134 · ANTICIPATION

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00:00 Anticipation! Now you're playing with Brain Power!

00:19 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And guys, today we have what Rare and Mattel are calling Nintendo's first video board game. I guess it sort of is that. Is this correct, Mike? Like, do you agree? Do your eyes lie to you? Well, you know, it's semantics here, but it's not really Nintendo's first video board game. In fact, Nintendo's first video board game is probably like Fortune Street.

00:53 You know, they didn't have a hand in the development of this game. And I don't appreciate them also stealing Nintendo's tagline of the now you're playing with power. And it just seems like Mattel really wants you to believe that Nintendo made this and not Rare. Really getting off on the wrong foot here. Yeah, I just... I guess they could be saying, like, well, it's... I guess, like, a lot of people called the machine the Nintendo. So it's, like, the first one available on the Nintendo.

01:17 That makes sense to me. Okay, I like that. But here's the thing. When you see video board game, right, are you thinking, like, Pictionary? Or would you be expecting Monopoly? Yeah, I'd be expecting more of a board game than just, like, a little mini game that has a board involved. I mean, there's a little more rules, too. But, yeah, I'm expecting Monopoly. Well, Anticipation says if you're bored with board games and you're tired of pursuing trivia, which I guess is just a reference to Trivia Pursuit, if you're bored of both of those things and you've had your fill of ethical questions, then you're ready for Anticipation. What the hell does that mean? What does that mean? I don't know. I guess there's no ethics involved in Anticipation.

01:58 I feel like that. Did, like, the manual writer just, like, he had, like, a Freudian slip there and, like, he's always just grilled on his politics or something whenever he plays both games with people? It was, like, a passive-aggressive, like, shot at his manager. He thought his manager would read it before he printed it. Right. It's, like, had enough of your neighbor?

02:19 You're ready for Anticipation. Is Jim pissing you off again? Yeah. I like the idea, though, that you're bored with board games and now you're going to play this and because it's a video board game instead, it's going to, like, change everything. No cleanup, no nothing.

02:37 Everybody hates the cleanup. It's all fun and games setting it up. Some people don't even play it. They just like to set it up. I don't know if you guys ever played the board game Mousetrap, but... Oh, yeah. I would only have set that thing up. I never used it. Yeah, I've never played it. I've just set it up and... Yeah, the first time... Set it off. The first time me and my mom played Mousetrap, one of the contraptions broke, so it was just useless.

03:00 Well, that stinks, and there's a lot of pieces, so... There are. Did you return it? No. Okay. That's also... It's not too late. So you're just, like, casually revealing that you're rich to the rest of the audience. You're, like, getting board games, they're broken, and you're like, this is fine. Uh, I'm just saying that, you know, I was, like, seven, and my mom probably had more important things to worry about, so... Actually, no, it's just child neglect.

03:23 Got it. All right, well, I mean, let's talk about anticipation as the best we can, because it's just basically Pictionary, like I said, except for there are dots on the screen that appear for different categories, and then slowly the computer fills and connects those dots, and then I guess whoever's the first person to kind of understand the image that the computer is drawing buzzes in and then tries to guess the answer. Anything else you guys want to add? Well, I think the important distinction you made there between this and Pictionary is that the computer is drawing it, and I think that a big draw of, like, actual Pictionary is that a friend of yours is drawing something.

04:06 Like, that takes away already, like, I think, a major part of, like, the appeal to something like this. Well, not even just that, but, like, I always liked to be the one to draw, and you don't get to do that in this game. Right. Like, you are just, there's just this fifth, if you're playing in a four-player game, there's just this fifth, like, embodiment of something that is drawing for you, and it just, it feels like half a game even there.

04:34 We didn't get into, like, the board game on top of this yet, but that's already, like, when I saw the screen caps for this, I'm like, oh, I'll get to draw something? Like, is this, like, I actually get to put pixels down on the screen? And then when I found out that I couldn't, I was very disappointed. Yeah, you'll likely have to wait for Color a Dinosaur before you're able to draw anything on the NES. You know that my anticipation is high for Color a Dinosaur.

05:02 So, before we talk about the larger board game, which I feel is the second part of the gameplay, not as important as this first element. You know, it is a bummer that you can't draw, but obviously that's because you're not divided into teams. Each of you is playing for your own win. And so, there's this whole element of, like, the game itself just being based around connect the dots and figuring out fastest what the object is. I didn't find too many objects to be impossible to guess within a few seconds.

05:36 Well, were you only playing on easy, Mike? I don't know if I played on the hard mode, but I played on the whatever the other difficult... Yeah, medium, if that's what it was called. Okay. Well, I mean, I'll have some stories later about hard mode, but... Which one gotcha? Which I'd be interested to hear, like, one that you were just like, I would have never guessed that. Okay. Well, this is, like, several stories. Okay, good. We need a story time.

05:59 Okay. So, I'll first preface this by saying that in the higher difficulties, and I think later in, like, just the normal game, the dots go away. So, you can't sort of draw them in your mind before the computer gets there. Um, but when you get to hard mode, it has these weird, like, there's a disconnect between... Sometimes it'll give you a category that's supposed to give you a clue as to what it might be, and it is completely different than what it is drawing. Like, I guess anything that, like, has one or two moving parts is science. Um, and...

06:39 But in hard mode, if you're playing a computer, their reaction time gets much, much greater. So, in one instance, uh, the computer had drawn maybe three or four very small lines, and the computer guesses and immediately types in, like, uh, oil can. Or not, uh, no, blowtorch. It was blowtorch. And then it's correct, and then the computer spends another five to six seconds drawing this very intricate blowtorch that the computer player guessed in three seconds. So, there's also this balance of, like, I guess, where do they draw the line of what's guessable or not?

07:20 So, your competition gets a lot stronger as you get... And the items get a bit more complex as you go higher in difficulty. And now, I don't know about you, but I am... I'm not interested in my reaction times versus a computer, and that's why I wasn't too interested in playing the harder difficulties of this game, because I feel like I got the full experience on Medium, and it is interesting to hear that the dots go away and that the category titles go away, so you don't know exactly what type of thing they're drawing for which category.

07:52 But I think the idea of, well, the way that it gets harder is that the computer gets smarter and it chimes in faster than you would recognize what it is, is kind of just like a... Like, maybe that works out better if you have four human players, but when a computer is added to the mix, even if it's three regular people and a computer, I feel like the computer has an obvious advantage there that I'm not interested in checking out. Yeah. I mean, we kind of had this problem with Jeopardy! to an extent, too, but it wasn't as, like, obvious and as problematic, because, like, it's just a question, and people either know or don't know that, but if you're just drawing these abstract lines and trying to form pictures out of them when they're incomplete,

08:36 then it gets a little bit more ridiculous that a computer can guess out of three lines or something along those lines. Sean, this might... Yeah. Oh, go ahead, Joe. No, I was going to say, I didn't... Because I only played Medium as well, and I had a similar thought where I was like, I should play hard, but, like, I feel like they're just going to make this game longer. Like, there would just be more turns where the computer reacts to be more quickly, and then I have to just wait through their turns longer, et cetera.

08:59 But, you know, I'm of two minds of another thing that they do to make it more difficult, at least as Medium, as you get to the end of the Medium board, where they take away the spaces that they put at the bottom to tell you how many letters are in the word. And at first I thought, okay, that's a little more organic, where I feel like, oh, it's just more... it's harder for me, and it's not because I'm competing against a computer that already knows the answer. But then after a while, there were some things... There was one that was like... It was like a... just like a stick figure. And I was like, well, that could be person.

09:29 It could be man. It could be... you know, it was man. And it's like the amount of spaces that would actually give you that clue as to what it actually was. Exactly, yeah. There were like a... And there were a couple of those where there was like, well, this could just be called a lot of different things, or I could word this a lot of different ways, and without those spaces, there's no leeway on that. I had one as well, and it was a picture of a barbecue with like smoke coming out of it. But I mean, I only say that now because that was the answer. I just thought it was a grill. So I typed in grill, and it was wrong, or I typed in G.

10:04 But I don't know. Well, yeah, there's a lot of weird things there. But just going back to like easy mode, there's a huge discrepancy in the difficulty of the different modes. Because in easy mode, I finished the game by myself. No other player just even interacted with the board at all. I just answered them all. And once you go to, I don't know what it's like in Medium, but with Hard, they just start guessing randomly.

10:34 It's just like there's absolutely no difficulty curve there. It's just a lot. Yeah, it sounds like there's a big jump because on Medium, I beat the game, and maybe I was playing with... There were three players in my game, and like each other player maybe answered once or maybe twice. Yeah. And that was just because I didn't... There was one thing that was a beehive, but it just... I mean, maybe I have... Do you know what I'm talking about? I saw that one, yeah. Maybe I have not seen enough beehives in my life, but this was not... There's not like a beehive. It's like a man-made construction. It's like an industrial beehive, yeah. Yeah. So I never would have gotten that.

11:09 An interesting problem that continues to occur, too, in these rare-developed game show-like games is that they have no perceivable way of giving the computer a wrong answer in a different word. Yeah. They just kind of misspell or add like symbols to the words.

11:29 And in this game, that really hurts it because you see something like, let's say it's Volcano, and they'll get like V-O-L star symbol A percentage sign, you know? And it's like, okay, well, that's a pretty good clue for me now, too, of what this actually is. I thought it was weird that they did that because I remember it was a Wheel of Fortune that had that where I remember thinking, well, okay, because they're making a guess and the computer can't come up

11:58 with a realistic guess that a person would make based on this. So it's just giving you part of the answer as like a compromise to like make it as close to real as they can. But for this, the way that you answer is you go through and you select each letter. And once you select one letter incorrectly, it says you're wrong. Yeah. So I thought, why didn't the computer just select one wrong letter and tell it it's wrong?

12:21 And then it doesn't have to have that kind of game-breaking thing where it's like, well, this is what would happen if another human guessed also. It's exactly what you would see. And then it doesn't have to give away the whole answer. Wow. I didn't even think of that. This is, yeah, that's very strange. Yeah. That's what I actually expected to happen too, because to be honest, I like the fact that on the player side, it doesn't waste your time if you don't know what it is off the bat.

12:44 You know, it doesn't make you type in every single letter and then be like, oh, actually we weren't looking for grill. We were looking for barbecue, you know, like to Sean's point. So I think that the fact that the computer is then allowed to like just draw the whole thing and write out the whole thing is a weird tell. Yeah. To help the players. Just for the actual players. Yeah. That's very strange. I guess we should have found a way to play this together.

13:13 I don't think that it would change our critical review of this game, but maybe our experience would have been a bit more in line with what people in 88 may have taught. Well, you know, I did play it with my fiance and I think that the thing here is that, you know, unless you have the NES four score, which was a add on accessory that would let you play with four controllers. It's just called a multi-tap. Yeah. They called it the four score, but that's funny.

13:43 It's true. Like multi-tap is now like the official word across all systems for those things. But like, I guess at the time, Nintendo was like, we have to make this exciting. Uh, anyway, you know, as long as there's one computer in the mix, you're technically always playing the same kind of game that you would play with or without another person. It's just that on the easier difficulties, easier difficulties, it gets to be more competitive with the human players. Whereas in the later difficulties, they're just kind of at the mercy of the response time that the computer chooses.

14:16 Yeah. The drawings though. I mean, you know, I'm sure there were some funny ones, but for the most part, the finished drawings are pretty competent line art. Yeah. I was surprised that there were as much as that there were definitely plenty that I was like, well, that's ridiculous. That's not what that looks like.

14:33 Um, that most of them, I was like, well, even, even with this like NES thing, even like a quarter of the way through the drawing, I do have a good idea. I mean, they, they did a decent job of making sure they didn't do any, they didn't do too many things that were like impossible to get like halfway through the drawing. Uh, granted, I'm looking at one right now because I'm watching a video as we're speaking that I've probably never would have gotten, but, uh, but for the most part that they, they did better than I expected. They did about as well as, uh, the, the general populace would, would do in a Pictionary game,

15:04 I'd say. That's a good point. Stick figures and, uh, uh, bad, like poor angles, bad perception or bad perspective, you know. Yeah. It would, it would be something different if there was actually like good graphics behind all of this, you know, it is kind of, I just posted one in the chat of a crab and I think like, you know, that's a, that's better than I would draw of a crab, but it's also not a great drawing of a crab. Yeah. It's like the art typical crab.

15:32 Yeah. I mean, you could even, uh, argue that that's like Totoro instead of a crab, if you look at it the right way. Oh, I see it now. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Or, um, Adelibird from the Pokemon. So maybe this is, uh, like an early Pokemon leak from Jansu. You see it, listener, right? No, I see, I see Chansey. Yeah, we should put this in the, uh, in the show notes or whatever. I'll put it in the show notes, sure. I've already saved the image. Doesn't everybody save images from anticipation?

15:59 Yeah, I did. So, you know, maybe this is good foreshadowing, but on, on the box for the game, it, it says anticipation, Nintendo's first video board game. But in between those two pieces of text, it has the entire alphabet, A, B, C, D, all the way to Z across it. And I think that's a good way of communicating how you're going to type out your responses in this game. But did you think that it was a little cumbersome to have to keep scrolling across the wheel? And it seemed like you had to wait for it to fall into position or else it wouldn't input the correct letter.

16:37 I think because of our, because of at least my experience with Wheel of Fortune, which was a nightmare, I was like kind of, I was kind of pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as bad as it looked, I think just because it moves faster. I never, I never ran out of time while typing, even though it does give you a time limit for some reason. It's got that nice little wavy animation when you, when you move past it. Yeah, you can really zoom across it too.

16:59 You don't, it's not like, it didn't take forever. Like it didn't Wheel of Fortune. I'm sure if I hadn't played Wheel of Fortune, I would have hated this, but now it just like feels so much better than, than what I've already experienced. So then I liked it. I'd say it's an essential, uh, alphabetical, uh, monolinear keyboard equivalent. I'm still waiting for my QWERTY layout. Yeah. It's going to happen sooner or later.

17:22 But I just want to, I feel like we've gotten, we've gotten pretty wrapped up in the pictures and I think we at least need to, uh, we need to acknowledge the fact that there is a bare bones board game on top of Pictionary. Sean, would you like to walk us through the board game part of it? So in the board game part, uh, you play as either a pair of shoes, a trumpet, uh, ice cream, or some other thing that I don't remember. I think a teddy bear. Yeah, a teddy bear.

17:51 And, um, you, you just go around in a circle and each space is a different color. And when you land on a space, you have to, uh, answer a question that you have to answer a picture, um, correctly. And if you get that correctly, that color, uh, goes into your little inventory of which colors you have. There are four colors. Um, and you have to get all four before you can go up to the next level of the board game.

18:20 Um, and, uh, depending on how long it takes you to answer, um, that depends, that, that, that, uh, that's your dice roll. So like if you're quick, you roll a six. Uh, if you're slow, you roll a one and that moves you to the next space. Um, and that's pretty much it. Now, when you say get to the next level, realistically, what's happening is, is you're like going up to like the second floor of the board game. If you imagine the board game as like a tower. You're getting beamed up. Yeah. You're getting beamed up and almost ascending in some ways because nobody else is there with you unless, uh, people beat you there.

18:55 And, and then it's just kind of like, there's no end in sight really for, for, for the first time it happens to you because you're not quite sure. Like, well, is there only two?

19:05 Yeah. How many layers are there? Uh, and I think there's four in the hardest difficulty, correct? And I think maybe three on the first, on the easy and medium. I, I didn't actually finish my hard game, uh, cause it was goofy, but yeah, on three, there, there are three levels in easy at the very, before you get to, uh, the winning, the winner circle. Allegedly at the, on the, uh, hard and very hard fourth level, there are dropout squares on that part of the board that caused the players to fall back down onto the third level. Now that doesn't, you know, that sounds like snakes and ladders to me as well, you know? So now, now we've got Pictionary, some form of trivial pursuit and snakes and ladders all in one game. It's a must buy.

20:17 Wait, what is the trivial pursuit thing? No, I'm not saying it's trivial pursuit. I'm saying they're alluding to that on their own, like back of the box. They were, they were. The colors of like, isn't that trivial pursuit? There's like different categories in different colors. Like, I guess. Yellow is. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's true. Right. Oh. And I think you need those colors, right? I thought they were insulting trivial pursuit.

20:38 They probably were doing both because they are that ballsy. Yeah. Now, so you have to collect all four colors on the, on the board before you can ascend. Did you find yourself, did you find yourself in a situation where you had the other three colors, but just couldn't land on that fourth color? Yeah. That's where something I thought that, I thought they have like maybe two decent gameplay ideas for a board game that don't work well together. And that's the needing the four colors and having the dice roll the way that it rolls. Whereas the more time that it takes you to guess something, the lower your dice roll is.

21:14 So, so theoretically you have to like, think about like, okay, how long do I want to take so I can get a three? Cause I only need three spaces to get to the blue space I need. But then really that, that's like a hard strategy to pull off. That's a hard strategy to have to like try and come because, because you're, you're competing against the computer. That might take the longer you take. Yeah, but it's a risk reward.

21:33 I mean, thinking about it, if you're playing against other people, like it's, uh, do I think that they'll get it? Or do, do I think I'm the only one that gets it? And so should I wait until I get that four?

21:43 You know? That's a good point. Especially if playing against other people. I think maybe playing against the computer is what kind of threw me off. Cause I was like, well, I just know that usually around three or two, the computer will get it on medium. So like, I never got a three or two because I was just like, well, you know, once I know it, I'm just going to guess it. Maybe I'll wait for a four or maybe just at three. So like, I guess because the computer was a little more predictable than a regular person that heard it. Yeah. I can only imagine how intense you were thinking though, Joe, in the moment as the lines are being drawn across the screen.

22:11 You're like, I should wait for the four because if I get the four, I will have my chance for green. Well, I wanted, I wanted to, I was hoping this would be a lot more, I don't know. I don't even want to say complex, but like, I don't know, a lot more like strategy based of a board game. I was just thinking like, even with like the primitive technology of the NES, if you're untying a board game from like needing physical pieces that can actually do things, you can probably come up with some cool little things and strategy things and ways it works that aren't tied to the laws of physics. But I feel like this kind of didn't really utilize that too much other than the fact that you go to other levels, but like, who cares?

22:49 So I was just like hoping there'd be like some, I don't know, more board game to this other than just like go around the circles and guess that they do the same thing over and over again. Yeah. It's like, it's almost like Candyland except for a little more advanced because at least rolling. You have some control. Yeah. Candyland is a game that plays itself. Sean, you never have to do anything. Once you shuffle the cards, the game is already decided. It's over. But I have many fond memories of playing Candyland as a child and you are taking that away from me. You have fond memories of watching Candyland unfold.

23:28 Yes. Candyland happens to you. You were merely a participant. Well, I didn't know that as a child. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's true. It's a colorful board. One thing that this game does not have going on. You would think that since this is a video board game, they would do a little more plussing up to make it look, I don't know, futuristic or even like have a background. But instead it's just... It has the beaming. It's just tiles though on a black void. It's like space.

23:55 What world are we in that like a high heel and a teddy bear are like the last sentient objects alive and they have to like move across... They're game pieces, Mike. They might be the first sentient objects alive. We don't know. That's also true. You know, I don't know about you guys, but I didn't read the manual or the back of the box before booting up this game for the first time. And I was a little surprised to find out that the whole game was just drawing the pictures.

24:20 Were you ever expecting like another, like, oh, that's the blue category. I can't wait to see what happens when I land on green. Yeah, I think that's kind of what I meant with like, it's like they just didn't use the fact that they could do so many other things. Like they were just like, all right, here's one thing we can do. All right, that's our game. Well, yeah. Even in the manual, like in the beginning of the manual, I still thought that like that was just one category. And as I get to like the halfway, because it says like, there's like hundreds of different

24:52 things. Which is so many categories. And so many categories. And I just thought like, oh, man. And then I got to halfway through the manual. I'm like, oh, it's just pictures. Like movies is just pictures. And I don't know what they would have done. But, you know, they already had the whole trivia system built in from Jeopardy. So they could have done like a trivia round and maybe like a, you know, an actual video game component of this where you have to like, you know, you have to do something with your

25:24 inputs to like catch a ball or something. I don't know. Could have been, could have been something other than just drawing pictures all the time. Yeah, like a Mario Party style. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what I was, what I was alluding to, Joe. A Mario Party style game where different tiles do different things.

26:00 Because is it weird for me to say that I've always, when I was a kid, I always thought that like that Super Mario Brothers 3 was kind of going for a board game thing. But like the tiles were levels. I don't know if they were actually trying that, but it always felt like a board game to me. You're on the board, you go from level to level, but there's all these little like unique pickups you can get on the board. There's other little mini games you can get. And it's kind of looks like a board game.

26:22 I love that idea. I definitely never thought that in my life. But I, no, but I also thought like, you know, to even give like a more recent example, Dragon Ball Z Budokai 2 did this something similar with their story mode where it was like, it was like a board game and it retold the entire story of Dragon Ball Z. And then you went into, based on where you moved your character around on the board, you went into battles that were relevant to the story mode. Yeah, I think that's a cool thing.

26:49 I mean, obviously we're, we're talking about even Super Mario Brothers 3 is much more advanced than this game. But like, we're talking about more advanced games, but like, I'm not, not even saying that Anticipation should have done that exactly. Like, oh, it had some kind of mini games or whatever. But like, I just feel like that, I feel like there was just so much more creativity you could put into a board game that's also a video game.

27:10 It would have been cool to even see like, if you land on a certain tile that like can draw cards and you can use those cards to like give to other players to like, now they have to guess after like one line is drawn or they have like, they have to go back and they, or they lose a color or they, you know, just other penalties and stuff like that.

27:31 Exactly. You can give players some sort of, some sort of way to change the layout of the board or like rearrange things or things you wouldn't be able to do on a real board game, but still don't feel like, oh, this is just a regular video game. Yeah, I agree. I didn't have any of these thoughts. Um, but that would have at least made the experience a little bit more, uh, what's the word I'm looking for?

27:53 Fun. There you go. Yeah. And really, who is the, the demographic that anticipation is searching for? Because if you look at this. I'd say late twenties, early thirties. Uh, that's usually the, the peak Pictionary time. Yeah, I agree. I mean, look at this box art. There's the, that's full of 28 year olds, right? Uh, about 50% women, 50% men, uh, uh, no facial hair. If you wear, if you have facial hair, you cannot play this game. Yeah. Is that Joe Pesci in the bottom center?

28:26 He just like showed up for this. He's like, oh, I love Nintendo. I don't see Joe Pesci in that, but I see a young, uh, uh, who's the guy that did, uh, America's funniest videos. And then he got really, uh, dirty. Bob Saget. Yeah. I see a young Bob Saget in the top. I think it was the other way around. I think he was really dirty. And then somehow. And then he got dirty again. Yeah. Okay. I got you. I also see Zac Efron in the top right. Now this is a star studded cast in anticipation. But that's, but that's Bob Saget. No, I'm saying that's Zac Efron.

29:00 I think Bob Saget and Zac Efron kind of look the same. I think I would agree on that. If they were ever going to like redo, remake full house in HD, they should use, uh, Zac Efron. Yeah. Just like a digitally overlay Zac Efron's likeness. Oh, I never thought about doing it that way, but I guess, yeah, that's, that's like a good way to remake the Cosby show. Just like put somebody else in that role. Yeah. Don't even have to get the other characters. Don't have to refilm anything. Just motion capture. Deep fake. I love it. Yeah. Deep fake it all.

29:33 Okay. One of the things that I want to talk about though is, and I'm trying to remember exactly what they're called in, in later levels, there are spaces that they say feature squares, feature squares. Exactly.

29:43 And, and from what, what I only landed on one once because it was very easy for me to finish the game after that without landing on them because you can just figure it out. But what it looked like to me is it just makes you rotate around the board really quick and you just press A on the, on the tile you want to land on. Is that the only thing it does? Has anyone seen it do anything else? That's it. That's the only thing it does. Cause the manual says, I wish I had it right here. It's basically along the lines of like, it's going to lift you up.

30:11 And if you press the A button, it'll bring you back down to earth. Well, what it says is, I'm just reading it now. If you, if you land on one of these, something crazy will happen. Stay cool and press the A button right on time. Like, like, like it's going to be something really stressful and crazy. You got to keep your cool and press the A button. It's like, that was, that was maybe the most exciting thing that happens in this game. And it's not very exciting. And the fact that it's not very hard to press the A button on exactly what tile you want. There's like no challenge to it. One thing I definitely don't think of this game as is stressful. I would never describe this like, oh, you shouldn't play this if you have heart problems.

30:49 Yeah. I just love that it says stay cool and press the A button. Like, we're here with you. You're going to get through this. Like, these manual copywriters are doing the best they can with the material they have. No, they're definite. No, I can't, I can't abide that. I don't want to go too off topic. But I'd say that most, most manual copywriters actually do a disservice to the games that they're manualizing. But this one, though?

31:12 I think this one actually does make it sound, it still doesn't sound exciting, but it sounds more exciting than it actually is. I'll grant you anticipation as the exception that proves the rule. I thought that's what we were talking about, is anticipation. I meant in general. Oh, gotcha. So when you win this game at the very end, you get teleported up to what seems like another stage and you're like, oh, great, here we go. But then your icon looks at like a trophy of your icon on top of everybody else's icons. Like, the other icons have been crushed. I mean, I've never won a trophy in my life, but I thought that's how it was.

31:51 Yeah, it's actually, they actually like get 3D models of you and have you stand on all the people on the other baseball team. Like, doesn't the Stanley Cup have engravings of the losing team being slaughtered by the winning team? No, Sean, it's close, but it's actually that every team that wins the Stanley Cup then just like adds to it of them crushing the previous winners of the Stanley Cup.

32:16 I like that. Yeah. So if you don't ever win the Stanley Cup, you never get in that. You've never lost, really. You've never lost. Yeah. So the Buffalo Sabres have nothing to worry about. I swear to fucking God. I will eat you alive. All right. So, I mean, believe it or not, I don't really have much else to talk about here. I suppose we could do a rare retrospective, but other than Slalom and Wizards and Warriors, they're pretty much just giving us board games now.

32:42 Oh, sorry. They also gave us RC Pro-Am. So they had like three hot. Now they've got three that are just like, well, I don't even know if these are really video games at a certain point. You know? What is a video game? What? RC Pro-Am is like, it's still like a small thing. Like they're just trying to remake things that are already in your house. Got it. Yeah, that's true. RCs are in your house and so are Wizards and Warriors.

33:06 So, you know, I'm not going to, we're not going to do the rare retrospective yet is what I'm saying. I think we should wait for them to come out with another big game. And then we could kind of ask like, what was the plan? Like, why did they go this route? I mean, maybe these games made money, right? You have to imagine that if you're marketed as the first NES, Nintendo board game, you're probably going to buy that.

33:26 Or your mom's going to buy that for you. You know, like your mom's going to be like, oh, board games. Great. He's always playing that Nintendo. Yeah, I feel like that was more the target. It's like parents who really weren't sure what their kids wanted, but they were like, oh, they like board games and they like Nintendo. Yeah. And I think we should figure out if we like this in 2020 during our essential games list.

33:47 Joe, you'll notice I said, do we like this game? But you're also going to have to give an essential vote. So please give both of those. So Spy vs. Spy, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Anticipation. Those are the last three games we played. And I think those are the quintessential, essential games of our time. So yes, I'm voting as essential.

34:08 Very good. You'll note that we played Super Mario Bros. 2, not 3. Oh, okay. Well, in that case, that's my mistake. So this is not essential. Oh, no, no, no, no. Anticipation. No, you can't do that. No, no. I misunderstood the question. I'm going to say not essential.

34:26 I think that they could have done a lot more with this game, even just to make it a play it. I think this is just like, like, it's not like it's, it's not like it's some horrible, like, it's not like you can't have fun playing this game, but it's just kind of, just kind of boring and like not something that you need a video game to do. I mean, I guess you need it for the computer to be drawing it. But like I said, I already think that's a, that's a mark against it. So I think it's just more fun to play this like on paper with a friend.

34:50 Joe, I think you're, yeah, the real trifecta here is, uh, Psycross, Suspied vs. Spy, Super Mario Bros. 2, the three S's of October 1988. Oh, of course. Yeah, I should have, should have thought of that. Yeah, the S tier of games, if you will.

35:07 Now, Sean, you wanted Joe to vote that game essential just now, so I'm scared to hear your vote here, but please tell us anyway. So I, I, I basically just didn't want him to, uh, to give a joke answer and then go back on it. Then I realized that I have done that before many a time. So that would be a double standard. Yeah, I consider you my inspiration, actually. Well, not anymore, but I do.

35:31 Um, so here's, so here's what anticipation is. Anticipation is Pictionary, except it removes, uh, it removes you drawing. It removes you yelling at your friends the same word over and over, even though they keep saying you're wrong. Uh, it, it removes all of the drunken antics that, that would happen alongside that. Uh, and it adds a multicolored circle with ice cream on it. I would say that this is not essential. I think that's well said.

36:01 I, you know, you're, sometimes you forget the human element of it, but even when I was playing with another person, I, we never had that moment of shouting out loud, like what it is, you know, so that it's missing things like that. Yeah. I put anticipation in the category of video games where, uh, you know, a development company

36:19 is told by the publisher, Hey, we need a new game. And they just kind of gather around and say, well, we can make this. Like we can make this really fast. We know how to make this. It's easy to make this. And then they make it. And it's like, it wasn't necessary.

36:33 Anticipation was probably a game that never needed to be made. But I understand why it was made back in that time. I'm here to tell you right now, you do not need to play it in 2020 and you won't need to play it 10 years from now, 20 years from now. I guarantee it. This game is, is lost to time at this point. And we're probably, if it's going to be a rare occasion, if we bring up anticipation again on the show.

36:59 Thank you for that, Sean. I do have one, I do have one little comment that isn't directly critical of this game. And it's just, uh, like the state of the industry, I guess. Like, I doubt that they were the first, the first guys to think that like, oh, what if we had board game elements in this video game? I'm not giving them that credit, but at least shows you where like thoughts of developers are headed right now. And that like, that there still is that nugget of like, oh, there might be a good board game base, like, like in terms of it's, uh, it's, it's gameplay, uh, elements and mechanics. Like that could happen over on the horizon maybe.

37:40 So I guess that's, that's all I have to say. I think that's a good point though, Sean, that like, we're still trying, you know, people, even though the gate, the console is being flooded with games, people are still trying different things and seeing what's working in 1988. And I'm sure there's going to be a point where we're just going to get continuously hit with shmups, sports games, and arcade ports.

38:04 But for the time being, it is nice to have like different stuff just to be able to play variety because there was a point in, uh, late 87 where we were almost playing exclusively shmups. You know, before we go though, we do have a, you know, a piece of fan mail, if you will, a question to, to answer here that's been posed to the nostalgia crew. Uh, are you guys game? I'm game. Okay.

38:31 Uh, this one comes from Steve from Houston and, uh, he says, best wishes, number one fan. I think that's, you know, that's tough to say you're the number one fan, but I believe it because it's the first question we've gotten in months. And has anyone else said it? I mean, you just got to say it. Let's not, let's not pit them against each other. Yeah. I wouldn't want to pit anybody against each other.

38:52 I think all of our number one fans are exclusively our number one fan. I agree. So anyway, the question at hand is if you could remake any game that we've played so far on the NES into an open world RPG, which is famously the best genre, what would you pick? No cheating with Mario or Link. Only hot, fresh IP. I got a meeting with Danny Konami and John Bonjaleco to pitch this to tomorrow. Oh man.

39:24 Uh, yeah. I don't know who wants to go first. Who's got thoughts? I mean, I got one. Okay, please. All right. So the game that I would remake, uh, on the PS5, um, and the Xbox Series X would be Lunar Pool. Now it's going to take some tweaking in terms of, uh, the scope, uh, obviously cause it's open world, uh, as well as like the, the lore. So basically Lunar Pool, uh, 2021 would be, uh, you live in a, a sort of, uh, a sort of cyber punky, like moon colony. Uh, that is, it's, it's industrialized. You, you have, uh, you have, you have little personal wealth.

40:06 It's very corporate, but everywhere are these, uh, these, these pool halls that are seedy and they're, they're where the actual things happen. And you take on the role as a pool shark. And basically you, you would, you would go around this lunar city to the different, uh, pool halls. Uh, you would play pool, get into fights. Uh, there'd be some romance options, uh, of the bar flies at the pool hall. Um, and, uh, you, you'd eventually take down the CEO of this, uh, lunar corporation in a, a game of pool. You wouldn't like win anything, but you'd really show them who's boss. That's beautiful. I honestly, I think that, I honestly think that would be a fun, that'd be a fun game. You know, they, they, uh, I would play it. They gotta get quirky.

40:55 Uh, Joe, do you have your choice? Yeah. I think what I, what I'm thinking, maybe maybe part of this is recency bias, but is spy versus spy. I think this is like, this could be the first ever exclusively two player open world game where you're both in the world together, setting traps worldwide.

41:11 You're gathering fowlers and factions and just doing like Skyrim levels of things, but all just everything you're doing is like trying to go on a quest that'll just help screw over the other person in some way. So I think that, you know, you're always looking for where they are in the world. Joe, you're saying worldwide, but is it really like the entire world mapped out? No, it would be like a world. Our entire real world. Oh. Oh, okay. I see. Yeah. Like an entire real world. I got it. Yeah. To scale. Yeah. And you can go in any building.

41:40 Yeah. Even like, yeah, even like the real people are all really there. No, even if it wasn't, you know, it could be, it could be any world, as long as it's large open world, the whole point of the game is to find and kill the other spy. Could take, could be an 80 hour game. It could be a 20 minute game. So do you have to set up like times that you play together. So do you have to set up times that you play together or can you play at any time? And you have to put your guy to sleep.

42:04 Yeah. I like that. I was going to say you just have to keep playing until you're done or want to forfeit. But I like that idea better. Like you have to like find a good hiding spot to like, to like, to sleep while you're not playing. And then they could come kill you in your sleep. And then you turn the game on and say, well, you lost. You shouldn't have. I kind of like that. Yeah. And once you lose, that's it. Your copy can't work anymore. Yeah. Yep.

42:28 Now, I'm going to give two answers here because I'm pretty sure I can't say my first one, which I was thinking of was Jaws. But that's not really a fresh IP. It's, you know, it's tied up in movies and everything. Oh, I guess neither is Spy vs. Spy if you put that right. Yeah. But you know what? It's fine. And I'm just saying like, to me, the Jaws game was already pretty close. Now, imagine that as an open world RPG where you're like trying to track down Jaws and you're you know, you're you're building out your ship and your your loadouts and you're getting stronger throughout the game. That would be great.

42:57 And then when you finally kill Jaws, it unlocks a second mode where you do the whole story campaign again, except for now you're Jaws and you have to get stronger and stronger and you have to progress through the game to try to outdo the captain. And is the captain now the captain that you've customized? Now you have to beat yourself. I don't know if it's that you have to beat yourself. I think it's just a, you know, it's a computer AI version of that. But you are Jaws. And I think once you beat both story modes, that unlocks the secret campaign where you play as Steven Spielberg trying to film it all happening.

43:31 See, I mean, that that's that's that's what I'm talking about, though. Asymmetric multiplayer. I know that you're not saying that it's a multiplayer game, but I think that it could be. It could be. And that's sort of like what I what I like about it. But of course, still open world. Yeah. Red Dead online, but Jaws online. I just like the idea that Steven Spielberg is like actually like a documentary filmmaker and he's like traveling around the world trying to film this real like actual shark. And you get to make your movies and release them online. Right. It's the movies as well. It's also that game for PC.

44:05 Yeah, it's that. Now, since Jaws, I don't think is really allowed. I will say that a game that should absolutely be made is Ghost and Goblins, but in the style of like a Dark Souls like game. I think that that world already has like a lot of cartoonish comedic elements to it. And it lends itself to like a fun, lighthearted Dark Souls game that's also already has a reputation for being very hard. Yeah, that's I agree with this, too, because a lot of like that Souls like genre is a little too grimdark. Like, I think the only the only one that has much levity in it is like the Jedi, the Jedi game. Oh, yeah.

44:44 Yeah, I think a fun, cartoony Souls like would be nice. So do you like in this Souls like version of the game, do you get hit and you'd like jump out of your armor and then you're walking around your armor? Yeah, your armor, you get two hits, basically. And the first time, you know, your armor falls apart and then you're in your heart shaped boxers. And then the second one, you are dead because you don't have armor. But to make a truly open world, you'd probably have to add some towns in there as well. Yeah, but the towns would react differently based on whether you had the armor or the underwear. Oh, of course. Yeah, but that guy's good. You have to have that immersion.

45:16 A fantastic question, really, from Steve from Houston. And he also wants to know why you guys don't tell us your last names. But I think it's for the best that you don't tell us your last names. Well, now we got you hooked.

45:30 Yeah, yeah. It's like that's that's the whole mystery. We will reveal that on episode 716. Don't you worry. I'm sure by then you'll know a lot more about us than just our last names.

45:41 Okay. And I think that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. Be sure to join us next week because we have Blaster Master on tap. You know, that's a game that has a ton of like follow up games and has gotten some new life on the Switch and everything. But this NES game is very well regarded by real NES fans. And I don't mean to call anyone who doesn't like this game not a real NES fan. It's just when you ever hear about like games outside of the Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zeldas and the Castlevanias. A lot of people start talking about games like Blaster Master. And so I'm really interested to see what this one's all about because I never played it. Same. I've never played it either.

46:20 And whenever I hear it, I know it's not true, but it always makes you picture math blasters. Oh, that's good. But yeah, that's true. And whenever I hear math blasters, I think of that other one, Number Munchers. Don't know that one. Oh, it's like a frog that eats, not fractions. That's frog fractions.

46:38 Yeah. You know, I always get those games confused. When we were playing Anticipation, I was like, this isn't frog fractions. You know, it's every time. I'm like watching the Fresh Prince on HBO Max and I'm like, this isn't frog fractions.

46:51 Anyway, you know, that's all the time we have for this episode. Please join us next week for Blaster Master. You can always ask us questions. You see how much fun we have with them. So keep the fan mail coming. Contact us on Twitter at NostalgiaCast or follow me directly at Esposito Film on Twitter. I'm Michael Esposito and I'll talk to you soon.

47:25 We'll see you soon.

47:35 See you next time.