091 · RENEGADE

• Back of the Box
• Manual
• Introductions
• The Warriors
• First Impressions
  • This is what fighting in your dreams is like
• Objective
  • Fist-fight your way through 4 stages as you take down punks and “thugs” along the way. In the first NES Beat em Up
• Tales from the Manual
  • Has cheats to go to Stages 2 and 3
• Gameplay
  • Why did they reverse Punch and Kick depending on direction?
  • Do Punches connect? Who has priority here
  • Stage 1 - bat guy is ridiculous
  • Stage 2 - Motorcycle fight
  • 3 interesting grapple moves, but the swap of buttons makes it confusing
  • P-Symbol allows you to become one punch man
  • Questionable fight with women in Stage 3
    • Described as Killer Kung Fu Females in the manual
  • Final boss fires a gun!
    • One hit and you're dead, no matter how much life you had.
  • Ending - The hardest cut to credits you’ve ever seen
• So what the heck is going on in this game? What’s the deal?
• Arcade
  • Different enemies and bosses
    • originally high school delinquents, bōsōzoku members, a sukeban along with her minions, and finally Yakuza members in Kunio-kun
    • And you gotta save your Girlfriend
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • On June 28, 2018 a port for the Nintendo Switch was released by HAMSTER as part or their Arcade Archives series. This port includes both original US and Japanese arcade game, making it the first time the original Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun being released in the west commercially.
  • Target: Renegade
    • Sequel on NES in 1990
    • Made by Taito this time
    • More traditional looking Beat Em Up
  • Renegade III the final Chapter on MSX
    • Unlike the first two games, Renegade III follows the character known only as "Renegade" as he travels through time to rescue his captured girlfriend
  • Technos had no involvement with the Ocean-produced Renegade sequels.
  • Technos produced numerous games starring Kunio in Japan. Some of these were localized in North America as Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom and Nintendo World Cup.
• EGL

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

00:00 Renegade! 2am is no time to be alone in the subway, and you're about to find out why.

00:22 Nostalgia 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 guys, today we're going to be talking about the 1970s film, The Warriors. Why did you know I was going to say that, Sean? Because it's just The Warriors. And it has that vibe though, right? Yeah, you're in the subway, you're beating dudes up, you're beating women up at some point. Whoa, whoa. Slow down, slow down.

00:54 I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation. I hope so. I was very confused. Yeah, the box art itself for Renegade is definitely giving me the Warriors vibes here. I don't know if you guys saw it, but it's the red spray paint for Renegade, and they've Americanized the whole thing from the Japanese version. The Japanese version is completely different. It's worth mentioning. So we're going to be talking about the American version of the game. Hopefully that won't confuse anybody. Hopefully you all grew up on this version.

01:23 And... Mike, what's the name of the game that this is a port of? What is the Japanese name of this game? Oh, I thought it was Renegade. What is it? I can't pronounce it. Oh, yeah. Oh, I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, Niketsu Koa Kuni Ko. Kuni Okon. Niketsu Koa Kuni Okon. Yeah. And Kuni Okon is, I guess, like the person you play as in the game. I don't know what Niketsu Koa means, but... I think it actually... That's pretty cool. The translation is very, like, hardcore.

02:01 It's like, I will beat your ass on the subway. Something like that. That's cool. We should talk about the objective of this game, which is basically a fist fight through four stages where you have to take down punks and self-described in the manual thugs along the way. I didn't want to say the word thugs. They made me. I think, I'm pretty certain, this is our first NES beat-em-up. Yeah, I think so. And what I find interesting about the objective is that it's also the first time that your objective is just to defend yourself.

02:37 Yeah, you could see it that way. I think most games are that. But most games, like, the objective is to save someone or to go find something. You've got to save your girlfriend or you've got to go find this thing. This is just like, these people just attacked you. You were just minding your business. So you're getting jumped in this game over and over. You're getting jumped in this game at 2 a.m. on the subway.

02:56 And that's where it all starts. And then you just proceed to continue to walk through various places where you continue to get beat up. Right. Long story short. That's where it gets a little confusing. You got jumped. How are you in this building now? How are you? Right. What made this guy so badass that he became a target?

03:12 The whole city. Are all the people from all the different stages, like, in cahoots with each other? Maybe. We'll get to the bottom of that. But first, I just wanted to talk about the beat-em-up genre in general because this is our first one. Sean, can you describe what a beat-em-up is? Turtles in Time? Yeah, Turtles in Time. There you go. Perfect. In fact, most Turtles games, that's a fantastic beat-em-up. Joe, you know any beat-em-ups?

03:35 I'll go the route of, like, actually giving a description of what it is, which is- I thought that was a good enough description. No, I think that is good, but I don't have a good example. So, I'm going to say it's games where you beat them up. Okay, wow. That's fantastic. You have to beat up people. It's basically, instead of a side-scroller in which you have two axes of walking, in this one you have, no, I'm sorry, one axis of walking in a side-scroller. You have two. You can walk to the back of the screen, the front of the screen, and left and right.

04:06 And you have, like, a much more tactile, I guess I don't really know the correct way to describe the fighting. I'll give it a shot here. Alright, so, a beat-em-up is a free-roaming game where the enemies are also free to roam around the stage. You have to kind of seek them out while they simultaneously seek you out. And the idea behind, you know, most beat-em-ups is that you have to clear off all the enemies on the stage for the level to progress. Yeah. So, sometimes that is locking you to a screen before the screen will continue to scroll. In this particular instance, it's a little more involved in that. It's actually, like, a door will open or you'll have to get on a subway or get on bikes. Yeah, for like a minute. For a hot minute.

04:54 But I think that that's nice to have a different variety because we've seen what could have been beat-em-ups before with games like Kung Fu and stuff like that had they have just, you know, taken on those concepts instead. But because now you're finally free to roam around the stage, there's kind of like some choice involved on your own part of how you're going to tackle the enemies. You don't have to clear the enemy directly in front of you to get to the next one.

05:22 It plays a little bit more expressive. Yes. And you can be as aggressive or as defensive as you want. And so, it sounds like Joe went defensive. Yeah. I didn't actually. He just curled up into a little wall. I'm just talking about the way the manual describes it. It says that you're just defending yourself. So, do you want to give your first impression? Yeah. Actually, the first thing that I thought of was that this is a very, the backgrounds in this are very nice looking. They're very clean and very, there's, there's, there's a lot of very clear signs in the background and the subway looks nice. It is a, it is a nice looking game off the bat. Okay. Sean, first impressions?

06:00 Um, my first impression was, was sort of, uh, in that same vein where I did appreciate that, uh, the backgrounds had more context. They seemed to be based on actual places instead of, uh, a labyrinth that had like windows in places. You know what I mean? Um, I did like that the, the stages were real places. Um, that was really all I saw at first though. So, and my first impression, which seems to be a little different from yours is that for both of your guys, uh, this is what fighting in your dreams is like, like when you have a dream and all of a sudden you start throwing punches, but they don't do anything and everybody can reach them.

06:46 Uh, that's, that's my impression from here. Uh, because I, I had a difficult time playing this one. Uh, I did get a little better as time went on. So I'm not saying the game is awful. I'm saying that, uh, definitely my, you know, you got to learn this one. Uh, it's not, uh, it's not all there laid out for you. It's not easy by any means, uh, throughout the entirety of the game, to be honest, had there

07:09 have just been maybe a little more, um, simplified control scheme, which we'll get to, uh, this could have been a winner. First, we have to talk about one thing in the manual that I noticed that I thought was very odd in the manual. Uh, there's a description of like each stage and stuff like that, and then how to control your characters and then different things that you can do, uh, with your character.

07:31 And then there's just like this page that's just like cheats to get to stage two and three. Mm-hmm . . . If you're tired of dying on stage one all the time, here's a, you can press this combination of buttons on controller one and two, and you'll get to immediately go to either stage two or stage three. They will not let you go to the final stage, stage four, uh, by means of cheats. It was interesting to me though, and I think this has actually happened before and I just didn't know about it, but that you have to hold one button down on controller one while putting the inputs in controller two.

08:06 Yeah. I didn't know that was even a function. I think the function of that, um, is to make it, make the lazy people not cheat because I was lazy enough, because I did end up wanting to just skip because I kept dying. Right. Um, uh, but I, that was just too much for me. So I ended up playing it over again. Yeah, there's a, there's another implementation implementation that we didn't talk about in the Karnov episode where if you are player two on Karnov, you just hold down A and B and like after like, I think a few seconds, Karnov will just automatically die.

08:39 What? Yeah. It's like, it's just to. It's like a soft lock thing. Like a soft lock. Yeah. Reset yourself and back to the beginning of that level. And crazy stuff. But we didn't talk about it. So we're going to mention it now because that's the only instance we're ever going to have to bring that up again. We'll talk about Karnov in every episode going forward. Hope. Well, he's our mascot.

08:59 All right. Now we're talking about Renegade. Let's talk about gameplay. I am going to bring up my biggest issue. First and foremost, guys, why did they reverse punch and kick depending on direction?

09:11 See, I think it's a good idea in like on paper, like, context controls. I think the controls are big now where everything sort of depends on what you're doing as a player character. But for this, it doesn't, it just, it feels like your wires are getting crossed every time you turn around. Yeah. I think because it's punching and kicking, I think what they were trying to do was there was a shmup that we played like this where it was directional. Section Z was like, you can use this button to turn around and then that, this button for shooting. No, no, no. It was another one where I think it was the one when you're in the jet pack where A shoots to the right and B shoots to the left. Yeah. That's section Z. It is section Z. Okay.

09:57 So then the, in this, I think it was trying to do that, but then making one direction, the direction you're facing, the punch and the other direction, a kick just makes it so much more confusing. This is just an archaic design choice though. For me personally, like I can't understand this because we've had plenty of games now that understand that like direction and actions don't, shouldn't change. Like there's no, for me, there's no rationale why, why punch and kick should change depending on the direction you're standing in. Right. Well, it's the directionality of the attack though. Like the kick only happens behind you. Right. It's yeah. So, so imagine if it was just punch. A is the punch to the right. B is the punch to the left.

10:41 I feel like that's just, that's makes more sense in your head right away when you tell it, when they tell you that the manual says something like, you know, it says when facing the right, A is the punch, B is the kick. When facing the left, B is the punch, A is the kick. Like that just, just say punch to the right by hitting A, punch to the left by hitting B. But that's not what it is though, right?

11:00 Yeah. Attack to the left by hitting A, attack to the right by hitting B. It's just that why would, look, I just can't, I really can't forgive the game for this. I'm not going to get on it. I don't disagree either. I just don't, the kick button can, if kick button stayed to be B at all times, right? Let's just say that. Whether you were facing either direction, I get that it kicks from behind.

11:20 Why would that matter though? Like, why would you have to change that? I don't know. There's no reason, right? The only kinds of games when I can see like this, this make any sense is like twin stick shooters or stuff like Smash TV. Right. But that is a completely different kind of game. And this isn't it. Does the kick do anything? Does it have a greater distance? I feel it's a bit stronger and it has a wider. I found, I found the kick to be like a better option if you can, if you can remember which, which button it is at that particular time. Uh, I also thought that like the jump kicks were the best thing in the game.

11:55 Sometimes. That's when you hit A and B together. So I just kind of defaulted to that because I couldn't bear to remember like which buttons I needed to press. I'm being serious. Like I really got confused by this to the point where I was almost like I didn't want to play the game. I couldn't wire my brain to remember like, oh, facing this direction, better use this button. My solution to that was to never think I'll have to kick this guy off to punch this guy.

12:18 It was just if they're behind me, if they're behind me, I hit A or whichever. If they're behind me, I hit A. If they're in front of me, I hit B. And just ignore whether it's kicking or punching. No matter which way I'm facing, just press the button in the direction of the enemy. Yeah. Which is flawed because then you don't, you don't think about kicking and punching. I ended up being able to get a little okay at this game. But that was, again, it was completely unintuitive because of that though.

12:43 And in terms of priority, right? When it's you and the enemy hitting at the same time, who's got the priority here? I feel like the enemies really get like, especially the ones with weapons have like a major priority when it comes to registering attacks, which is upsetting because you're taking on like four to five enemies at a time. And they do gang up on you. So you could be in a grapple with one of them. And then the guy with the bat just comes over and whacks you with it and you fall to the ground.

13:14 Yeah. It's simulating an actual street fight. Yes. And to that, I give it some credit. Sure. Like, no, it did feel like I was definitely in a losing street fight. Like, there's definitely like a thousand simulations where the main character dies because he can't fight five guys at once. But a lot of times when I'm in an actual street fight, the guy in front of me, I'll be accidentally kicking behind me and not realizing I'm trying to punch the guy in front of me and I forget. It's like what fighting in your dreams is like. Yeah, that's true. I really found that bat guy in stage one to be absolutely ridiculous though.

13:46 My thing for him was jump kicks working and I would take him out first. Mm-hmm. I felt like it was a losing strategy to just leave him with the bat and just try to deal with other people. Yeah, because you're right. His attack is so fast. You can't get near him if he's about to attack. Mm-hmm. All of those weaponed boats. I think the weapon holding characters are actually weaker though in terms of how many times they have to get knocked down.

14:11 Yeah, which is great. You know, it's a good design decision from the game to make something happen. And I'm not saying that it took a ton of jump kicks. I think that, you know, if anything, like the jump kicks on weapons makes even more sense if you think about it because you're not going to punch some guy with a bat. He's going to take the bat and spot your hand. You might as well just aim for his face with your feet. Aim for his face with your feet.

14:38 You know, and while we're talking about like the combat things here, like your options, you know, they did give you a fair amount of things you can do. There's even a running punch and a shoulder throw. Yeah. And you can even knee the enemies. Yeah. It's just that a lot of that stuff is is contextual. I yeah. And I also don't know how I triggered it half the time. I thought it was, oh, I just hold the opposite button and then he'll throw them into the enemy behind me. But then sometimes I would just let go of him.

15:09 I didn't really know what I was doing when I did those things. Yeah. Same. When I came up, I was like, yes. Yeah. Keep going. Might as well capitalize on it. Yeah. I felt like if I was doing like maybe like three punches in a row that connected, I might like somehow just grab onto the guy from there. And then and then I would just immediately go for that shoulder throw. I thought that was awesome. So you knew how to do the shoulder throw. Yes. Yeah. Which is just the controller pad in the opposite direction.

15:37 Oh, OK. Yeah. So if they're to the right, then to the left and so on and so forth. Yeah. That one makes sense from it. It would actually be like the worst thing they could have done at that point was be like, oh, well, if you want to do a shoulder throw, you should hit the directional in the button that he's facing. Yeah. It's also at the directional pad, which we're already programmed to say that has to do with directions. Yeah. A and B were very rarely like this is left and this is right. Yeah. And then there's another one, too, where if the opponent is knocked down and hasn't gotten up yet, you can actually like get on top of him and like, yeah, give him a little lap dance.

16:13 Yes. That's what you're doing. That's also a good way to dispatch because they always get back up. But if you make sure you sit, you sit on him and punch him a couple of times, you're like, this guy's not getting back up. This is how you actually fight.

16:24 Well, yeah, this is a great combat simulator. Hogan's alley was a great FBI detective. They always get back up. You got to immediately get on top of him. You know, it's funny. Can I can I segue into a manual thing about the sitting thing for real? Well, the in the manual, the description for attack an enemy when he's sitting down pretty long description. But it gets to when the enemy is lying on the ground, stand over him, push the control pad down to make the renegade sit on him and then start punching.

16:54 That's how I read it. And then start punching. It's so funny. You don't know when it's going to end. Just keep going. Just they attack you. They deserve it. Exactly. I'm not I'm not I'm not for these guys. Violence begets violence. I'm listen. I'm all for the different ways that you can attack your enemies. Well, with without like overcomplicating it. Right. There's no there's no like when you get into a grapple. There's no selection choices. Would you prefer that? No, I wouldn't. That happened in tag team wrestling. Right. There's also no like power up system. It's like, oh, I don't have the shoulder throw right now. You know, like that would have been obnoxious. So I'm all for this part of it.

17:37 It's really that that punching and kicking opposite mirror world thing that I really don't like. Yeah, that that wasn't great for me. And also, I do think that the controls being the punching and kicking. It's like hard to tell. We said earlier, it's hard to tell if you're registering a punch. So I feel like I'm like an inch away from their face. And it just felt I mean, they do. They do they do at least give good feedback that they have been hit.

18:01 Right. And it's hard to tell when I will if I'm close enough to hit him or like if I'm going to hit on this. You don't have very good range. Right. Which I think sometimes it looked like I was hitting and then there was no reaction. I think the range thing is fine. Yeah. I think that the bigger problem. I wouldn't want an arm that extends like beyond belief, you know? No. It's not Space Jam here. OK. I love how many times I'm trying to bring up Space Jam every episode in 88.

18:30 Because Michael Jordan was in college. Anyway. I thought he was born in 1988. Oh, yeah. Maybe. No. Oh. Michael Jeffrey Jordan was not born in 1988. Anyway. I don't mind the range of the punches because again, like if we're talking about like, you know, it's really trying to feel like a you verse five kind of fight like that's fine. But, you know, the game's got to give in some kind of wiggle room. And the register in the punch thing is where I have the problem because it's like you feel like you're seeing the graphic like like as if you're punching him, but the pixels are touching. Right. The pixels are touching.

19:06 That's a hit to me. If pixels touch. That's very Larry David of you. Pixels touch it. That's it. But also, I think sometimes you're so close that like, yeah, you're not hitting, but like the game needs to kind of maybe give you a little leeway. Like I'm not going to stand in real life in a fight against an opponent just one quarter of an inch far enough away where like my fist doesn't hit. You're not going to. I'll lean forward, you know, in like real life. That's that's that's not going to happen. You know, you have been using this as like.

19:38 This has been training. Yeah. Working out and watching playing some renegades. I've actually been using this to get stronger at Mike Tyson's. Wow. This is just training. This is like swinging with multiple bats. Yeah, exactly. So stage one, overall, pretty cool. You get in the subway and then you fight some people there, too. So it's like it's neat that you're it's neat in the same stage and you're still going to different environments that are, you know, like everything makes sense as a concept. Yeah. Stage two.

20:06 Then there's like you're in like a like a bunch of motorcycles are parked out and then there's people just like riding their motorcycles into you like kamikaze style. It happens. What's up with that? It happens. You ever been in a fight where the motorcycles came in? Have you ever been mugged by an entire city? The cyclists get on you and that's actually what's happening in this game.

20:27 Yeah. Also, like with the with the motorcycle thing, though, Sean, I can understand like one guy gets road rage and starts charging at you. We're talking about multiple people here on motorcycles. We're talking about a premeditated attack on bad dude or what is it? Mr. K. Yeah. Mr. K. Um, so obviously if motorcycles are involved, they're going to be used as weapons. This is just common sense street fighter street fighting tactics. But is his name not Renegade? It's not Renegade. Because the manual certainly refers to him as Renegade.

20:58 It's Mr. K. Uh, yeah. But here's here's another fun thing. Mr. Karnal. That sees us. So stage one had the whole subway thing where like one thing we didn't talk about that was awesome is that you can shoulder throw people onto the train tracks. Oh, shit. And that's an automatic death.

21:13 Like like the train never comes and hits them, but you can throw them off the ledge. I think that's really cool. Did you wait? Did you just like wait over there? I would wait over there and get into like a grapple and then just throw them over and that's fine. That's not cheap. You can also throw people into the water in that motorcycle level. Yes. And so that's what I'm talking about. These are cool things, right? And the subway one specifically because it's like you see the subway and then you go into it and have a fight there.

21:36 Do we really need like we already see the motorcycles. We're alluding to the fact that we're probably going to get on one, which is cool because you're not expecting that to begin with. But do we need people on motorcycles beforehand attacking you to sell the idea that like this is a motorcycle themed stage? Like I'm fine with the motorcycles being in the background. I would have even liked to have picked one up and just smashed it over someone's head like Super Smash Brothers Wario style. Yeah. I mean, I, I, it didn't really bother me that that's happening, but I was definitely like a little, a little taken aback when I just saw people riding at me on motorcycles.

22:11 Yeah. But that leads to the motorcycle fight, which is really cool. You're now on a motorcycle. This is unexpected. And you drive the motorcycle as other people, bad guys are driving their motorcycles and you have to like, you're still punching and kicking. Yeah. But it's like weird again. The controls get kind of weird here where you have to like hit the direction in a certain way to lean the motorcycle down and, and then register. See, this, this level was more intuitive to me because there are only two directions that, I mean, yeah, there are only two directions that you could fight in, in the other one, but you're always traveling in the same direction.

22:47 So. Yeah. This one doesn't have the mirror world problem. Yeah. I'm not saying I have, I have a huge problem with it. I just think it's, again, it's another unnecessary step to take because there's nothing wrong with also just like, you know, like just kicking, having a kicking button in general. Yeah. You know? That's true. But, but yeah, like to your point, if you're going to lean to the left to get closer to the guy, that's how you would kick them anyway. That's how you would do it. Yeah. This also being a simulation for motorcycle fights. Absolutely. And everybody usually kicks in motorcycle fights. Yeah. Just watch out for that. Uh, no one, no one, you know, is responsible and parts the motorcycle and fights. We fight on our motorcycles.

23:30 Uh, in stage three, there is a questionable fight with a group of women. Yeah. At this, this level, it looks like you're just fighting a bunch of clones of Linda Belcher from Bob's Burgers. I thought that too. I didn't even watch Bob's Burgers and I was going to bring that up. It is the weirdest gang ever. They are described in the manual as killer kung fu females. Which I also thought was out of place because everyone else is just like thugs and like, these are like professional fighters. Like they are, they are trained fighters. It's ramping up now, Joe. But, but then the next level is just more thugs.

24:10 of Navy SEALs or something, but it was just more thugs. Call them killer kung fu females if that's what they are, but dress them up like that too a little. Why don't you? Don't make it look like, I swear, did they have purses or something? The thing like this is, it's, it's almost like tasteless, right? It's like one, they've given no credit to females in general by making them look like they couldn't put up a fight, but then they go ahead and fight you with their purses, which is insulting.

24:38 I hate them. They could beat you too. Right. But then you beat the shit out of them. I almost feel like they realized this in, when they were writing the manual and they're like, let's call them kung fu females. Give them a little more, you know, credit. Killer too. Yeah.

24:53 It was strange. With their all- It is really tasteless. Yeah. Playing the game. And there's all, there's not like, you know, it's kind of weird cause like there's not a lot going on in this stage otherwise. You're just like at a bar. Yeah. There's no like, um, you know, stage two at the motorcycle fight stage one had like the subway theme, which was cool. It seems like we're almost like ramping down. Things are getting more calm. Now you're just, now you're just being an asshole at a wine bar.

25:21 Yeah. Bold of you to assume it was a wine bar. Yeah. Cause I also, yeah, noticed that after that you go in to fight like the boss of the stage. You like go into a building. You sought out this boss. Yeah. You are attacking. See, this is what you are no longer the victim. The NES is clearly, uh, the NES port has, and I'm joking here, has left out like a cut scene where you finally like grab one of the people you beat up and you said, tell me who's responsible. Where were the other drugs going? They spill. They spill all the beans.

25:52 And now you're heading to this place, which brings us to stage four because it's like a, it's a funny like maze of sorts where there's just, you know, clear all the enemies in the room and then you got a choice door a or door B and you don't know what's behind either door and you could just wander off forever. You run into like somebody just like enjoying their dinner and then you start fighting them.

26:15 Right. I think that I forgot what's the, the, the big burly woman's name. I don't know if they have names, but there is a name because if you die, it says like name. Oh, that's funny. You, you're not tough enough for me. I thought it was always the same guy saying that. No, no, no. All right. Well, I don't know the names. I couldn't tell you, but that's kind of funny that, um, that like, you know, I don't like, you know, the, the idea of like each character being like, like, you know, it's like a watchdogs three. Like all the non-blable characters have lives outside. I really can't believe the watchdogs three ripped off this game.

26:54 It's absolutely insane. Uh, so say you do make it through this, uh, maze of a building, which really should just be like checking each floor. Right. Like, like there's no way that you would open up a door, go to another door, do that like several times and then open up another door and only to be like, oh, back at the beginning, like, was this a Scooby doo?

27:18 Like you don't know which doors you entered and exited. Hey, those scenes were always funny. Even, I feel like Link had more contextual awareness of where he was in dungeons than this guy does in a building. Sure. Whatever. But say you make it to the final boss, uh, which is not the final room. You, you know, like if you look at the layout, I think it's actually like the room K or something like that. If you make it to the final boss. Wow, it's that big. It's just, yeah, it's pretty big. Um, it goes all the way to P I think. The final boss is just a guy with a gun.

27:53 I thought it was a shiv. It's a gun. It's a nine millimeter pistol, right? And he shoots bullets and they're, to be fair, to make it, you know, like it actually is a simulator. One shot, you're dead. It doesn't matter if you have full health or not. You get hit by a bullet, you're dead kid. Not even if you punch the bullet. You can't punch the bullet. Uh, that'd be cool. You just watch him catch it. Mr. K just catches it, eats it, throws it back at the guy. No, you have to dodge the bullets. Uh, again, jump kick all the way, uh, on this one. I think you keep your distance. The interesting thing is that, um, he can't shoot like diagonally.

28:34 Of course not. But like that makes it interesting because you only have to be in his line of sight. Oh no. I have to point directly at you and longitudinal or latitudinal axis. Right. So that's very strange. Uh, so instead you can just kind of stay out of harm's way. And then I guess like immediately after he shoots a bullet is a great time to just kind of jump kick him in the face and then go back to whichever way you were. Uh, the interesting thing though, too, the game is pretty unforgiving in terms of like, you know, you get a certain amount of lives and then, uh, you die and that's game over. So that's why they included access to stage two and three via cheat codes.

29:14 But if you die and have extra lives left over in the final room against the final boss, you just respawn back in the same room. You don't even have to go through the maze. Interesting. I mean, it's considered its own, its own level. It's just a frustration release, I guess. Yeah. I think it's a nice inclusion, but it seems like something that like no other game was doing at that time. Yeah. So that's like going to ghost and goblins and dying and just winding up back at the very end of the game. Yeah. I guess it's like, uh, it's been all or nothing. It's either been a limited continues or back at the beginning of the game.

29:47 Not this, uh, uh, not, I mean, keep you saying contextual, not this specific moment. Sure. Say you, uh, say you defeat the final boss. Uh, Joe over here is dying. Uh, say you defeat the final boss. Uh, you're going to finally figure out what everything was all about. You're going to know like, you know, why they, why he was hunting you this whole time. What you, a stranger at 2am did to deserve this.

30:14 No, the second that you land that final punch on the boss that would, that would deplete his health bar. And there is a health bar for him. As soon as you do that, it is the hardest cut to black that the, that the world has ever seen. And it just goes right to the, right to the credits, right to the credits. Like credits are when director Yoshi Kishimoto immediately appears on the screen.

30:38 Guys, they're obviously trying to say something about the, the pointlessness of violence, the pointlessness of violence. It's, it's, it, violence begets violence. And once, once you finally taste that, like you've, you land that final blow, you've accomplished nothing. It's, it's just, you, you, you go back. It's kind of shaming you. It's like, Oh, great job. Good job. We made this game.

31:06 You think you're better than us? Like, like, yeah, actually that guy, that's just the, that's just the, the pawn in the whole thing. We're the people who sent these people after you. I just love the idea of like, Oh, you beat the game. Great. We made the game.

31:23 Yeah. You're right. Cause it's not the end. It's literally like director. Yeah. Well, it's, I laughed so hard when I first saw this because last week we played Karnov and it was the, as soon as it ends, it says, congratulations, the end. And I was like, how could it even be more abrupt than that? And this answered my question. I like, there's a person, if you go to the YouTube, like ending of this, if you watch it on YouTube, there's a guy who goes, wow, they don't really fuck around with the credits.

31:50 This is the fastest way to ever get to the end of a game. But here's the crazy part. Okay. What is going on? We don't get any answers. There's the manual kind of sets things up as you're a random dude who gets attacked at 2am. Música

32:38 Thank you.

33:15 Thank you.

33:35 Pass it around the room. Come up with a story, guys. What is happening in this game? Why are you being attacked? I'm just thinking of this as like, as we go right now. This is improv. Yeah, this is improv. But I'm starting to think that the manual is kind of like an unreliant narrator.

33:53 It's telling you like, oh, no, you just got attacked. Like this is all self-defense and everything. But as you're going through the game, you're like, there's something else going on here. Like I'm definitely the aggressor as I'm going into these buildings and seeking people out to fight. I think that it's like a little bit of like you need to – it's teaching you to not trust everything you read. See, I think that this is actually a remake of the 2008 movie Drive in which – Don't spoil it. Best picture. It's best picture every year.

34:26 And, you know, he – at first, bad things happen to him. And he starts reacting to them until he decides to be super violent. And that's what this movie is about. It's the fact that once you start becoming violent, you will be violent for the sake of violence. And it doesn't matter what the actual reason was once you get to the top. Interesting. It's about the frog and the scorpion. Hence the jacket he's wearing. I think that there are no answers because you didn't stop to think about asking any questions on your murderous rampage. How do you have just like waited – like maybe disarmed the guy with the gun and started some dialogue with him? Be like, hey, man, what's going on?

35:15 I'm just looking for an answer as to why people are doing this to me. And he's like, why are you attacking me? He's like, because you're in my house. You walked into my house. I went and got the gun. Yeah. Actually, you have just – since the game only takes about 10 minutes to complete if you're really good at it, if you do like a speed run, this is actually just a guy who smoked salvia at 2 a.m. and then started attacking people. And then other people were like, hey, he's attacking that guy on the subway. And they all join in. He stole that hamburger. Yeah, he stole that hamburger. Drive was actually a 2011 movie.

35:48 Okay. Thank you for that. I will tell you, though, that there actually is a story. Bullshit. No, it's true. In the original arcade Japanese version, there were different enemies and bosses. Okay? So, the game was pretty much like completely re-skinned for this NES American port. In the original game, you first face off against high school delinquents. Then you go up against what I'd like to pronounce as Bozozoku members. Ah, yes. Which are, that's like the Japanese subculture of people who ride motorcycles. Motorcycles, yeah. Yeah. So, that makes sense when you see that.

36:32 Then you fight a Tsukiban and her minions, which is why there's the females in the third level. Tsukiban means a delinquent girl or boss girl in Japanese. Boss girl. Yeah. Okay. So, like a dictionary of Japanese slang says that Tsukiban only refers to the leader of a girl gang. Okay. So, in Japan, they have those, you know, or had those. I guess that makes a little more sense as to why the men and women were not mixed together. Yeah. Like why they weren't like fighting together. It's like the men's side and the women's side. So, then finally, the last thing is that, that final stage is that you confront the Yakuza. Oh, that's the Yakuza. Yeah. You fight, you fight them and Kunio-kun, who you are.

37:21 Oh, no, no. Sorry. Kunio-kun is the, is the location. No, it's Kunio-kun. Okay. So, the translation of Neketsu Koa Kunio-kun is hot-blooded tough guy Kunio. Oh, okay. Great. So, that's Mr. K. I like it. Okay. Yeah. Kunio, it's a whole series apparently in Japan. Man, whatever. Anyway, just to, just to wrap things up, there is an ending, even. After you win the game and everything, you realize that you've done it to save your girlfriend. Your girlfriend's been kidnapped by the Yakuza. Was she in the credits? She's in like, yeah. She's in the credits. It's not in the credits. Yeah, she's in the cut scene before the credits. Mr. K will return. Yeah.

38:08 So, that's that. And I should have noted by now, but I haven't. Kunio-kun's series is like, that's River City Ransom. Wow. Yeah. Wait, it is literally? Yeah. Like, literally. Like, those characters. Wow. Only in Japan, though. Like, it's localized here. I see. To not be involved with all this stuff.

38:28 But like, even River City Girls is like part of the Kunio-kun franchise. So, that's cool. On June 28th, 2018, a port of Renegade for the Nintendo Switch was released by Hamster as part of their Arcade Archive series. This port includes both the original US version and the Japanese arcade game. Okay, that's value. Yeah, if you're looking for that, $7.99 on the Switch. Not quite a good value. Yeah. We've talked about this in the past. There's a lot of, actually, NES games that you can play the original arcade versions for on the Switch. It's kind of surprising, but they're all $7.99 separate. Yeah. So, it's really not worth it, in our opinion, unless they're essential. In which case, check them out.

39:12 What's interesting about that port, though, is that that is the first time that the Japanese arcade game has ever been available in the West. So, if you've ever wanted to play the first Kunio-kun game, you know, that's the only way you're going to do it, is on the Nintendo Switch. We do get a sequel, though, on the NES that we will play someday. It comes out in 1990. It is called Target Renegade.

39:38 And this time, it's made by Taito. And it's a more traditional-looking beat-em-up. Much more like... Isn't this game made by Taito? No, this game is made by Technos. I think the last game was Taito, right? Oh. No, Data East. Oh, yeah, that's right. I think Taito's involved in this game. They might be. I guess what I'm saying is Taito was probably the NES port maker. Oh, okay. You know?

40:06 Target Renegade is a game specifically made by Taito. Okay. Technos made Renegade when it was in the arcade. So, they are solidifying the rules of the beat-em-up. Yes, yeah. And so, Target Renegade is just a more traditional, like what we know today, beat-em-up. Much more like your Turtles in Time example, where it's a... You're on a screen, you take out the enemies, the screen continues to scroll, and you can, you know, take on the next wave, essentially. So, I'm cool with that. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And then Renegade 3, the final chapter, came out on, like, MSX and Commodore 64. It did not come out on any consoles.

40:52 That's it then, right? That's the final chapter. It's the final chapter. Until. Just wanted to note, though, that Renegade 3 is the one that decides, screw it, we'll jump the shark. And Kunio, this time, travels through Japan. I'm sorry, not Kunio, Mr. K. Travels through time to rescue his captured girlfriend. Again. Okay. So, that's Renegade 3. Just to make it clear, Technos had no involvement in the Renegade sequels, but they do go to continue to produce a bunch of games starring Kunio in Japan. Some of them we know because they got Western releases with different names. But it's kind of interesting to hear, like, Super Dodgeball. That's in the Kunio-kun franchise. What? River City Ransom.

41:44 Nintendo World Cup. These are all NES games that we're going to play that all take place in the same universe in Japan, but are released as separate games. Dodgeball? Super Dodgeball. Yep. If you look at the main character, it's Mr. K. Okay. I'm dead serious. Like, same thing with Nintendo World Cup. Like, Mr. K is in there.

42:04 River City Ransom, it's Mr. K. But they don't say that. Yeah, they don't say that as such. So, it's a weird section of the sequels and spinoffs where, like, in Japan, this is a well-regarded, like, Renegade, yeah, that started the whole River City Ransom thing. Whereas, we've abandoned that and said, like, River City Ransom is a franchise and Renegade is a franchise. Huh. Nice. Whoa. All right. I think that since you guys are so in sync, it's time for the Essential Games List.

42:41 So, we're going to get into it, but I understand that, Joe, you have a straight thought. So, you can do that and then please follow it up with your vote. So, okay, my straight thought is the first time of 1988, I have a thought on the pause sound of this game. Oh. You see, this deserves to be an essential section. And first, I want to say, I don't really remember how I ended up doing this pause sound thing. Don't worry about it. But now I notice all the pause sounds. And this one was interesting because I feel like every pause sound is made up of, like,

43:10 two or three, like, different chimes or beeps or whatever you want to call them. And this one had, like, four or five and then one that came, like, a little late. Like, it was, like, definitely, like, an afterthought. Like, they were like, let's add one more chime onto that at the end.

43:26 So, that, bleeding straight into my Essential Game vote, was that I do think this game had, like, a charming look to it and was pretty cool. I think the controls keep it off of the Essential Games list.

43:41 Specifically, the weird registering of the hitboxes and me not really knowing when I'm going to hit, when I'm not. Sometimes it feels like I should have hit and I didn't. That keeps it out. But I think it was better than a lot of these games that try and do, like, wrestling or karate that we've played in the past. Not all of them, but some of them. All right. Sean? So, this game, for me, it's interesting that you can see the primordial ooze of the beat-em-up. But it's really blurry. This is the most far away from it with while still being a beat-em-up that can possibly exist. The polish isn't there.

44:33 The backgrounds are nice for the NES, but everything else is just sort of messy. It's got bad handwriting all over it, so it's not essential. Got it. All right. And I also have a straight thought that I just remembered. I want to talk about, since we joked about power-ups, like, if you needed a shoulder throw power-up, but there is a power-up called power-up, which turns you into one-punch man, where it's described in a manual as a power P will appear.

45:05 If the renegade can catch it, he will be able to knock down his enemies with one punch and can do so. And so, I just thought that was kind of fun. And they go flying off the screen. It's cool. Yeah. I think that's, like, neat as, like, a bonus thing. But it only shows up depending on the last two digits of the timer. Yeah. It's really weird. And that's very strange. And you have to kick something at those last two digits. You have to, like, time your kick. Yeah. You have to jump kick the enemy. Right. Yeah. It's ridiculous.

45:29 But what's funny is that they say in the manual, hint, jump kick the enemy when the last two digits of the timer are as follows. That's not a hint. That's a rule. Yeah. That's a good answer. Yeah. That's, like, please note the only way, like, it's weird. You know, it's almost like the hint should have just been the first part. And then it's, like, you figure out what time it has to be. But they didn't care. That would be a pain, too, though.

45:52 Yeah. I will say this. Weird thought on this one. If it was 1988 and we were, like, the current, like, news people for video games and we were recommending things, I would recommend this game right now, like, because it's just, like, hey, you should have this in your collection. NES fans. If it was 1988. I think this game is doing, like, you know, something so different from what we've been offered in the catalog so far.

46:18 But I'm not going to say in 2019 here that it's worth it. It's not worth it on any scale, really, because of how bizarre the controller layout is for dealing with enemies. And then on top of that, I also don't think that, like, you know, how Sean was talking about, this is just the first bearings of a beat-em-up. I don't think the whole picture has been figured out yet. I think this leaves me kind of excited for Target Renegade. You know, like, I'm not saying, like, oh, Renegade was pretty bad, so I'm not looking forward to this 1990 sequel. I'm looking forward to seeing if they learn anything, if the, when Taito makes the game, if they take any lessons from it.

46:57 But it's just weird to say that, like, had it have been 1988, I could have totally seen myself being like, yeah, everyone should have a copy of this. Like, this is something that we haven't seen yet. Like, go for it. But today, I won't even recommend it. I'm trying to think. I'm trying to think if I would have, if this was the only exposure to the genre that I had, if I would have said the same. And I think that without the knowledge that this, without the knowledge of what these games

47:25 are and were, so that I sort of had a basic understanding of how they operated, I don't know if I would have liked it that much. I don't know. Got it. I think that there is enough, like, charisma in this game. Sure. That makes me also, like, there's like a charm factor to it, too. That, and the fact that you can skip between the first three stages, like, so this way you don't have to actually be good at the game. You can still experience it. All those things are, like, thumbs up in my book. But that is all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia.

47:58 Next week, we're going to be doing Contra, big game. So if you've played that one, be sure to listen. But if you haven't played yet, you still got time. Be sure to listen. So, yeah, yeah. You still got time. Play it. Listen. Watch a video on it. Listen. Hey, we all do it. Listen. Hey, listen. Yeah, exactly. Do as Link would and listen. You can always check us out. More information at www.nostalgiacast.com. www.nostalgiacast.com. We're also on Twitter at NostalgiaCast. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on EdEsposito Film. And we'll talk to you soon.

48:57 I'll see you next time.