screen? I think it's in the manual. Is it not? It could be. You just had the one spot I'm looking at that says Bronx. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't see ghetto, but... Maybe, okay. It's not Freudian. But it's also... No, it is just weird, right? It's like the selection of stages is like, okay, so naturally you would start in a forest, right? That's like this game's Green Hill Zone, right?
Whatever. And then the Bronx is just like, now we're just out in the open playing paintball. Right. Like in the city. With these giant muscular dudes with mohawks also. Yeah, they're punks. They're not even like people who represent the Bronx. They're like, oh no, we're just playing paintball though. Right. But then the third stage is just winter.
Yeah. It's not even a place now. It's just a season that you're in. Which they got creative with again, with the snow and stuff like that. Right. And, you know, having different vantage points for the enemies. But it's still just bottomed my mind that they thought that like winter would be the ultimate end stage. Like, you know, like, oh, where do we go next? Back to forest. So the introduction of the manual has this excerpt.
Whether you're in the dense green woods, the steamy urban ghetto, or the snow-covered winter forest, there's only one thing on your mind. Survival. So, yeah, they call it a steamy urban ghetto, which is, I guess, like, not a very nice way to talk about the Bronx. I always believed in you, Sean. I knew you wouldn't just make that up.
Yeah, no, all of this is, all of this is strange because it's, where is just regular paintball locations? Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I used to play when I was a kid, we just had this weird, like, unused plot of forest. Right, but I wouldn't have minded even, like, castle or something, you know? Yeah, it's a video game. Let your imagination run wild, you know? Yeah, yeah. Instead, it's like... Space paint. Yeah, it could only ever happen in three locations. Everybody knows paintball only ever happens in the winter, the forest, or the Bronx. Yeah, the Bronx. In the forest or the winter forest.
They didn't even think to do that. No, that's what it says in the manual. Yeah, it says it when Sean does. A winter forest. I just meant, like, a version of the forest that's just covered in stuff. Or the city forest. That's just winter. Yeah, yeah. Where was the Bronx forest crossover we were all waiting for? It's like place, time, and concept. And if you're wondering why we're talking so much about the stages, it's because we pretty much run out of things to talk about when it comes to this game. This game does not offer a lot. Well, okay. It gives you...
No. There's this thing... We mentioned that you can tell when people aim at you. That's cool, right? I still wasn't sure until that moment if you were doing a bit there or not. No. There's a song that plays also when they aim at you. Yeah. There were three different songs, actually, that I thought were interesting.
No, it went in love. I thought it was interesting. The song changed. Like you said, when someone's aiming at you, it's a different song. When your opponent has your flag, it's a different song. And then when nobody has your flag... Well, the only thing I don't like is that when you have their flag, but they have your flag, you hear the song of your flag being stolen. You don't get to hear a song for you having a flag. Yeah, there's no success. And it's like, well, I'll only ever get to stop hearing this music once I finally cross paths with this guy and shoot him immediately.
Yeah. That's my problem with this game is that it's just one character going one way, another character going another way. Eventually, they'll find a middle point, which might not necessarily be the middle. Like some characters move slower than us or whatever, but eventually there's just going to be a point where the only thing you have to do is just shoot the guy with the flag and then keep moving. There's never anything about like planning when to take down the other enemies. So that leads me to a question I kind of have.
So what do you think could have made this a better game? Like not like what would be a modern paintball game, but what would be a better NES light gun paintball game? What would they have to do? I almost think... So I can't remember if we talked about this in an earlier game, similar to what Sam said earlier, but like I almost want one person to be controlling the guy and the other person to be covering them with the light gun. I almost feel like that would be...
That'd be cool. Some game where even if the platforming is almost... Even if the platforming is like a Super Mario game and you can jump on enemies and whatnot, but then maybe there's some enemies that only the gun can take out, some enemies only the character can take out, and some that cross over. And then you can kind of like plan and be like... That is an idea. I never thought about something like that. You can be like, all right, so you cover this area, I'll get this area, whatever. And that's a cool co-op game. And they include an entire map with like where your flag is on that map and where their flag is and stuff like that. Why not just also include points for where all of everybody is on the screen and track them all as if like,
you know, here's where your teammates are. I'm assuming in my version of this game that I have teammates. Here's where their people are. And then keeping in mind that like, oh, right now there's only one guy guarding my flag, so I should send people that way or send myself that way, have my AI people focus on getting the flag. Maybe that's something you could even do by like hitting the start button.
And like, I guess I'm going the opposite of Joe's thing because I'm almost saying if you're going to make us use the controller, just make us use the whole controller. Don't worry about just the left and right thing. Like I'm saying... Oh man, I can see this being... Well, continue your thought. I just think like get kind of cool with it. Like you have A and B almost be like commands for your team squad. Like B could be like play more defensive. A could be get more aggressive towards their flag. This is a much more complex game now. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But I also just think that it's a better game because I think that they left a lot of the structure there.
Like I said, the enemies are really cool how they hide behind things and that they took the time to, even if there's only three levels, that the three levels act differently. That's cool. But there's just not enough going on with the gameplay loop that doesn't stop me from just going like, all right, just keep moving right, keep moving right, up, there's a guy, shoot him, keep moving right, there's a guy, shoot him, grab the flag, and then wait till I run into the other guy. I think that if you keep the light gun as a part of it, though,
the amount of use you're getting out of the controller is really going to hamper your light gun experience because you get, at one point it seems like you're going to have to put it down and issue commands or something on the controller. What if you... I almost imagine it, sorry, but I almost imagine it like, you know, you got your gun out like this and then in your other hand, you're almost, you're holding it almost like a walkie, you know, and then you're just using like your pinky and ring finger to execute the B&A commands and using, you know, using your index for the left and right. Idea. Okay.
Like gun in one hand, power glove in the other hand. Oh, shit. Rob with the controller on the floor. Yeah, but really, Rob should have been the buddy who controls the movements and you shoot. You're helping Rob. This could have been a Rob game. Yeah, it should have been a great job for Nintendo if they could incorporate Rob, light gun, and an NES controller all into one game. That is intense. All right, I'm glad I asked that question. Are there any other pressing questions?
Or statements? You know what, I actually think I might have another answer to Sean's question. Okay. Because it's fun. I think you could, another thing that would be kind of interesting is if you had
some like, quote unquote, destructible objects or just, you know, things on the screen that you can shoot which you have like ammo cases and stuff. But most of them are empty and one of them has the flag hidden behind it. So it's like, oh, is it behind the snowman this time? It's different every time. So you have to stop and search which would make it a little more dangerous because then people are shooting at you. The old neighborhood game of Capture the Flag. Right, right. Yeah, I see. I like that. Okay. I think with that in mind we should go right into the Essential Games list.
So far, not a single Zapper game. No. That's of course a lie. You guys know by now Duck Hunt is an Essential game and we really like that. We kind of questioned if anything else would ever make it onto the Essential Games list for Zapper games. Gotcha is now on the table for the Essential Games list. Sam, where do we stand? I think that this game kind of like almost has a lot going for it. You know, it has a lot of potential
and I think that it's a clever take on the light gun but I don't think it's essential. I think that there's, I mean, there's only three levels. I feel like you can really only have that much fun memorizing what kind of enemies are going to be there to shoot and I don't know. It's okay. It's not the best game.
It's okay for a light gun game, I guess, but I think that's all it can be. Sean? Alright, one thing that I thought about, I think about whenever we play a light gun game is sort of like retroactively looking back at Duck Hunt and why it is essential and because I think that like all these other games are adding to it in some way whether it's you shoot your character to make him jump or you control the screen to go and pick up a flag or something along those lines but then when I really think about it I just realized that it's because Duck Hunt had such a purity to it where there was really only the one thing and while it's not that complex it's still fun that I think whenever these games come out and they add on these little
extra things it's really just it's not really adding any flavor to it it's just adding more buttons to press and so no, it's not essential but that was just my thought on the light gun games in general
cool Joe so Sean you took the words kind of right out of my mouth so I'm just going to sort of expand a little bit on what you said where I feel the same way that Duck Hunt I think because the light gun I think works so well and Duck Hunt is a game where you're just focusing on shooting like that's it you're trying to raise a score by shooting and that's what's fun about it and I think that there can be a really cool idea where it's like shooting is not necessarily the primary objective you're using the shooting to try and do something else which I thought that's a really
cool thing in this game and I did have fun with this game but if there's something else that you're doing is just run to the right and then run back to the left that's what makes it so it kind of falls short where it's like I'd rather just play Duck Hunt whereas which I said that about other games too so I think that it's there's definitely still potential out there that a light gun game could exist that's doing something else than just having you shoot that has some other objective that's fun but then if you're going to do that it can't be quite so simple as this game was
okay this is going to sound harsh but there's nothing to see here folks move on this is not essential and I've said more about worse games but the point that I'm making here is that there's nothing left here on the table for anybody to check out no one's looking for like I wonder if they made like a paintball game on the NES and what does that play like you're just you don't have a CRT you probably don't even have a zapper you're really going to go out and get this stuff just to play gotcha like even if you bought it for Duck Hunt to get all that stuff right to play the essential games list don't buy gotcha just to experience another zapper game I don't think that there's this game just like it's manual is only half you know
I so part of me disagrees a little bit on that though I do agree that this isn't like that great of a game but I think if you all don't make your decision based on this but if you are already getting Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley and any of those other ones and a CRT and you already have the setup to play it I think that this is worth picking up because it's just a small fun aside it's probably going to cost you like eight dollars or something and it's different enough I mean I did have a fun time
and if you are a zapper guy I would take Joe's recommendation to heart there because he really is the zapper guy of this podcast he really enjoys that accessory and the games that come with it so yes I guess I'll take that back but I guess I meant for the normal consumer definitely don't go out and buy all this stuff for this game absolutely not you'll have fun with this game for a few minutes you may compete against your friend but it's not anything to write home about and that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia join us next time for Jaws make sure to play yourself we haven't done that in a while please play along if you can
we do this every week every Friday but if you can't get enough if you're like I need more before next Friday go to www.nostalgiacast.com and check out the episodes tab we have over 70 episodes now I think we're almost at 80 actually by the time this podcast goes up so that's pretty cool and if you just want to like say guys I think that's pretty cool you can click the contact button on www.nostalgiacast.com and just write in about like thoughts on this episode previous episodes future episodes
we'd love to shout out and say go Bills yeah you could do that too or you could say that no the Bills will never win a Super Bowl I'm not saying that personally I'm just saying that you can tell Sean that if you're from like New England or something and you feel the need to tell Sean that go for it I'm Michael Esposito you can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter and I will talk to you soon Bills gotcha yeah the whole episode was a prank it wasn't real alright cool I'll
Thank you.
