110 · LEGENDARY WINGS

• IF YOU FAIL, MANKIND IS LOST. TAKE WING, LEGENDARY SOLDIERS
• Introductions
• Overview
  • Capcom is back! Last seen with Gun.Smoke (and Mega Man before that)
  • Fantasy-themed shoot-'em-up both Horizontal and Vertical.
  • Set in a distant future where an alien supercomputer named "Dark", which has been helping human civilization achieve a new state of enlightenment. He has suddenly rebelled against mankind. Two young warriors are given the Wings of Love and Courage by the God of War Ares in order to destroy Dark and ensure mankind's survival.
• Gameplay
  • SHMUP
  • Power-Ups
    • The player can improve their character's firepower to four levels: starting with the normal gun, the player can improve it to a twin laser, a penetration beam and a three-way flame shot.
  • Damage
    • Your power ups are your health
• Spinoffs
  • Michelle Heart makes an appearance in the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes as one of several support characters who assist the main fighters in combat.
  • In the tactical role-playing game Namco x Capcom, the character of Sylphie (the shopkeeper from Forgotten Worlds) dresses up as Michelle Heart when she performs one of her special attacks.
  • Michelle Heart is also featured in Project X Zone 2 as a cameo character in Captain Commando's Solo Unit attack.
• EGL
• 29:25 EGL for IRON TANK

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

00:00 Legendary Wings. If you fail, mankind is lost. Take wing, legendary soldiers.

00:19 Legendary Wings. And welcome to NEStalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. And I'm Sean. And Capcom is back as well, guys. They're bringing us legendary wings. Capcom was last seen on a wanted poster for Gunsmoke. Great game. And Mega Man before that, so they are killing it. We really like Capcom here. They're being very good boys. Yeah, very good boys indeed.

00:53 We've liked even their older entries, Commando and Ghosts and Goblins and stuff like that. So they're constantly bringing out these memorable titles at the least, you know, things you've heard of, things in the game sphere, you know. They matter. The game sphere. Wow, what a reference. It's spherical. So my point is that you've never heard of Legendary Wings. I have not. Truth or false? Truth. Truth for me. It's truth for me. Truth. Okay, gotcha. Truth.

01:48 similar to Section Z without the ability to shoot backwards. I mean, I think they're like the other, but what's the other horizontal one? Twin B. Gradius. Aside from Gradius. Actually, it does have a little bit of Gradius in it. I'd say that Section Z isn't the best analog, but we're getting off topic. Yeah, no, I guess I was mostly going on Section Z from even what it looks like point of view. Sure. The person is big. It's a person. No, and it's clunky.

02:16 Anyway, now what you've really asked for, of course, is the deep lore of Legendary Wings. And if the cover art wasn't enough, which we've linked in the show notes, the cover art features an angel, or so you would think. Yeah. It turns out that's just what humans look like these days. He's holding like some kind of what looks like one of those 1950s Twilight Zone style guns that vaporizes people. And there's a hint of like a godlike creature that's actually the supercomputer known as Dark.

02:51 He's been helping human civilization achieve a new state of enlightenment, but has suddenly rebelled against mankind. Can I just say this thing on the cover, this face or computer or whatever it is, it looks like... His name is Dark. They shot it like live action or something. It looks like a real thing, and it looks like it's like a prop from... It's funny you say 1950s Twilight Zone, because it looks like a prop from like Doctor Who, the old Doctor Who or something. Well, wouldn't a godly light creature, like a supercomputer named Dark, wouldn't those things take on a different appearance than the things of its world?

03:27 Would they? Like is this a thought experiment? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like things beyond comprehension and stuff like that. Like they wouldn't look exactly like the... They wouldn't have the face of the angel. I would say that if like if there was an AI that took over the world, it wouldn't even adopt a face because, you know, humans are so puny. Yeah, take that Dark. Yeah. You stupid idiot. So Dark, I think like, you know, if you're smarter than us, then don't play down to our level. Like just be yourself. Maybe it's trying to... At first, they try to like lull the humans into a false sense of security.

03:57 Be like, look, I'm one of you. I'm just made out of plastic or something. I just think that there are better ideas than trying to look like one of the faces made of rock from that 90s kids show. Yeah. Oh, Legends of the Hidden Temple? Yeah. That's what I was thinking of, but I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, all that from Legends of the Hidden Temple. Also, if Dark didn't take on the embodiment of a face, though, it'd be really hard to have like a final boss in this game. It would just be, imagine that reveal at the end, I'm everywhere. And then you have to shoot all over the screen. I mean the cartridge. The cartridge itself is the end. Completely unrealistic.

04:34 But just, you know, now two young warriors, they're given the wings of love and courage by none other than the god of war himself, Ares. So I question if it's the real Ares because in the manual, Ares is in quotation marks. Which makes me think it's like Ares, like with air quotes around it. God of war gave two young men. I mean, these aren't even real angels. Right. It's all over the place. This has no common theme at all. Can I just, I mean, I could just read the whole story because it's pretty short here. I don't know. You've been given permission. I'd like to read the whole story because I love the ending of it. Ares, god of war, gave two young men courage and wings of love to save the world from extinction.

05:18 Ares entrusted them with the survival of the future of the human race. Time is of essence. Take wings. Legendary wings. Is that like his like James Bond, like drop the mic kind of like, he's trying to be like epic? It sounds like a commercial for like a place that does chicken wings. Yeah. Legendary wings.

05:38 Also like for the god of war to be talking like that. Right. I expected something a lot more epic. But also he wasn't talking in this whole story until the last two sentences where suddenly we're like coming off, coming from his voice. Take wings. I don't know. Legendary wings. Yeah, there's no sense of tense or anything like that in these older games. You get whatever you get and you don't get upset. Exactly. Aww. Yeah. I'm just gonna, rather than do this whole thing where we talk about controls and we talk about levels and layouts and stuff like that. Just end now.

06:09 Instead of talking about this game at all. I'm gonna get right into the meat and potatoes of what makes this a different kind of shmup from the ones we played before. And I think it's something that a game like Gradius needed,

06:22 which is really cool. And that is that your power-ups are your health bars. So when you are on like stage one power-up, you technically can take a single hit. And when you're on stage three, you can take three hits or four total hits before you die. and you won't reach a, you won't use another life. Right. It's almost like Mario rules a little bit where you have the mushroom. Yeah, where that's like the power-up mushroom. Yeah. And I thought that was really a great solve

06:52 into a game that usually gives you one hit and you're dead. What did you guys think about that? I loved it. I mean, I did feel like, at first I was frustrated as I usually am with shmups because whenever I get hit by anything, I'm not a big shmup fan anyways. So having that ability to kind of cushion your experience and be able to keep going after getting hit or making a mistake was helpful. Yeah, it's definitely sort of a positive feedback loop. Like if you do well, you're going to do better. If you do poorly, you're going to do worse.

07:24 I'm of two minds on that, on that like philosophy of difficulty. I think that there should be a balance that maybe you have more power-ups and you can take more hits, but maybe now there's going to be a bit more enemies to counter that. But I mean, it definitely did provide a power fantasy. When I was at the full health, I felt like a human with angel wings on my back. Wings of love and courage. No, it's just courage and then wings of love. And I agree with the balance thing, but I'm not sure I would love having

08:03 when I get more power-ups, there's more enemies because then it makes my power-ups feel kind of... That's why there are different thought processes. There are different ways to go about difficulty. Right, right. Well, I think the biggest thing here though is the way the power-ups work is that they're given throughout the stage as you defeat enemies and stuff like that. So it's something you must collect. It really is a great way when as you're leveling up to, like let's say you're on stage three of your power-ups, it's a great way to make it through the normal part of the stage. However, once you get to the boss-like character,

08:37 it reveals that it pretty much wanted you to have all those power-ups to begin with because if you take three hits from, let's say even the first boss, the dragon, if you take three hits from him and now you're back to your regular power-up, you cannot collect any additional power-ups, which I think is a bit of a mistake here. But more importantly, the game expected you to either know that you should have like your power-ups at all times and not take hits or it expected you to know that like, oh, in shmups, you know, you just got to shoot things over and over and over again because that dragon on level one without any power-ups will take approximately 50 to 75 hits to the face.

09:17 Like not even to its, its body doesn't count. So you have to be pretty accurate with that too. And that's just the first level of the boss. So I think the game made the mistake not in rewarding good players, but in the fact that it really punished you. Yeah, it punishes you if you don't have the, you know, the optimal amount of power-ups. Or even some level of power-up. And that's sort of what I meant

09:42 because, well, yeah, maybe we shouldn't add enemies when you get better, but there has to be some kind of aid for when you have the pea shooter and you will die if you get touched by anything. Right. Especially because you can't even, I mean, you can't even, sometimes I can't even tell if I'm hitting anything when I have the pea shooter. Like that's really frustrating too because then I don't even know if it's worth me shooting at this thing if I just go around it, which brings up other problems, which I'm sure we'll get into later. . . . . . . . Thank you.

10:59 So we mentioned the power-ups give you health, but we didn't really talk about the power-ups themselves. This is a game that doesn't have a wide variety of power-ups. It's just levels of your ability. So it's the same shooter all the time. It just gets a little bit better. So you have your... There's some variety in what it does when you shoot, though. Oh, no, no, absolutely.

11:20 I guess what I meant is that there's no growing complications. Like the power-ups that are obtainable to you right at the start of the game are what you will have for the rest of the game. So you start out with the pea shooter, and then when you pick up your first power-up, you get like a twin gun, which is typical. And then on the third, I think you get like the crazy wobbly...

11:42 It's like an eight-looking thing? Oh, that's right. Yeah, you get the one that like... It basically does a bunch of helixes in the air, or maybe I'm skipping one, but... No, I know... So the third one is the... It's called penetration. Ooh. Which is very strange, but I guess that's because it gives you the ability to go through enemy vehicles. Like it will continue to attack the... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then the following one is like the helix-y wide attack.

12:13 Yeah, the flame shot. Yeah. And then the final one is sort of like a big wave shot where, you know, it goes through enemies. It doesn't stop when you hit the first one. It doesn't have quite the area of effect of the previous version, but I guess it's more powerful. Yeah, I did think it was a little weird to have like the area of effect one just be on that scale of progression. Yeah. You get like stronger, stronger, stronger. Here's a whole different technique. But I mean, it's definitely way more stronger.

12:43 Oh, absolutely, yeah. I feel like the... I think that the fourth one may be my favorite just because it makes crowd control so much easier. Right. Yeah. The only thing that the fifth one gives you over the fourth one is that you can now get two extra hits or three extra hits or something before you lose it. And you're within two direct hits.

12:59 Okay, yeah. But also the flame shot one that Sean likes, that one makes an interesting switch off too in that, yeah, it is better than it shoots in the three directions, which is very effective for taking care of a lot of different things. But its damage only counts as two times normal shots, whereas penetration counted for three times. So you're actually by... I keep saying penetration. I know. It's so strange. But I don't know what else to call it. Power up three.

13:27 You know, it's interesting that they decided to actually think about, well, if we just kept scaling it up to be like, well, this one's three times powerful, this one's four times powerful, this one's five times powerful, then you would never, you know, you would just continue to get more op throughout the game. And so it was cool that they thought about damage scaling as well, even if they do on the Firebird, just say, it's four times as powerful as many times. Like, go to town. You collected four items consecutively. You might as well... You're a good boy. Yeah. Might as well keep going. You like collecting so much, why don't you marry it?

14:02 So these are the lazy jokes that we make when we're not prepared. Which is always, really. Yeah, true. So the vertical stages are nothing special, I think, in the world of shmups, because it's mostly just patterns of enemies coming down. It reminded me very much of Stinger with the way the enemy... Or even, like, to go really far back, like Galaga, you know, where you see the enemies on screen first. They would do their, like, here we come, and then their performed layout.

14:31 I'd like to say that I think that the concept of having ground forces as well as airborne forces and having to switch between, like, a bomb and an actual shot... I kind of hate this idea in the shmups, because your bombs end up being so boring and slow. And it just breaks the flow so much for me. Also, does it matter that much in a game where you can do two inputs at once? So you're just constantly hitting both all the time? Sure. No, I'm saying, like, it's stupid. They should actually make it this way. Is it one or the other? And does it really matter? And also, why are those things on the ground able to hurt us?

15:16 We have wings. Yeah, we have wings. From so far away, you know, it's like, why are they a threat on that? And why should you have to manage that kind of thing? Like, there's already enough enemies up at the top.

15:29 But I didn't enjoy the bomb not having any power-ups either. That was important because precision becomes a thing, specifically with the land enemies. So you have to think, you know, you have to almost think about, like, lining up your shots. Yeah. And I think that the land enemies in this game specifically are a lot more trigger-happy than we've seen before.

15:51 Like, I ended up having to dodge them more than I had to dodge the other enemies in the sky. Yeah, because you can't outright ignore them because if you do, they'll just continue to shoot wherever you may be on the screen, limiting your arc. So if there's three of them on the screen and you go from left to right, you know, sooner or later, you're not going to be able to go back to your left and you're going to trap yourself in a corner.

16:14 Whether that's good game design or not, I'll let game designers decide. But I didn't enjoy that as a player. Yeah, and one thing I think we didn't talk about much yet either is on, I mean, in both versions of the level, that you can't shoot behind you. Which I think things get behind me all the time in this game. So that adds another level of frustration, especially I noticed in the vertical levels where things would be behind me. You can't, I mean, I guess you can back up, but sometimes you can't back up enough. Sometimes they're at the back of the screen. I don't mind that you couldn't shoot behind you because that seems to be the standard in shmups for the most part. But I would have liked a power-up that maybe shot in the directions.

16:52 Yeah, exactly. I guess it was just that I noticed it more because it just seemed like there were so many more things behind me in this game than there are in a lot of shmups. I didn't notice that. I think that if they made it a thing that, like, you can just shoot behind you if you do this button combination, that would just mess with me. So it would have to be always shooting behind you, and that would just look goofy. I don't know. And I think the patterns actually didn't lend themselves to having enemies behind you. There were definitely enemies that would appear from behind, and you would have to, you know, first let them kind of circle back.

17:24 But I think that's part of the, you know, there's this element of shmups that I'm sure we've all understood, but we haven't really talked about on the podcast, of that just as much as this is about, like, shooting everything up, it's also this complicated, like, self-evolving maze. Yeah. The opposite thing where you don't touch the walls. The opposite thing. You know, like, rather than going along.

17:49 It's about evasion as much as it is about dealing out damage. Right, yeah. Yeah, so you really have to, it's almost like a puzzle of figuring out everybody's arc and where they're going to be, and either knowing that to shoot where they're going to wind up, or dodge to a place where they're not going to be. Yeah. No, I hear you. And I think I'm mixing up where I have found it the most problematic.

18:10 I think it was actually the horizontal levels, where something about seeing it horizontally makes me feel like I should be able to shoot in the other direction, because it's not, like, behind. Well, in the horizontal levels, I felt overall, because of the different layout of the sprites, and the way that the graphics look in the horizontal levels, everything felt very claustrophobic in those levels. There's really, you know, if there was, let's say, four lanes in the vertical one, there's only really three in a horizontal level. I guess I just mean by, like, lanes of player, positions the player can be in that are completely unique. Yeah. So I didn't appreciate the horizontal levels at all, because not only were they claustrophobic,

18:53 but they had this weird enemy that would shoot when it was directly, when you wound up directly under it. And that became a game of dodging on a platformer level for a scrolling shmup, something that you don't really have control over. The enemy is, between that one that was, like, the ceiling-mounted laser and another, which was sort of like a weird bug that would jump between the ceiling and the floor and shoot to the side. Was that the jellyfish thing? Yeah, it kind of looked like a jellyfish. Okay. That made a lot of sections very difficult to figure.

19:32 You know what? I've just realized that in this podcast, we just want a game that serves everything to us on a silver platter. Like, anytime something's kind of hard where it's like, you know, screw this game.

19:42 Tell us like it is, John. I just didn't like it. I didn't like that part. Yeah, I don't know if I need games to be easy, to enjoy them. You know, it's easy to look back at all this stuff later, retrospectively, and say this was dumb and was just used as a way to, you know, enhance the game's lifespan. Yeah. To be like, well, you know, you just got to remember everything about the game, and you'll get through it no problem. You know, that's half of the sadistic nature of people who like shmups, is that they just constantly play through the same levels over and over again until they've figured out all the patterns and things. And I find that to be very rewarding in this genre.

20:26 I just don't really care for enemies that are either so different than everything else in the stage that they become their own boss in a way. You know, like, every time, anytime an enemy comes up that's not a boss that you dread, that's going to continue to show up throughout a game too, that is more of a flaw in the design of the game for me than it is a, like, if the death beams were a single level layout thing,

20:55 where, you know, it was just like, oh, this is that one part of the stage where that happens, and you got to like, you know, think about your position. Because there are some that are, like, very well laid out where you can just choose the correct path ahead of time and you won't have to deal with them. And then there's others where it's just like, nah, we didn't think it that hard. Like, they're just here all the time now, and you just got to, you know, constantly be dodging them as you wait for this scrolling exit to appear. Yeah. And I think that this sort of leads into, we were talking about what pads out a game.

21:32 This game is just a repeating sequence of two levels. And not only that, but a repeating sequence of two bosses. And I felt kind of, even though I, you know, this game was released years and years ago, I felt sort of robbed because of that. Like, it says that, like, oh, you've killed the first boss, now you have four other towers to go to or something along those lines. But they're all the same tower. It's the same dragon with a different coat of paint. It's the same weird brain mothership with more eyes.

22:12 And we've seen plenty of games older than this that have done it better, that have given us new stuff. But it's even, I know that the specific patterns change, and maybe the arrangement of caverns change a little bit, but there isn't really too much that changes, except unless you go into, like, these bonus levels where you go into the dark stomach or something like that. Like, I just felt like there wasn't enough variety in this game, even though some of the things felt good. Yeah, I think the stuff, you know, the levels themselves feel really,

22:50 not talking on a gameplay level, they feel really nicely designed aesthetically. And it feels like they put a lot of work into, like you said, these two levels. Yeah. And then it almost feels like, as much as I love the design, like, even if they sacrificed a little bit of, like, the aesthetic quality of it to make more variety.

23:07 Yeah. So I can, you know. But, yeah, that is, like, I think that's, like, a big highlight of this game is that, like, it looks unique and cool until you start looping back on yourself over and over again. You see the same unique and cool thing. Yeah, yeah. Now it's not unique anymore. Now it's everywhere. And there's two sub-stages specifically found in the vertical shmup levels, and that's the minus stage and the bonus stage. Did anybody get to either of these? They're, like, those whirlpools show up. One has a face. I got to the one in the face, the one that... The minus stage. Yes, the bad one.

23:40 And it's just kind of another side-scrolling, very, like, organic, like, environment where it feels like you're, like, inside something's brain or something. Yeah, you're, like, inside the brain or womb. Right. It has, like... No, it has, like, these weird... It's more of a stomach. I think it's a stomach. Is it a stomach? Yeah. Well, I guess you went into the thing's mouth. It looks internal. Yes. And it's actually pretty graphic for an NES game at the time. I'm surprised Nintendo was cool with that. Yeah. They have the final say on it. Like, they've made other developers change things in games that were fine in the arcade versions. For sure.

24:14 And I actually went into that, read the first one that was available by accident, and I just thought, oh, that's cool. This is what the game is going to be. You fly on this overworld, which is the vertical levels, and then, like, land in these horizontal levels, finish them, and then come back out and continue on the overworld, which isn't what it was. See, I didn't think you were supposed to go... I thought that the thing, like, sort of sucks you into it. I thought that was fire. Like, I thought you were supposed to avoid that. Well, I think you are.

24:40 But, like, the ones that I think you find just scattered around if you blow up a couple of the ground-based enemies. Yeah. The bonus ones. I thought that those were all so bad, and then I just didn't know... They don't look any different other than face and no face. Yeah. So, I agree. And I really like Joe's take on what this game could have been.

25:02 But I almost read the whirlpools as something, like, that you wouldn't want to get... Like, I didn't really... Because it's a shmup, and you knew it was a shmup going in, you know that this works as, like, a... You just gotta keep going forward until you get to the next stage kind of thing. And so, I didn't think I would want to get sucked up in a hole. Right. Well, yeah. Well, because I thought that it was almost like a punishment. Like, you come across this little obstacle. If it hits you, well, now you gotta do this little extra level in order to get back on track. It fell in the hole. Yeah.

25:31 And the minus stage is definitely designed in a way that's supposed to make you lose your power-ups or even, you know, go as far as losing the lives. And when you lose a life, it is pretty cool that it just automatically regenerates you. Yeah, I do appreciate that. Appreciate that. And even the continuation system, too, which, as long as you have hearts collected, you can, I think, you get up to nine, you're able to, say, continue and move on. Now, granted, there's only five stages in the game, so I don't think it needed that complicated of a continuing life system. But I'm all for it.

26:05 I really expected, the first time I died was on the horizontal stage, and I expected to have to, like, redo that whole room, and I was kind of pissed. And then I just immediately came back out, and I was like, oh, it's kind of nice. It's appreciated. I don't think I remember that. Yeah. Can't think of anything like that, actually. .

26:35 .

26:59 Capcom did make this game in 1986 for the arcade, even though it's now 1988. But it's around the same time as, say, Gradius was done by Konami. So it's like they did have other shmups as a point of reference. This was just their way of doing it. Capcom maybe did 1942. I can't remember.

27:26 I don't think so. I don't think they did. I think that might have been Irem now that I think about it. Who did that? Nope, it was Capcom. Very cool. Yep. Very legal. It was Capcom. Very cool and very legal. And so Capcom has done shmups before and they just seem to not be stepping it up to Konami's level. But at least it's an improvement. But it is an improvement. Absolutely. And the game was made or designed, rather, as a team of people. But the designer was Akira Kitamura, who we talked about extensively on the Mega Man episode. He is the director and artist of Mega Man.

28:01 Nice. I mean, like, it's just weird to think that Mega Man and Legendary Wings can happen around the same time and one game be so revolutionary and talk to so many people and the other one never mentioned again. Just forgotten. Yeah. But that's just how things are sometimes. And for all we know, you know, who knows what the video game industry in Japan was like in the late 80s. But it might have just been like, Kitamura, you're doing this. You know, like some guy programmed it. You're the director. Like, go direct. Yeah. Go figure out, like, you know, the art style for the game and stuff like that. Like, you know, oh, I think it should be fantasy themed. And there's a dark supercomputer.

28:41 Who knows? We don't have any interviews on Legendary Wings. So that's that. Any straight thoughts? I don't want to play any of the games with music. I have a very short straight thought about the pause sound. This pause sound. I don't even have any, like, pretense to this anymore. I just talk about the pause sound. This pause sound sounds like maybe, like, five pause sounds put together. It goes on for really, it's like.

29:07 So maybe give that a listen. Highly recommend. Does the name Michelle Hart mean anything to you two? Yeah, she's my favorite UFC wrestler. Joe? No. Okay. Michelle Hart is apparently the name of the female player. Legendary wing. In Legendary Wings. Must have been in the arcade cabinet because I don't think it's ever mentioned on the NES. Yes. But she winds up kind of making many appearances in later Capcom games to keep Legendary Wings in the scope of things. Like, we didn't forget it. It happened. So here's a list of small appearances she's made.

29:46 In the fighting game Marvel vs. Capcom, the first one, she is a support character who assists the main fighters of combat. So she will not. Just any of them. She's a mercenary. I think she can be selected. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. And in the tactical role-playing game Namco x Capcom, which I've got to get my hands on. That's tactical role-playing? That's what it says. I've never seen this before.

30:11 This is what Michelle Hart's been reduced to, though. In this game, the character Sylphie, who's the shopkeeper from Forgotten Worlds, dresses up as Michelle Hart when she performs one of her special attacks. Not even actually in the game. Right, right. Not even, like, saying, like, hey, you remember Michelle Hart? I'm dressed as her. Like, who knows if that's an actual reference or not. Maybe they just drew another winged, like, creature.

30:37 And last but not least, Michelle Hart is also featured in Project X Zone 2. That thing I was talking about, Project Commando, that's actually called Project X Zone. Project X Zone 2, she's a cameo character in Captain Commando's solo unit. Perfect. Project X Zone is really cool, though, I will say. It's a, I want to say an SRPG. It's a RPG-style game where all the different Capcom characters get in it. Was it SRPG? Strategical. Oh, gotcha. Wasn't she also in Shantae? No. But Shantae did get Karn.

31:11 Karn-offs. I reduced him to the name Karn. Karn on the Cob. Shmup. Speaking of Michelle Hart, though, she's kind of the secondary character because you have to select her as player two. So there is two player in this game. We just never played it. It's simultaneous, though, too. So that's pretty cool for a shmup. Joe, you have some thoughts on this? Yeah, just a little bit. It looks like there's quite a bit of slowdown that happens when you play that.

31:40 Well, there's slowdown in the regular game, too. That's true, too. It looks like there's quite a bit more. Maybe another character probably wouldn't help. But I do think it's cool to have two characters in this shmup like that because I fully expected it to be what we've seen a million times. One player plays, the next player picks up where they left off and really just not two players, two people playing separately from each other. It's just a good way to get people to share. Right. Now, on a scale of Cuphead, right?

32:03 To what? No. On a scale of Cuphead, I'd give it a cuphead. On a scale of Cuphead to Cuphead, right? Right. Is the game, does it make it easier or is it frustrating now that you have the second It seems like, so I haven't actually played it. I was just watching footage of it. But it seems like it has to make it easier because you're not really running into each other or stepping on each other. All you're doing is doubling your firepower.

32:26 Right. And if one person dies and it's gone, they're just out. It's not like you both lose or anything like that. So I can't imagine it making it. And I can't imagine that the game spikes up the difficulty based on how many players are in it. So I assume it makes it easier. Also, am I crazy or is this the first shmup or first of many kinds of NES games that doesn't have points? There's no high score. There's no reason to shoot everything.

32:50 Don't the treasure rooms give you points? Isn't that like the only... I can't. I just... Oh, shit. I'm trying to remember. I know, but I'm trying to remember. I mean, yes, Sean, to your point, there are definitely other games that didn't have scores. I meant arcade style games that just ignore it because it's, well, it's on consoles. Like we've said, who cares about the points? But I'm sorry, Joe, but unless it's like hidden somewhere, it's not on the actual HUD. You're right. I mean, there's nothing there, but I do remember getting like extra points with those treasures. So I don't know what those... Maybe those are to get the hearts. I can't speculate. We don't speculate.

33:26 We can neither confirm nor deny. We can speculate on whether one man would be able to take down an entire country in the Battle of War, which we did last week. Wait a minute. Sorry to interrupt, but I'm just looking at the end of the game here on this Let's Play on YouTube. It just casually reveals a score at the end. It does. The score just comes like it's secretly keeping track of your score, I guess, and then at the end it tells you what it is. It's like when you finish a Resident Evil game and it tells you how bad you were at it, you know? I've never been bad at Resident Evil.

34:00 It's secretly keeping track of how good or bad you are at the game at the end. Had I beat Legendary Wings, that would have been a fun reveal for me to see how bad I was. You got an E.

34:11 Yeah, that would be great too. Give me a rank then in that case. I guess a lot of games do that now. I think Kingdom Hearts does that at the end. It tells you how many times you died and everything. You don't know it throughout. Yeah. So I'm not... Yeah. This is the first one. It's a pioneer in a genre. Skeet skeet. For genre. Very cool. And you know what else is very cool? The Essential Games List.

34:35 The question on everyone's mind. Is Legendary Wings legendary enough for the Essential Games List? So there are some good things in the game, as I feel like I always start with. But I really did think that you can see that this wasn't just a game that was just pumped out to make money. There was care put into the game. And like I mentioned earlier, and I want to clarify something earlier, we mentioned that the aesthetic... That the levels repeat and everything. And the aesthetic of these levels does change and kind of give you... Feel like you're progressing in that way. And I was actually really impressed with that.

35:13 And it's... I'd say it's slightly above a lot of other shmups as far... Above the average of other shmups as far as gameplay and the leveling up and everything. I just thought there was a... It lacked anything that would really set it aside. And also there were a few things that bothered me a little bit. Like the fact that sometimes I couldn't tell if I was hitting an enemy. And sometimes I felt like enemies would appear in such... Mike, you talked about the ceiling lasers that feel like a little... Like it's not really necessarily always right in your power to get out of their way. Or there were a few times where enemies would just appear literally right on top of me. With no warning.

35:58 And I felt like there were little things like that that bothered me. There was a little bit of slowdown. And just overall, it was a good but not essential experience to me. All right. And that's one no. Sean? Yeah. So Legendary Wings... It's also in like the middle of my rankings of shmups. Thankfully, we haven't had too many recently. So it doesn't have that like to get past like shmup fatigue.

36:27 So while I did enjoy parts of it and there is some satisfaction of being like totally overpowered. The fact that there are only two bosses in this game that just go back and forth. Dragon brain computer.

36:43 It got annoying and it was like sort of a letdown. So while I don't think it's an essential game. I think that Legendary Wings would be a really cool like restaurant that specializes in wings and also has like this cool like Greco-Roman aesthetic.

37:03 So I'm copywriting that in terms of restaurant names. So no... You can't call that now. Oh, yeah. I think if you say that on a podcast, then it's legally copied. You don't even have to find a file word. Yeah. Exactly. It's sort of like mailing a letter to yourself. Yeah. Also, because this came out in the arcades, just out of curiosity, for the restaurant, is it going to be like the arcade cabinet over in the corner? For what? For Legendary Wings? Your restaurant? You mean the game?

37:33 Yeah, yeah. In my restaurant? Would it be in your restaurant? I don't think so. It might be too confusing. Yeah, no, I don't think so. Right. But would you make a game based off your restaurant? You know, that could be cool. Like a Coozie Mama, Legendary Wings? Yeah, it'd be like an overcooked sort of thing, but more wing based. You went overcooked. I went Cooking Mama. Yeah, yeah. I found that interesting that you went Cooking Mama. Guys, Cooking Mama's coming back in a big way.

37:56 I'll call it like something like Legendary Wings the Game. Very good. Is it in Buffalo, the restaurant? Doesn't have to be. Huh? Okay. Yeah. There's other places you get wings. You know, you're keeping your cards close to your chest, I guess. I get it. You don't want to reveal your business strategy. Legally, are you allowed to sell wings outside of Buffalo? You have to call them Wings a la Buffalo. Very good. With the au jus sauce. All right. Enough.

38:25 Let me give you my spiel on this Essential Games list vote. Been talking a lot about Capcom. Been talking a lot about Konami in this episode. It's not an accident. Next week, we play Life Force, which is a Konami shmup, which is also considered a very good shmup. Capcom has done this in the past where we've played Konami games and then immediately played Capcom games or vice versa. They always seem to like put games out around the same time.

38:55 And so far in the history of things, Konami has eaten Capcom's lunch every single time. It is so crazy to think about. But Konami is really, you know, what I think of when I think of these NES shmups. I mean, so far they've done it twice with Gradius and Stinger. So I'm expecting good things from Life Force. Legendary Wings, you know, when you look at the grand scheme of shmups that we've played so far in the NES, yes, it's definitely more competent than most. But that's because we're talking about games like Schoon and Tiger Heli, which— Look, don't batmouse Schoon on them. I understand.

39:34 But I guess what I mean is now we have to think about, you know, we've already got a great library of shmups in our Essential Games list. And we already have, like, our defining, like, Konami and Capcom rivalry going on here that I'm just making up, you know. I'm like, let's have at it. Like, other than Nintendo R&D 4, who else is going to own this system? And so far it's between the two of them. And so I think Legendary Wings, with everything else that I know about Capcom and that I know about Konami shmups, actually winds up being disappointing in the retrospective of everything. And that's important for the podcast because there's a reason why we play everything in chronological order and understand the system better the longer we go on.

40:19 So Legendary Wings was cool, but it wasn't something I would even consider going back to now because I feel like my itch has already been scratched by other things and is going to only get better. Your itch will be scratched even better in the future. Yeah, it'll be scratched even better in the future, but I wasn't even itchy going into this episode.

40:39 That's what I'm talking about. So with that in mind, Legendary Wings is not essential. That's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. You'll join us next week for the very now hyped Life Force episode, I think sometimes known as Salamander. That's much less hype. Yeah. No, it's cool. But it's Konami and it's a shmup. So I know Joe is very excited. You know, I love shmups. Sean, I can't really get a read on you and shmups. You like them, right? I play them. Cool. Okay. If Sean is a professional gamer, everyone should know that first and foremost.

41:20 I don't really know what else I was going to say, but I will tell you this. Eat at Legendary Wings. Eat at Legendary Wings restaurant. Tweet at NostalgiaCast while you're there. Or just in general, tell people about this podcast. That's right. The podcast you're listening to right now, the one called Nostalgia, the one that we don't bombard you with telling other people to tell them about it all the time. Now we're doing that and we're going to be doing it a lot more until we start seeing the views and listens climb. We're about to go on to a huge marketing campaign where we are going to be posting billboards in many small towns across America.

41:57 Our first will be in Columbus, Ohio, which isn't quite a small town, but it was the first thing I could think of when we were having that meeting. I was thinking more like Beacon, New York. Beacon, New York. See, I don't think they have many billboards up there. That's why it's ripe. It's a ripe billboard. They actually have a huge mountain, though. We could put up a new billboard at the top of the mountain. You're right. I said we carve our faces into the mountain. Great. Mount Rushmore style.

42:24 People have been asking me about that. Like, when are we going to put ourselves on a mountain? Well, who would be on your Nostalgia, Mount Rushmore? If you had to pick four NostalgiaCast employees? Yes. I can't think of any. I would put Chris up there. He's the audio podcast. I would step down for Chris to be on there. Okay, so yeah, that's what it'll be. It'll be me, Sean, Chris, and Sam. And Sam. That'll be the Nostalgia. Sam Emeritus.

42:49 Also, one other little housekeeping thing. It's worth mentioning that sometimes we ramble, and that's what I'm doing right now. I don't have anything else to say to you. I'm just holding on to you for dear life because we love talking to you guys. We love hearing the feedback. We're the clingy podcast. We're really clingy. We don't ever want you to leave us. Right. And if I have it my way, we're going to keep putting on episodes every Friday after I die.

43:17 Well, we can do that. I think that by the time that you die, there will be the technology available to create a voice print. Yeah, and just like AI will make the episodes. Not quite AI, but I'll record things that Mike might say. But what if we all die? I think we do like a botnik AI. I'm pretty sure I'm going to outlive Mike. One of the projects. Yeah, we're all going to outlive Mike. Well, we do a lot of work for the podcast. So one of the projects I was going to task our listeners with was taking from every episode

43:49 every individual unique word we've ever said and kind of cataloging them into like a dictionary system. Yeah, make sure you get a bunch of different phonemes. Like that could be the E sound, the ah, like the tt, or any of those. If you could just compile that so that we can feed that into a black box advanced learning algorithm. And we could just create all kinds of cool words with our own voices. Yeah. At the post show of this episode, which is about to happen in five seconds, each of us will say the alphabet. Good night. Good night.

44:51 A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. A. C. D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M. N. O. P. Q. R. S. T. U. V. W. X. Y. Z.

45:40 A. B. C. And D. E. F. G. H. I. J. K. L. M.

46:15 N. O. P. Q. R. S.

46:28 T. U.

46:36 V. N. W. X. Y. Z. A. No. .