130 · RACKET ATTACK

• THE TOUGHEST POWER GAME OF TENNIS IN THE WORLD
• Introductions
  • Sports are back on the menu! Fighting Golf was the last we reviewed, loaded genre. First Tennis Game since TENNIS
  • This one comes from JALECO, made their debut with City Connection and Publisher of Bases Loaded.
• Overview
  • Compete in a Tennis Tournament as one of 16 characters.
• Gameplay
  • Choose your character!
    • 8 male and 8 female characters
    • players contain unusual names like "Gibbco" and "First."
  • Different Courts
    • Grass, Clay, Hard
  • Actual Tennis
    • The switch in camera between serve and volley
    • Learning the timing of shots
    • You can’t win them all
    • This is gonna be LONG
  • Design
    • Six different shots
    • A and B are different on context
    • Players can protest to the line judge if a decision is not made in their favor.
    • Minimalist Score design and announcer
    • Same Camera Angle as Bases Loaded
  • Single Player is only Tournament Mode
  • Passwords allow players to retain their statistics after playing
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • In Japan this was part of the Moero sports line of games. Moero 1 was Bases Loaded and so this was Moero 2
  • I think it’s interesting to note 2 Moero games we won’t get on the NES
    • Moero 6!! Shin Moero!! Pro Yakyuu Baseball GAME
    • Moero 7!! Juudou Warriors Judo GAME
• EGL
• Next week - Seicross. Arcade Motorbike game

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

00:00 Racket Attack, the toughest power game of tennis in the world.

00:20 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, sports are back on the menu. It's been so long I forgot that sports was a concept. Right. It's important to note that sports aren't back on the menu necessarily in the real world, although by now maybe they are.

00:45 But sports, you know, like we record a little bit ahead, but sports have been a having a disappearance on the NES for us after a barrage of them early on in the system. Yeah. It was almost like Nintendo thought to themselves, like, let's get them all out of the way because nobody plays them. And none of them are going to make it on the essential games. Yeah. And we get them out. Focus on what our true passion is, which is shmups.

01:09 Yeah. And I think like fighting golf was the last one we reviewed. So that feels like a while ago now, but it's probably only like two actual months on the release calendar. True. But this is our first tennis game since tennis.

01:26 That's true. It's revolutionary. Did anybody want more tennis games or did you think tennis did an OK job like fulfilling that need on the NES? Yes. I think that tennis.

01:39 I think there was a lot of improvement that could have been made with tennis. And so I think that they should keep trying until they get it right. You know, Mario tennis is quite a ways away. So I'd like to see more.

01:53 I love to see sports games. You know me, Mike. Yes. And Joe and I'm I'm not usually a sports guy, but I will say I forget that like tennis is just tennis is just a simple video game. It's like made to be a video game. Like it could be a really good video game. And then you think of pong like it's just it's just hit the ball back and forth. So I think that that's one where like there's a lot of room to make it fun. Granted, there are with other sports games, too. But this early, sometimes it could be hard.

02:18 Yeah, Joe, you know, that's a great point. Do you think that just because of the success of pong that, you know, everybody is it has to do something different now with the tennis game? Like it's like, OK, pong established how to do it that way. Right. And now whenever I'm going to make a tennis game under the same restrictions, right, 8 bit isn't too much different than early computing.

02:38 Do you feel like that's why we see such a different approach to tennis than what pong brought to the table? Like the pong clones are done and now it's like trying time to do something different. I think it might be more of like, you know, pong was just like the simple it's just a simple like it's just trying to be a video game. And it's like, yeah, it's it's using the like the basic basic idea of tennis as it's like gameplay mechanic. But then tennis or or racket attack are trying to be like, oh, this is like actually like the sport of tennis. Like pretend you're playing the actual sport where I think that's where it like makes it a little different.

03:13 Yeah, I think saying something along the lines of we want to be we want to be different than pong is sort of like a filmmaker saying like we want to be what we want to be do something different than what Muybridge did. Like, right, right, I think it's like you can't really compare.

03:32 Yeah. And in many ways, like pong is just been iterated on in the sense of like games like Arkanoid and breakout, you know, that that's where pong kind of went to. I guess you're right. Tennis is the same with like a scrolling paddle. Yeah, yes. Yeah. But it is racket attack today. And this one comes from Jalico, who made their debut with City Connection, a game that I think like none of us really cared about at all. And I stopped thinking about it after we recorded the episode. But yeah, I forgot. They were also the publishers of Bases Loaded. Do you guys remember Bases Loaded now?

04:08 Oh, I do. OK, yeah. Bases Loaded at the very least offered a different baseball experience compared to like the differences between RBI baseball and Nintendo's baseball. So I'm interested to see, you know, when I when I was booting up Racket Attack, if they would try something completely different than Nintendo's tennis or take that as like the base of what they should do and then just keep going.

04:30 So I'm not going to give an overview on how to play tennis or what tennis is. And I feel like we covered that extensively in the Nintendo tennis game. And everybody probably knows that the basic rules of tennis. So in this one, what makes Racket Attack different is that you're competing in a tennis tournament as one of 16 characters. And I think you have to win.

04:50 Is it five or six matches, guys? Do you remember? Well, I think it's five. Right. And then if you but if you're if you're if you're not up by two, then you have to win. You know, two. Correct. So I think that's just those are like sets. Those are sets. Yeah. I'm talking about matches against the tournament. Yeah, I think it's I actually don't remember because I could only play like one and a half because this is a they're pretty long. Yeah, it's like real time tennis.

05:18 Yeah. I think that's something that we should just talk about right away is, you know, the the actual tennis part of this game, because it seems like the most natural part to translate. How does how does real world tennis make its way into the NES? Yes. And I think the first thing is that it might not be a great idea to actually include a full tennis match for each of for each part of your tournament. And again, that's that comes down to six sets per per game. And then you are sorry, six games per set. And you have to win at least three sets to to win the match. So it's a lot of tennis when you consider that.

05:57 And I'm actually impressed, Sean, to see that you carried through to play a game and a half. I also played, I think, two or three games. But, you know, it's a draining experience for sure. Yeah, I'd say that I played one full game. I guess I'm missing a messing up the terminology, but like one full like one on one thing where you have to get the three sets. That's the match.

06:21 I played one full match because I wanted to see what like interesting presentational stuff they did at the end. But other than that, I played a couple sets here and there of of like trying out different characters and trying out the other gender. Yes. They do include both the women's league in the men's league.

06:47 But yeah, I mean, it's it can get a little monotonous, but I guess we can go into further detail for something along those lines. Well, I have a question for you, Sean, because I actually I did kind of the same thing, but I tried out then the different courts. But I didn't really try out the different characters after after I finished.

07:05 What do we say a match? Yeah. But but just because I felt like it would it would take me a long time to get the hang of a character enough to really notice the subtleties of the differences. But were they like noticeable differences or did they did you feel the like the different advantages that another character would have over the first character? So I switched up too much. I messed with too many variables to really notice if there were differences in characters, because every time I switched characters or I switched league, I was also switching the turf. So I could not tell you I'd have to play the game like a dozen more times.

07:43 Yeah, I think I think that kind of like sums up the how I feel about a lot of things about this game is that there's like there's like a lot of detail, but it's all it's there's a lot of subtlety to it as well. Like, I think that I think this is one of those games that you you can take a lot of time to get really good at and it maybe will only get better the more you play it and like kind of get the hang of all the like nuances of how to play this game.

08:07 And like, then you start to notice the little differences and stuff, but nothing like even when I switched courts, I didn't notice anything too overtly like, oh, my God, this is so different. It was like very minor differences in like the level of bounce that the ball had on on like a hard court. But it was still noticeable, not game changing, but noticeable. Exactly. Yeah, I think it's mostly, you know, for the courts, it's all about the bounce, right?

08:31 Yeah. And that just for this kind of game, you know, where there isn't a 3D space, that's just more about figuring out the timing of when it's appropriate for you to swing your racket, because I think that's the first obstacle everyone's going to have in this game is figuring out the timing. Would you guys agree that you had a couple times early on where you went for a swing and the ball was kind of near you, but it turns out it didn't quite connect? I'd say so, but I will also say that I think this game does a way better job of, I guess, fudging a Z-axis like we've always complained about with tennis than tennis.

09:08 And with a lot of the sports games that sort of incorporates that, I think it gives you a lot more leniency than previous games that we've played. So I was able to get the gist of it a little bit quicker. I don't know if you guys had a similar experience.

09:27 Yeah. I think once you kind of adjust to it, then like it's consistent, you know? So even if at first you're like, oh, it's hard to tell if this looks like it's where it is on the Z-axis. Once you kind of like get your like references down, you're like, oh, now, you know, okay, whenever it's here, it's kind of where I want it to be.

09:47 Like you sort of get an eye for it. Yeah, I think it's part of learning the timing of the shots, but it's also understanding that tennis, especially when it's flushed out into this realistic of like playing six games in a set and stuff like that, like doing all that. I think there is something to understanding that you can't win them all and that you're not supposed to just go like 40 love back to back to back, just win the quick six sets. There's something about understanding that sometimes the placement of your character is just going to give you a really bad shot that's either going to just go out of bounds or that the computer will take advantage of.

10:25 And that tennis is built to be a very long, you know, like in real life, it's like a two to three hour match sometimes between these guys. So it's definitely an endurance test. And I think if you're coming from Nintendo tennis, that won't translate to the to your mind right away. You might think of it more of an arcade experience, whereas this is this is very you got to be methodical about what you're doing and understand you're going to take some losses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The scoring in tennis is it's almost fractal because like you make a mistake and now you found yourself down like 30 love.

11:02 You may think like, oh, I'm doing very poorly, but like that's just to score one point within a point. And that translates into this game as well. And, you know, we were talking about the characters, but I kind of wanted to go over them a little more because I did. I did try out a few different ones. And the game outside of even just the manual inside the game, they do explain kind of like what each character does.

11:26 And I think that having eight different male and eight different female characters who the eight male and eight female, they basically have the same characteristics, but just spread between genders. And that the female characters play a shorter tennis match because that's how it happens in real life, too. I think that having this variety of characters is actually really cool and goes against what I was arguing in in fighting golf, where I was saying that it led too much to chance in fighting golf that they gave like four unique characters. And here are the male characters.

11:58 No one is is absolutely terrible. There's no like there's no defeat. There's no defeating factor to anybody where it's like, oh, I wouldn't play them because they have this skill. Like I would play any of these characters. Yeah, I wouldn't say that that's any different than in fighting golf. Not to not to rehash that argument, because I think that similarly, there's going to be pros and cons to both and to both characters in this game versus that game. And it just depends on what what portion of the game you want to lean into, I guess. So I'd say that the fact that there are there are pros and cons to these characters.

12:39 I mean, it's still it's still OK with me. Yeah, I liked it a lot. I liked it a lot here, too, just because I think that like the more I played this, the more I realized this feels like almost like a tennis simulator, you know? So it doesn't feel as much like a video game as I think NES tennis did. So having those other characters that can like once you get good at it, that can really make like small differences or that you could turn into probably big differences if you're if you're good at the game felt pretty natural. Yeah, I agree, especially on the point of the simulator.

13:13 There's just it seems like it touches a piece of every part of tennis. Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about the controls like the the way compared to go for it? NES tennis. I defer to Mike.

13:50 Yeah, I'm asking permission. I'm raising my hand. Yeah. Give it to me. I I feel like at first when I first booted this up, I was a little frustrated with the fact that, you know, a lot of where you hit the ball has to do with literally where on the racket the ball hits. So like it depends on how far you've moved to the left or right or forward or backward.

14:15 And as cool as I thought that makes it really challenging because in real tennis, that's just you doing that. Like you're like another level removed now. I feel like it's a lot harder to gauge where you're hitting the ball on the racket when you're watching yourself from a third person perspective, like from a distance.

14:33 And that kind of bothered me at first. But the more I got the hang of it, I mean, it never got particularly great at it. But I think the more I play, the better I get. But it does lend itself to giving you like a little bit of a feel for the game. And it does start to feel a little less like what button do I hit for this or what do I have to do for that? Like it's just kind of feels a little intuitive after a while.

14:53 I think that that's like I imagine an experience a lot of people would have where maybe if they just pick it up once, they would be like, well, this game sucks. But then they play it longer that you actually realize that it's built to to to make you feel like it's in it's tennis. Yeah, I agree. I think this game felt a lot more natural than NES tennis.

15:13 And that specific mechanic of of like where the ball will go, depending on where you are and at what point you hit the swing button and with which button. Like I did grow to to understand it more and be able to play with it more.

15:33 Once I started to get away from what was my the intuitive for me, it would be intuitive to hold down a direction and try and like push and pull where that where the tennis ball is going to go because I'm holding down left or because I'm holding down straight like forward. And I thought that that would in some way affect it. But it really wasn't because it's just not how it calculates where the ball is going to go. But, yeah, over time, I did learn how it actually worked and was able to get a little bit more skillful as a result.

16:07 Yeah. Sean, I think I'm going to say exactly what you are saying just in less words. But it's really cool that the A and B buttons are different in what they do for the racket based on context of everything that's going on in the game. So this way it removes all those choices from you of directional inputs or, you know, oh, well, A button can only do power shots and B button does lobs. Like it removes all that. And instead, your A and B button are able to do like, I think, six different shots depending on, you know, where it hits on your racket and where you are, whether you're front or back of the net. I think that stuff's really cool to add additional elements to a controller that only necessarily has two buttons.

16:48 Yeah, I was impressed, especially like the one that was the most noticeable in terms of like context-based animations is if you're in like a really tense, quick back and forth near the net and you sort of get the last shot off, you'll do this really cool overhand like smash. It kind of looks like. And usually you're going to win that point if you time it right.

17:15 So, yeah, I think it looks great, too, with the way that it communicates these different moves to you. And true to form on that, too, when you are spiking the ball like that, there's a chance that it will also just hit the net right in front of you. And that's definitely something that can happen in real life. For sure. Did you guys, I actually wasn't able to do this, but from what I understand, players can protest to the judge if a decision is not made in their favor, if it like just hits the line and is ruled out. Is that actually something you can do in this game? Or was that just something that like is a rumor that I read somewhere? Well, it wasn't a rumor. It's not a rumor because it is in the manual.

17:54 That's where I read it. I just wasn't able to do it. I wasn't either. I did not know what button I was supposed to hit or even if it was like just a false feature. I wasn't able to do it.

18:05 I think that's really cool, though, if it actually is possible. And if anybody wants to let us know how to do that, I think it would only enhance the game further to be able to do that. I mean, for context, you know, it's kind of weird because it is a computer and it knows absolute whether it's in or out. But adding that little... I can confirm, though. I can confirm that the computer will judge things wrong because I definitely hit something out of bounds and it did not count it against me. So I imagine that was one of those situations where the computer could have contested, but he didn't. So, yeah.

18:39 I like that in the sense that it's realism, but also I have two minds of it because also I feel like, well, you're a video game. You actually have the ability to remove a level of error that is in the actual sport. Why wouldn't we just do that? I get like we want to be like real. I always had this thought. I always had this thought about when I think it was introduced in the PS2 era Madden games. I always had that thought of like, well, why would you be able to challenge something?

19:09 Like the video game should just know. Like, is it luck based? Sean, I'm sure you can fill us in here. Oh, I 100% have been in situations where there is a there's a bad call that the computer has made. But then it'll also just decide that I can't challenge. Like, it's not that it's in the two minute warning. It's not that we're in overtime. Those are usually situations where you can't challenge. But the computer will just say like, no, that wasn't one of the times that we messed up. So you can't challenge.

19:37 And I'm like, but you did. So I've been very I am also of two minds as to whether there should be computer driven mistakes in like the refereeing of sports games. But I will say that presentation wise, it at least does add authenticity, even if it does harm gameplay. It's almost like asking why is there wind in golf? You know, it's like it's a computer. It should be able to simulate perfect zero.

20:03 I think it's different. I think it's too different because because that's just part of the game that would be in golf. Whereas like somebody making a mistake is like not part of the rules of golf. It just happens. So you need a way of or, you know, whatever football or whatever. It just happens. So you need a way of combating it. But like if you can remove that and just make it like this is the game under real conditions.

20:25 I don't know. I understand, Joe. It's more like if the computer player laid down another golf ball somewhere else and it was up to you to call him out on the fact that that's not where his golf ball is. Well, Landon, that's what would be the equivalent. Right. It would be like Blitz the League, but for golf. Yeah. Is that what is that? What's Blitz the League? Is it like a game where you can cheat? It's like a game about cheating. It's a game about cheating in the grand scope. Like you could you could get the other team drunk before the before the game the next day. You could hop yourself up on steroids, all that fun stuff. Yeah. Well, I'm sure in the next MLB The Show, you'll be able to bang a trash can. So anything's possible.

21:05 And, you know, since we mentioned Jaleco and Bases Loaded at the beginning of the episode, did you guys get the vibe on that? This is the same exact camera angle set up as Bases Loaded had for like the 45 degree overhead. I feel like it's just more intuitive in tennis to have that. But I couldn't help notice that that's the same way Bases Loaded had it. And now Racket Attack has it as well. I thought that camera angle was fine.

21:31 But I just thought that that was interesting that Jaleco continues to like be like, this is the objective way to view sports. Yeah, I would say that Jaleco has been making surprisingly detailed sprites for the characters with both Bases Loaded and this game.

21:50 They actually mean, they do just look like they're they're wearing like little jumpers or I forget what rompers rompers. Yes. But other than that, like they are anatomically correct. And that's sort of what reminded me of their Bases Loaded game. But also one thing I noticed, and this isn't this has nothing to do with baseball game, but it seems like the the cameraman gets a little woozy at times. Have you noticed that the camera is a little weird in this game when it scrolls up and down? It kind of loses the ball sometimes.

22:25 I, you know, I have I have a bigger problem with the camera that I'm sure we're all going to talk about in a second. But I did notice, Sean, that just in general, the camera seems to be not necessarily tracking the ball and tracking you as a player. So I think that could lead to that kind of error. Yeah. You know, they're going for like a handheld look. Yeah. But to follow up on that, the problem I have really is with the serve.

22:54 And how it you know, it makes sense. Give yourself a different, closer view for the serve so you can line up exactly where you want to hit the ball and all that. It's the cutaway to the then 45 degree turnover shot. It's that cutaway while the tennis action is still happening. You know, it feels like you're just watching TV doing that. But you're but instead, you're the actual player on the field. So it's almost as if the player on the field is watching the TV feed of the same tennis match that they're playing in.

23:27 Yeah, I think it would have worked a lot better if it means I think this was a technical constraint. But if it was just a straight cut, then we would be probably wouldn't have really cared too much about it. But because it basically cuts to black and needs that split second to like re raster the image or like redraw the lines that you kind of there's a separation between the two states. So, yeah, I was I was very confused as to why they did that. I think maybe they should have just had the same camera angle the whole time, even if it may have cut down on like a like I guess serves are supposed to look different. But yeah, I was also confused by that.

24:09 Yeah, I didn't like it either. And I'll be honest, I don't even really get what makes one what makes the serve angle any better. I don't know why there were two angles. Maybe someone maybe you guys have a better had a feeling that it was felt a little better to serve in one angle. But for me, I was just like, why don't they just keep it in the second angle the entire time? I couldn't tell you. No, I have no idea.

24:30 No, I think it was. I think it was just from a presentational standpoint that like that's that's how it you know, that was just like a better way to make it look like again, it's all it's all for, you know, the whole thing of bases loaded. And now this was to make it feel like you're actually watching a real sporting event. Right. That's the reason why the only way you can play this game is in an actual full game of tennis. Right. They're trying to make it as real as possible. So that's like their selling point against the arcade style versions of these games.

25:01 Yeah. But I do agree that this is this is the instance where presentation hurt them because it's disorienting every single time. And it never makes you lose. Like, it's not like, oh, well, during that cutaway, I actually lost track of the ball and I didn't have time to respond. Like that never happens. But the fact that every single serve is is at least jarring to me brings down the game, you know, a little bit because it's a constant thing that happens every single, you know, every single time you play this game. Yeah, I'd agree.

25:33 It's sort of like in a current game. If every time you start up, there's like texture, there's like LOD pop in immediately, like every time that would I mean, it may not affect your your gameplay, but it's going to affect your your experience of the game. So I agree. You know, when we were talking about the characters earlier, you guys didn't seem to have a problem with the names of these characters.

25:57 I figured we'd get to it. Okay. Because, you know, first guy. Right. Gipco is a is an interesting fella. But then the one of the females is a spawn. I feel like that that's just weird. And I know I don't know. I'm spawn. Okay. And maybe I was thinking like, you know, they're probably last names or something like that. But, you know, that doesn't make it any better for things like spawn or what else did we have? There was there was another crazy one. I mean, I just first first first. First is my big first guy.

26:33 He's my favorite. He's my favorite tennis player. And one more thing from a design perspective. I really appreciated that the score was kept entirely to the actual layout of the stadium. So it's just it's just hidden in the background and it's constantly on the screen at all times. And it doesn't take up like a chunk of the user interface. It's not something you have to hit start to see the score. It's just presented there. So minimalistic that I really thought that was smart of them. But also another surprising stance. Guys, thoughts on that? Well, I think that I actually couldn't find it for the first couple games.

27:15 But then I obviously found it. But I was also surprised that we actually have some pretty competent VO for 15 Love. You know, all those all those announcements. It was very clear compared to some of the horror movie versions of human voice that we've heard in the past on this system. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because it sounds, you know, it sounds like you said a lot better than anything we've heard so far. Plus, I mean, I've never actually been to a tennis game, but I imagine it sounding like you hear it like a baseball game, which is not that far removed to like this. This sound kind of almost unintentionally simulates that like speaker sound. Kind of the echo. Yeah.

28:02 And it's also got what I can imagine is other than town and country, what in water rage roadshow or whatever it was called. Surf is on. Yeah. This has like this has the first advertisement in a video game, right? With that Wilson logo. Oh, yeah. On the right. At least it was there. Yeah. At least it was like a context.

28:25 It was it made sense in the context of a tennis game instead of what you see nowadays. But I thought that added to it. Yeah. I think like apparently in the Japanese version of this, that side of the screen is just blank. So they you know, there's no there's nothing that should have been there that was missing. And so they had space to fill. That's actually a very well thought out way of filling out the space while also making some money.

28:53 Well, now that you say. Yeah. Now I now with Jilco is just sellouts. You're not supposed to make any kind of money on video games. Right. But at least it would feel more sellout if they were like advertising something that you wouldn't see at a tennis match. Like. So at least it's like, oh, no, we were just going for immersion. And then Wilson was like, we'll pay you for that.

29:10 I guess it would make a lot more sense today if it was just like draft kings in the background. Yes. Or, you know, Jilco could have promoted bases loaded. You know, they could have just put their promotion for their other NES game right in there. So I'm sure they did something like that in the manual. I feel like, you know, that always happens.

29:29 Always. OK. And oh, you know, so I wanted to talk to you guys just about the fact that, you know, we seem to be liking this whole simulation approach and going much different than Nintendo did in terms of recreating tennis. But what do you think about the fact that single player is only this tournament mode and that there isn't like an exhibition mode or a way to choose? Like, you know, I just want to play, you know, one set or I just want to play first to three games. You know, like what do you guys think about stuff like that? Well, I mean, I guess I would just tell that person to only play one set.

30:09 But I know that, like, it's not really adding or removing anything by you're not. I guess you just don't get to see the handshake at the end. My knee jerk reaction is to say, yeah, I wish that they gave you the option to play, you know, just play one set and then tournament thing could be another option because that's a long commitment. But I mean, yeah, that's a great point.

30:31 I mean, you you can just play one set. You can stop whenever you want, because at least the two player mode in which it makes more sense to like, I guess, only want to play this for a short burst. It is more of an exhibition style. But I did find it funny that in the manual it says something along the lines of like in two player, if you want to have a tournament, keep track of it yourself.

30:54 It's like it made it seem like a feature, but it's just like, no, just like write it all down and figure it out. But one other stray nitpick from the manual that I found interesting. I don't know if we've ever if it's ever been referred to it this way in other games, because usually when it's like, oh, if you want to play against you want to play against the computer, if you want to play against the AI in this game, they say if you want to play against the control deck, they refer to the computer as the control deck. As if it were some like military technology. Yeah, it sounds like Skynet is taking over. We have to play tennis against it for the fate of humanity.

31:34 I just found that interesting. Yeah, I think I think, you know, there's always in these manuals, there's always a different approach to just like explaining how to play video games in general, because that's something that needs to be done. And since you've got me looking at the manual, I'm just wondering, like, the controller layout on on the very first page, like, is that necessary to point out which one's the B button, which one's the A button? Like all of those things are labeled on a controller. The controller is this diagram.

32:04 Right. And the control usually on the manuals, the controllers say, like, this button swings the racket and this button pauses the game. You know, like for this one to just tell you the same layouts that you see on the NES controller. I don't know. Bizarre. Honestly, I thought that, like, if you were a poor person and you got like the poor person NES, you got an unlabeled controller. So I guess this is just helping those people out. The man. You're supposed to cut this out, actually, and lay it over your controller. Yeah. Hey, it's an upgrade from the from the Magnavox Odyssey days. Yeah, that's true.

32:39 But, you know, Sean, I will agree with your point about, like, if you just want to play one set, I would tell that person to play one set because there are passwords in the game that allow you to resume where you left off. So it's not like you're you have to play, you know, a full match in one sitting or anything like that. Well, you do. You do need to wait until the match is over to get that password.

33:04 Gotcha. OK, yeah. You only get that while they're shaking hands. But is this the first time we've seen any sort of password or saving mechanic in a sports game? No, it's not. What else do we see it in? One of those boxing games. You could keep your record and everything.

33:18 Oh, I forgot what it was. Maybe I blocked that out. Yeah. Why? You hate the boxing games? The boxing games. Yeah. There are a couple of a couple of doozies in there. Yeah, I honestly cannot remember that either. But I think this this password system of keeping track of your tournament makes complete sense because otherwise you are looking at, you know, a freaking gauntlet of tennis matches back to back to back just to see what is maybe, you know, I don't know if you guys looked it up on YouTube. But it's just an additional shot of you holding a trophy and your character like seems to kiss the trophy.

33:58 And then and then like it just repeats that animation for a little bit. Well, don't forget about the uncomfortably long handshake that you have with your opponent. But that happens every time, right? That happens every time. It does. But it's just funny to me.

34:12 I mean, I guess in that case, why play? Why play any of these games that don't have 15 long 15 minute long cinematics to end the game? I mean, like, yeah. What did you think you were going to get? That's I think I think Final Fantasy VIII is the first good game.

34:28 Yeah, I don't think I was going to get anything different, to be honest. I just think it's funny that you might have had to, you know, in a word in a world without passwords, you might have played this whole thing in one sitting to become the champion. And then all you see is just like your character holding up the trophy like you would think it would be something a little extra. But Mike, when you get to when you go to school the next day, you could you could tell your lunch table that you beat racket attack.

34:57 And yeah, right. People might respond to that in some way. Yeah, I don't know. If anybody would even know what you were talking about, because as far as I know, like racket attack is not a game that people talk about, you know, like this is the first time I'm ever hearing about it. And I'm surprised by it, if we're being honest. I'm saying if you were, you know, a kid at a lunch table in 1988, maybe more people would have heard of that about it back then, you know? And I'm saying we're fascinated with Jaleco's approach to designing games on the NES.

35:27 But they seem to be like they seem to be one of the black sheep of the NES. Like no one talks about these games. There's four bases loaded games that I didn't hear about any of them until we played the first one.

35:37 You're right. Right. But if you want to tell the kids at the lunch table that you beat racket attack to Joe's point, you can just say that whenever. No one's going to question it. But you'll know that it's true. Right. You can tell them that, you know, Yoshi was on the top of the castle at the end of racket attack and then they'll believe you.

36:02 My only minor thought, which I think we've seen in maybe the other tennis game, is that you can't pause it during during gameplay. You can only pause it in between, which I think makes sense because you can't do that in tennis. But also, I think we should be at a point where, like, you should just be able to pause the video game because that's the point of pausing the game.

36:23 Like anything, you know, in Mario, like if you were thinking of that as a real thing, if you're a real guy fighting weird creatures, you wouldn't be able to pause. But it puts it there for convenience in case something happens in your house. Yeah. So that's like, you know what I mean? I mean, we're not online. So like, might as well put it in. We're not in an online game. Exactly. So you should just be able to pause. Yeah. But I thought it was just interesting. You can pause, like, in between sets or whatever.

36:46 But that's my closest to a pause sound I can come up with. Weird enough, Joe, you actually can't even shut off the game while it's actually playing. You have to wait until the set is over for you to be able to shut off the control deck. Oh, yeah. You can't even, your power can't even go out. Yep. Yeah. A lot of people just keep it as a generator. Yeah. None of that's true. Don't buy Racket Attack for those reasons. I would imagine Racket Attack being a game I haven't heard of would be one of those games that turns out to be super expensive.

37:15 You know? Was it? No, I don't think it is. But I'm just saying, you know, like, it's only games that no one cares about that wind up costing a lot of money on older systems. True. Uh, sequels and spinoffs. I don't really have much here, but in Japan, this was part of the Moro sports line of games. M-O-E-R-O and Moro 1 was bases loaded. So this was Moro 2. And I could talk to you about Moro 3 through 8. But I think the interesting thing here is that two Moro games will not be coming to the NES, but only released on the Famicom.

38:07 Okay. Don't, don't just search Moro, spelled that way, into Google. Because I think it brings you to some, like, really weird weeb shit. Uh-oh. Weird weeb shit. Or it might be related to this. I don't think so. There's no tennis rackets here. Gotcha. Just little girls. So I'm gonna go away from that. Well, it's kind of like how Doki Doki doesn't mean Super Mario Brothers. True. You know, it's a Japanese word. So, like, yeah, that's probably why this is happening.

38:40 Moro 6. Shin Moro Proyaku. Is a baseball game. So we will be missing one of Jaleco's baseball games. Amazing to think we might have had a bases loaded 5. But it never came. And Moro 7. Judo Warriors. Is a judo game. So I don't know if we'll ever see a judo style game on the NES. Because that probably was our only chance. Darn. Anyway, we're gonna vote on this one now. In, wow, that was a terrible segue.

39:14 Sean. I'm gonna need your vote on whether Racket Attack is an essential game. I will say that Racket Attack, for a sports game on the NES, like I've said many a time before, is enjoyable. I just enjoy these games for the most part. I'd say it's in my top five sports games in the NES.

39:38 But, as I've said in the past, those games don't really come close to the threshold needed in my mind's rubric to put it on the essential games list. So I will not be voting for it. Fair enough. I think probably your most concise reasoning of all time.

39:56 I've been more concise. I can be more concise, Mike. No, I love it. I love it. Because you know what? It was concise and thoughtful. You're thoughtful. Okay. Joe, give us your vote. I have a similar thought where I do think this is higher up on my sports games of the NES. And while I love the kind of realism to hitting the racket in the right place and the simulating nature of it, I think it does it really well. And I think it works pretty well for an NES game. I think it stands to undergo a lot of improvement also.

40:33 You know, there are some times where it's cool that it's doing that, but sometimes I'm like, well, is that like really accurate? Like, how much control did I really have over that? Where sometimes it feels like a lot, other times it doesn't feel like a lot. So I think it's on the right track.

40:45 But again, it's hard to put one of these on the essential games list because there are just so many of them. There's so many directions to go for a sports game in general. And I think that this is a good start that can stand to improve. So I'm going to say no. If I could just get in there real quick before you put your vote in, I will say that after playing this game, I did look up to see how much the most recent Mario Tennis game was because it kind of got me hooked. And then I saw that it was $60. And so I said, no, thank you. But it made me think about playing more tennis.

41:21 Right. It's fun. Like, I guess that's just like, that's something good to say about it. Like, it is fun for all its other things. Like, you're having fun playing it. What else could you ask for? Yeah, Sean, I think what you're looking for is Virtua Tennis. You should play those games. They're fantastic.

41:36 Is it on Switch? It's not on Switch. I think the last one probably came out on Dreamcast, if you want to be honest. But I think you can get Virtua Tennis 4 on Steam. So something to look at. You know, I don't know if that one is as good as the Virtua Tennis games I've played. But Virtua Tennis and Top Spin, all great games. Now, here's the thing with me and this game Racket Attack here is that I think Sean and Joe have pretty much said the gambit of what can be said on why this is a great game in this realm of what we've played so far, but can't get onto the Essential Games list.

42:11 And I'm just going to have to agree with it rather than add anything new because there's things that you can fault this game for and there's things that you can say, you know, like, wow, this is really bringing the NES closer to more realistic or, sorry, not realistic, but better simulations of sports games in the 8-bit context. So there's cases for and against it, but I can't imagine myself putting any of these sports games on the Essential Games list knowing the awesome games that we're playing today in sports. And honestly, the best way to experience sports is really outside. So, you know, I don't even know if I would put any sports game on an Essential list.

42:53 But, you know, the sports games that we have put on an Essential list in our category are things like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, which is not even really a sports game, you know?

43:03 I always said that was a rhythm game. So it's going to be interesting to see if one does crack the list. Anyway, now that Sean is going to go buy Virtua Tennis 4 and Joe is just going to think about tennis but not play any of them, you know, I think the best version of tennis ever is probably in the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time when you fight Phantom Ganondorf in the Forest Dungeon. That's probably the best way to play tennis.

43:34 So neither of you know what I'm talking about. No, I think, OK, say what you will about this game I haven't played or this mini game I haven't played. But there is a game on Steam called Tennis Elbow Manager 2, which I'm not really sure if it's about playing tennis or just managing a sports injury. But it's in early access. So give that a look if you're interested. Yeah, become a tennis coach and manage up to nine players. Take care of training sessions, planning, sponsors, team members. You got to love stuff like this. It sounds cool. There's a whole genre of like sports simulations. Out of the park, baseball, football manager. F1 Manager is really good. I have that actually.

44:19 There's all sorts of great things like that. And then there's also like Goat Simulator, which is not fun. You know, just yeah, not fun. All right. That has been the show. I am Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter. You can find Nostalgia on NostalgiaCast on Twitter. Every single episode of Nostalgia can be found wherever you listen to your podcast. We don't lock any. If you can't find a particular episode, let me know and I will hunt it down and find it for you. I know that Sean actually keeps discs, CDs of every single episode of the podcast. Sean, would you be willing to ship those out at all?

45:03 Right now, all I have are the floppy disk collections. Each episode is 10 floppy disks. They're all compressed down to 64 kilobits per second. But there's a sweet FMV of me, Joe, and Sean waving to you. Yeah, it's pretty much just like an old-timey GIF-looking thing. We shake hands for an uncomfortably long time. Yeah, it's in there.

45:29 All right. Join us next week for Seacross. Seacross, I honestly have no idea if I'm saying that correctly, but it's this arcade, like motorcycle, Tron-like thing that I played for a little bit today and didn't quite understand. So I can't wait until we talk about it next week when I fully understand it. Talk to you soon. Bye. Goodbye.

46:06 judgments?! Thank you.