090 · KARNOV

• Back of the Box: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/nes/587379-karnov/images/158113
• Manual: http://www.thegameisafootarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Karnov-Game-Manual.pdf
• Introductions
• 1988
• Objective
  • The game puts the bulging-muscled, fire-breathing, east-Russian, ex-circus strongman KARNOV on a quest through nine different levels to search for the ultimate treasure.
  • title character Jinborov Karnovski
• First Impressions
  • What even is this?
• Tales from the Manual
  • HOW TO PLAY
  • The final fight is IN the manual
• Gameplay
  • Control
    • Terrible programming. Almost everything feels sloppy
  • Enemies
    • Enemy placement and screen scrolling
    • sword-wielding monks, dinosaurs, djinn, hopping fish men, gargoyles, tree monsters, will-o-wisps, rock creatures, centipede women, and ostrich-riding skeleton warriors
  • Power-Ups
    • The clunky UI (Why be able to select them in real time?)
    • the lack of thought in the power-ups
    • The stupid K’s
    • The Mask blinking
  • Turning Blue instead of a health bar
  • Swimming stage
  • Flying stage
  • Unlimited Continues
    • And you can even kill Karnov with the AB buttons on player 2
  • Ending
    • Different final boss from the arcade. Arcade had a Dark Wizard on a similar stage.
      • If you defeat the wizard, you will earn the final piece of the map and be presented with a short endin of Karnov finding the treasure he so desperately sought. Congratulations.
    • Congratulations! The End
  • Music
• Data East is trying to make a mascot here and they have failed
• Arcade
  • Karnov dies in One Hit, instead of two.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • The future is not kind to Karnov
    • Relegated as a basic enemy in some future Data East games.
    • In Bad Dudes Vs DragonNinja, Karnov is the level 1 boss.
      • this version of Karnov is called Kusamoci Karnov
    • Karnov is also the last opponent in the original Fighter's History, and becomes a playable character in its sequels.
      • The next game in Fighter’s History would even get his name KARNOV’S REVENGE
        • The Bull that appeared in the bonus rounds in Karate Champ appears in this game as a secret boss if the player completes the game on the Normal setting or above without losing a round. The Bull is an unplayable character.
    • He appears in the alley background of the Neo-Geo game Street Slam. He is shown wearing a shirt with a "K" on it.
    • In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, a ghostly silhouette who helps the titular character is highly similar to Karnov, and is even implied to be her dead father.
      • bears heavy resemblance to the video game character Karnov. Given his descriptions of events similar to Karnov's gameplay, theme music similarity to Karnov, and fixation on ladders, this is likely intentional.
• EGL

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

00:00 Karnov, the fire-breathing Russian, is seeking the lost treasure of Babylon. He runs, swims, jumps, climbs, and flies through nine levels of gameplay.

00:26 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And welcome to 1988, guys. Are you voting for Bush or Dukakis? Well, love it. Sorry.

00:47 There might be a few coughs on this episode. I can't say that. I just gave Joan the nastiest- Yeah, it was such a dirty look. We had this rule. We had this agreed upon rule. Nobody was going to cough in the 1988 episodes. I think Sam's coughed a lot in the last few episodes. I'm being serious. I thought I earned a cough. Yeah. Okay. Well, first I just want to address that Sean is the worst defender when it comes to coughing. I don't cough. That's true. Ever. Never coughed. It's true. Never coughed. Write in with who you think is the worst cough for listeners.

01:10 Wait, should we all give a cough? Maybe in the post show? No. And it doesn't really matter if you're voting for Bush or Dukakis because we know where the Donnie Darko family stands on that matter. That's true. That's unfortunate. It's a very great kitchen scene where- What does the little girl say? She goes, what's a- How do you suck a fuck? They put on a frequency that we're not giving out. Yeah. So if you want to just tune through, if you live in the tri-state area and want to just go through every single frequency- They're live for us while we're recording. Yeah. That's how you'll know. All right. That's enough silliness. let's get into Karnov a game made by Data East

01:54 and unfortunately an attempt at a mascot character here if you can believe it did you guys get that sense from Karnov that like he was destined for bigger things? No I didn't. I did read that he was supposed to be a mascot and I also read that he's in other games. Oh he's in there I'm sure we always do that I don't know if a mascot status was

02:15 first in my mind I do like it when these third party developers try and make one for themselves like try to force it to happen. I remember on the Super NES I played a game called Arrow the Acrobat. Yes. I feel like that was supposed to be something. Absolutely that's like a Crash Bandicoot Rayman kind of thing where you're like this is our platforming star and that's like Karnov just seems like a very weird choice for those of you that don't know

02:41 this game it puts you in the bulging muscled fire breathing East Russian and Exercus strongman Karnov as you go on a quest through nine different levels to search for the ultimate treasure the lost treasure of Babylon yeah and so Sean maybe give me a little more than that what is like a what is a normal gameplay loop like in Karnov you walk to the right

03:08 jump and shoot fireballs at enemies until you get to the point on the right where there is a boss that you fight pretty much the same way until the boss you actually were describing Super Mario Brothers right I mean like you shoot the fireballs with the fire flower so I could see that I think the biggest difference is that in this game you probably want to mostly always be shooting the fireballs yeah there's just enemies coming a lot yeah and another important thing to note about walking to the right you just reminded me that like

03:38 there's only one game so far that moved to the left right that was Sky Kid what about Metroid oh yeah Metroid you just move wherever yeah that's an exploration game I'm talking about like why did you move no also Kung Fu there was a full level where you go oh yeah yeah yeah you would actually move to the left and then to the right and then to the left you were like a zigzag yeah you were just going up a zigzag staircase anyway I think it's time for first impressions

04:00 Sean walk me through your first thoughts as you played the legendary Data East arcade mascot character Karnov my first impression was when I was reading through the manual and I it sort of dawned on me that most games of this time I think the stories are generated by a game of Mad Libs that the developers create because I think if you take out all of the proper nouns this could be any game's premise

04:33 and I I don't know like the game itself it's it seemed to be what a what a side-scrolling platformer wanted to be but you know I started to play it some more and had more developed opinions later sure and Joe I mean my first thought was that he was he was a very interesting character you know definitely unique as far as game characters that we've had before but yeah as playing it my initial thought was that out of the gate I wasn't crazy

05:06 about the way it controlled but I mean yeah with a character named Jinbarov Karnovsky you know you really can't my first impression was like what even is this on a North American platform in 1988 like this is so like Russian focused it really isn't though it's just a guy yeah no but I guess what I mean is even the design of the character is just something that like to me would have just been off-putting to the American audience at that time and then you

05:38 you follow it up with like he just kind of like shoots these fire he just animates these fireballs in front of him like where are they coming from like his stomach his mouth I think it's his mouth stomach it's just very confusing they do describe it actually now that I look at it in the manual it's fire breathing so it is his mouth but like it doesn't look like that in the game and I don't know I think that's just a weird choice this is a strong man

06:01 I would almost expect like you're gonna do some hand-to-hand combat stuff you know I was expecting more of a beat-em-up game with a character like Karnoff so my first impression of this game really threw me off in terms of what I was looking for based on like the manual and everything and then what I actually got in the game do we think though going back to the context in which this game was released you know it's now 1988 we're nearing the end of the Cold War

06:26 do you think that this was Data East's attempt to broker peace between East and West I'm gonna take I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Japanese didn't care oh okay you know what was happening they were trying to get involved you really don't okay no I get it Karnoff was definitely one of the like brokering pieces between Reagan and Gorbachev getting the wall down and on top of that Karnoff started as an arcade game first and the you know there's some minor differences that I think we should talk about

07:01 right off the bat and that is that Karnoff in the arcade version is a coin eating game because you die in just one hit in the arcade version I can't imagine playing that game yeah it's like anything that comes close to touching you any projectiles and you're just this defenseless guy anything that comes at you one hit you're dead I played through the arcade version and while the graphics are definitely nicer as always you know we've come to expect this in the arcade versions there wasn't too much of a difference between how gameplay functions

07:31 that I actually think the NES version is a competent port and I think that the addition of getting two hits instead of one hit is a big upgrade for the NES so I imagine a lot of fans of Karnoff in the arcade if that existed

07:45 then when they got their NES version they probably weren't like you know hardcore about it and being like oh this isn't Karnoff real Karnoff is only one hit you know sometimes you get people who like complain about difficulties in games and it's like oh there's a there's a mode where Yoshi will just fly you across the map like why would you want to play that Mario game and it's like I don't know it's like it's not for you yeah exactly now I also find it funny that even the home console version in Japan had it worse off because they didn't

08:16 have unlimited continues yes and so we got the hand holding which I'm happy with whether or not you think that that's too much like it's still really hard this is a really hard game it's really hard to just try and not get hit half the time yeah a lot of times projectiles especially during some boss battles I'm sure we'll get into later but like projectiles are coming at you in a formation where I look back and I'm like how could I have gotten around that there was nowhere for me to go and it happened so slow that you just have to watch yourself die

08:53 so let's get into the gameplay and the first thing I just want to talk about is the control of Karnav the character control is something we always care a lot about how you jump how you move how the stage functions and stuff like that for me this was

09:08 apparent within the first 10 seconds of gameplay that this game was not going to be something I was going to fall in love with just because of the way Karnav controls in very specific instances with ledges he does that thing where like if you just walk off the ledge even a nanometer off the ledge you have to forcefully watch an animation of him just falling down to the edge whereas if you would have jumped you can watch a fluid jump animation and control him the entire time what's up with the inclusion of this ledge fall thing I'm not sure this seems like a relic of much older games where

09:47 I guess it's punishing you for not being as intentional as you should be but other than that I have no idea why it's still in these games yeah I think that it's weird that like you said that when you're jumping you can control that but I also don't think the jumping is much better anyways but yeah like you said if the if you can control yourself falling while you're in the jump why would it's almost intentional that

10:10 you can't control yourself when you fall off a ledge which doesn't make any sense right yeah the jumping just overall though falling jumping anything is just so floaty and slow to me that that that was more frustrating to me I found the jumping to actually be a positive side for the rest of the gameplay because because it was floaty I really appreciated that because this is a game that mostly relies on dodging

10:33 attacks because enemies take multiple hits to to get through them and so yeah you're always spamming your fire button but you need to make sure that you can dodge the enemy's attacks and so having a more precise dodge say something from like an ice climbers or a spelunker even had like a weird jump having something that was only like a few frames would have would have had me spamming both buttons all

10:57 the time like a faster jump right having a faster jump instead of a less I kind of appreciated the fact that they had a floaty jump going I guess the reason that it still bothered me there were a few instances several instances where there was some enemy higher up or just above me in some way and I tried to jump to avoid one attack and I could see another attack above but you can't as soon as you

11:19 press that jump button you are going in the slow elevator ride up to the top of your arc no matter what and like I would run into things up there that I didn't want I couldn't dodge because I because I couldn't control the height of the jump and it was so slow that I was just like up there for so long that things could shoot me like I ran into that more than one time and that kind of comes down to enemy placement though in general right now now do we think I have a couple more thoughts on on movement itself sure sure but my complaints are more with like again I think that I agree with with Mike on the fact that jumping itself feels all right but I think that when it comes to hit detection in terms where you're jumping to it's terrible

12:06 it's it's really hard to tell what's a thing you can jump on and what's a situation in which you're not going to clip correctly and therefore land on a platform I think that ladders which you end up using a lot are super sticky too where you would think that you'd be able to jump off of a ladder but you can't yeah and sometimes I feel like you can't get to the top you can't get to the top

12:33 means that you've hit the top of the screen I think right because Karnov needs to stand on the top of the ladder so they won't cut him off yeah so I mean I just wanted to expand a bit more on movement and I mean since we're talking about movement in depth we also have the duck in this game as another form of cover but it's not really a duck he kind of just takes a knee right

12:57 it's like a little bit like a pixel lower on sort of like ducking I mean if I ducked I'd probably just go down to that level except I wouldn't have as big of them of like a six pack yeah and it's weird because the the enemies in the game are all sorts of weird stuff too I mean we have sword wielding monks dinosaurs

13:16 hopping fish men gargoyles tree monsters you name it they're in this game but they also are mostly projectile based characters too yeah and that just seems like a strange choice of like it was really stupid when you know there's the there's the water level and then I see what looks like a piece of seaweed and then it shoots a fireball like everything shoots fireballs whether it's a lion tamer or a piece of seaweed I don't get the design in that aspect at all yeah again another thing I think would have benefited from like even just having a couple characters that just like walk from enter stage right leave stage left you know it's like just having things that are more like

14:00 I'm not constantly trying to dodge it almost like a shmup platform right like every encounter is like a shootout yeah and I saw a strategy online which I guess I kind of use subconsciously anyways that anytime an enemy appears to just walk to the other end of the screen so you can shoot at him without getting anywhere near like you might as well just oh the projectiles your projectiles will carry that far yeah I mean as long as they're I guess I didn't really test it I I stayed a middle distance from every single thing in the game I stayed at a distance that felt comfortable so this way I

14:29 could anticipate because some of them are throwing at you know objects as large as boulders at you and so you have to kind of be you can't be like up in your face with them because they're gonna take you those are the words on a hit so you have that but then also at the same time like you don't want to I feel like you don't want to leave yourself unguarded from a second attack so that's why I kind of like like being in the middle of any particular stage because the screen scrolls with you so I like being in the middle is this way I had like kind of complete coverage yeah again like mentality yeah of like my blind spots right

15:01 and I think you know the game is the game is punishing at first to to people who try to rush through it you do have to take down like every single enemy as as they come up you really there's a there's there's certainly some examples of enemies you can skip you know if you're on a different platform from them you don't have to deal with them for the most part but for the for a good majority of the game you're kind of just like walking encountering an obstacle getting over the obstacle and then you know there's

15:30 these fun moments where like you know use your power ups to solve this puzzle thing and it's like this is not a puzzle like this is like you either have that power up or you don't yeah so speaking of the enemies I think we should talk about enemy placement since that was such a big thing that we left a note of on 87 and so something I'd like to kind of follow up with in 88 not that like this game wouldn't take any cues from 87 games pretty much just going to be an 87 game at this early on point but is

15:59 this a good example of a game that strategically places the enemies it seems like they are in locations I'd say it is an example but I wouldn't say it's a good example it's definitely putting putting them in places on purpose but I wouldn't say that it is the the optimal placement it's a step up it doesn't feel like you can easily strategize like okay there's not strategize but just like learn like this is when this enemy comes to get like the muscle memory of it it's more just feels like just shoot everything as fast as you can yeah yeah and when you have like when you have a gargoyle to deal with that seems like

16:34 enemy placement works more in that favor because that's a relatively still enemy in the game but then you have like those ostrich skeleton warrior thing you know it's like a skeleton riding an ostrich and it like runs across the screen yeah like those things it's almost like you know don't even bother thinking about how you're gonna place them if you're just going to have them enter as soon as the screen

16:59 scrolls their their existence you know because then it's it's not timed to anything so it's just more like oh we hit that specific spot in the stage level so just make just send the enemies right yeah it's more like they're placing spawn points where it if you don't you don't defeat a screen it just you have to get through it before they respawn right yeah that is true there are even those those gold statue men that just appear you'll be on a screen it'll appear like right now it seemed like a random moment no warning and then if you don't beat them in like a second they turn into like something else but if you die yeah if you die you will realize that they actually are

17:39 spawning in the same place it's just yeah poorly planned it's just there's no way of seeing it coming it's like they almost you know imagine in the arcade version if there's only one hit you just get hit because you happen to be where an enemy spawn right yeah I don't think that that sounds fair there was a there was a segment in the game where it's just I think it's not a secret because it's just a bunch of K marks which I guess we'll get into later but you go I go down into this little cave thing and I walk past the point and then the I the guy or the gold guy that we're talking about he looks like something on us out of earthbound for some reason in my head yeah and

18:21 you're thinking of those like silver UFO guys yeah exactly yeah so I passed the point and then he spawns behind you and that's a dead end on the other side and so I think it's just there to be a trap yeah because you can't escape it I ran into that exact same thing yeah you can kill it but it's just it's really ready for it and and it's it's clever game design when you're warned about these kind of things and you're also like seeing these things commonly placed and learning from your mistakes it's not clever game design when it's like all of a sudden this one thing happened to me this one time now it's like there's no rules yeah there's no rules in Karnoff yeah you just kind of

18:59 like like we said the whole thing even when you move between levels and it's nice to get a water level and a flying level but nothing changes in those stages enough that like makes it feel any different than what your task was for the rest of the game yeah like I know in Half-Life to watch out for the the guys hanging from the ceiling because I've learned that if I go into like a dark wet place and I can kind of hear some weird movement like oh I should I should look up but it would it would be different if they just sort of drop down from the sky whenever you were walking through a corridor like it's just not it doesn't feel like you're you're meeting a challenge and learning it just feels like the

19:46 developer wanted to fuck with you a great example we haven't we haven't had really any sound cues yeah in any of these NES games so far I think that'll be an interesting thing to look out for because that would have been good for the gold guys you know like to have almost this like oh no there's an alarm or something coming yeah but you know the closest example I can think of is Kid Icarus had those Reaper characters that if they saw you it would play a different music and then and other enemies would charge at you it's not the same thing because it's not a it's not a warning but it is a warning now that like now that they've seen you you're in danger yeah you're in danger right I like that so while we're

20:24 talking about these swimming and flying stages though I think it's a little weird that you need the power up for these things because it gives it to you immediately so it's like why not just have always had that yeah you know if you can only use them in those stages to begin with if you actually get if you hack the game a little and get like you know like use a game gene or something like that and get the wings they're actually not selectable in any other stage but the flying one even if you have them I feel like it was it was just their attempt to make it like more immersive like look at this cool you've got and that well how it helps you but yeah functionally

21:00 instead of yeah it's like here we gave you this tool that you can use and it's not just like this level is different right you are using it so without without getting further into the power-ups though when you got to the swimming stage did anyone think that kind of became a mermaid for like half a second it looks like he's got my mermaid tail like two mermaid I guess but yeah merman yeah merman but I think that I don't know something about that was really funny to me and it was less funny when he becomes like an angel in the flying stage I thought that was funny too actually because it's just this big bulky guy

21:35 who just got these like angelic wings floating right and that's when the game truly doesn't become a shmup in certain regards because you are just shooting fireballs at other things shooting fireballs in on us yeah they thought they can get away with it but there's we we can detect shmups like nobody's business when when you get attacked in this game if a hit registers you turn blue which signifies that you have one bar of health left if you will to me not the best system to communicate like danger or or this is your last shot you'll know it as soon as it happens like you turn blue and then you die the next time you get hit but

22:15 why not just do a health bar with even just like two big blocks on the hp uh you have that whole ui down there in the bottom you're right um but why clutter it more i guess i'm maybe blue isn't the best color weird um you'd prefer him to bleed i yeah i prefer a bloodied uh karnoff um but it feels like they're trying to do something similar to ghosting goblins where you lose your armor on the first hit yeah and that i like to think it's also weird no but i love something visual i think is kind of i think we talked about this in the ghosting goblins episode that's a cool visual cue to be like you are near

22:52 death like you don't have your armor anymore blue doesn't blue doesn't do anything here's my head cannon um i think that uh what when karnoff gets hit by something he eats it and the blue means that he's choking on the uh projectile and level for the rest the level and you know he's just he's losing oxygen i thought he was just gonna join the blue man group do we know if any of them are russian i think they're all russian spies okay that's a theory for you to discuss on a later post show uh stick around for that in the meantime i think i think it is time now we we need to talk about the power ups in the game and that whole system

23:33 because if we don't talk about the power ups we're doing this game uh like a disservice but also everyone who wants to play this game a disservice because they need to know how shitty these things really are i'd like to start off with the user interface of the power ups because

23:49 it was for a very long time confusing and then uh when i finally figured out what i was doing it left me with a big why yeah it was like more confusing as to like how someone could have come up with this idea joe do you want to walk us through how how it works yeah so you obviously to move left and right you use the left and right on the d-pad but also to select things on this this long menu of of items that you've collected you use left and right on the d-pad so if i'm trying to move over to two to the left i have to be walking to the left and

24:24 that's that really sums it up i mean not much more to it now you can select things while you're paused oh you can i didn't know that so you don't have to do the stutter step okay however um i i understand that there aren't a lot of inputs on this controller so some things are going to have to do double duty um and you can't do context based because we're not really at the point where that makes any sense um but i think that this system would have been much more well received if it just didn't take any uh ui input until you were paused absolutely my point because then if it's

25:00 paused and you select something and you on pause it i can't walk or else right you can't walk or else you'll select something else exactly you have to use it immediately or you can you can choose to use it in the pause menu as well so you can select and use oh you know i did notice that you can because i dropped a bomb by accident in the pause menu but i never thought of functionally using that yeah but i think yeah to sean's point it's such a better idea to it should have never been turned on while you're actually playing the game because it almost feels like a mistake like they couldn't figure out how to not program it to function at all times but the

25:33 fact that you can pause like let's say in front of an object that needs to be bombed pause select the bomb even even press the select button to have it register and then as soon as you unpause the bomb is there that seems like a really effective way to do like a a menu system for for items you've acquired just don't have the input be while you're walking yeah and this is a much better system stutter step thing or i like trying to select something and i'm like all right as soon as i select it i have to be facing the way i want to face and shoot it yeah which uh it almost gets becomes like a math problem after a while

26:07 but i think there's just also outside of like that that clunky user interface there's just a lack of thought put into these power ups in general the ladder seems more like a thing that was added on after they designed the game and said like oh you know there's really no way to get up there we we should just give this guy a ladder i did think the ladder was was silly at first but like i actually that was probably one of my more useful power-ups i thought you're gonna say favorite power i thought it was one of the everyone loves ladder but like you know i thought it was way more useful i thought it was one of the more useful right but i'm saying like do you don't

26:39 you just think that instead they should have just had like multi-tiered platforms that you could jump from one to the other to get to higher platforms like i i used the ladder in boss battles even to get to like the their face level and to dodge items like i i did do that yeah so you can still shoot when you're on the ladder right yeah you can still shoot that is useful uh it's described in the manual as uh use it as an option positioned in a high place or to avoid an enemy's attack so it is kind of nudging you in that direction i also just i just thought it was just silly and quirky and kind of funny i don't know those i like quirky things in there when they function

27:18 and then there's the boomerang which to me just seems like why would you want that apparently they're really good for boss battles but i wasn't having any luck with them i think it's because they actually deal more attack power but it throws one and you have to wait for it you have to catch it or else it's gone right yeah which is an interesting idea but i just not executed that well because there aren't that many boomerangs in this game you're probably also trying to

27:42 like duck and weave through this boss battle so by the time you want to use it again you aren't selected anymore it's not selected yeah because you've been inputting left and right over and over i feel like any extra power that it gives is kind of offset by the fact that then you have to pause like you're not even that you have to like do like a chore to get back to it that puts you in danger exactly focusing on that and like you're you know i don't know i'm sure if you're good at the game you you can do it but we're not or at least i'm not but and i didn't know what to call this one but the manual refers to it as a clapper uh

28:14 it looks like bomb all thing yeah it looks like i um like a like a ninja star here but it flashes onto the screen and kills every single enemy on the screen at one time except bosses cool but like again who's who's do where's this power coming from like what is what is going on like the the mouth breathing fire thing is already enough of a stretch for me but now there's like this item that's in the game that just summons like a yeah one hit like dead thing but doesn't work on boss enemies like well i mean i get from a gameplay perspective why that wouldn't work on yeah i'm not saying i'm immersed

28:50 or anything that just broke my immersion but i will say that what is going on which you just said kind of sums up a lot of what i was thinking while playing this game it was very confusing a lot of things in this game what are the rules also the manual calls this next item glasses but it's like a mask yeah i think it's um that just that just shows you uh secret items right yeah it's actually i think this is a great example of a power up because it the mask will actually blink on the ui when you're near like other hidden items or power ups and stuff like

29:25 that and i think that like that's kind of a cool like metal detector style thing i guess yeah i never used it i didn't either i didn't even notice it was doing that until i read the manual and i was like oh i should probably be looking out for if it's blinking but i guess if you've collected what you need it only blinks though when you have like your cursor on it which you aren't really keeping track right and you can't keep track of because it keeps moving through as you're as you're pressing the right uh d-pad to keep moving on the stage

29:56 i won't go through everything but i think we do need to talk about as sean mentioned earlier those k's that are all over the screen okay what a stupid stupid idea of a collectible you know mario collects coins right and that's like that doesn't make any sense right because it's the mushroom kingdom and do they even need currency in a world like this right but coins are cool it's like they thought about making it an item in the world this doesn't even look like an item it looks

30:24 it's a square tile that just has a k in it why would karnov like oh naturally he would collect the letter k everywhere sort of like in i forgot which shmup it was but how all of the pickups were just other letters oh yeah that was from shmup yeah shmup the movie and it just seems like the art department got lazy if it wasn't it's not even like a cut out k it's like one square tile

30:49 i just you know there's not even a great incentive there because they're like oh for every 50 you collect you get a life and it's like there's unlimited continues it doesn't really matter to begin with but also like 50 of those things littered all over the screen is like hell it takes up it takes up a lot of real estate it really uh you know we were joking about the immersion thing earlier but like it just seems so random that they're placed throughout the stage when there's like okay there's a pair of boots somewhere i buy it okay wings sure k's everywhere like whatever

31:25 whatever whatever karnov you know after you've gotten through the nine stages of the final boss is actually different than the arcade version uh in the arcade there's a dark wizard and that that's high that's like the last thing of the treasure i should also mention at this point that in the arcade there is a map that you are collecting pieces through as you go to each stage to get the map to the treasure it's a very complicated story

31:55 beat that probably wasn't necessary yeah you know like i don't think the nes needed that yeah but at the same time the nes has like no story going on here nothing at all the manual just says you're collecting the lost treasure of babylon so you're not really sure what to expect is the final boss it's a dragon doesn't it in the manual not okay so thank you for mentioning that because not only does it say it's a dragon it shows you a picture of the final fight of the

32:20 game in the manual very casually it's not even like trying to be be like oh you know like let's just sneak in an image of the final boss it's actually just showing him and says here you will encounter ryu in a deep forest atop the mountain good luck so i guess the dragon's name is ryu it's kind of like a dragon snake like thing but there are dragons in the thing that throughout the stages that follow you this one there's like three windows in this in this mountain that he just kind of like pops his head out

32:50 yeah he's actually one of the like i don't know easier battles we've had for final boss i didn't play the final boss i will admit but but watching it looks very underwhelming yeah it's a head that that's whack-a-mole yeah essentially whack-a-mole and as long as you stay in similar positions for when you know which window it's coming out of he can only extend his head so far yeah he just can't reach you wait he won't be able to reach you so say he comes out of the left window if you see his head

33:19 like because first it kind of just like shadows out just walk to the right he let him come out and then just shoot a couple fireballs he shoots one slow projectile it's a very big ball of fire and comparing that just to the to the clumps of projectiles some other bosses fought that were like almost unavoidable just seems like i like that yeah it just seems like this is like a such an such an easier battle yeah and we were fighting dinosaurs as bosses the whole dinosaur not just its neck and head like this

33:48 this guy yeah so i don't know that this just seems strange but even more strange is that even though this is a port they chose to keep the same final boss stage design as the dark wizard the dark wizard actually has those same three windows even though they had to redesign it for the nes version they chose to not change anything other than instead of a wizard which was probably too much for them to program they chose to just reuse an asset of a dragon it's too hard to program a

34:14 wizard you need to have a very high spell book to cast the dark wizard i will say though i like karnav's uh strategy now that i'm thinking about it no other hero just doesn't go into the room with the dragon he just stands at the window yeah and shoots him from the window don't go in there that's what it's his turf and is the is the dragon like guarding the treasure of babylon i think so treasure well we'll never know we'll never know because if you if you defeat

34:43 ryu the uh the dragon boss at the end of the game uh you get a you just get a congratulations the end screen and then some credits but no closure i'm like you don't even get a mention of the treasure actually so you don't know that you're trying to collect this treasure so why didn't the manual the game told me i did a good job though so why didn't the manual

35:06 why didn't the manual just set up the idea that like oh you know karnav was hanging out in town and all of a sudden this dragon at the top of the mountain started casting down evil enemies and it's your job to get to the top of the mountain and kill ryu the mystical dragon exactly you don't have that treasure treasure beat it is interesting it really feels like a rush like they had they had to ship it and they were like oh what can we do for the ending just someone just got out their keyboard and just

35:36 congratulations the end i like to read it without punctuation to congratulations the end like it's just really fast we can get out of here whereas in the arcade version if you defeat the wizard you will earn the final piece of the map and then be presented with a short ending where karnav finds the treasure so you don't even get to navigate the map what is this right there's no like uh you can now play as luigi there's no moment like that instead it's just now that you've collected all the pieces to the map enjoy this cut scene where karnav solves the problem that you were trying to do www. такую такую www. такую www.

36:21 www www.

36:56 And there's only one track in the game, really. Now, there's a music change as early as the final boss. The music changes. That's true. But I think that the more iconic one is probably the one I've played by now in this episode. And it's so jolly. It's weird. And, like, free-spirited. I don't get... This is why earlier I said that this was like a Mad Libs game. Because I don't understand what this circus performer has to do with all of these mythical creatures around him. Because... So, the setting of these mythical creatures infesting the land is set to a circus track. It sounds like a circus song. Which makes sense because he used to be in the circus. But that makes sense for him. Not the setting of the game.

37:47 Absolutely. And also, like, you know, why not something more akin to, like, Tetris theme A? You know? Like, something more Russian, at least? I don't know. That's what I was expecting. Or I was expecting maybe some, like, desert-style music. Like... Why the desert? The first level gave me vibes of, like, a desert... Desert music.

38:13 There's some desert music in Super Mario Bros. 3. Yeah. That is good. Oh, it's great music. Great desert music. We just play that. We should play Super Mario Bros. 3. Maybe we will on this podcast. Yeah, maybe in a couple years. Guys, Data East is trying to make a mascot here. And they have failed. Well, so far. So far. What do we think about the potential? Pretend the game was good. What is the lifespan of Karnov, even if the game is good? Like, how would he resonate? Like, would he be a master chief in this early game development? Well, I guess the question is, what made Mario iconic?

38:52 In terms of his character design? Yeah, that's a good question. Do you think that Mario is... Do you think it's the design? Or do you think it's the fact that he just happened to be in two really good games? I think it's... It's got to be a combination of the two. I don't know. I mean, his design is simple, I guess. That's one of the main things. But I think if Karnov was in a great game, he's kind of, like, quirky and interesting. I mean, that might have some sticking power. I suppose. I think that there's too...

39:22 It's too quirky to become a mascot. Maybe. Because mascots are generally open-ended enough that they should be able to appeal to everyone. Yeah. Whereas there's a Russian fire breather.

39:35 It's just too much. It's too much. Yeah. And also, just like, Mario, you can put in, like, any situation in the Nintendo universe, and it makes sense. It's like, cool. Mario's doing this now. He's doing a party? Great. He's racing carts? Cool. If Karnov's like, hey, come to Karnov party, right? It all has to be... That sounds like you'd call the police, right? Come to Karnov party. It all has to be, like, under the setting, though, of, like, Russian influence. Yeah, so everything is just vodka. Does it, though? There wasn't really any Russian stuff. There was zero Russian in this game, aside from apparently... Yeah, you just have to say it in the manual.

40:15 I just... Alright, fine. You at least have to use, like, the world that you've created here. So, like, you know, skeletons riding ostriches have to be, like, a normal occurring thing. They have to be the Goombas. There's no rules. Again, there's just no rules. There's no rules. There's gremlins in this game, too. And it's like, okay, that maybe they're, like, the...

40:33 You know, who... Is Ryu really an iconic... Is he a Bowser? You know, he's not. Like, they made a lot... They didn't think a lot through this. But, again, like, even Mickey Mouse, right? No video game. Like, let's not worry about his video games right now. Just the mascot element of him. Is it the design, or is it Steamboat Willie? Like, which one... Well, considering that I feel like most people that like Mickey Mouse tangentially may not have even seen Steamboat Willie. Well, I guess that's what I mean, though. It's like, what started... We're too far ahead of that. I'm only talking about what started the mascotism.

41:09 Not, like, what made... Because now it's, like, Mario, Mickey Mouse, Sonic. Like, Sonic can make bad games for the next 20 years and probably will. And has. Yeah, and has already. Yeah. But it doesn't matter because he's already a mascot. Like, you can't take him away. Yeah. I also think... I mean, it's that whole thing where... I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Disney was setting out to make a mascot as well. So, maybe partially Steamboat Willie, but then all the things that came afterwards...

41:32 Sure. Like, I don't remember. I don't know for sure, but was Mickey Mouse designed as, like, a random character? And then they were like, oh, he's so popular. Let's put him in other things. Or was it like, he's our mascot. Let's put him in it. I think it was Steamboat Willie was such a big success because it also happened to, like, sync music to the cartoon. And that was, like, a big deal, I guess, at the time. But also, it's runtime and things, too. Went for it because Mickey Mouse was in two cartoons before Steamboat Willie that, like, Walt Disney doesn't want you to know. Yeah. Plane Crazy and another one.

42:05 Jiminy's Journal and Kingdom Hearts didn't tell me that. In Plane Crazy, he smokes a cigarette. Oh, man. So, Mickey Mouse. And he looks a little different. He looks a little more like a mouse.

42:14 So, I definitely think that, you know, the design is important. Absolutely. You know? And I'm sure that, like, a ton of research goes in as mascots continue. Yeah. Like, Sonic the Hedgehog was probably much more thought of in terms of design and look. It was much more marketing focused. Right. Than, say, like, Mario was even. You know? Like, Mario was probably more like, look at this. We came up with this funny idea of, like, an Italian plumber. How do we make this guy look as cool as possible? Right. And so, it's amazing that it paid off. But you could say that, you know, a good game does matter even more because, you know, Crash Bandicoot had a great, like, start out the gate with those first three games.

42:52 And it's not like his mascot design is anything, like, amazing. Right. But you think of him now and, like, you know, there's, like, a... But that's where I think that there are maybe almost, like, two roads, too. I mean, granted, like you said, Crash Bandicoot just happened to be an amazing game that, like, got really popular.

43:07 But I think, like, there's a simple, overly relatable mascot, like, design-wise. And then there's a Bandicoot. Who had heard of a Bandicoot before Crash Bandicoot? I think that part of it is there's, like, some intrigue, which I think they maybe missed the mark here where it's, like, people have heard of Russian X Circus fire-breathing people. It's definitely a spectrum, though, because you've got the home runs like Super Mario, Mickey, and... Minecraft Steve.

43:32 And Sonic. But then you have, in the middle, I think that Crash Bandicoot is not a success story in terms of a mascot. It was forced for a while, but until, like, the remakes, nobody was really itching for a new Crash Bandicoot game. I'll say, I think that Crash Bandicoot easily could have been a mascot for longer. I think kind of Sony sort of just slowly stopped focusing on it.

43:56 In its... I think, you know, in the time of the 90s Crash Bandicoot games, Crash was on track to be the Sony mascot. They kind of, like, let go of it. Yeah, we're derailing this conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I will say that, like, I actually think it was a very smart decision for Sony to stay out of the mascot race. Because it's not their thing. Right.

44:17 And just to be like, we actually have hundreds of games. Yeah, we just have good games. Yeah. But I was going to turn that into, and then you have Karnav at the other end, which is, like, on the same level of Arrow the Acrobat, and I can't even think of the others. But, yeah, the mascot idea, I think it would be interesting to go into more when we run into more of these games. Maybe we'll have a better idea of what it means to be a mascot.

44:44 Absolutely. I mean, we've only seen the first Castlevania game and the first Mega Man game, and I don't know if I would say that, like, those two are even necessarily, like, the mascots for their respective developers either. They're just recognizable video game characters in Simon Belmont and Mega Man. But I don't know if, like, I think Capcom would probably opt for, like, a Ryu over Mega Man. Maybe. The future, however, is not kind to Karnav.

45:28 They still, they push him for a good while. I don't think he has a mascot anymore. They might have arguably had some more popular mascots in the future. But Karnav does stay in the Data East universe. He's relegated to being a basic enemy in a lot of future Data East games. A specific example being... Hundreds of Karnavs? What? Like, he's just an enemy that has... Yeah, he's just an enemy that shows up in games. Yeah. Like, not even like... Not like a boss.

45:59 Just like... Wow. Yep. Mm-hmm. But in Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja, which is a game, Karnav is the level one boss. Wow. He's the very first boss you fight in the game. And this version of Karnav is not... Maybe it's like his son, because this is Kusamochi Karnav, not to be confused with Jinbarov, Karnavsky. Oh, son of Karnav. So, a little different Karnav there. Karnav is also the last opponent in the original Fighter's History, which is Data East's fighting game. You know, everybody needed their own. Yeah. So, he had Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury is also SNK. Yeah. But Fighter's History is Data East's fighting game,

46:44 and Karnav is the final boss of the game. So, that's pretty cool. That's like a big step up for him. And he becomes a playable character in the sequels. In fact, the next game in the Fighter's History saga, which would be Fighter's History 2, is actually called Karnav's Revenge. Wow. It's just a game called Karnav's Revenge. What happened? They lost the Fighter's History thing. With a face heel turn. And Karnav, yeah, definitely looks evil in this game too, and much bigger. I think they went for a Zangief. Yeah, they went for like a Zangief feel.

47:20 Zangief is from Street Fighter. No, I understand. I'm just looking at you. No, that's fine. You're just looking a little puzzled. And you're about to be very puzzled, because I'm about to rope in a game called Karate Champ into the sequels and spinoff section. Does everybody remember Karate Champ? I do. We got into a fight about how the best part of that game is the backgrounds.

47:41 It was great. The backgrounds are pretty good. Back in our 1986 days. Yeah, but you probably won't remember from Karate Champ is that after you got through a few fights, which are impossible to say anybody got through, but if you did get through a few fights, you would be treated to a bonus round where you would- Flower Pot. No, not the Flower Pot, so maybe that was a thing. That was a thing. I'm thinking more of the- Yeah, they throw Flower Pots at you. I'm thinking of the bowls.

48:05 There's a bowl in the game. You guys are thinking, I know what you're thinking of now, Urban Champion is the Flower Pots. No, they throw it from off screen. Yeah. Okay, maybe it is a bowl. Okay. It is a piece of ceramicware. I thought you were thinking of the windowsills in Urban Champion. No, no, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. But there's a bowl that you have to wrangle in Karate Champ.

48:25 And in Carnival's Revenge, that bowl- What the hell does this mean? That bowl appears as a secret boss. The bowl. A secret boss? A secret boss. If you beat the entire game on the normal setting without losing a round. You fight a bowl. The bowl. Yeah, like he's gigantic. Hold on, let me get this straight. You fight a giant bowl. Guys, I gotta show you the video afterwards, and I'll link it in the show notes for everybody else. I even said a reminder to make sure I do that,

48:56 because it is a crazy- He takes up half the screen. He's gigantic. A bowl, like a ceramic bowl. No, the bowl. The bowl? With horns. Yeah, the ox, you know? I don't remember the ox. Oh my gosh. Well, good thing I have two videos. I have the bowl from the original Karate Champ, and then the bowl from Karnhauser Revenge. Bowl. Yeah, you're saying it the same way both times or both instances. Bowl. Oh, this sounds like a barrel roll with Tom Green, when he's like, a barrel roll?

49:30 Yes, Sean, an ox, okay? It looks like a bowl to me, so I didn't want to say ox, because a lot of people on the internet say that it's an ox, and I don't agree with that. I think it's a bowl. But I think Sean thought you were saying a bowl of cereal. Not a bowl. No, not a bowl. A bowl of cereal. A bowl. Okay. Like the thing that doesn't like red. I see. That's not true.

49:54 Space Jam. Space Jam would have you believe otherwise. All right. We're getting a little out there, but unfortunately, Karnhoff continues to appear in games, okay? He appears in the alley background of the Neo Geo game Street Slam, which is a basketball game. You know it's him, because he's wearing a shirt with the letter K on it. Oh, no. That's what he does with those Ks. He makes shirts. Yeah, he makes shirts out of them. Textiles. He laminates them onto his shirts.

50:24 But there's that. And then this is the last thing, and it's a stretch, and I almost didn't want to include it, but hey, we're at this point. We're just talking about bulls and bulls for an hour. In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, okay, do you guys know about Shantae? Yeah, no. Okay. In Shantae and the Pirate's Curse, a ghostly silhouette who helps Shantae is highly similar to Karnhoff, and is even implied to be her dead father.

50:51 Okay? All right. Not true. All right? I'm going to link a video. You guys can make it up for yourself. But the only thing that they have in common is that Karnhoff talks about, like, fighting a gremlin. He talks? Yeah. Well, sorry. I'm saying Karnhoff, but just like Shantae's father, who's dead, who's a ghost, talks about fighting gremlins and getting over a tree, and that's something that you do in the arcade game of Karnhoff.

51:17 His theme music is also kind of similar to Karnhoff's theme music in the game that we just made fun of, and he has one line about a ladder. And people are like, You know what? It's him. It's gotta be. He loves ladders. Karnhoff loves ladders.

51:34 I'm with you, buddy. Yeah, so I think that's a stretch. I'm going to file that under conspiracy theories, not under confirmed facts. But one thing I forgot to mention because we got so caught up in the bowl thing is that in fighters history, he appears in all three games, Karnhoff. That's the move set. Like, if you watch these videos, that's the move set I would have liked to see in this game. You know? Yes, there's the fireball breathing, but that's like a special move that he does. For the most part, he does some really cool grappling things and punching and kicking that the NES game could have used that stuff, I think for sure. I think that that wasn't... See, I see this game as a direct follow-up to Mega Man

52:17 as just how you can get all those elements wrong. So, you know, Mega Man doesn't have any physical moves. It's just shooting stuff. So, I just like that idea. I like that idea too because we went over a lot of rules in Mega Man and they followed them all, but they've done them all so poorly that it doesn't matter. Yeah. All right, guys. I think with that in mind, it is now time for the Essential Games List.

52:46 Okay, it's the first game of 1988, so don't feel like you have to make this essential. I know you guys are feeling pretty strong about it. That's a relief. Joe, since you seem to be relieved now, would you mind telling us how you feel about Karnov as an essential game? I don't have too much more to say. I don't think it's essential. But the biggest thing right away, barring it, is the way it controls for me and the way the enemies come in and stuff. I mean, all the other stuff is kind of icing on the not essential cake.

53:16 But yeah, I mean, it wasn't the worst game we've played. I can say that. Great. And you know what? I'll take a slice of that cake while you're at it because I also think that this game is not essential,

53:26 mostly for the controls thing. But I think there's just a, there's a lack of understanding in what could have made this game good from Data East. And this is now like, I don't even know, the eighth or ninth game from them that we're just straight up rejecting.

53:40 So they really need to, they just need to chill for a second and just think about it. Now that gets into a whole conversation, of course, about whether game companies even care if the games are good or not at this point, as long as they sell, right? Like if you're in a limited market where only a certain amount of games are coming out each month, you have a great amount of the share in what's available to anybody. So I'm sure a lot of it just went into like making sure that like the back of the box looked cool enough so that you would buy it. And then, then later,

54:10 you know, like where any kids take a note? Like, oh, I didn't like Karate Champ. That game sucked. I'm not going to buy the next Data East game. I wonder how many people thought about that because we don't have video game magazines yet either. But that's a whole nother story. But I say, Data East, you're not getting away with this. We will remember you.

54:25 Sean? Yeah, you guys covered it pretty well. I think that this is just a, I don't think that there was any direct relationship because I think that the arcade game came out before Mega Man. But this is just like a shoddy Mega Man to me in terms of the tools are sort of like your power-ups in Mega Man and the shoot first nature of it.

54:53 It's just not a fun game to play. It's too hard for its own good. It's random. It's janky. It's not essential. And there you have it. Three votes as a no means that there's no way that Karnov is getting on the essential games list. That's going to mean that Karnov will not be on the essential games list. And so we start off 1988 0 for 1. But next week we have Renegade, which is made by Technos Japan. So maybe they'll give us something.

55:24 Any insights on that? I also hope it's good. Yeah, good. I hope it's good as well. And then we actually have another big game coming up for if you're looking in the forecast. Two episodes from now we have Contra, which I'm sure a lot of our listeners are fans of. Personally, I've never played a Contra, so I'm excited. I just know the Vampire Weekend album, Contra. So I've aged myself out of this. What about the anti-government forces in Nicaragua? Is that what Contra, the video game, is a reference to? Maybe. Cool. I'm excited to do some anti-stuff.

56:02 I am anti-stuff. You've heard it here. If you have any thoughts on this episode, be sure to write to us on Twitter, at NostalgiaCast. You can let me know all your thoughts and thoughts on future games. I'm Michael Espozito. You can find me on at Espozito Film on Twitter, and we'll talk to you soon. What? www.mo такую такую www.mo такую