140 · SUPER TEAM GAMES

• Here’s a thrilling series of games that will challenge all your friends!
• Introductions
  • Remember the Power Padm?
• How do you feel about these games?
• Gameplay
  • Obstacle Course A consists of the following events: Log Hop, Water Cross, and Wall Jump.
  • Obstacle Course B consists of the following events: Belly Bump Ball, Crab Walk, and Bubble Run. Both courses also contain Sprint events.
  • The Super Obstacle Course combines all of the events of courses A and B.
  • Skateboard Race simply presents the player with a random assortment of obstacles to avoid.
  • SIX PLAYERS
• In 2007, Namco Bandai Games announced that the Power Pad would see a reappearance for the Wii.[7] This version of the pad, called the Mat Controller, will also work in conjunction with the Wii Remote, and connects physically to the Wii console via its built-in GameCube controller ports. It was released as Active Life: Outdoor Challenge in North America
• EGL
• Next week -

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

00:00 Super Team Games! Here's a thrilling series of games that will challenge all your friends!

00:16 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. Guys, do you remember the Power Pad? Vaguely. From a very long time ago. I remember going to the Museum of the Moving Image to use it.

00:41 I'm not kidding. I thought you meant in the context of the podcast. I do, I do. Yeah, to play it I think for something for the podcast. I found it at the Museum of the Moving Image. Oh, wow. I think just like I happened upon it. I was like, oh, I need to play this for the podcast. And I played it. The Museum has, for those of you that are in the New York City area and are out of the COVID situation, I guess in the future, the Museum has an amazing video game collection because that's included as part of their like moving images. It's not just film and TV. It's true. It's that things usually are animated in video games. Yeah, it's kind of funny. You go in there and you see like an NES on like a little pedestal behind glass.

01:28 Yeah, and then some people like they point, you know, because they're older people, they point out to like their, their kids like, see that NES like that's really rare that thing's worth like thousands of dollars. Like, but some games are. Did your dad say that to you? What's that? Did your dad ever say that to you? No, no, no. I'm just saying like that's a thing that older people believe that anything that is old has a lot of value behind it. Yeah, I think what they're talking about too, where a lot of times they tell their kids is like, you know, that newfangled nostalgia podcast you listen to? Well, this is what they're talking about.

02:01 And then they play it and the kids are just like not excited about it. And he goes like, I guess your generation's not ready for it, but your kids, they're gonna love it. Right. And that works full circle because that means that an old man made a back to the future joke that his kids don't even understand. Right. Oh my God. That's a lot of layers there. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what the show is all about. I've been told by several listeners that this show is like an onion.

02:31 Like a perfect. Name three. Uh, no, I cannot. Okay. I legally am not allowed to. That's why. That's fair. Not because it did not happen, but because I legally cannot name them. Anyway, back to the power pad. The reason I bring it up is because I think in our Super Mario Brothers Duck Hunt episode, we were talking about even the zapper kind of feeling like a, uh, thing that was forgotten. But the power pad has only really had, uh, two games, technically three, but one is just the same game rebranded.

03:03 So super team games comes along now. And it's like, I guess if you owned a power pad, you know, the investment was already there. And the band, I probably felt like, uh, we gotcha. Like you own a power pad. Might as well buy some more games for it. Yeah. I mean, it's that, that install base thing. I feel like it, maybe people would have like a little bit of like guilt. Like, wow, why did I waste my money on this power pad? I only have one game. I feel like they're all pretty dusty in a basement already though.

03:31 Probably. Yeah. It reminds me of, uh, Joe, to your point, the eye, eye toy for the PlayStation two. Yeah. Yeah. For PlayStation two. And that had like its own game. So it already justified it, but then they made like a bunch of like franchises, got their own like eye toy version. And you just kind of bought it. Cause you were like, I'd like to see what Sonic can do on the eye toy.

03:55 Yeah. I mean, even, yeah, even like, I don't know if there was a, was there a, like a dedicated Sonic eye toy game or was there just like a, like a playable mode in a Sonic game? It was Sega all stars. Gotcha. Cause I had, uh, even just like, I mean, I had a couple of, uh, standalone games for the eye toy, but I even had like a Harry Potter game that had like an eye toy mode, like a bonus games.

04:16 Uh, I also loved the eye toy by the way. It doesn't get enough love these days. I would definitely play with my eye toy again. I would not play with my power pad again. The difference of course being that the eye toy was somewhat reliable in, uh, what you did was represented on the screen. The power pad, because you're like stomping on it, the inputs just are not designed to last very long.

04:40 Yeah. Also the inputs are just so, I mean, I know it's not like fundamentally it's, it's not, or like it theoretically, it's not much different than like a dance pad of like DDR, but man, it's just so different. If like it's DDR, if DDR was on NES title, then I mean, nobody would have put that thing away. You know? The thing is, I just don't think that the power pad, like, like to Mike's point, just have the input, like quality that DDR has. Even when it's brand new, I imagine. Yeah, I figure as much, but I mean, I'm just imagining like an eight bit version of dance music, which I think would be great.

05:19 I think you just invented like an amazing new homebrew, uh, NES game that uses the power pad. It's already copyrighted and, uh, patented. So nobody try it. Um, I'm already, I'm working on it right now. Yeah. And another thing there, Sean is like, that is a, that is just a great idea. I'm still blown away that you came up with that, but you know, not because you're not good at making ideas, but because like that actually seems like something. It came from me. I understand. It seems like something they should have done.

05:49 Why do they keep instead focusing on like these, you know, you're in camp obstacle course games instead? Well, this is the first, like, at least this is a little bit, this game is a bit more unique in that, that camp is the context instead of like, you're somehow at the Olympics or something along those lines. Like this is a bit more down to earth, I guess, in terms of its setting.

06:16 Yeah. Like when you get in the giant crab and start walking sideways down the course. I mean, that's what I did when I went to summer camp. Yeah. I mean, I admittedly, I've never been to summer camp, so I don't know what they do there.

06:28 Yeah. But athletic world, right? Didn't that one also take place at summer camp? Well, that, that sort of counters what I said earlier. So I'm going to stick by it and say no. Okay. Yeah, I didn't think so either. But you're probably right. Yeah. I like how, I like how Joe made it into an opinion thing. Like, no, I didn't, I didn't perceive that as summer camp. Yeah, to me it was like they were saying as summer camp, but I think that there was a deeper story there. Right, right, right. You know, I think that was the same summer camp where Friday the 13th takes place. So it's like shared universe.

07:01 Anyway, how do we feel, how do we feel about these games? You know, these power pad like games. Are you guys at the point now where we're on game number four and you're like, I hope I never see another one of these? Or are you willing to, you know, maybe hope that Bandai has learned something new and useful about the power pad and that they're going to change the way these games play? Well, let me tell you something. I don't want to see another power pad game unless it's just like Twister. Unless it's Twister, I'm not into it. You see, that's another great, you should be like the power pad like marketing, like the head of their idea department. I'm in the wrong generation, guys. Don't say that.

07:49 Think about it though, there's 12 inputs on that power pad, like it's made for Twister. You're doing a great job. I know, I know. Thank you. Yeah, I also similarly don't want to see any other power pad. I would like to see a Twister game, but otherwise, this has just further solidified my idea that they don't really know how to utilize this thing in a way that's any good.

08:14 But I don't want to see any more because from the best of my knowledge, they're all just made by Bandai because Bandai teamed up with Nintendo to release this power pad. So I don't know of any other power pad games that are going to come out that aren't made by Bandai. And it seems like they just have this idea of, because it used to be called the family fun fitness pad. They just have this idea of family fun and fitness that they can't detach themselves from. So every game is just based off of like running in place.

08:46 Yeah. And, you know, and the power pad isn't really used for anything other than like run in the middle. OK, now run up top. Now run in the bottom. It's like, all right, that's one way to handle making a video game. But imagine if Mario, the whole thing was you just ran at different speeds.

09:02 Yeah, honestly, if they were going to go and rebrand this like and make it the power pad and not because like what you just said, the family fun fitness like facilitator thing, I would imagine that these would be the kinds of games that come out for it. But because they called it the power pad and they did this rebranding, you would think that they would go into these like, you know, Twister or something like that. I don't know. So I think this may have been less of a failure if they just kept the old name, because then this is what we'd only expect from this. Yeah, I think that's a good point, because.

09:42 Well, I don't know, actually, you know, you have the power pad name is definitely not represented here. But I don't think like just because something is called the family. It's almost like giving the Wii Fit board a pass because, well, it just plays Wii Fit. And that's that's good enough. Like, I didn't expect anything more from it. Like, you would still hope that it's still good. Right. Sure. I guess, though, if you're it just seems like a half measure. You call it the power pad and you only release these these faux competitive fitness games.

10:15 You may as well. I mean, I guess we're kind of saying the same thing here. No, I totally get what you're saying, though. Nintendo should have when they changed this to the power pad and released it themselves. They should have released like a Super Mario Brothers power pad game. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

10:32 Yeah, because that's like something they would do nowadays. Like if you if they designed like a new peripheral, there would be a, you know, maybe not Mario, but some of their IP based around it to get it, you know, to get people on board with it. It seems more like they're just spitefully making Bandai play out the rest of their contract. Yeah. And and, you know, just to talk about the game, too. You have obstacle course, a obstacle course, B and the super obstacle course. But the super obstacle course is a combination. It's just everything from obstacle course A and B.

11:06 So why is that one like the first option for you to select? Seems like it just wants you to play the entire game all at once as like the very first thing you do. Yeah, the entire 12 minute obstacle course that just seems to never end is what you start with. It really doesn't sell it for me because after a while I'm like, oh, my God, I've been playing for like eight minutes and I'm not even like halfway through the obstacle course.

11:30 You went for eight minutes? It's not literally, but it still was like it was just ridiculous. Like, did anyone else think that like each section of the obstacle course was ridiculously long? So I just threw this game into an emulator because I don't have we I know we tried to get a power pad back in the day and we would have we would have probably.

11:52 If COVID wasn't a thing, maybe we would have all been trying to get one just that we could play these games the real way. But we can't get together anymore. We only live virtually. But so I threw it into an emulator and use my fingers as feet. And maybe it's because like I can I can twist my fingers faster that I can than I can run and jump. But I was able to do it in like four and a half minutes, which I guess is like that's a good workout if it's high intensity. Right. Like I don't I don't work out, but that sounds about right.

12:24 I mean, in the manual, they only suggest like an hour maximum of this game a day. Oh, so you've got to run this game like you got you got to run it like 12 times. I just can't even see anybody doing that. Yeah. It's just too repetitive. I mean, even like you were saying before, I mean, even when you're when you change things up, you're still just stomping on the power pad. Maybe you're stomping on two different buttons, but you're still just that's all you're doing. The whole game is stomping on the power pad as fast as you can.

12:56 Yeah, for sure. I mean, like that's all that's all any physical activity is just stomping on the ground, you know? Well, right. I just mean, like, what about like like the way it's presented is like, oh, now you're in the crab walk part of the obstacle. Now you're in the bubble part of the obstacle. Now you're I mean, granted, there's there's jumping, which is which is one nice little break from fake running all the time.

13:17 But it's just nothing actually really like changes about a lot of these things when you change from a different point of the obstacle course other than what you're seeing on the screen. It's cute. And it's funny to see like, oh, now he's blowing up a bubble. He's going to go through a bubble. Now he's got to tread through all this water.

13:33 But I just wish there was some way of making those things mean something more for gameplay. Well, the the crab walk and I think the bubble run are the two that change where you need to be on the power pad so that you're kind of are facing it from the side. Your step, you know, like you're you're you're stepping with a longer gate on each of your each of your feet. And that's a cool idea for something like the crab walk, because you it is kind of mimicking the way that a crab walk looks.

14:06 But I agree with you, Joe, that if the only thing that's changing is visual aspects of it, like if the log hop and which is running and then jumping over logs and the water cross, which is actually swimming. If the only thing different about those is what you see on screen, then that the sections are almost it's like weird. There should have been something that you do where like and this is just me getting crazy for a minute. But if you're going to try to emulate swimming on a power pad, maybe you do something where you have to have your hands on positions one and two and your feet on positions nine and ten. So that, you know, you're kind of like in a bear walk. You're halfway to twister.

14:51 Yeah. But you have to like alternate a little bit. This way it actually like looks somewhat like you're swimming as opposed to just running. I think the swimming element is the is the best example of what I'm talking about, because it's like you're in water and now it's like, oh, it's harder to get through.

15:07 But I mean, I guess if you're using your imagination, you're like, OK, now I'm in the water. But really, swimming through the water, you have to do the exact same thing you do to run on land. And you can make the argument like, well, you're going to want to go faster now because the water slows you down. But like, I mean, I guess this is a not the best argument. But like if you can go that fast, maybe you should just be going that you should just be going as fast as you can the whole time.

15:30 I mean, unless you're trying to save your energy for the bursts you need when you're in the water. But I don't think it's it's that intensive that you need to do that anyways. Yeah, it's really just window dressing, because like if both competitors have the same like preset areas where their speed is going to be cut down from the same motion, like there's the same motion for running as it is swimming. But if both competitors have like the same spot where that happens, like there's really no difference.

16:00 Like you can just keep going at the same pace. It's just your avatar on the screen goes slower. It's really just window dressing for it all. And it it I mean, I really don't know how else you could do it, aside from what Mike said. But yeah, it kind of sucks. They do make up for it a little bit, though, because if we're talking about like that, the only thing that changes is the graphics, the graphics are pretty nice in the game. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a good aesthetic. It's passable.

16:29 There's something about like and I don't know if it's just because the characters are taking up more screen space than our usual characters that we see in our games. But there's something about the sprite work in the characters that gives them a pseudo like 16 bit quality to them. Yeah, I think it's one of those games. There's been a few games that we've played like this where it's just something about the like.

16:50 It's weird because it's almost something to me about like the solidness and simplicity of the colors that make it look a little cleaner than other because they're true. They're just keeping it simpler as far as maybe not the sprites, but like the backgrounds. Yeah, like that part is is nice and clean. And so the characters stick out a little more.

17:09 And I don't know. There's just something about like I know it's not 16 bit. I'm not arguing that I'm saying like there's just something about like the. The roundness of the heads and like the the gloss that they put into the hair to like add that spherical shape to them. That just makes them feel a little more alive than the usual NES games we see.

17:29 We're like, I don't know. Just take take Samus or, you know, Simon from Castlevania. Like take those guys, for instance. They don't look like these guys. They don't pop. But I'm not obsessed with super team games. You know, I don't want you to think like all of a sudden it's like, whoa, he loves it. You know, the characters look cool. That's all I'm saying. They look like humans. I'm invested in the world in which they go to camp.

17:54 Well, I mean, if I can move on to the skateboarding section. Please. It's nice that they that they added like a different mode of play. And like, I guess like, you know, your rhythm is different in this game. But it seems like it's a little too easy. Like there's no like you'd think that it would be. You have to kick. You have to like kick the ground to get faster or something along those lines. So that you're not just like slallowing. Slalloming is how they say it.

18:33 Between like different what they call traffic cones and stuff like that. But it makes another like it breaks the rules of extreme sports games again. Where when you jump on the skateboard, you're just jumping on the skateboard. You're not. This isn't how it works. I forgot the other game that did this.

18:59 We played it. With skateboarding? Yeah, the skateboarding game. Yeah. It was a wacky water to town and country rage. Oh, yeah. The surf company. Wacky water. Town and country surf design. Yes, town and country. You're just stomping on the skateboard. And it's I don't know. I don't I'm just rambling right now. But I guess what I'm saying is I appreciate the change of pace. But it's much less engaging even compared to the regular super team games. Yeah, I think it's like it's just that I think it's a really cool idea to be like the switching lanes element of it.

19:39 But it's just too it's too simple. Just two lanes. You go one direction. You go the other direction. You just dodge between things that admittedly are not ever really that close together anyways. Yeah. So like it's not that hard.

19:51 Just take a step to the left step to the right. Yeah. It's a cool idea. Maybe if they were like I can't remember where who I was talking about this with. But I always thought that would be a good or maybe someone mentioned this. That would be a good idea for the Wii balance board to have a skateboarding game or like.

20:09 Well, there was Joe. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. I know that. Tony Hawk Shred. Oh. Yeah. It was like Tony Hawk Shred. And it came with a skateboard for the Wii. And I think you put the Wiimote in it. Hmm. But you stand on the skateboard like the. Yes. The balance board.

20:29 Yes. It was a skateboard controller. It seems like this is what we all would have wanted for this game to use. But no. Yeah. Exactly. It failed on the Wii. But it also would have failed here. Right. Like it would have just been another bad power pad like device that people would have had to pay a lot of money up front for to be able to jump on a skateboard in a video game. Yeah. You're probably right. There's not. And there's not a lot of like other other uses for this for this theoretical NES skateboard. And what do you guys think about the fact that you can play with six different players?

21:08 I think that's the only time that this game would be any interesting is like if a bunch of people got drunk and decided to play this on a lark or, you know, I guess if you have, you know, family, you can do that to completely sober. But I guess that's where I can only think I'd find the interest in playing this game in normal times. And I'm not doing a podcast about it. I almost think that I was going to say, I almost think there'd be something really fun about watching the six different people play if you couldn't see the TV.

21:47 You're just watching like a party of people just stomp around frantically. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. There's almost like you want to see a Twitch stream of somebody just playing the power pad. I think rather than watching like the NES long play footage of the games themselves, you'd rather have some, you know, a demonstration of not seeing what's happening in the gameplay, but just watching the person dance on the power pad.

22:12 The six players thing, though, there's definitely a family thing there, right? Like the connection is, is that like the whole family can play, you know, because no families go beyond six. But, you know, four is even like impossible right now on the NES for the most part. I think maybe a few games supported it, but you need the NES four score adapter.

22:34 So to have six without any adapter and just a power pad. Cool. Yeah. No, I mean, I, I think that, uh, I can't tell cause I'm, I've been looking at screen caps from this game. Maybe I would, I just didn't play it long enough, uh, or, or just, uh, I didn't explore every angle, but was tug of war in this game? I do see. Yeah. I see, I see super team games having a tug of war as well. I have no idea where that is, but it does look like it's three V three. So that would be cool. Is that in a tournament? I mean, so that would be, I have no idea how you would do that though, unless you got everybody scrunched together, all six people on the power pad. I don't know how that would work.

23:21 And also like the fact that like it is three V three like that, that would actually be a very, uh, cool feature here, you know, rather than like six people running in place, all just kind of competing on screen, the three V three element of it would, would enhance it.

23:38 Yeah. So maybe, maybe this is a, maybe this is a hoax screenshot, but, um, or, or maybe we just, we, we weren't, uh, we weren't good enough gamers to get there. But I I'm interested to see how, how tug of war would have worked on this. So I have it here in the manual tug of war. You split up into two teams. And, uh, as soon as you hear the starter gun, you just start running in place. And that determines how you tug on the, on the power pad. So again, just another running in place thing, but it doesn't, you don't necessarily need

24:16 six, uh, real people. Uh, but you would have, no, you would have, if you had six, you would have everybody standing on the power pad from positions one through 12. Everybody gets two. So you have one, one person on one and two, one person on three and four, and everybody's scrunched up on this power pad and you're all just running in place. Yeah. I want to see that happen. I, uh, I just love the fact that even like a tug of war that has nothing to do with running.

24:45 The only thing that you could do, of course, is run in place. I just want to see a series of games that like ask you to do other things that like fly a plane by running in place. I'm like, just like everything, every task you have to do is running in place. Make this sandwich while running in place. Yeah. Burger time, but it's all running in place.

25:05 You know, what's funny too here is they have the, probably the greatest solution to tug of war ever. Because if you think about it, tug of war is one of those games where you don't win until you like drag the other team across the line. And that takes like a really long time to figure out like who's got it on which side. So this one says after 30 seconds, the position of the ribbon, uh, whoever like has more real estate wins.

25:32 I feel like there are probably versions of, there are probably versions of real tug of war where I've never played it that way. I think that's, but I like that rules. Yeah. I like it. I think it's fair. I almost wish that was just the case for all of these that you didn't have to finish each thing. It was just 30 seconds and see how far you get. Yeah. Really. That's what we need in the track and field community is instead of the distance, it should just be time. It should be like, this is the five minute race and they just find out after five minutes who's the furthest along. I like that. There's no end. It's just whoever got farther away from the start. Yes, exactly. So a marathon should just be like how, how far you can go in three hours.

26:18 Yeah, sure. I think that would be a really interesting idea. It would result in at the, at the ultra competitive level, it would result in a lot of people running very slow together for a very long series of time and then trying to time like the last 20 seconds of the race to just sprint as far as they could. That's true. Unless you, unless you make people take their, they start at different places altogether

26:41 and you just measure the distance. They're not even near each other. They can't even incite each other. We're designing an entirely new track and field sport right now. But to be fair, Joe designed a track and field sport that is fair during COVID times. Right. Yeah. It's a socially distanced event. Yeah. I like that.

27:32 It's a socially distanced event. All right, so you guys are probably sick and tired of talking about Super Team Games, but I need to mention in this, like, sequels and spinoff section, if you will, not necessarily that Super Team Games got a direct sequel,

28:05 but in 2007, Namco Bandai, because they joined together, they announced that the Power Pad would see a reappearance for the Wii, and that this version of the Power Pad, just called the Matt Controller, will also work in conjunction with the Wii Remote. It connects physically to the Wii console using the GameCube controller port, and eventually they released one game called Active Life Outdoor Challenge,

28:31 which is very much in the spirit of this Super Team Games thing, so that's why I included it in our sequels and spinoffs section here. However, I don't know if the right decision here was to, like, release a whole Matt controller similar to the Power Pad again, when you just have the Wii Remote, and you could just be like, shake that up and down, and that's running.

28:53 I guess that it was just, maybe they had plans for more, maybe they had plans to release more stuff? I don't know. I think it does make it a more immersive experience that it registers your footfalls, but I don't see myself playing this. Is it just the two inputs on the power pad? What do you, no, it looks like a power pad all over again. Okay, yeah. Well, I was going to say, I mean,

29:22 why don't they just use that balance board? I mean, I feel like that thing can do all this stuff, and it was really only, as far as I knew, not supposed to stomp on the balance board. I figure that's probably the problem.

29:34 Yeah, the Mac controller, now that I'm looking at it, it's not quite like a Power Pad, it's more like a DDR pad, but it's, I don't know, there's just something about this where it's like, it didn't work on the NES, and now, you know, two decades later, you're making it on the Wii again, and, like, did it really sell well enough

29:55 back in the NES days to, like, warrant a Wii revival of the Power Pad era? Yeah, it might be a little clouded, though, because I think, yeah, I doubt that there was anybody, like, in the 80s that was like, wow, the Power Pad is the best part about the NES, but the weird thing that's kind of clouded about it is that maybe by the time the Wii was out, there were a lot of people that were just like, oh, man, remember the Power Pad?

30:18 Like, and they, just that, like, there's, like, rose-colored glasses about, about, you know, childhood, and then, and that's why there might have been, like, a little bit of an appetite to be like, oh, yeah, another Power Pad on the Wii, I loved that thing when I was a kid. Now, that makes a little bit of sense, and you also have the, uh, the DDR,

30:34 like, matte aspect of it, too, so you're appealing to, like, I guess, a lot of different people. I don't know if Namco Bandai ever made a DDR-like game, but they should have at least used this thing for more than one game. And, however, the Wii is riddled with this stuff. I think there's even, like, accessories to put your Wiimote into things, but the actual thing you put it in doesn't do anything different. Like, you could put it in a golf club, but the golf club doesn't register anything, so you're just swinging the Wii remote.

31:03 But now it feels like you're using a golf, uh, a golf stick when you're playing Wii Golf. Yeah, you gotta love the golf sticks. We're making a lot of analogies to the Wii in this episode, and I think that makes sense, because, in many ways,

31:18 the power pad, the zapper, the, you know, the power gloves, like, all these weird things that Nintendo was trying early on, you don't see them pop up again, really, for the Super Nintendo, or the N64, or the GameCube. It's really only, like, once the Wii starts to redefine how video games are played with the motion controls, that all of a sudden they're like,

31:40 huh, these bad ideas we had in the NES times, well, maybe we can revisit them. And turns out they still weren't ready for the technology. Yeah, but I think that's a great point, though, because, I mean, with the exception of a couple of those zapper games, I mean, really nothing of their, like, attempts at, I don't know if you'd call it augmented reality, but whatever, their attempts at anything like that have always failed.

32:02 So, finally, they were like, oh, we can find some success with this. You know, and we're going to see if the game is a success when we do our vote in the Essential Games list.

32:16 All right, Sean, it seems like you can't shut up about Super Team games. You just love talking about Super and teams and video games. So, when we put the three together, it's a home run, right? Well, I mean, there have been a lot of Super games that I enjoy, and Super Team games is not one of them. Zing. But no, I'm going to go all in on my retro DDR game, because this isn't doing it for me.

32:53 This game had no chance to be on the Essential Games list, where this is all for the ritual of it. So, that's all I have to say on it. All right, and Joe, your vote? Yeah, I mean, I almost wanted to say that this has solidified my opinion that there's not going to be a good game on the power pad. But I actually think, if I think back, I think that was already pretty strongly my opinion. So, this game has certainly done nothing to change that opinion. It's just too repetitive. I don't think that we'll ever see... I would love to see a good power pad game. I don't think that we will see one, until Sean's Rhythm Game comes out.

33:37 Yeah, I don't think there's anything else really to be said here. Super Team Games gives you its entire load right at the beginning. It's like, here's everything we have to offer. Please enjoy it all at once. And to be honest, I didn't enjoy it. And also, we didn't talk about this, but if you're just going to have the same music over and over again, while you're doing the same type of inputs over and over again, while you're looking at the same thing over and over again, you're setting yourself up for failure within the first five minutes of playing a game. So, this makes me think that, like, this is the kind of game that is made, but not tested. It's just like, well, we finished it. Time to ship it and see who buys it.

34:23 Yeah, I imagine that when this game came out, I'm sure... What month is this? We are now in November. All right. So, some kids got this for Christmas, and I'm sure the family had a grand old time for a couple weeks, but by January 15th, this game was never touched again.

34:43 Sean, you know, it's great that you brought up when this game came out, because it is November 1st, and that means we have a whole new issue of Nintendo Power to talk about and ask some questions from the 1988 Nintendo Power crew. I do want to note, though, one interesting thing is that Nintendo Power Issue 2 had Castlevania Simon's Quest on the front cover, and we still don't have that game. We don't. I've been waiting for it. Like, a whole month later. A whole month later, and you still can't play the game that was on the cover beforehand.

35:13 I mean, I guess... I remember, like, when I was reading PlayStation Magazine, you know, PSM, not PlayStation Magazine. They'd have stuff that was, like, four, five, six months out, but maybe since this is the 80s and game development time is a little quicker, that would be surprising. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, on the surface, that doesn't surprise me just because of the world we live in now. It feels like that's not too abnormal, but, yeah, maybe in the context, it's a little different.

35:42 Well, they're keeping the, like, cool cover designs alive in Nintendo Power number three. You'll remember number one is that awesome claymation of Super Mario Bros. 2. Nintendo Power number two is this amazing, you know, Dracula-esque, like, blood-red cover that just looks awesome. And now we have as our front cover Track and Field 2. Oh, God.

36:08 And we haven't played this one yet either, so we will see what happens. Wait, is this back on the power pad? It's not, as far as I know. Okay. Remember, Konami made Track and Field 1, and I actually like that game. Oh, wait, that wasn't a power pad game. Yeah, it was not. Yeah, you just hit A and B on the NES controller instead.

36:29 Much easier. Much better. Yeah. However, there's something cool about the Track and Field 2, like, front cover of Nintendo Power, is that it's these, like, futuristic-looking shoes that have jet engines on the back of them, so they're, like, bursting with fire, and they have no human legs attached to them. They're just ones floating in the air, the other ones, like, half on the track, half off the track, and it's just ready to, like, take off into, like, the sunset.

36:59 That does sound beautiful. Yeah. I mean, and I know that that's, like, probably just an artistic thing to show, like, how cool their game is, but I love the idea that, like, Track and Field 1 was just track and field, like, actual, like, events, and then Track and Field 2 is, like, a cyberpunk future version of Track and Field.

37:19 Yeah, it's almost like... When we've all replaced our legs. Yeah. Right. We don't need legs anymore. The shoes do the running in Neo-Tokyo. Anyway, we do have questions from the Nintendo Power number three issue that I'd love for you guys to answer. Remember, these are questions submitted from children in 1988, so be nice to them. They're now full-grown adults. Okay. And, yeah, you guys are full-grown adults, too. In fact, these people are older than you. That's what I'm saying. More than likely. Yeah. Oh, okay, that's what you said. I'm just not paying attention. I kind of yawned through it, though, so maybe it was...

37:54 You yawn on the podcast? I don't know if that's allowed. Well, it's because it takes so much energy for me to put all this passion into it. All right. Well, here comes Kenan Barra from Troy, Michigan, and he writes,

38:37 Wow. I like the sentiment there. I think your parents probably might be onto you. Yeah. I do like... I think... Okay, the second one is definitely a better excuse than the first.

38:50 Getting your fingers nimble. I don't think any parent would take you seriously for it, but if it's the hand-eye coordination, you know, I feel like I may have used that before. At least... Maybe not to say, like, hey, mom, can I play the PlayStation? It would be more to defend the fact that I play video games in general, you know? Totally. No, that makes sense. I also love the idea of the kid saying, well, it helps your hand-eye coordination, and then 20 minutes later, the parents walk into him just stomping around on the power pad as fast as he can. That's good. All right, so here's another one. How do you find out all those hot tips for Super Mario Brothers? Do you get them from other members, or do you get them from yourselves?

39:38 I'm not sure I understand the question. Is he asking, like, do you discover them yourself, or, like... I think that's what he's saying, is, like, do you discover them yourself, or do you look for them online, or, like, with friends? Online? Well, you know, he doesn't have online, but the question is now in the future. Do you understand how we're doing this? Yeah, I got you. His kids are from 1988. Yeah. Yes?

40:01 Well, for me personally, a lot of my Mario tips just came from, like, people I knew that were able to do it, but I like to not... I like to, as much as I can, if it's a game I'm really into, not look up too many of the tips and see if I can figure them out myself, but then when I do want to, yes, I'll look up a guide. I've gotten way too lax with how okay I am with going online and seeing, like, how do I get the best result of this thing or the other thing? Like, when I played through Life is Strange 1, I played through it pretty normal, and I just

40:40 made the decisions that I was going to make. But when I played Life is Strange 2, I was just like, what's the best way to make sure that this happens and not this? And what's the worst case scenario if I end up doing that? I've gotten pretty bad at that, of, like, owning my decisions. But I guess that's different than tips and tricks, but it still has to do with looking up things. Yeah, it's similar.

41:06 Yeah. I don't know, for me personally, it's like, I'm sorry, I'm just taking a second turn instead of giving you a turn, Mike, but for me personally, I'm just, like, it all comes down to whether or not I think that the information I need is, like, something that'll enhance the gameplay or just some stupid thing that I would never figure out on my own or would take me forever.

41:29 True. Yeah, I think I brought this up on the Super Mario Bros. Duck Hunt episode, but, like, no one remembers exactly how they found out about the warp zone. It's just kind of something that, like, everyone knows about and you don't remember the first time you, like, wind up like, oh, I wonder what's behind the warp pipe. You just find yourself there. And so I think, like, a lot of something like Super Mario Bros. is self-discovery, but then you have other games on the NES, much more complicated games.

41:58 I'm thinking of even more recently, like, Dr. Chaos. Not something that I wanted to, like, experience on my own and find out. I wanted the answers a lot more, you know, a lot more quickly and I needed to know for the episode. So I didn't have time to, like, waste myself, like, getting through this game, dying over and over again, repeating my same mistakes until I figured out the tricks. I needed them up front.

42:22 And so for something like that, a harder, you know, less future design driven game, something like that I will go online for. But if it's something like Super Mario Bros. where the gameplay is easy in the sense of anyone can play it, yeah, I'd be happy to figure those things out on my own. Yeah. All right, so we have the top 30 for November of 1988 here. That's for every single NES game released so far.

42:48 Legend of Zelda, still the number one game of all time, according to readers, critics, and they still include people who sell the games at the stores themselves, the retailers. I think that's a dirty trick. They shouldn't include the retailers. No. But Nintendo covers themselves here by saying, once again, the all-time favorite, that honor, may not last forever, though, as some hot new games are pushing up the list. They're trying to tell you stop buying Legend of Zelda. We got plenty of other stuff here. Number two, Metroid.

43:20 Number three, Metal Gear. Is that surprising? That is surprising, at least the American version. I mean, it just, I forgot what I, what the gist of my, of my criticism was it in the episode, but I just remember it being like a shadow of its former self on the MSX.

43:41 Yeah, I think I had a similar, a similar thought with that, too. I remember thinking there was so much potential and it was a really good game with a lot of little flaws, but maybe those flaws weren't as apparent back then. I mean, they also just didn't have anything to compare it to since it wasn't really in the States. All right, and then real quick, the rest of these, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out at number four, Gauntlet at number five, another very surprising one. Number six, Super Mario Bros. 2. I mean, that's a pretty new game. Maybe people just aren't playing it yet, but, and it'll pick up after the holidays. However, I think that one should be a lot higher right now.

44:16 Number seven, Bases Loaded. And number eight, Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link. I guess that's like a, we're excited to see how this game, you know, comes out. That was definitely, that was definitely the retailer stuffing the ballot box on that one and getting people to try and like get ready to buy it. I don't know. Yeah. Is it, is it out anywhere in the States right now? In the November, December, it would not have been. And it literally just made it to the holiday like release in time for Christmas. And it was actually like super limited in its, in its availability.

44:54 Huh. Like I remember they only, I think they only targeted like major cities across America because they weren't able to deliver the cartridges in time. Guess we'll talk about that later. We'll have to because I mean, you know, Zelda 2 is going to be a big episode coming up. Uh, obviously Simon's Quest, another big episode coming up. I think next week we have Bionic Commando, which a lot of people like. And we've had some big episodes. We had, you know, just, just recently, 132 Spy vs Spy, 133 Super Mario Brothers 2, 134 Anticipation. You can't miss that episode.

45:28 Uh, so the games are going to keep coming. And even though we've played now 140 NES games, uh, an amazing feat for the three of us. But even though we've played 140 of these guys, we've got so many more to come and still so many classics that, uh, listeners are dying for us to get through. And you better believe we're going to be there, even if it takes us to 2037. We will be there. That's right. It's actually funny to think about how, what'd you say, 140? Uh, sounds like a lot. But then when you think of what are they like, there's like 750 games on the NES?

46:04 Yeah. Uh, 715 total, I believe, is what we'll be getting through. Plus the specials. And, uh, you know, and then when the Game Boy and the Super Nintendo get released, who knows what will happen. Yeah. We're in it for the long haul. You know? Uh, definitely won't be playing every Game Boy game, though. That would drive us insane. Uh, Sean would, Sean would probably, uh, not, uh, I don't know why I'm picking on you. I'm going to stop right there. You know what? You probably would love it. No, I quit. I quit right now.

46:32 Okay, yeah, we'll quit ahead of time. Anyway, we're going to quit the episode, but we're not going to quit on you. A hundred, uh, 140 games done so far. Another 600 and something to go. You better believe we're going to have a great time. Join us next week for Bionic Commando. The week after that for Blades of Steel. The weekend after that for Bump and Jump. Castlevania 2. Indiana Jones. Othello. Paperboy. Platoon. You name it, we got them. Join us on the Twitter at NostalgiaCast. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter. And I'll talk to you soon. Go Bills. Go Bills.