126 · MAGMAX

• It’s up to you to save the human race by transforming mechanical parts into the ultimate robot warrior - MagMax
• Introductions
  • What does MagMax stand for?
    • Politically and just as an abbreviation.
  • It doesn’t matter how good this game is, the box art is going to set you up for disappointment
• Overview
  • MagMax is an action game fought with a transforming robot. The player can transform himself into a robot, increasing his power as he builds the robot to fight more than 30 different enemies. Now get ready for the ultimate battle against the gigantic mechanical monster Babylon.
• Story
  • A highly civilized group of aliens has conquered earth and put the human beings under the control of the Computer Babylon which has begun to kill the human beings. In order to stop the aliens, the people developed a transformable mechanical robot named MagMax. They also chose a brave man for their rescue. The brave man is about to depart to the ultimate battle with the aliens in order to save the human race.
• Gameplay
  • The idea of a Mech shmup
    • Shouldn’t there have been more “mech loadouts” like a mega man style thing
  • A and B buttons: Shoot
  • Layout of the stages
    • Switching between above and below
    • a lot of focus on the top and tail with projectiles coming in the middle.
  • King Babylon is really cool
    • If you think the fight isn't worth it you can just not fight Babylon - after a bit of time the screen scrolls on.
• Development
  • Nihon Bussan
    • Person or Company. Turns out company that has yet to release an NES game, but knows how to make lots of different games
  • FCI is the publisher
    • Lunar Pool and Zanac
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • This just recently came to Nintendo Switch as part of Hamsters effort to release everything under the Arcade Archives label
• EGL
• Next week - Mickey Mousecapade
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/233150/LUFTRAUSERS/

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

00:00 It's up to you to save the human race by transforming mechanical parts into the ultimate robot warrior, MagMax.

00:24 And welcome to NEStalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Guys, we joked about this at the end of last episode, but what does MagMax stand for? Like both politically and as an abbreviation? Oh, politically. What does he stand for?

00:52 I think MagMax stands for liberation of the people. Yeah. That's what I would say. People usually say like freedom and justice for all or something like that, you know? And it's like, not really for all. Like he's clearly getting in the way of many other robots to clear way for everybody else. I think he wants to fix the potholes.

01:14 That's a pretty good like civic thing to stand for. And that's, yeah, that's true. Cause there's a, there's a reoccurring pothole in this game. There's lots of potholes. So it must be what he was trying to fix all along. Yeah. Uh, but other than that, I have no idea like what his name is supposed to mean. Um, cause I, I'm still not over the whole one letter off from Mad Max thing. Yeah. I think I said that as a joke last episode, but, uh, I'm starting to think like that might be like the only reason behind it. Like a Mad Max sounds cool.

01:45 Let's call it Mag Max. And, and there was a Mad Max trilogy by this point, you know, we, we got three of them. So it was kind of weird to, to get that close, but I suppose this is, you know, the Japanese maybe don't care for Mad Max as much as they do Rambo.

02:01 I suppose. Um, that's, that's a little bit presumptuous, but yeah, we'll see. Or maybe they did care and they knew, so they knew it would sell, uh, they would sell well as well. You know, it doesn't really matter how good this game is because the box art is going to set you up for disappointment. Did either one of you see this box art?

02:19 It is fire. I did. I have looking it up right now. You should look it up right now because I'm telling you, if you were a kid and you went to Toys R Us and it was even 1995, you might've still bought this game thinking that you're going to be this awesome robot who takes on a three headed robotic dragon in space. He's got a lightsaber too. I mean, I guess I know what that might be in the game, but it does not look like that.

02:43 This looks like a, like an actual exact Star Wars lightsaber. Yeah. It's a mixture here. We have a mixture of like Star Wars, Tron, Transformers and, um, uh, Gundam, you know, like, and Godzilla for that matter, because that might as well be Mechagin Ghidorah. A little bit of, uh, gravity starring, uh, Anne Hathaway. Oh, I see that a little bit. Uh, the shield blast, you know, from the, from the dragon will clearly push him out into space and the rest of the thing will be about him trying to get to the ISS. Yeah. I think the space here is the space from gravity. It's the same space.

03:22 Yeah. Anyway, that's enough fooling around. We're not going to let this, uh, this go on any longer. I just thought it was worth noting that some games have really awful box arts and are good games. Other games just have like middle of the road box art and the games like whatever. And then you have games that have pretty sick box art, but turn out to be shmups.

03:44 Which is what MagMax is. MagMax is a shmup, uh, fought with a transforming robot. Uh, the player can transform, uh, from a ship into a robot, increasing, uh, their power as you build this robot with its head and its legs and a cannon for its stomach. Uh, and you can fight more than 30 different enemies according to the box. That's pretty cool too. Yeah. Um, so I think like these are the selling points of the game, right? But get a robot or have a ship and turn it into a robot. That sounds really cool as a concept, right guys? Yeah, I think so.

04:22 Um, what this game sort of, uh, made me realize about myself is that I needed, because shmups are so, are so different from pretty much anything else. I needed a different kind of way to score and like, I needed a rubric for shmups. And I've, I've got like a few categories if, if you will indulge me. Please don't. Yeah. So one is like, you know, is the gameplay good? Does it have any interesting elements? Uh, sure. That's, that's the one. And the other one is like, does it have anything ridiculous that means nothing in terms of how good the game is, but like, at least it's something like visually different?

05:06 And that's the other. And the third is, does it, does it need to exist? And the answer to that is always no. No, but with, with this game at like the fact that you aren't like, just, you're not a ship. You are a, an anthropomorphized robot that actually walks across the screen. That was different enough for me. And I, my, my bar is so low now that I was just happy to see something different like that. I don't know about you guys.

05:36 I mean, I agree. The, the, the fact that there's this, this anthropomorphic ship and the fact that you like collect, instead of just collecting power-ups, you're collecting like pieces of your ship as you go through. Yeah. Building yourself. Mostly legs. As you go through. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The legs, I will, I will say though, the legs are the silliest part.

05:54 Like you look really silly once you have the legs. Well, what's silly is that, what's silly is that there, there's all of these parts of your, of your robot scattered throughout the land and you pick them up as you go. And if you don't need the legs, like if you already have them, it's just like, oh, I'm just gonna leave those legs over here. Like you can't do anything. I just like, just leave those legs over there. I might need them when I like loop through this game again.

06:18 Yeah. But the idea of a mech is, is pretty cool. Right, Joe? Like, like the idea that you would become this all powerful robot. Like we're always talking about power-ups being an important, smart, important part of shmups, but to actually see your ship grow into a robot is a lot cooler than just like, I got a new cannon that shoots lightning.

06:39 Exactly. Yeah. And it, you know, seeing it, you're like building loosely what's on the front cover, you know, there is that lightning cannon, which I assume is supposed to be a lightsaber.

06:50 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I, I thought it was pretty cool. Although I would have liked the power-ups to do like most of the power-ups just give you an extra gun. That's the same as your regular gun. And then like one or two give you something unique. Would have been cool if they all had something like that changed, you know, like that wasn't just the same gun.

07:09 Like the feet just shoot lasers, but like, it doesn't look like there's anywhere that lasers would come out. They're just feet. They come at the toe. So I thought that was like, yeah, it's just come out of the toe. It looks like it is wearing shoes. So maybe they're laser shoes. I think they are. Yeah. Yeah. I'm realizing now that all my complaints about this game are about the feet, but, but, but, but no, it just looks goofy. But I, you know, I did think it was cool.

07:31 Yeah. I think, uh, Quentin Tarantino would love this game then if that's, if that's all the complaints you have. Yeah. You know, shouldn't there have been more mech loadouts though, than just like these same pieces floating across. Like, wouldn't it have been cool if instead of legs, you got like a submarine base or something like, or instead of the generic head that you have, there's like this awesome head that does something, you know, like instead of shooting a projectile, it, uh, it can take two hits or something. I just think of like a Mega Man style thing. That's a cool, I didn't think of it that way as in like you mix and match your pieces and build kind of your, whatever robot you end up with.

08:08 Yeah. That's a cool, because, because I did have a little bit of a, a wish at least that like, that you could continue to collect more things. Cause it does seem like you can get the full robot pretty quickly.

08:19 I thought like, well, there's a lot of time in later levels. I feel like maybe what if you could just keep adding on things, but I think I like your idea a little better where it's like, you can build a robot of like these five pieces, but there's a bunch of different combinations of different, you know, different heads, different legs. Yeah. That is something I never, I didn't actually think about, but that would make this game much more, uh, it's much more satisfying to play. If you could sort of tailor it to your own play style. Cause like the, the, um, the novelty of walking around instead of flying around wears off pretty quickly, especially because yeah, you get, you get these parts very quickly.

09:02 Um, and when I was like reading the manual before this, I thought like having a complete robot was going to be like, not that there's like an end game in these kinds of games, but I thought that would be much more difficult to come across.

09:15 And it's, it's pretty pedestrian, um, once you finally get it. And the, the power ups also work like HP, uh, similar to what we were talking about in, um, what was the most recent shmup we even played? I can't remember. It was like, I forgot what it was called. Yeah. It was some Capcom game, but yeah, that's not the point. Anyway, you know, we're starting to see a lot of shmups incorporate this idea of like, well, one hit is kind of rough. So maybe there's a way to give the player like extra chances. Oh, it was 1943.

09:46 Oh, right. Fuel gauge and the health power. Yeah. And so here you have like, if you, if you're just your ship, obviously one hit's going to take you down. But if you have a full body, you're entitled to four full shots before you die. And I also thought that thematically that might've made sense too, but it is kind of weird to think like it, which, which part of the ship, you know, like, like if the head goes out, right. How does the rest of the ship like remain intact completely normally, but that's just like regular logic getting over game logic. So I'm not too bummed about that. I just thought it was funny that like, you know, you're, you're assembling this robot and then it gets decapitated and it's like, no big deal. We'll find another head.

10:29 You're basically, it's like a zone of the enders thing where your pilot is actually in the crotch of the ship. That's a good analogy because, you know, in, in power Rangers, you're usually up in the head. So it wouldn't work well if you were decapitated. And it's not quite like, uh, um, you know, the, uh, man, I can't believe I forgot the name of the movie. The, the one we are Pacific Rim where you're more in like the, where you're more in like the heart or are you in the head? I don't know. Yeah. You're right. This is, this is definitely like lower abdomen, uh, crotch area. Very crotchal region.

11:06 You know, we've been talking about the legs and I know that's making you uncomfortable. Well, no, I, I actually, before you go on, can I call something out that I, I, I, I missed while Sean, while you were saying it, but I just need to mention that before you called, uh, you said that when you get the whole thing built, it's very pedestrian. And I don't know if you said that on purpose because he has legs. I did hear you chuckle. But I thought that was very funny. And I meant to say something, but then the conversation had already gone on. Oh, wow. You could just have, I'm watching like a playthrough right now and you can just have like your base thing with legs. Yes. Yes, you can. And it is very disturbing.

11:42 What's funny is the legs aren't quite walking on the ground either. It's all, there's something uncomfortable about them. Just like you're, you're still floating and they're just kicking in the air. Yeah. Like they're not walking at the speed you're moving. It feels like you're moving at a steady speed and it's like walking on a different surface and like a, you know, like that is not actually what's propelling you.

12:01 But the arcade version of Mag Max is very careful to actually show the legs are on the ground. They have a shadow and you can clearly see that they're like, they're firmly planted. Like, I like that. That's immersion. Uh, this NES version, I don't know. Am I supposed to believe that, uh, he's kicking hard enough that he's floating in the air? Should I try running fast enough that I can fly?

12:25 Generally, I think that like the, the main difference between like, you know, gen five and gen six consoles, uh, was like, are, are the feet planted? You know, like, are the legs doing what they should be doing? Yeah. Um, but getting away from legs for now, uh, we can go back later if we want. Um, uh, the difference between basically every level, not that I can really tell the difference between like which levels, which, uh, has like an above ground and a below ground portion. And it just has a very small difference in its perspective. Um, uh, where, whereas like your bullets will take a different project trajectory. Like, what did you guys think of that? What would you make of that?

13:10 Well, as far as the perspective before even getting into the bullets, I just thought it was interesting when I first went like what below ground, I guess, where now it looks like you're flying. Yeah. Just because of the angle of the background. Yeah. It's like you fly below ground and you walk above ground. Right. But the only reason it looks like you're walking above ground is because you're at this like angle where the background now looks like the floor instead of the wall.

13:35 Yeah. So I thought that was interesting that like nothing about you changes, just like literally like the lines tilt a little bit and suddenly it looks like you're, you're floating. But yeah, it was a little bit of an interesting actual gameplay, like, like an actual change to the mechanic where when you're above ground, it's like you shoot your laser at the ground. Like you're, you're vacuuming up things on the ground.

13:55 You're like shooting a beam in front of you at the ground. Whereas when you're flying suddenly that, that beam adjusts to be shooting straight in front of you only. And even like other lasers you shoot out of your head, I think shoot at the ground when you're on top. Oh yeah. When you're on the. Definitely just like fix perspective down.

14:14 You, you really want to mop up that floor. Exactly. Yeah. Below has like the traditional horizontal shmup that we're used to, but the above has like, you know, this weird in the arcade, it's almost like a parallax, but like a 45 degree angle on the NES version. You know, you're not, you're, everything is, is a little slanted in terms of design. Right. Right. And it does give you a shadow on the top. So it does look like you're like right on the ground. Which is important. I need to know that I'm on the ground when I'm walking. Right. Not that we're getting back to the legs so quickly.

14:50 You know, I wanted to talk about the A and B button both being shoot. Yeah. I was testing that out. It doesn't really seem to be any difference in how you shoot. Another opportunity though, right, Sean? Like they could have done something with that B button to have for mech powers. Like maybe if you are fully assembled, the B button does an awesome like combo thing that you build up.

15:13 Yeah. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of missed opportunities with the design of this game because it's like, it's not even, I always give these games a pass because there's not enough fucking buttons. But they decided to reuse a button. So I don't know what they think they're doing. Yeah. It's kind of funny in a world where there's only, you know, seven buttons if you count select. There's only seven buttons on a controller and they're saying like, we don't really need to do anything with five of them.

15:45 You know, just to get into the story here for a minute, it's covered in the manual. I thought you guys, did you guys know it or do you want to hear it? I found it pretty interesting because again, like the box art was great. So why wouldn't the story be great? Yeah. I mean, it is a great story. Go ahead. A highly civilized group of aliens have conquered earth and put the human beings under the control of the computer Babylon.

16:11 Computer is in capital. So I'm assuming that like, sorry, just the C on computer. So I imagine that's its full name is computer Babylon, not just Babylon. It's Serang first. Right. Which is that, uh, that dragon thing. So you wouldn't think the dragon was named computer Babylon, but it is. And, uh, basically now that the humans are under control of computer Babylon, uh, it has begun to kill all those human beings. So I don't know why it put them under its control if its plan was just to kill them. Um, but anyway, it's up to MagMax to stop them because, uh, the people that aren't brainwashed have decided to develop a transformable mechanical robot named MagMax.

16:52 They also chose a brave man for their rescue, which is implied to be you. The brave man is about to depart to the ultimate battle with the aliens in order to save the human race. Um, real quick before we delve into the, like the story itself, like as, as a saga, as a piece of literature. I just want to say that, um, uh, it seems that computer Babylon is more of its like its short name or like a nickname because, uh, on a character list, uh, number 36, he's listed as gigantic mechanical monster Babylon, which I think is his, his given name. Yeah.

18:00 If he's just going to kill them, shouldn't he just control them to commit suicide or something? No, no. I mean, it's probably has to do with using their biomass as fuel for, uh, an ever increasing war machine to move on to the next planet. But that's all just assumed. Right. And we can, we can only assume a lot of things. Uh, like why would you ever want to go underground? Uh, maybe you guys found an answer for this, but I felt like as long as you can avoid the potholes, going underground is a punishment, right?

18:28 I didn't think so. I don't know. I only wanted to run once and I didn't notice it being more or less difficult. Did you? Well, I find it, I found it more difficult because like going back to the gameplay of it, uh, while when you're above ground, uh, all of your bullets sort of coalesce on one, one like little area and goes forward. Whereas when you're below ground, it's the typical, like everything is spread out. But that also means that you're, all of your body parts are the hit box.

19:04 So it's much more, it's much easier to get hit when you're below ground. Um, and I would say like, well, maybe you, maybe you enjoy that, um, that kind of gameplay better. Uh, but yeah, I don't think you ever needed to go down there. I don't, because I don't think there's even a way to win the game.

19:24 So, uh, I guess what I'm saying is it seems tacked on. Yeah. Did you find that? I guess I didn't really notice. Did you find that you didn't feel like as big of a hit box when you were above ground? I think it could only hit you, uh, things can only hit you if they hit like where your feet are. Really? I didn't, okay. I didn't notice that. That would definitely make it a big difference. Cause I, I noticed, I was going to mention that like, even though you get stronger as the big robot, you're a bigger hit box. But I didn't notice that not being true for up top.

19:51 I could be wrong. I'm not sure. Um, but yeah, to be honest, I went down below for a while, uh, just like for one long stretch of time and I didn't go back down afterwards. But I, the only reason I prefer it is because I like the music down there better. Oh yeah, that's true. It's like more relaxing. It's a little like meditative.

20:09 Okay. You really get into like a trance down there where it's up top. It's like a little too happy. True. And maybe this was just like me tricking myself, but I felt like I wasn't actually moving forward in the stage so long as I was underground. And maybe I just conveniently timed it so that when I would go back above, it would actually like progress me to the fight with,

20:31 um, computer Babylon, but I don't think that could, that, that wasn't happening for me. Yeah. I don't think that happens down there. I fought computer Babylon below. Really? Wow. Yeah. And I, and I just thought it was just like a ball and like one, like the first box. Is it like the same? Is it the same? I mean, I didn't fight him above, but I, but yeah, it looks like I was watching a playthrough. It looks very similar. It looks exactly the same.

20:56 All right. And you know, we're, we're talking about how cool computer Babylon is and, and sorry, Sean, what's his full given name? It's gigantic mechanical monster Babylon. Right. And I still think that's really cool. And it's nice to have Mecha King Ghidorah in, in a, in a video game that isn't a Godzilla game.

21:14 But what's really fun, not fun. What's funny about this is that you approach him like he's a boss. And like Joe said, you would think he's the first boss, but he's actually the only boss. He just shows up a lot, but if you don't think the fight is worth your time, you can skip right past him. You can, you can, if you just dodge every like little bullet he shoots at you, you know, like, which, which sounds hard, but it's really not because he's the only enemy on the screen at the time. After like 20 seconds, you can just, the screen just keeps scrolling and you just move on without him.

21:50 That's funnier to me in this game than it would be in like most other games, because like you say, you can't, you can't really win the game. It's just kind of like an endless loop of a game.

21:58 Correct? Yep. So like, if you're not going to fight the boss, like also, if you find that the game's not worth your time, you can just not play it at that point. It's like the, it's like the one other thing that's not the rest of the gameplay loop. And if you skip it, like the only reason to play this game is to like experience the gameplay. Right. Not even like a goal really, other than getting a high score. Or so like, I feel like if you just skip the boss, it's like, well, you just skip like, I don't know. There's no reason. Yeah. I mean, like the humans have put all their faith into mag max to like stop the computer Babylon. And then it's like, he finally approaches computer Babylon and he's like, I'm not doing this.

22:38 You just keep, keep on walking with those legs. I think what it is, is that now what he realized what life is like with legs. Like now that like most robots that we played before, I haven't gotten to walk around now. He's like, well, I don't want to, I don't want to risk this. No, I mean, if I had just gotten legs the first time, I would be pretty protective of them. So I don't. And not normal legs, legs that you can just kind of floaty stride around on. I mean, they're definitely like nuclear powered legs. So that's, that's impressive. And, and how subjugated are the, is the human race in this game? If they have the capacity to create mag max at all.

23:14 With, with, with a lot of redundant parts. I mean, there's a lot of redundant parts. It's like they had a, they had several factories making, like they, they had an assembly line going on, but they had an economy of scale to create this many giant robots. It makes me think that like, it's a highly civilized group of aliens.

23:34 That maybe they're only, that they're also, you know, civilized in the societal way. And that like humans are not really subjugated at all. Yeah. Maybe this is like kind of propaganda. I think it is. Yeah. Like they're like trying to justify, you know, sending in a brave man who is one of my favorite video game characters to kill this guy. That's cool. Imagine if it wasn't MagMax. Imagine if it was, like, Ultron. I don't know if you guys know who Ultron is, but, like, you know. Like, at age of?

24:47 Yeah, sure. Like, any other robot mechanical thing. Like, a Gundam, let's say. Or, you know, Godzilla. Anything fighting a giant kaiju like this, right? Wouldn't you be disappointed if it was a shmup? Absolutely. Like, instead, like, if you were Godzilla or a Gundam, right? Wouldn't you rather it be, like, an action platformer? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

25:09 Definitely. Like, you know, just, like, Rampage. Just make it all Rampage. Right, whereas, like, I guess the... Sorry, just to make a long story short there, because it might not seem like I was understanding what I was getting at, but, I mean, in Life Force, you're a spaceship. Like, it makes sense to be a shmup. You don't want an action platformer where you control a ship. You know? Like, that doesn't make any sense. But if you're going to be a robot, or, you know, or if you were going to be Godzilla taking on King Ghidorah,

25:37 like, you don't want that to turn out to be a shmup. I guess it depends on which way you're looking at it. Because you could look at it like we're saying, let's make a shmup. And you know what would be cool? If it was a robot instead of a ship. In which case, I'd, like, appreciate that they, like, they made these little changes. But yeah, if they're like, let's make an awesome robot game and make it a shmup, that's when I'm like, oh, well, you ruined it. So I feel like it's just kind of a perspective thing. Got it, got it. It all depends on in what order you had ideas.

26:03 Exactly. And I guess it depends on if you revealed them, too, in that order. Yeah. Well, no, it's what order you see it. Like, it's glass half full versus glass half empty. Got it. But I'm realizing right now that we really need to get, like, a pro shmup person on this podcast to, like, defend the shmups. Well, I think that we, some of us, are pro shmup on any given day. Yeah. I think the thing is, is that, like, we've seen enough of them that it's, like, they're starting to not, like, what's wrong with platformers?

26:36 You know? Like, that's a really good genre on this system. Yeah. I mean. And we don't have as many of those. Look, if anyone wants to come at us for not, like, giving shmups their due, we've played all of them that we can right now. And, like, there's nothing more that we can do. Like, we're going to know everything about shmups at the end of this podcast.

26:59 Right. So, yeah, we don't need an extra person to tell us how wrong we are about our opinions. I don't mean wrong about our opinion. I just want to, you know, say another perspective. Joe, for reference, we've played 14. This will be number 15. We've played 15 total shmups, let's say. Ten of them we said skip. One we said play. And three are essential. I think we've been very fair to them. We're pretty high. Yeah. Three being essential is pretty good. Yeah. Lifeforce, Gradius, and Stinger. I just like that every time we, at least I always mention that I hate shmups. Just like you always want to make sure the audience knows that. Yeah. It's very true.

27:39 And, you know, if I could talk about development here for a minute, this was not made by Konami or Capcom, who happened to make, like, all the other shmups on this console. In fact, Konami made all three of those essential shmups that we just listed. So that's pretty cool of Konami to keep making good games, regardless of genre. Yeah. And maybe they should make games at all now. Yeah. I'm looking forward to whatever you have on development history because this game had the shortest Wikipedia entry I think I've seen for a video game.

28:09 Yes. So I dug deep, okay? I dug deep. And the developer, first off, let's get the publisher out of the way. The publisher is FCI. Now, FCI sounds like you've never heard of that publisher, but they also made Zanuck and Lunar Pool, two NES games that we've played. Classic Lunar Pool. You know, what's funny there is, like, Lunar Pool is now, like, it has my attention a little more now because it's surrounded by a company being publishing shmups, and then they were like, oh, let's release this billiards game. So either they really like billiards.

28:44 It's a good thing they didn't then decide, but let's make it a shmup, and then that would be the best shmup billiards. Lunar Pool could be a shmup. Yeah. Right. Yep. It takes place in space, so it's already one half shmup. Anyway, and then the developer, I'm going to say this wrong, but I believe it's Nihon Buzan, and, you know, is that a person or a company? Could be a place.

29:10 Turns out it's a company. Oh. And they haven't released a single NES game that we've played so far. So this is the first one we get from them. And I don't know about you, but I could say, like, both ways. I can go both ways on this for them. Like, this is a really interesting idea. I'll take it. But I'm not too hyped at their, like, overall strategy of video game making based off of this. I hear you. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this could be, like, oh, that's a good start for your first video game. Let's see where it goes. But it could also be, like, well, hopefully it doesn't, you know. Hopefully it doesn't continue. Hopefully they expand. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah, just don't do that again.

29:55 I really feel like a Mega Man shmup is long overdue. You know, and this could have been it. You could have actually just called it, you know, Mega Man Max. And it would have, you know, it would have had Mega Man instead of Mag Max. And it would have been, like, at the end of each boss, you gain a new power up for your shmup. It's unlimited potential. Somebody should do it. The game that you guys are kind of describing, and it's not a pure shmup. I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before. But, I mean, check out Loft Rousers. If you like the idea of, like, a fully customizable, like, 2D, 8-bit looking game, check out Loft Rousers. All right. I'm going to, how do I spell that?

30:45 L-U-F-T-R-A-U-S-E-R-S. There you go. Yeah. That'll get into the show notes for anybody who's interested. We have a little bit of cleaning up here to do. I just wanted to, you know, before we get into the essential games list, talk about the sequels and spinoffs. Because you're 100% right that there are none. So, Nihon Buzan couldn't be bothered to make a sequel. But this did just recently come to the Nintendo Switch. You can buy MagMax on the Nintendo Switch. It's part of Hamster's effort to release everything that was ever released in the arcade under the Arcade Archives label. They have, like, hundreds of games there now. And I think it's, like, $7.

31:34 Which, I don't know about you guys, I wouldn't necessarily pay that for most any game. I mean, you can get some 60-hour JRPGs for $7 these days. That's true. That is money. So, would you want MagMax instead of Tales of Berseria?

31:52 I wouldn't want either, but I prefer to have Berseria. Gotcha. Joe? I don't know Tales of Berseria, but I think it's safe to say I probably wouldn't. What about, like, Tales of Vesperia? That's another one. I got nothing. Sounds more familiar. Well, I think if you're not going to pay $7 for it, it's probably not going to wind up on the essential games list. But let's do this anyway in the essential games list.

32:22 Joe, it's not worth $7, but is it worth a vote? Well, I think if I were to put it in the essential games list, it would really devalue all the games we put on the essential games. We're putting, like, a number to it now.

32:32 But, yeah, I think it had, like we said in the beginning, it had some cool game mechanics that I really appreciate. And I like being able to build your robot. And I would like to see that expanded in, you know, in something else. If there were a sequel, it would be cool to see if they would have gone in a direction where, like, doing what you said, Mike, where you can add more. Or you can mix and match or just, like, build, keep building onto it and add, like, make a giant mech by the end of it. But for now, I think it just kind of got a little too quick and didn't really blow me away. So, no. Okay. And Sean? I'd say this is, like, a 25-cent game. Like, if you found this game for 25 cents and you did have change on you, then I would buy it.

33:19 But not if you had to, like, swipe a card because it'd probably be, like, a $5 minimum or something along those lines. And you should not buy that game. What I'm trying to say here is that there are no, like, there's nothing interesting in the gameplay. Like, I don't know where you're getting this, like, fun gameplay stuff. It doesn't exist. Who, me? Just us in general. Oh, okay. Game is, it's got... We lied this whole episode.

33:49 No, I'm just saying that it's not essential. Yeah, I can tell you where I'm getting, what I'm talking about when I say fun gameplay. I think, like I said, I think it's fun to kind of go through and be able to build your robot and see the differences. But I do wish it was more fun. I'm just very disgruntled with shmups right now. There was a 100% chance that I would have bought this game as a kid based on the box art alone. And I know I would have been disappointed. I filed this under that same category of, like, Iron Tank Invasion of Normandy and Golgo 13 Top Secret Episode.

34:26 Not because those ones have subtitles. But because I filed this under the idea that, like, really cool ideas with lackluster executions. I do think the idea of your ship, like, becoming a robot and seeing that happen. And, like, you know, even though the power-ups aren't that interesting, right? It's mostly just more bullets. I do think that there's something there. They just didn't do... They didn't go all the way on it. But to become an essential game in 2020, you know, you need to... You know, you're a game from 1985, really, because it's in the arcade. If you want to last till now, you've got to push every kind of envelope.

35:06 And that's what our essential games usually do. And that's why I think that this one, you know, it comes short for many reasons in the gameplay alone. But just this idea that ideas have to... Like, for essential games, you have to have a great idea, and you have to execute it well. You can't do just, like, great execution, but I've played this game a thousand times. You have to have both. I will say, guys, that if this was a box copy, then it would be definitely worth $7. Because you could just hang that on the wall. It looks pretty cool.

35:39 Yeah, you could even flatten the cardboard and frame it. Yeah, for sure. I wonder what MagMax goes for on eBay, you know? Let's buy them all. Oh, that's a thing we talked about on our stadium events episode, John.

35:55 If you found a boxed version of this game, it's only worth $22 with the box. And that's not a great return on investment from 1988. No, no, not at all. I see. I just looked at eBay, MagMax. This is the first one that came up. It says, brand new, lowest price, $2,699.99. Huh. That's so funny. I don't know what the... I haven't read anything about it. It doesn't look like... The picture is of an open product. But is it yen? No, it's dollars. It's dollars. And Joe, you have to go to the picture right below that, because it's one of those stupid VGA-graded copies.

36:34 It got an 85 near mint plus, and it's completely sealed, and nobody can ever play it. For what it's worth, the graded price of this game on VideoGamePriceCharting.com is $150. So please don't even pay $2,600. But why are you buying sealed games, guys? What is happening? You know, imagine like a sealed version of Monopoly. Would you want it? I would find it interesting. It might not be in there. Yeah, that's true. It could also be ants that live in there. That's true. Yeah, I mean, if cockroaches can live in your K-cup pods, then I'm sure ants can live in your MagMax pods. Is this something new that I haven't heard about, Mike?

37:20 Apparently, if you open up your Keurig machines, you might see a cockroach in there. Oh, okay. I thought you meant they came in the pods. All right. Oh, no, no, no, no. You don't know? Yeah. There's no cockroach flavored coffee yet.

37:35 Anyway, that's all the time we have for this episode because now we're rambling. If you wanted Mad Max instead of Mag Max, there's a game on Steam called Mad Max based on Fury Road, I believe. Sean, do you know anything about this game? It has some like aesthetic stuff that borrows from Fury Road, but it's like a new story. It's kind of fun. Yeah. It's on the NES, right?

37:58 I thought there was a Mad Max on NES, but yeah, it is on Steam. There's a Mad Max on Steam. Car Combat. Get some. To be fair, Sean, there is a Mad Max on NES. I just don't. I was going to recommend people to a newer, better game. Oh, okay. We're not even going to review it yet. We will play Mad Max. So that's two years from now. And it is based on Mad Max 2. So it continues the trend of a game being named after its first film, but being based on the events of its sequel. I don't know why this keeps happening to NES games. It's very frustrating. But that makes number four.

38:44 Yeah. So that's all the time we have. Join us next Friday for Mickey Mouse Capade, which is Mickey Mouse, the Disney character. He's going to go through a bunch of different Disney worlds, like Alice in Wonderland and Neverland. No, I'm dead serious, Joe. I'm not kidding. So this is Kingdom Hearts 0. It's Kingdom Hearts 0.8. I see. Okay. Yeah. Or maybe 0.2, because if you add everything up, I think it would get to three or something like that. Yeah.

39:22 Kingdom Hearts Fibonacci sequence, Mickey's Mouse Capade, is what we're going to be playing next. I was definitely trying to reference Kingdom Hearts there, because you are going to most of the same worlds that you do in the first Kingdom Hearts, so I think that's funny. But we will play that, and we'll have great content on Twitter all week long. So join us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter, and we'll talk to you soon. See you next time.