086 · TOP GUN

• Introductions
• Some comments on recent games
• The Movie
  • I feel the need. The Need for Speed
  • The kind of movie you would test your Surround Sound on
  • Top Gun Anthem
• Development
  • Made by Konami (we like em!)
  • Not the first Top Gun game
    • It is a one-on-one dogfighting simulator with 3D wire-frame model graphics; versus more traditional sprite-based graphics and straightforward gameplay of the Konami game.
• First Impressions
  • I’m having so much fun, wait how do I land?
• Tales from the Manual
• Objective
  • In Top Gun, you are Maverick and must control your plane in a pseudo-3D environment to dogfight other planes in 4 missions. Once your mission is complete you must land the plane onto the air carrier. Similar games include Star Voyager.
• Gameplay
  • Dogfighting
  • Landing
  • Missions
    • An enemy aircraft carrier, an enemy base, and finally an enemy space shuttle
  • Endings
    • The game has two endings. If the player loses but achieves a minimum score of 50,000 points, a still shot is shown of the player being presented the Top Gun plaque that was awarded to Iceman in the film. If the player completes all four missions and successfully lands on the aircraft carrier, a scene is shown of the F-14 taxiing on the carrier and the player waving to the LSO crew.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Top Gun: The Second Mission, released in Japan as Top Gun: Dual Fighters, is the second Top Gun game produced by Konami for the NES. It was released in North America on January 1990
  • Top Gun - Fire at Will (PC, Mac, PSX 1996)
    • The game's overall plot focuses on the player-character, Maverick, going to combat in Cuba, North Korea, and Libya against a secret group of mercenary pilots called the "Cadre
  • Top Gun: Hornet's Nest (PC 1998)
    • People hate it
  • WAY MORE
• EGL (Mike, Sean, Joe, Sam)

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

00:00 Top Gun, you're a high-flying fighter jock, the hottest pilot in the heat of a battle. Top Gun, you're a high-flying fighter jock, the hottest pilot in the heat of a battle. And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. I'm Sean. And I'm Sam. Guys, how we doing? Excellent. I'm pretty good. I feel like I'm in the highway to the danger zone. Why do you feel like that? It's like a reference to the movie. Today we're talking about Top Gun.

00:49 It's funny, I always like to think that when I say what we're talking about, because it's the title of the episode too, so the viewers already know, we know, but I'd like to think Sam just gets up and leaves. You're talking about Top Gun? I just heard something about a goose, so... Yeah. But before we even start the episode of talking about Top Gun, we received some comments from a Twitter fan, Beefcake Barber. In regards to Punch-Out, Punch-Out is my favorite game ever. Been playing it since I was four, and 28 years later it still holds up. Guys, true or false?

01:25 True. I have not been playing since I was four, and false. False on that. Okay, good. Zanuck, it is so much better than the previous shooters on the console, and it's the groundwork for Gun-Ak. True or false? False. False because it's not better, right? Yes. We know that it's not. We said the two shooters are better. Remains to be seen whether or not it is the groundwork for Gun-Ak. Seems like because Zanuck, Nack...

01:55 Oh, Nack. Confirmed. Tree. I love that. Yeah, I think I'm interested in Gun-Ak. I think Zanuck was terrible. That was the episode that you were remote for. Oh, I remember. We were confused if you were even playing the right game. Yeah. Based on the comments you made.

02:12 And then, Gun-Ak is actually, according to Beefcake Barber, a top five NES game. Alright. So we gotta keep an eye out for that. What year is that? I don't know. Okay. We should play it when it comes out. We will play it. We should. We will play it rather than just watch YouTube videos like we usually do. Make sure everyone knows it was my idea when we get there. When we play it? Yeah, that we play that again. That's great. And I request that we play Color a Dinosaur when it comes out.

02:37 I'm looking forward to Color a Dinosaur. I'll do that without the NES. Yep. And one more thought. When I was five, my brother's friend left Rad Racer at our house. I still feel guilty about being the reason his copy went missing. And the exact card is on my shelf to this day. Well, not anymore, Beefcake Barber. We have special gifts. We've contacted your friend. Yeah. Could you imagine? It's like, here's a special guest. Beefcake Barber's friend.

03:05 No, we would never do that to you. I'm glad that you still have that copy because it's like an important, like, I don't know the reason why I own like over 800 video games. I don't remember one for every single reason, you know? It's like, some of them are just, that was a gift. Yeah. The reasons were clear back then. Yeah. That was a garage sale item that I bought. That's true for most of them. Those are always fun. Most of my NES games. Yeah, I have a lot of garage sale finds. That's how I got Pokemon Snap. Joe, you talked about that on the first episode. Yeah, that's what I thought video games were. I didn't realize that there had been better consoles for the market. We called them all Nintendos. We called them video games.

03:44 All right, let's talk about Top Gun, the movie. Ah. Everybody knows that Top Gun is actually the prequel for the Need for Speed franchise. Is it? Oh! Yeah, they have that line. Are you talking about not Need for Speed?

03:59 But Fast and Furious? I always get the two confused. What he says is I have a Need for Speed. Yeah, I meant the Need for Speed, the video game franchise, but I did say the movies, right? It's funny when you said it, I envisioned the movies. Yeah, exactly. I always get them confused too. I always think that the Fast and the Furious is just a, like, wow, it's weird how much more popular the film franchise is than the video games. But yeah, there's that line in the movie, I feel the need, the Need for Speed. That's where my joke was going. So just disregard everything. It's funny that I understood the whole thing because I have never seen Fast and Furious, played Need for Speed, or seen Top Gun. Who has seen Top Gun here? I have not seen Top Gun.

04:38 That's awesome. I thought it was going to be the only one because I feel like that's a classic, everyone's seen it. Guys, this is the kind of movie that... I have the VHS in my house. That's what I'm saying. When it came out on VHS, this was the kind of movie that you had to own to test your surround sound system. Your family came over for a summer barbecue, your extended family.

04:57 And then you all went inside and watched Top Gun. Yeah, it's like, you know, there's that point. It gets weird later in the night. There's like that point where it's like, oh, the gnats are out. Like, you know, like we're going to get eaten alive. Let's all go in. This sounds like such a specific story. I think this is Mike's personal story. We did it actually. Our surround sound test video was always the perfect storm. Oh. The perfect storm. You know, when the storm happens, when it's the perfect storm. That's what we would use. I don't know what you're talking about. I know of the movie.

05:26 I know of what you're talking about. That's what that is. And then also, you know, if I have some other thoughts on Top Gun, I think like, one, it is a good movie. It's a fun movie. It's not great. It's not on the all time great list. It sort of defines the 80s camp though, right? Yeah. And I think it was a breakout movie for Tom Cruise too. The only other thing he was doing at the time. I thought it was Tom Cruise. Yeah. He was doing the color. What is that? With Paul Newman. He had that movie about billiards. The Color of Money? The Shootist. Yeah. No. Scientology is a thing Tom Cruise does. Lunar Pool. Lunar Pool is one of the... Yes. The video game. He couldn't appear in it for a reason. He's the guy on the covers.

06:07 It is the color of money for what it's worth. I do remember my films pretty well. That's a Martin Scorsese joint. Oh, Martin Scorsese? Yeah. With Scorsese with both Paul Newman and I don't know why I'm tripping up the... Like, I feel like I... It is Paul Newman. Thank goodness. I got nervous because anybody, you know, Newman's own lemonade, that's the same guy. I know. Okay. And then Tom Cruise is also in that movie, but he's also in Top Gun. He's very kind of lemonade. Yeah.

06:37 All right. I'm sorry. Yeah. Also, there's the Top Gun anthem. That's amazing that, you know, that guitar solo and everything like that, that holds up to this day and was actually in one of the Guitar Hero games as like DLC and I played the heck out of it. All right. But we're not talking about Danger Zone right now. We're not talking about Highway to the Danger Zone. All right. That's a different thing and that's also good and is in the trailer for the movie. Yeah. You guys should at least watch the trailer. I've seen the trailer. Most of the movie is conveyed in the trailer anyway. You're not missing much if you just watch the trailer.

07:09 Another way to get by on movies nowadays if you feel like, oh, we're playing so many games based on movies and I haven't seen the movies, just watch like the 10 clips that are provided on YouTube by Movie Clips. That's the game. You know, and it's like Top Gun Movie Clips 1 dash, you know, like one out of 10 and then you just watch all 10 and you get the story pretty much summed up for you. Yeah. That's my little movie tip if you want to get around and go to the movies. Your Movie Clip movie tip. Yeah. Good movie tip. Speed running movies. Speed running movies essentially.

07:38 I think that's like a thing some people try to do is like watch movies at one and a half times speed. I'm like, why are you watching the movie? Well, if you're doing that, if you're going from clip to clip, that's like an any percent run. Yeah.

07:48 Very good. But it's not truly any percent if you can't just, you might as well just skip to the credits of the movie. Like I'm going to do a credits warp. That's how it works. It's really just how quickly you can click to the last frame of the video. You start the DVD, you have to try and get through all of the previews and the FBI thing and all that stuff. You have to get through it as fast as you can and then it's making sure that you hit right and then scene select and then go right to the credits and hit play and then you're there. Well, I heard that, I heard that like Top Gun as a movie was so popular they made a video game out of it. They did. And we're going to talk about it today. Thank you. Next week on this.

08:28 So this one, you know, it's made by Konami. Yeah. We like them. We like Konami. You know what else they made? The Goonies 2. No. I like Goonies 2. So, okay, good. You said that like under your breath.

08:44 Is that okay? It's okay to like the Goonies 2. I thought it was a weird thing. A weird thing, right. Like great ideas executed poorly. Yeah. You know? Kind of like, you know, if you ask for an egg omelet and they- Are there other kinds of omelets? There's a- You can get an egg white. No, I was thinking, I guess that's, yeah, I was thinking more like, you know, if you order an egg omelet and then they start including like, you know, onions and peppers and it's like, great, but I'm actually allergic. You know? Like I didn't need those extra things. Just give me the game. So you just want an egg. Still, I was still a little fuzzy on it, but I get it. No one's listening to this episode.

09:21 Anyway, Top Gun. This is not even the first Top Gun game. Really? Yeah. There's another one before this. It's a one-on-one dog fighting simulator with 3D wireframe model graphics. So it's a little more like high tech looking than the traditional spike break. Like Battlezone. But in the sky. Exactly. This is more like, you know, in our Top Gun game on the NES, there's sprite based planes that you shoot down in a similar dog fighting scenario. Yeah. And also the gameplay was a little more straightforward in our NES version compared to the original Top Gun game on the PC because that one had like a more complicated UI and tried to actually be like a little bit of like a flight sim for whatever a flight sim could be back in the day.

10:12 That's cool. Can I get first impressions on Top Gun for the NES? Sam? Yeah. So one of the first things that happens in the game is you see this really badass looking jet on like, I think it's the title screen or before the title screen or after or whatever. For sure it comes right after. Yeah. And it's, it just looks cool. And it kind of got me thinking of Jaws. And I'm thinking like, all right, is this going to be, you know, a superficially good game based on a movie with like maybe some interesting mechanics, but doesn't really hold up? Or is it going to be like a cool game? But once I finally got into the game, I decided it was a cool game.

10:54 Thank you for that decision. Yeah. I think it's important. Sean? I agree. This is a pretty cool game. My, my first image was just, you know, like the, the title screen, but I really liked the, the sort of reverbed, like snare at the beginning. It had a very like eighties, eighties feel to it. Like not, not like just eighties, but like that, that retro wave thing. That's cool. Now it felt really cool. Um, and then like the gameplay itself, while I thought that it's a little rough around the edges in terms of like visual fidelity, uh, it's actually pretty fun.

11:33 Yeah. Joe? Yeah. So kind of echoing the, the title screen thing that we all keep talking about, which, um, is that the, I, I just, I sat on that title screen until the song played like a full loop because I was so absorbed. Like it's very like the, the titles, the, the titles, the, the titles, like the, the cut to the beat of the, of the music. I was very impressed with that. But then while starting the game, it kind of evoked, uh, a little bit of, um, star Voyager to me, a little bit of the simulation-y feel. And I was pretty surprised that, you know, yeah, like, like you said, it's rough around the edges, but I was pretty surprised at like how much it did kind of feel flight simulate-y-ish.

12:12 That flight simulate-y. I don't know. I agree. Uh, I would even say, look, the reason why we're all talking about the title screen is because that is literally the first impression, right? Like that, that title screen tells you a lot of things. And for most NES games, it's pretty bland, you know, it's just like the name of the game,

12:28 game A, game B, or start, and another mode like versus. So for this to have like that kind of involvement was awesome. I, I was having a lot of fun during the dog fighting. It was a little bit of a learning curve to just learn your way around. But thankfully, when they say that it's a trait, your first mission is a training mission, they mean it. If you're really not going to like get shot down or die unless you're not moving your character at all. So I thought that was really nice to like actually get a chance to like learn the ropes and figure out like, what's the difference between locking on enemies versus just shooting on them? Like, how can I, how can I best take down people?

13:02 And I was just having so much fun that I hoped I never had to land my plane. And you are. Well, before we get into like the gameplay itself, I did have a quick tale from the manual. I would love to go into a little tales from the manual. What do you got? So, a lot of video games start with a little bit of a, of a deep lore. And this one starts with what, it starts out as like a second person omniscient story of you, the pilot, getting ready to get on, to get in your plane and do some really cool dog fighting. And then somewhere in the middle, it changes to a letter from the president.

13:41 Like it starts with snug in the cockpit of a $30 million war machine. You ease the control stick forward and aim the plane's nose toward the center of the runway. And then yada, yada, yada, yada. And then remember the entire free world will be flying with you. If you succeed, World War three will be averted. If you fail, may God help us all. Good luck. Signed, Mr. President. He was just trying to set the mood for you in the beginning of the letter. And then you gotta read the line. You didn't even notice that. You gotta read the line after that though. And then P.S. You crumple the orders and eat them. No way. The president is just like lost it. It's like the Adam West president from Family Guy.

14:17 Or the mayor or whatever it was. So I think that really sets the mood. I don't know if it's the correct mood for the movie. And you play as Maverick in the game, right? I guess. Yeah, I'm just saying like, is that in line with his character? What do you eat? Does he eat paper in the movie? I don't recall a scene where he like crumbled off a paper. He eats a letter from the president. I don't recall a letter from the president in the movie. So. I think this is just Konami plussing things up for video games. You know, like that's the kind of stuff where if I'm a kid and I'm reading that, I'm like, heck yeah. I eat paper.

14:48 Like. Well, can I add to that too? Because when I read this, after this like intense intro, there's a big title that says How to Play. And I was like, this is going to get down to business. But then it still goes, strap in, lieutenant. Like it still goes back into the story. And then in the middle of it, it says, you begin the mission with three aircraft. The game, if you can call war a game, ends when you, it's just like telling you the instruction, but like still just committing to this like, this act. I love it. I think it's all very fun. I think it's a little too much information, right? Usually we just get like a little blurb or something. Yeah. This is just like, you know, paragraphs of exposition.

15:31 Yeah. You know, to set up a game that does a pretty good job. I didn't have problems following along that I was like on missions to assignments to take down. Yeah, it tells you in the game what your mission is. Yeah, exactly. So I don't think I needed all this extra setup, but I'll take it. It's nice. It's in the manual. It's literature. If you're in the car on the way home, you're reading the manual and getting the story. Absolutely. That's a thing that is a shame that it's no longer around. I know. But also it wasn't exclusive to even this time period. I was doing that all the way up until like... 2005. Yeah. PS2. I would do that even when I would have my own car. Yeah. I was driving over the side. Very unsafe. Let me read the manual. At the stoplight? Sure. They can arrest you for a crime you committed years ago. Ha! Ok! Ok!!

17:10 All right. So we're going to jump into gameplay, but first I'm just going to set up the objective again. If you guys notice, I have a new format for the objective section based on last week's episode. Good job, Mike. Seems like people like that, so here I'm going to do it again. In Top Gun, you are maverick and must control your plane in a pseudo-3D environment to dogfight other planes through four missions. Once your mission is complete, you must land the plane onto an air carrier. Similar games include Star Voyager, as Joe mentioned earlier.

17:40 I would like to say that the similarity to Star Voyager is pretty, like, that's on the surface. I would like to say that similar to how, I'm surprised you called this one out, but you didn't call out the Metroid thing too much in last week's episode when I said that Super Pitfall is like Metroid. I think it's just more like genre and vibe and stuff like that. I don't think it's like the game is, like, the same thing as Star Voyager.

18:06 I'm just trying to give, like, a reference point. I understand. It's really kind of like the way it controls, the way it, like, literally looks. Yeah. And also, like, partially the way it controls. It's not a simulator. We really only had, like, two first-person-ish games, and I think those are the only two, so I will grant you that. Yes. I wasn't trying to say that you're looking for other planets in Top Gun. No, I understand. There is, like, automated takeoff and landing, though, in both of them. Yes, that's true. Well, automated? Well, to an extent. Like, there's a cutscene that plays when you're in landing mode. That's true. Okay, sure.

18:38 So, before we talk about landing, look, that's going to be a whole discussion. I know it. I feel it already. Anybody who's listening to this episode who's played this game knows it's coming. They can feel it on the edge. They're probably skipping to that chapter marker right now. But instead, we're just going to talk about the dogfighting right now, okay?

18:53 What did we think? We said in our first impressions that that was a pretty, like, convincing way to handle it on the NES. But was it actually fun? Yes, it was fun. And I think it's fun because they didn't try to be a simulation. This is very much an arcade game that sort of has bells and whistles that might make it look like a simulation.

19:15 Because it's sort of like in that same realm of Tales of 3D World Runner where you have this illusion of control, like turning and stuff like that. But really, you're just always going forward. And if it were trying to be a simulation, you'd probably get stuck on trying to just center yourself. And I think that the simplification of a flight simulator works really well in this game.

19:44 And I don't know if it was just me, but, like, I started at a certain altitude. And by the end of the dogfight, I was like 30,000, 40,000. I just continuously moved my aircraft higher and higher. Like, I never went down. I went down sometimes. I feel like it's better off being relatively low. I think that's part of the game. Part of it is feeling out if it's better to take on the battleships that are in the water or the planes that are in the air. Yeah. I actually didn't notice too much of a difference between at least the look of the game, depending on your altitude. I know that when you're doing air-to-ground combat, because there's three modes. There's dogfighting, air-to-ground, and air-to-sea.

20:31 I guess the sprites might be bigger when it's on the ground or in the sea if you're lower. But I didn't really notice anything else. I didn't really either. I rarely looked at, like, my altitude. Yeah. And what do we think about, you know, fighting other ships, other spacecraft, fuck, like, all over the place today, guys? Like, other planes, how did we feel about, like, that version of dogfighting versus, like, shooting against the battleships?

20:59 It was a lot more fun. Yeah. I thought it felt satisfying. Like, it felt, you know, you felt like you're hitting these ships. That, like, kind of basic, like, satisfaction of targeting something and then firing and nailing your shot. I did feel like I couldn't move as well as I wanted to. You know, like, not that my controls were stiff, but just that it wouldn't turn as much as I could.

21:21 Yeah, definitely. I feel like a real plane might give you some force on that, too, though, right? Yeah. Like, I'm not saying, again, it's not a simulation, and I think that's to its credit. But I also thought, like, you know, it shouldn't just let me seamlessly, like, move completely over one way or the other. Like, the plane would give some fight higher up in the air.

21:38 Yeah. I think that a lot of it is just because going off of, like, the illusion of control thing, no matter where you are, you're not going to be able to, like, avoid these guys. Right. They spawn on top of you, pretty much.

22:18 Mm-hmm. It's different. I always went with the middle ones. Yeah, that's what I did. Did anybody try anything else? I just went with the top one the first time, just thinking, like, I have more. And then after that, I went with the middle ones. And I... That's what I did. Yeah. I guess I didn't really notice too much of a difference in the power.

22:34 Like, maybe later in the game it gets more noticeable. Well, when you're trying to go to, like, air-to-ground or air-to-sea, like, the battleships and the tanks may take more than one of a certain variety and die in one hit from another. I thought, yeah, because I thought with the... Oh, you think it's, like, these missiles are better for battleships than these missiles? No, I think that whereas the middle one may take out a tank in one hit, it'll need two of the first kind, of the less powerful kind.

23:03 Yeah, because I really only tried the first missiles on other aircraft. Yeah, me too. Yeah, and the missiles work great on the aircraft. Yeah. You know, most of them pretty much guarantee, like, that that aircraft is gone. Yeah, just like you. Yeah, and that makes sense, too. Aircraft gets hit by a missile, you're dead. You know? Like, I don't really know what to tell you.

23:21 But also, like, I didn't mind that shooting was a valuable option, too. Like, you know, it felt almost like at first I was the missiles. I was like, oh, the missiles are great. Like, they lock on. They're going to pretty much guarantee a hit. But then I tried using the shooting, too, and it worked really well. The dogfighting in this is a lot better than Star Voyagers. Oh, yeah. Every one in 100 chance you run into a dogfighting situation, this was really good. Yeah, I think the aiming was a lot more maneuverable. I mean, whereas your plane itself may not feel very maneuverable, at least you can hit the guys you mean to hit.

24:00 Like, going off of what Sam was saying. Yeah. And there's a lot of, like, they'll appear behind you and you have to figure out, like, what's my best strategy. I usually just try to, like, change altitudes and not, like, slow down. You can't slow down really. Well, I think it'd be during landing sequences. But only during refueling and landing. Yeah, refueling and landing. Yeah. So I think, like, mostly my strategy was just shake myself as much as possible to shake them off of me.

24:30 And then... Are you talking about when there's a lock-on detected or when you see them down behind you? Even when I see them on my radar behind me. Which is really cool. We didn't talk about the radar. But I think that the radar is very appreciated as well. Yeah. Because it seems to sync up pretty well. And that's, like, a hard thing to program, I imagine. Yeah. A radar that also corresponds with where the enemies are in the game, too. Because it's, like, two separate spatial awarenesses, you know, for a game to register.

24:56 So I appreciated that. I like all this stuff. Seems like we're pretty hot on the game, guys. Yeah. No one's complaining. No, I think it was fun. Let's talk about the landing. I think we should wait to get to the landing. Not only because... What's up? Sorry, no. I have something about the radar, but... Okay, yeah. Please say something about the radar. Just, I think that the radar's cool for seeing things that are coming up behind you and around you and stuff, but it's... I feel like it's too wide.

25:19 Like, visually, it makes sense to be a square, but when you're just going forward and you really don't have the option to go left or right on your radar that much, like, your dot is strictly in the center and everything else is going to be in front or behind you. Yeah. So that just kind of becomes really apparent when you're looking at the radar that you really can't move that much. Yeah. One thing I did want to say in relation to the lock-ons. I think it's really cool that it has these things that will pop up that will make you have to sort of multitask.

25:55 Because every once in a while in the game, you'll get a lock-on warning and it'll show you a graphic of your plane in relation to the first person of a missile about to hit you. And you sort of have to wiggle back and forth to get out of its way. And I think when you're doing that, while you're trying to hit other targets and also avoid incoming fire from the front of you, I think that that can get really tense. And I think that's to its credit instead of like a, oh god, I'm overwhelmed sort of feeling.

26:29 Yeah. It does feel like, you know, you're kind of... On the edge of your seat. Yeah. You're on the edge of your seat. You're really battling, you know, the elements out there. Not the elements because it's... You're battling the weapons. You're battling the elements. That'll be funny. Children's clouds down. Weapons. No, but it feels like a dogfight. Yeah. The enemy planes don't just like take it either. You know, they do try to move out of your way when you're locking in on them or, you know, they kind of like... They don't zigzag, but they sway. They swoop. Yeah, they swoop.

27:00 I like that. You do the swoops. You do the swoops and stuff. I think it's all awesome. Yeah. I'm a big fan of all this. And I also think like, what is communicated to you in the UI compared to that first Top Gun game that they said was more technical? I feel like this is pretty well established. Like you have... How many missiles are left? You have your altitude. You have your speed. You have that little radar thing. I don't know what else I'd include. I don't actually know what was included in the HUD for the original.

27:28 It wasn't... There were no numbers essentially attached to it. It was a lot of meters going up and down. The game was more primitive. It was earlier in video games. But I'm just... I'm surprised that some people, you know, like... I wouldn't want to play that game at all after playing this one. This is such an improvement.

27:46 And then it also has a couple other gameplay modes, I guess. Okay. The first of which that you'll probably work with is the refueling, which sort of just happens in the middle of any level. I think it's just time to happen. Well, you press start when it happens. But when you run out of fuel. Yeah, I think it's programmed to run out of fuel about halfway through. And you can call it in when you have missiles that are missing also. Oh, yeah. It also restocks your missiles.

28:17 And that's sort of like a prelude to what we're trying to get the hype up for, which is the landing sequence. But you have to like match speed. And then it's a very different kind of experience. What did you guys think of refueling? To me, it was kind of like a little bit of a tedious interruption to the fun I was having.

28:41 It was cool at first, like the way they handled it. I was like, oh, that's like a workable way to handle what you're trying to get to work. But after a while, I was like, all right, you're just putting the instructions. You're just telling me which button to hit on the screen. It says like up, up, up, down, down, faster, slower, whatever. It's kind of crazy that they even decided to include something like that. Because to Sean's point, it does kind of like, it's designed to have to interrupt gameplay at a point in the mission. You know, like you can't go the whole mission without depleting fuel. Where are the enemy planes at this point? They take a break. They take a smoke break. It's like a respect thing. They're like, all right, he's refueling.

29:17 But like also like ships do refuel. Yeah. So like that's a point towards this trying to be like more simulated. But like, I don't know, I didn't think it was necessary. I did really like that ship though. It comes over and helps to rebuild. It's nice graphics. It's cool. It definitely isn't necessary, but I just like the detail. I just like the immersive touch. I was going to say, I imagine that in the 80s, I would have been like, I would have loved it because of how much more immersive it is.

29:43 Isn't it shocking that there wasn't like a flight simulator controller specifically sold with this game? Like, you know, at this point, we've gotten specific controllers for like even Arkanoid. So how do we not have one for this flight simulator? I think it's just funny. Yeah. But we have to start complaining about something. We're known as the people that complain.

30:04 And before we get into the landing sequence, I think a complaint that I have about just the game overall is that the missions, there's only four of them and they're not really different

30:17 enough. Like the setting changes and the, you know, the look of things changes, but it's not enough for me to say that like, this was a full retail game at any point, you know, like it's fun now as like an arcade shooter thing. But this was designed for home consoles in mind. And I don't really know if it like, if it sells enough. I don't know if there's enough there. It feels a little bit like it's a, it's a one-time experience. I mean, you might want to play it again at some point, but it's not something you're going to be like, ah, what am I playing now? I'm playing, you know, I'm playing through Top Gun. It's like you play it once. I don't know. You might play it again.

30:49 I don't know. I probably wouldn't go back to it that much. I mean, I, I have my own complaints about the game, but I don't think that the length of the game is really too much of a concern because I mean, I would never say that this should be an excuse for a game, but I think the length comes from the difficulty because this is a hard game. It's a, it's a hard game after I think like, yes, the landing, but also like, I think like,

31:10 yeah, the later missions are hard, but I'm not even saying that. I'm saying they're, they've nailed this dog fighting thing, but that's, that's the game, right? Like that's, that's just the loop over and over and over again. And then that would be fine. Like, you know, if, you know, in shmups, we complain that there's no, uh, like, you know, like where are the power ups?

31:31 What's the enemy variety? Like in this game, this is, this is all you get. Like we're not, there are no additional power ups. There's no, like, you know, other than missiles this time I'll take some, you know, I'll take this instead or like, well, I think that when it comes to shmups, like that is such a crowded genre that you have to stand out in some way. Whereas I, I mean, yeah, there were other flight sims out on different consoles, but this is the first kind of game that we've played aside from the very slow paced, uh, star Voyager. Right.

32:04 But I guess what I'm saying is if there was only one shmup on the console, right? Just like, oh, this is our, we'll say this is our first dog fighting game, right? If there's only one shmup on the console, you're not going to give it a pass for not having power ups, right? You're going to say like, oh, this gets pretty redundant after seven stages of this. If it wasn't already established with prior games that power ups were to be expected, I don't know if I would go one way or the other.

32:29 I think just knowing where we are now in 2019, like knowing that where games are, I just feel like I wouldn't accept Star Force as like the first shmup on our system. And I'm just saying like, I think like Top Gun is a great like start for this kind of genre, but it doesn't offer enough variety to keep me, to keep, to keep me entertained for long enough. Like I liked the dog fighting. I didn't think like it was something that was going to like, I'm going to play this for hours on end.

32:56 Okay. This is kind of reminding me a little bit of the conversation we had about Star Force where I know I kind of felt like, you know, none of us really cared for Star Force, but but I did feel like there might be people who just want to play just shmup exactly like the core of that. Like just want to see how good they are at that. And I can see people playing this game for that reason too. Just getting really good.

33:18 Just be, just literally to the basics of flying this plane and shooting it. I mean, pseudo-QD NES crash. Well, if you have nothing else, I think that, I mean, I know that's what we've been saying, but even still, I think that it's the kind of game that you could just enjoy the simple gameplay loop over and over again.

33:35 That seems like right. That is the selling point. Like this is giving you what you wanted when you bought the game. Right. I think. Right. But I, so I think that there's just like a, it's just like a preference thing. Like if you want to just play this flight simulator over and over again, but some, but so I think there are, you know, the same amount of people, if not more people that would be like, well, I want more to this game after playing this for a little while. Now I want something else or I'm bored. Unless you're trying to like. I just think about what the other movie games have offered so far.

34:01 And I just think like Top Gun is giving great gameplay for a few minutes, you know. A few minutes. Are you, are you serious? Yeah. I'm being serious because I think that like, look, what I'm saying is, is that there's no way that this is going to keep me entertained for an extended period of time. Once I've seen it all.

34:19 Okay. Once I, once I've seen this dog fighting thing, right. There's, there's no, like, there's nothing new to experience in this game. Once you've seen that. Once you've done the dog fighting and once you've realized how hard the landing is, that's the game, baby. That's like, that's it. But like, you, is there other, are there new things in any, in even like the, the good shmups? Like the, the, the core gameplay loop is the same in those as well.

34:44 Yeah. But I think like the, like for Stinger, each, each level had different enemies come through every single time that changed their patterns and acted like differently and became increasingly harder. And you had to navigate, you had to figure out like, how do I apply the skills I just learned in level five with these new harder enemies in level six. Okay. And also, you know, your power ups, they stack over time. And I, I pretty sure like for someone in the Stinger level, you're going to want to like increasingly get better powers. It's like Gradius. You don't start off with this awesome ship. You have to build it as you go.

35:16 And yes, it's crushing when you lose it, but it is something that like, as the game progresses, you get this awesome thing. It's not like by the end of the first level, you have a thing with two barriers, uh, two options and extra things shooting at you, the missiles. You don't have all that at the end of the first thing. Well, you get ranked at the end of your levels though, for your, your kills though, right? Like your start, your star count. Yeah. So I feel like that's something, that's like something you can aspire to. That's inspiring to do. I think like, you know, that's like, that's our high score talk always too. Like we always talk about how much, but I think like, yeah, I think that's great.

35:47 Yeah. I think that prevents, that creates a, like a replay value. I think I sit somewhere like right on the fence here between like, between these two arguments where I do feel that if they're not going to include more in the way of power ups and that kind of thing, I want more game than that's going to at least change where I am and what, like something about how it's playing, but that's me personally.

36:08 Um, but you know, if we also want to talk about other things that like we found as points against this game, another thing we sort of already talked about it, but we didn't really talk about it as a negative is once you realize that, that these other, these enemy planes and stuff are not exactly necessarily in like real space around you, they're kind of spawning and stuff that makes it sort of, for me, lose a little bit of that charm.

36:30 Once I feel like that's one of the things that makes it for me like less, this might be like a really meta way of putting it, but like less enjoyable for me to play it because I know that I'm not actually turning and finding it. The game is really controlling a lot of where I am. Like, and there's, other than your rank, there's no consequence for letting those planes fly off into this and another set of planes is going to come from behind you again. Right. Sure. You know, soon. True. It's just like those planes have it what it is. I almost think like, what if this took like a, a radon bungling bay approach?

37:02 Not like in the sense of it's an open world thing where you can explore the whole thing, but just in the sense of like, there's a base that has like a lot of, you know, like, like it's growing. The longer you take to destroy it, the stronger it gets. It has an armada. You have to take out the armada before they get out of the blast radius zone. Right. Like if they, if they go too far, you won't be able to stop them. And then the mission's over that way.

37:23 But also you have to make sure you take down the base at a certain point before it becomes too strong. Like that's a, that's an interesting thing that I would have liked to see done here rather than just, you know, take down the ships, take down, like take down your targets. I think it's cool. Well, I mean, in any, if we're talking about that, you can just let them fly by you and there's no consequence. And then it's like, is that not the same in Gradius? You can let any, you can just. You have to dodge them knowing that one.

37:50 Exactly. Like you were saying though, this is presenting itself as like a flight simulator. You still have to dodge things. But this is presenting itself as a flight simulator and making it, when you don't know this, when you don't realize what it's actually doing, it does feel like, yeah, like I'm flying this plane. I'm really controlling it. Once you realize what it's actually doing, then it's like, well, okay. So I was, I was excited because of how like simulator-y this felt, but now I'm like, well,

38:14 I'm not really in control of, of, of a lot of this. Yeah. You're not, you're not in control of the specific places that you can go, but you, your input is still like what, what causes you to either get hit by a missile or dodge a missile. Right. I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that it's the part, it's the aspect where it feels like you're flying a plane and that, and like you're turning to find the enemies and all that.

38:37 That, that's, that's really cool at first until you realize that like, oh, you're not really, the enemies will just spawn where they spawn and you have to dodge them. Like, you don't have to really worry about where you're going. You're not trying to find them. You're, you're, you're traveling relative to the enemies, not like in a real thing where you're traveling. Yeah.

38:54 And that, that's, you know, and I think that's like, at first you really enjoy it. And then once you realize, which all the listeners here are now robbed of the chance to not realize, to have the time before you realize. Because, but, um, once you realize that it, I mean, you could, you could go either way. It's just personal preference. But for me, once I realized I'm a little bit like, uh, okay, well it's not quite as cool as I thought it was. You're kind of looking for something more like, you know, much later games, Ace Combat, where it's like, there, there are specific planes in specific locations that you have to track down and find.

39:21 Right. And again, I don't expect that here because I'm just impressed that they're even able to sync up a radio, you know, a radar and this. And to be clear, I wasn't, I wasn't looking for that experience until I came in and it fooled me into thinking I was having that experience. Right. And so I wasn't expecting like the NES games have to do this crazy shit like. No, I agree. But I just thought once I, once it tricked me and then I was like, wow, that's amazing. And then I was a little bit like, oh, okay, I see what it's doing.

40:26 We can get it. So let's get into the landing. Then let's talk about basically at the end of a mission when you complete it, and this happens in the training mission too, you are told that you're going to initiate the landing sequence. And then where your radar was now, there's like a series of instructions to move in certain directions or change your altitude or slow your speed or increase your speed. I mean, it's a little unfortunate that it's all conveyed on the same exact screen because sometimes it feels like I need to be moving left and slowing down.

41:01 And you only, you know, you're, when you're engaging in the landing sequence, you're taking time bomb. You know, you only have a limited amount of time. And this is before rewind, you know, like if you're playing this game on a real NES, once you, once you kind of like commit to a certain thing, you might be too far off from ever being able to actually land it.

41:19 If you're down to like your final thousand feet and you're not like in a great position, you're not really like savable at that point. I feel like even if you are doing great and at the last second, you're one tiny input off. Like I felt every time I felt like, wow, I'm doing great this time. Like this is going to be great. And then what would you guys say your, your success rate was? I did perfect every single time. So did I. I had no problem with landing at all.

41:44 For real. I'd say, yeah, I'd say I thought landing was fun. It was like intense and you're really in it. And I think that it's annoying that it's all kind of all the information stacked on top of each other. And if they had some kind of UI instead, like arrows on the screen or symbols or something, I think maybe that could have worked better. But honestly, I was having a really good time with it. I'd say 50% for me. But that's not necessarily the game's fault. I mean, I did think it was a fun segment. I don't know. I kind of feel like it is the game's fault because I agree with you that like, if you're a little bit off, you're, you're done.

42:15 Like you're, you're not, it's not, when it goes to the, um, how do I, like the portrait view of it coming in at the end, I'm, I'm, I'm done. If I had, if I wasn't perfect when it was time for the cut scenes. You guys were aiming for the numbers in the manual, right? Like the 280 and 200. Oh, I didn't read that. Nope. Oh, really? Yeah. I wasn't. Yeah. I wasn't. I was. I was just reading the onscreen prompts. So maybe that was my, my problem. Yeah. I mean, if your airspeed is, is 280 and your altitude is 200 or about like, I think, give or take like 40, uh, then you'll always land. I guess I didn't think about that. I was just kind of like listening.

42:54 I was, I think that the sounds are really cool during this part too, because you can hear your plane, uh, your plane, uh, really like the end, you can hear the engines in your plane power down or, uh, power up. Uh, and it kind of, so I think it creates this really cool sense of urgency when it says you're too low and then you hear the plane like start to, uh, you know, you hear the engine start to roar as you try and like, or you're too slow. You need to, you need to power up. I don't know. I thought it was really cool. I think knowing that there is an altitude and speed to hit, I think that probably could have been communicated better than the manual, but I almost makes me wish that that was like

43:34 information that was on that HUD, you know, in addition to like maybe in the starting section of the landing sequence, like, you know, don't forget 200, uh, 200 miles per hour is like what we're shooting for or something, you know, like information like that. But I did really like the sense of urgency that you get. And I kind of feel like, why is it so urgent to land this plane and so hectic, but the dog fighting felt more relaxed than this, you know, I wish that they would have taken what, taken their audio cues and even just like this, these alert notification systems. Like it feels like it would have been really cool if they would have done more with that.

44:09 I mean, I know they tell you when you're locked on and you can kind of see the missile and stuff like that, but I would have just liked more of that throughout the entire dog fight to kind of make it like a clutching your controller kind of thing. Like even when, even when other enemies aren't on the screen, it would just be cool to have like their, you know, they're coming or something like that.

44:27 Like knowing, well, I feel like I had that sort of, that's what I was describing that I was, it was a pretty tense experience with all the, the stuff happening around you. Um, but you've seen the movie, right? Mm-hmm. Is there like a landing scene? There's no like, I mean, like, let me put it this way. Yes. There's a landing. There's no like hectic landing scene where it's like, I can't land this ship.

44:49 Because like in the, like they do describe it as like everyone that's, that flies these planes knows that the most tense moment is landing and I, I just didn't, I thought maybe it was in the movie. Like you would think that like your wing was like, like maybe a little chip during battle or something and now it's like, I don't know how we're going to be able to land this thing, buddy. You know, it's like, also, I mean, the consequences seem very dire, but you know, you're landing in, in water at the end of it. So theoretically, if you can just straighten out the ship a little bit, you, you know, you crash, but it's not like a certain death.

45:21 Yeah. No stakes at all in this game. I mean, look, I'm talking about like, you, you're not going to go, you're not going to go into it like that. You have enough time to continue to slow, 200 miles per hour is off the table now, right? You can progressively slow down even more and more.

45:34 You have, if Sully can do it in the Hudson River and you have the entire ocean at your, at your display, I feel like you can do it. But he's still going away. You know what? It's all right. I thought that was a special case. Yeah. I'm just saying either Sully is like a superhero, uh, air, air, you know, like air pilot, which I think, you know, yeah, probably there's a, there's a debate there. I think that was the case. Yeah. But also like, I just feel like, you know, that's like such a small target. And here we have like, right. You know, it's a fighter pilot. It's going that much faster.

46:05 Yeah. But like, also why do you, why, why don't you have a chance to just kind of like, okay, we're going to do several passes of slowing down. Like you've seen that at, you've seen that at. Yeah. You're already, you're already. Yeah. This is like, you're at the ground. That's when it's like the problem. I know. What I'm saying is if you see this at, at like regular, uh, airports too, is like sometimes your pilot won't like, they will skip over the airport.

46:28 I'm not a, I'm not a pilot, but I feel like if, if you're at the point, if you're at a point where you're like, yeah, I better circle around. You're much higher. Like once you're at this point where you're going to crash land, you're like, yeah, there's no like after you already circled around a couple of times. Yeah. This is, this is my guess is where you're like, you came in for a landing. There's no, there's no turning back now. You're too close to the ground. I came in for a landing at 900 miles an hour.

46:50 That's on you. No, you guys are missing. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the mission is now over. The landing sequence has just started. What is the urgency to make it the small timeframe that it is? I'm saying that they've oversold the urgency of the landing here in the game because you would have, if the mission is truly over, right? If the enemies are gone, you would have time to slow down, take your time. I feel like you do. I thought you were just saying like, if you realize you're just about to crash, just circle around a lot of time.

47:25 That's not, yeah. I'm not saying right before that cutscene. I'm talking about that moment. I'm talking about the moment where now the mission's over and all of a sudden you're like, okay, great, mission's over. You got 20 seconds to get to the air carrier. I don't think that's what that is. I think that's just like any kind of plane. Landing a plane, especially on such a small target as an aircraft carrier, is a tense thing. And that's all it's trying to communicate.

47:50 I think it did it well. I don't know. I honestly have no problems with the landing sequence. I do think it did it well as far as creating tension. I do have a funny little anecdote, which I don't know if you guys, Sam and Sean, did you guys see the death animation of this at all? No, I haven't, no. I just thought it was almost like a little comical the way it plays off because it's like, you're coming in and it is really intense. And you're like, okay, up, up, up, down, down, down, down, left.

48:11 And you're like, it's like first person. And then right when you get to the point you're about to land, it just cuts to this wide-angle shot. It's like really extreme wide shot. And your little plane in the distance just goes, pshh. It's like a tiny little explosion. It's like not intended to be comical, but I thought it was funny.

48:28 But I will say that I think the landing sequence was intense, but I feel like after playing this game for a while, maybe, I don't think I played it long enough to get this experience, but after a while, I think I might want to be like, all right, I just want to play more dogfight game and not go through this really long landing sequence every time. But, you know, it did convey the intensity. I will throw out for the listeners of the podcast, because I do know this is a big thing, is that you're not alone in that the landing sequence was borderline impossible for me. And I think that that is shared through, like, this is like a meme thing of the landing.

49:00 The Angry Video Game Nerd covered it pretty well about the landing being like almost impossible. And every comment on this Nintendo Complete YouTube video does say, like, wow, I finally got to see what the landing looks like, you know, or wow, all I ever wanted to do was land one time without crashing. Love the game. Never pass the landing sequence. My first ever rage quit was due to that landing sequence. Memories. All those things. So I think, like, they're not alone if they think that, like... I get it. I'm just... My message to them is to just get good. Right. Yeah. Honestly, I thought it was...

49:33 Not that it was easy. It was, like, intense. I'm not very good at video videos. It was just, like... I wonder if a lot of people... I mean, because I didn't read that in the manual. I wonder if a lot of people just didn't read that in the manual. I didn't read the manual either. Like, no one's mentioning the manual in here either, so I wonder, like... Because I thought we were going to all come in here and be like, man, that landing thing was so tough. And you guys are like, I like it every time.

49:49 I also want to be like, yeah, me too. I didn't read it in the manual. I just kind of, like, felt it out. Yeah, that's right. I thought it was very, like, natural the way that you would want to approach it. That's why I felt the opposite, because I was like, it's giving me exact instructions on the screen. Down, down, or, you know, whatever. Slower, right, left, slower, slower. I'm just hitting all those inputs and, like, get it keeping me centered. And it's like, all right, here's your little crash animation from far away. I love that.

50:14 I do have a complaint about the game as a whole, though, and I would have just liked some kind of image, at least on the levels in which you are above ground. Maybe some sort of landmarks or features in the background instead of just a straight plane.

50:35 Or even when you're in the sky with clouds, like maybe some big clouds in the background. I feel like that could have been done with what they've been able to do with the rest of the game, because it would have at least given it some sort of scale. Right, but I think if you have features in the background, that hurts their... I mean, they can scroll left and right in a loop. Right, right. But I guess that's true. Yeah, I guess that would make sense. Because I feel like that hurts their, like, illusion of your sense of place. Yeah. If now you can see, like, oh... Their illusion of sense of place was that you were in no place.

51:07 Right, yeah. Right. And, I mean, like, it is cool, though, when, you know, like, when you're looking down and you start to see the ocean versus, like, the clouds. Or when you start to, like, know, like, that you're getting close to land or something like that. Like, I think there's enough there. I wonder, you know, we were talking last week about performance issues and stuff like that. I wonder if they would have added too much if it wouldn't have been as smooth. Because it's a pretty smooth game.

51:28 It is smooth, yeah. Never got choppy ever. And I think that's probably because they know what to limit in terms of enemies. Like, you can't have it where... And that's probably why you can't have it where, like, the enemies are placed in specific areas. Because they never let more than three enemies on the screen at a time. And I think that makes sense, though. Like, you wouldn't want, like, three coming this way and then three coming from the same opposite direction. And then that could also cause those... And, like, they're not going to program AI that smart.

51:56 So then planes could... Their own planes could crash into each other. Mm-hmm. So I definitely see all that. Also, while we're following up on all this stuff, I will say that Jameson Galanka on YouTube adds, when I was a kid, just like the rest of you, the landing was the hardest because we paid attention... We paid it, he says. We paid it attention to the up, up, left, left, speed up, slow down. We never paid attention to the fact that it tells us the speed and altitude to be at just below the picture of the jet. There it is. And so I guess it is in there.

52:28 I didn't notice that. I'm trying to watch it in video now. I didn't notice that. But that was my major gripe is, like, you know, it's cool that it's in the manual, but I would have appreciated it on screen. But that's pretty cool if it actually is on there. I'm going to try and pull it up, but we can keep talking while I'm doing that.

52:43 Okay. Here we go. Great. Here are some words. I don't know if, like, people just got confused. Like, I don't know what I was thinking, but it does say, even, like, you know, where it shows you the orientation of your plane, you know, and it says, like, speed up, slow down. It says right below the picture of your jet, alt, 200, speed, 288. There is a separate thing, obviously, where your altitude and speed have always been in the left, you know, where it tells you your real altitude and speed. Where you're trying to match it, yeah. I don't know why I just blatantly disregarded that information, but I just also feel fine that millions of others did it, too. I think it's just tunnel vision.

53:19 Like, again, it presents itself as tense, you're feeling it as tense, and you're not looking at it. Well, I feel pretty good that I might be able to go home tonight and land one of these bad boys. Yeah, just do that. That'll make me feel better. I hope, like, maybe I'll just DM some of these people on YouTube and be like, hey, did you know I have 200 and 288? That'll do everything. You hearing that, listeners? There's 200 on the altitude, 288 on the speed. Just listen to this podcast while you're playing it. This will give you better than on the street screen. Oh, not while you're listening to it. That's fine. Left. Yeah, just, yeah.

53:53 Sean's got that one specific player right now. Everyone try it. Whoever gets it, write to us. All right. Anything else on gameplay? I will add that there's two endings for the game. That's kind of cool. I didn't know that. Yeah. There's an ending for if you lose, but do okay.

54:13 But performed okay throughout the game. So if the player loses, but achieves a minimum score of 50,000 points, a still is shown of the player being presented the Top Gun plaque. And the same Top Gun plaque that was awarded to Iceman. It's just his code name. It's not the superhero. In the film. So like, that's kind of cool that you get like this certificate of sorts.

54:37 Like, thanks for playing. Try again. But if the player completes all four missions and successfully lands on the aircraft carrier, a scene is shown of the F-14 taxiing on the carrier and the player waving to the crew. Aw. So I think that's cool. Yeah. I think it's like, both endings are great. Yeah. I'd be for that. What if you don't land on the aircraft carrier, but you still... There's a funeral. But you beat the game.

55:00 There's a funeral with full military honors. It is weird that they specify that, right? I think the only reason why they specify successfully lands on the aircraft carrier is because technically the mission is over, so you could have completed all four missions, but then just don't land. Yeah. Landing's not on the mission. Which is poetic. I guess it's like poetic that like, oh, he saved the world from World War III, and then he just crashes around the world. He's back in the best damn pilot in the world. He'd stopped all those things from happening, and then he crashed. He was already celebrating in a cockpit. We told him to just go around and gamble more coffee.

55:39 All right. And so we can go into the sequels and spinoffs now, and I got good news, guys, since it seems like we all pretty much like Top Gun or have things to like about it. We're going to do this whole thing again in 1991, 1990.

55:56 In January of 1990, we get Top Gun, the second mission, which I try, I'm not going to talk too much about here, but for what it's worth, I think that what I've seen of gameplay, even just in stills, it just looks like a plussed up version of this current Top Gun. So I'm hoping that they didn't add too much that screws it up, but did adjust like the variety in missions that I'm hoping for. So I think that's going to be cool. And in Japan, it was released as Top Gun Duel Fighters, alluding to the fact that you can do... Multiplayer? Multiplayer dogfights too, against each other. So I think that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Then came Top Gun Fire at Will, which was released for the PC, PlayStation, and Mac OS. It was...

56:43 It's the only film to... It's the only title of any game or anything from Top Gun otherwise to have somebody from the movies in it. But no, of course, it wouldn't be Tom Cruise. It's James Tolkien reprising his role as commanding officer.

57:00 He was... He's called Stinger in the film, but he's called Hondo in Fire at Will. So he went through all the trouble to get the actor to reprise his role, but then refer to him as something different in the game. It's everybody's favorite character too, right? Right. Everybody's favorite character, Hondo.

57:16 The game's overall plot focuses on the player character, Maverick, going to combat in Cuba, North Korea, and Libya against a secret group of mercenary pilots called the Cadre. Okay. Is there like a dating sim aspect to it too? I wish that there was, Sean, but unfortunately neither Top Gun Fire at Will or its next game, Top Gun Hornet's Nest. See, that sounds like it could be. It's like the stakes are much lower now. You must go through neighborhoods. Like someone's house, they've called in, they have a hornet's nest. They have a hornet's nest. They have a horse pilot. You thought the landing sequence was hard. In the first game, imagine landing in the kitchen.

57:55 Top Gun Hornet's Nest was released for PC in 1998, and instead of an F-14 Tomcat, players have the opportunity to also pilot the F-A-18C, and it was considered to be a complete washout and received bad reviews for its noticeably lackluster design and gameplay, of which I have seen nothing, so I'm not going to judge Top Gun Hornet's Nest, and I hope that it is what we think it is. Maybe it's like Mr. Mosquito. Sean's a big fan of Mr. Mosquito. Maybe it's like that, where you're just this little F-14 hornet going through the neighborhood screwing shit up. Maybe it's like Donkey Kong 3.

58:37 Yeah. That could also be like that. You know what's not like Donkey Kong 3, though? Top Gun Firestorm, which came out in 2001 for the Game Boy Color, and the following year for the Game Boy Advance. You know, you always got to wait for those next-gen versions of those games. It's an isometric flight action game with missions to complete. So like top-down? GBA, yeah. Yeah, no, not top-down. It's isometric down. Like from the corner. From the corner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. From the top. The corner top of the sky. Right. Top right. The corner of the sky.

59:19 Top right of the sky. Left. Slower. It's not like a first-person kind of thing. It's not a first-person. Nope. Which would have been... I feel like that could have worked. If it worked on the NES, do it on the Game Boy Advance. First-person isometric? Yeah. First-person isometric. That's what it was... It's a lot like Peter Molyneux's Black and White.

59:37 I don't know where we're going anymore. Yeah. Then we have Top Gun Combat Zones, which was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2001. And there's a whole big spiel on this, but basically in 2004 it was also released for the Game Boy Advance three years later. Okay. And the game is composed of 36 missions spread over three eras. There it is. That's going to be your favorite game, right? This is history. It better be my favorite game.

1:00:07 Intended to illustrate the history of the Top Gun Combat School and its near future. In each era, missions are located both at the Top Gun Academy in Miramar and in a live combat zone. Upon gaining access to each era, the academy missions must be performed before moving to the combat zone itself. Makes sense. Do you get to play a mission as the Wright Brothers with like a gun?

1:00:33 They just throw rocks at each other. Yeah. So you get to basically you do the Vietnam War and then the second one is during the like Persian Gulf thing in the 1990s. Well, it's not really a war though, right? Even that like... Operation Desert Storm. Yeah, right? Like it wasn't, but it wasn't like official, right? It was like the president decided... I mean, none of them are official anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get that too. However, the final era is in the Arctic Circle and depicts a future conflict based around disputed borders and a global fuel crisis. Oh my God, this is actually the future. Yeah. Like this takes place in 2021.

1:01:16 Oh my God. No, it doesn't. I'm saying that like it's happening sooner than we realize. Yes. Then Top Gun comes out. The movie. For the Nintendo DS and it was released in February 23, 2006. And that one had to draw your missiles, right? The game, in this game, it's a story driven campaign featuring appearances by characters from the film as well as a set of solo missions and a multiplayer mode that supports up to four players. The bottom screen is used as a map and weapons area. So that's cool. You know, it's like the bottom screen of the DS is just your radar and then the top screen is where you see everything. Then we have Top Gun.

1:02:05 What do you spell that? Yeah, like it's weird because it's like it's again just Top Gun but for PS2 instead of the DS. I don't know anything that would be different about this game. Probably no bottom screen. Top Gun Guts and Glory, which was published by Konami. They must have still owned the franchise at this point. It's released for the Game Boy on January 1993. How did we go backwards? Game Boy. Top Gun Guts and Glory pilot an F-14 Tomcat as they engage against Soviet Union forces.

1:02:41 The game offers extra modes and jet fighters like other USAF series. This is bizarre. Then there's iOS and mobile phone versions. You guys don't care. Top Gun Hard Lock was released in 2012 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. You take the role of a pilot named Lance Spider-Web. Spider. Who graduated from Top Gun under the auspices. Auspices. It's not going to be just reading the Wikipedia. The rest of them probably aren't worth playing. These are crazy. Well, that was the last one, actually. Top Gun the card game. There's a canceled Top Gun game for the Nintendo 64, but that never came out. And that's... Oh, and in 1996, the Top Gun game was also in the works for the Panasonic M2, but was never released due to the systems canceling.

1:03:38 All right. That's funny. Yep. So just to run it all down for you, it's Top Gun, Top Gun, Top Gun the second mission, Top Gun Fire at Will, Hornet's Nest Firestorm, Combat Zones, Top Gun, Top Gun, Top Gun, Guns of Glory, Top Gun, Top Gun, the canceled N64 game, and Top Gun, the canceled Panasonic M2 game, which is the canceled system. One more time. No. Wait, no, but for real though, did anybody expect that? Is that worse than Athena? I expected more sequels than usual, but I didn't expect that. Yeah. That's weird. We didn't even get Goonies 3, but we did Top Gun's like billion sequels. We didn't even get Goonies 1. We didn't even get Goonies 2, the film. Right. Okay. Half-life 3. Let's do the Essential Games list.

1:04:36 Joseph, what are your Essential Games list thoughts? This is a great game. I enjoyed it, but I think that my biggest issue against it is the one I talked about earlier, is that... I mean, I guess it's still very fun to be shooting at these things, but once you realize that they're all just coming in like a pattern to an extent, and that they're appearing in a certain way, I think for me, I needed a little more game to it to make it essential. That said, definitely play it. I mean, it's a fun experience. I think it would get a little tired too quickly for my liking.

1:05:17 Sean? I take a little bit of an... I don't take issue with the fact that you don't think it's essential because I think that's expected, but I think you're hung up a lot on the pseudo... I mean, that's why I walked that back as soon as I said it. I mean, you don't... That doesn't have to be what makes a game good. Yeah. But I think then without that, it breaks a little bit of my immersion.

1:05:41 Once that immersion's broken, the parts that I'm finding fun get too repetitive. Not even that the immersion's broken, just once I realize that this is what the game's going to be the rest of the time. Okay. Like I was expecting at first, I can do more. I can do more. There can be more, you know, than just these few patterns of the planes flying at me and stuff. That's more what I mean. I understand. But yeah, I shouldn't say that because I'm not doing this one thing I was expecting me doing that makes the game worse. Not what I meant. Well, I think that this is a great game for the system. I think this is just a fun experience in general. It still really holds up. Like it doesn't feel like a broken old game.

1:06:23 And that's actually selling it short. I think that the experience is tense. It's exciting. And it's unique so far to this system. And I know it's not going to make it on. And I'm sure that I'm definitely in the minority here. But I'm actually going to throw in a vote for the Essential Games list for this game. Very cool. Sam? I almost said Sean again. I just figured maybe I should have another vote. No. Sam? So I really like this game. I think that it's definitely got a very unique feel to it. And I think that the core mechanics of it are fun. I think it all works well. My biggest complaint is that the controls feel a little bit stiff.

1:07:06 I would compare it to like on-rails shooters. Like on-rails space shooters or something. Because it's not really like you don't get a free range of motion or anything. I would agree with that. Yeah. And so when I'm playing this game I'm thinking...

1:07:27 My thoughts originally went to Star Fox 64. And how I feel like that's not like the exact same thing. It's not like a simulator. And it's more of like a 3D shoot-em-up on rails.

1:07:40 But I don't know. I feel like this game is lacking that one thing to put on the list. Because you can get this experience through other means I think. And even though it's really cool. And things like landing are really intense.

1:08:00 I don't know. I think it's just one element off from being essential. But it was very close for me. So it's a no. But it's definitely a play. I think it's still one of my favorite games that I've played on this system. Or at least one of the tightest ones.

1:08:19 Very good. Alright. And for my thoughts. I think like one. This is a really rare episode of Nostalgia. Where you don't exactly know the essential games list votes going into it. I think a lot of times we beat up a game early on. And I feel like this episode was different. Like we all really enjoyed how this game handled. Playing. I would even argue that in some of the things it doesn't let you do. It's similar to like you know how we talked about in Punch Out. Like the game is better because of what it doesn't let you control. I think that's a case here. I think there's a case for that.

1:08:52 One thing that I don't think we talked enough about in the episode but that I struggled with was that as the game goes on it gets incredibly hard to the point where like enemies are firing like three missiles at a time. And it's like look I have no problem dodging one because that's like you know that's just like keep elevating yourself. You know like keep moving up.

1:09:14 But to get around like three of them at a time it's a pretty tough game. And I don't think that like being tough keeps it off my list. I think what keeps it off my list was the point I think I was trying to make earlier that I'm going to try to sum up better now is that there's one mission in this game. And that's what you do in this game.

1:09:33 I would have just liked to see a variety of mission objectives and goals in line with like some of the stronger games that we've had on the system. I don't think that because it only does the same mission style that it's not a good game. I think it's a great game. I think it's going to hold off on my essential games list vote for this because what would make this a great game that I would recommend to people still today is something like that. Seeing NES games in this style like this pseudo 3D thing they just don't translate well enough for me to like recommend playing today.

1:10:09 But one thing Sean said that I think is really true is this is one of the best games on the console to date. I think that definitely like for me goes without saying. I think Konami is killing it and this is just another example of a way to offer something that nothing else on the console has offered yet. The only thing we could even say that it came close to was kind of like Star Voyager. But Star Voyager was garbage. You know like that was just a really like almost like a tech demo.

1:10:34 Yeah. This is a full video game. And I think that if it was 1987 and you're big on Top Gun and you get this game, this game offers exactly what it's selling to you. I think the problem is that we're in 2019 and not 1987. And that's why I'm not putting it on the essential games list because it's not doing enough now. Yeah. Similar to. I totally agree. I would almost say like my feelings about this one, it's tough because I feel like it's like Metroid. You know, Metroid would have blown somebody's mind in 1987.

1:11:02 Knowing what we have now, I don't think that Metroid is like still worth playing through because it's such a leap back from all the other great Metroid games. Let alone all the other great games that have been inspired by Metroid. I think that it'd be really tough for any first person style game to be on my essential games list for the NES because there's a lot of like I still have a lot of problems with modern first person games. I think it nailed the dog fighting. I think it got a little too difficult.

1:11:32 The landing sequence thing, I'll admit, my bad. I think that's pretty cool that there is a way to do that. And I'm actually like, I'm down for that. I was mostly joking about the tension of the landing sequence. I just would have liked to have seen that same tensions applied to the game because I think like a missile being locked on. There is tension in the game. That missile being locked on to me did not feel nearly as stressful as landing and I just feel like what is more stressful than three missiles being targeted on to you? And I'll guarantee you, I'm dying on them. There's no way to get extra lives in the game. So the three lives you have is that's it. So good luck, you know?

1:12:08 That said, I think it's a great game. I think we're all in the opinion that you should at least try it out and make your own opinion on it. Because I think some people are going to love it. Some people are going to hate it. And for those of us that played it, not me, but for those of you that played it 20 years ago, if you didn't know about that landing thing, maybe go back and check it. Because you might have some hidden skills in the dogfighting thing from playing it so many times that you might nail this landing thing and just progress right through the game.

1:12:33 Like I said, I think this one definitely is one of the ones that teeters more on the edge than a lot of our games. A lot of times you can tell we're going to vote in the first impressions. We just give our essential games. Right, right. But yeah, and I also just wanted to say too that I think Sam said it really well as far as the way I feel is like something, just something missing. Like I wanted something just a little more to this game. But it is a close one.

1:12:59 All right. And that is all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. I hope you'll join us again next Friday. In the meantime, if you want more Nostalgia, you can go to www.nostalgiacast.com. Got all sorts of fun things on our website, including every other episode we've recorded. And there's a little contact thing over there. You can contact us just like we had our guy earlier. Yeah, like mail. Yeah. It's like mail. Yeah, beefcake. Barber, beefcake. Oh yeah, beefcake barber. Beefcake barber. You decide. I don't want to dox the guy. You decide. All right, so does he cut the hair of beefcakes? Of beefcakes or is he a beefcake that cuts hair? Maybe his last name is Barber. Oh, I didn't think about that. Maybe his last name is Doctor.

1:13:46 Barber Beefcake Doctor. Yeah, but he contacted us, so you should. Right? I'd love to hear your thoughts. You tell me if you were able to land that plane when you were eight. I bet you didn't, but I also bet you didn't just look below the jet like the rest of us did, because that's confusing. I feel like that's a Berenstain Bears thing, guys. Like, what is that about? It was there.

1:14:10 And you know, while you're at it, we're on Twitter, at NostalgiaCast. We're on Gmail, NostalgiaCast. No one says that, right? I'm on Gmail. Yeah, we're on Gmail. Get me. Can't you slide into my Gmail? Yeah. We also, like, we're around, if you see us on the street. Yeah, if you hear our voices. Yeah, if you hear our voices talking on the street, they'll be afraid to come up to me and be like,

1:14:34 hey, you're Joe from Nostalgia. And I'll be like, no, I just sound like Joe. I'm Mike from Nostalgia. If you think that Mike and I sound alike, please write in. If you think that Joe and I sound alike, please write in. I agree. Because we're told that a lot. And I get alarmed because I'm like, well, we do a podcast together. So hopefully people know who's talking. I don't think anybody who's sane thinks that. Right. That's true. People think. This is post-show material. You were on a closing rant. I was on a sales pitch. If anybody would like to buy shares in Nostalgia, we're selling all the time, anytime. We're selling the company? 100% of the company.

1:15:12 Is my job at stake? No, no. You'll still work for them. Well, they. You don't know that. You work for them right now. They don't own me yet. No, but they listen to you. So in some ways, you work for them. All right. That's depressing. But so is capitalism. We'll be back. See you later. Bye.