145 · Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

• Feel what it's like to be Indiana Jones!
• Introductions
  • Another one of those Unlicensed THEN licensed Tengen games
  • It takes a lot to get to this version of the game
    • The film comes out in 84
    • The Arcade game is made by Atari in 85
    • Unlicensed game comes out in early 88
    • Nintendo wins Lawsuit
    • Mindscape releases the licensed version of Temple of Doom in December 88
• Let’s talk about THE MOVIES
• THE GAME SAYS PRESS START BUT YOU PUSH SELECT
• Gameplay
  • OVERVIEW
    • Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom gives the player control of Indiana Jones as he makes his way through the temple in a series of 12 levels or "waves."
  • The very start of the game made me trip out
  • Rescue kids, then rescue the sword, then rescue the gun, like come on
  • This game reminds me of Super Pitfall in many ways
    • Worst jump since that game
  • The level layouts always make the game a chore. It’s actually not fun to do anything they set out to do
  • A two handed maneuver to select weapons in an action game filled with enemies/conveyor belts
  • It’s a very confusing perspective
  • Secret doors
    • It seems simple, but the levels are too large and your ammo is too scarce for you to just throw them around aimlessly.
  • The first 9 waves
    • In these stages, the player may restart the game with all items intact in the last area reached. Afterwards, if the player dies, they must return to the Chamber of Kali (Wave 9) and finish the game from that point.
  • Building the dragon lava bridge
• Arcade Differences
  • In the original arcade version, the Sankara Stones were not all found in one location at the end of a wave. Instead, Jones had to travel through a temple every two rounds.
  • More weapons and items for Jones to collect from the slave children he frees.
  • Jones was also unable to jump
• This game fits two different NES criteria. Based on a successful licensed property AND a successful arcade game ported to NES.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark is the first Indiana Video Game. Very popular but let’s recap some weird ones
  • The Young Indiana Jones Chronicle - Made by Juh-leh-co
    • We will play this on the NES. Follows the short lived TV show
  • Indiana Jones and his Desktop Adventures
    • The game is set in mid-1930s Mexico. Indy and Marcus Brody have set up headquarters in the small town of Lucasio from which to conduct excavations at Site R, whereupon they are immediately confronted with a series of mysteries, emergencies and adventures.
  • Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for Wii and PS2
    • The game takes place in 1939, and involves Indiana Jones searching for his former mentor Charles Kingston while competing with rival archaeologist Magnus Völler for the Staff of Moses.
• EGL
• Next week - Othello

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

00:00 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Feel what it's like to be Indiana Jones.

00:20 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. And I'm Sam. Guys, thank you all for joining me today in what is sure to be a blockbuster of an episode. Am I right? Like the place you go to rent movies. The place you used to go. To rent Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Yeah. I still go. We should probably talk about the movie before we ever talk about the game because this is one of those things that I don't ever associate with George Lucas, but I guess you should.

01:03 He wants you to know he's very responsible for Indiana Jones. I only ever watched the first one. I never felt like this was the trilogy I needed to be a part of. So when it came to Temple of Doom and Last Crusade and the one where he goes inside a fridge, like I don't really think I need to watch those movies. You know, I actually really liked The Last Crusade. I saw that one. The first one's still the best, but The Last Crusade I thought was pretty good. Which one's The Last Crusade? That's the third one with Sean Connery. Oh, interesting. I mean, I don't remember it. I haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember liking it a lot.

01:37 Now that I think about it, I started watching it with my friend in March or in February. It was right before COVID and then we just both lost interest. We watched something else. Temple of Doom or Last Crusade? Last Crusade. Okay. Maybe it doesn't hold up. Maybe I'm idealizing it. So is Temple of Doom the second one? The second one. Yes. Okay. Yeah. Which is a thing that we get often on this show. Somehow the NES released like right in the middle of all of these franchises coming out. Thankfully, we got a game based off of the original Jaws and not Jaws 2, but we got Karate Kid 2. We got Goonies 2 and that didn't even like ever come out.

02:16 We have Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So, you know, I don't know what it is, but I guess you just, it makes sense to be like whatever the actual movie is. Let's sell the hype towards that rather than like the big one that everyone knows. Yeah. I also, I don't know the actual plot to Temple of Doom because I, the one that I read in the manual for this game doesn't seem to be all that in depth. Could you give the spark notes to us? Uh, you gotta go save some children. Uh, and then there's a big fight on a bridge, uh, against a dude. Yeah. I don't know his name, but. Oh, so you've seen the movie. I didn't see the movie, no. Oh, it sounds like you did.

03:00 I'm just kidding. How much of the movie, Joe, has to do with rescuing children who are forced into slavery? To be honest, I really don't remember. I remember because Temple of Doom, Temple of Doom I only saw once. And, uh, I just remember a couple things when I was a kid that sort of disturbed me. I remember there being eyeballs in a bowl of soup and that, that freaked me out. Um, I, I don't even remember specifics. I just remember there was just, there was some disturbing imagery for, for my child brain.

03:30 Is it the one where there's like a, where, where they have that shot battle where like Indiana Jones takes a bunch of shots with somebody? Or maybe that's a different one and. Like, like drinking shots. Drinking shots, like in a bar. Cause I thought you were talking about the one where the guy like whips around the sword and then Indy's just like, I'll just shoot you. I have a gun. Oh, that's, that's, that's a great scene. We are, we are basically experts on the Indiana Jones franchise.

04:00 Yeah. I hope there's not like a listener. That's just a huge Indiana Jones fan. That's like just pulling their hair out right now. Yeah. I would hope they're not pulling out their hair because this is a very authentic experience they're getting. They're getting four people who could care less about Indiana Jones about to do a deep dive into it. But I do think that's important though, right? Like kids who grew up in the late seventies, early eighties were probably huge Indiana Jones fans as a result of like, you know, they, they just kind of missed out on star Wars.

04:30 Like they were probably way too young for that. And so I feel like Indiana Jones and back to the future are like the three, the two big trilogies of that, you know, that late eighties style thing. Maybe, I don't know. The, the Terminator probably comes a little bit later in terms of trilogy, but that's like what I think of when I think of like late eighties trilogies is Indiana Jones. And, um, the other one I just said, the other one I just said, that's the future. When did, when did the first one come out? Are you going to confirm it for us, Joe? Or I'm looking right now. I'm trying to remember what the first one was called. What was it called? The Raiders of the Lost Ark.

05:07 The Oakland Raiders of the Lost Ark. Do you feel like you have to call the first movie of a trilogy or of a series in general? Do you feel like you have to call that one by its subtitle or do you think you can get away with just saying Indiana Jones, Star Wars? I mean, I just call it Star Wars one. Um, which is wrong.

05:29 He specifically numbered them. He numbered them on purpose. By the way, it's 1981. Oh, so this is one of those things where like it took a long time to get to Temple of Doom. Sounds like it. Yeah. Cause Temple of Doom was like 85, I believe. Yeah, 84. Oh man, I'm all over the place. Anyway, we should probably talk about video games cause we should stick to what we know. Uh, all four of us in one way or another work in media. So it's really upsetting that we don't know anything about Indiana Jones, but. He's played by Harrison Ford.

06:02 That's, that's good to know. Um, he's played by Harrison Ford. He has a hat he likes very much. He doesn't like snakes. What do you call that hat? It's got a name. Or what? His hat? The hat's got a name. Yeah. It's like a fedora, right? Not like a pet name. Yeah, not a pet name. Like a, is it Stetson? It's a fedora. Fedora? What? It's a neckbeard fedora. Harrison Ford's a neckbeard. You heard it. Harrison fedora.

06:29 All right. Video game wise though, Indiana Jones and the temple of doom is another one of those unlicensed then licensed Tenjin Atari games that they got like sued like crazy for by Nintendo. You guys don't need me to recap this story anymore, right?

06:46 Um, I, I believe we've gone over it, right? Yeah. No, three times now. This is like, you know, RBI baseball had it. Um, what was another one that had it? Uh, just did it. We just did a big one on it, but a Pac-Man, Pac-Man had the problem. So Atari keeps trying to do this thing under a second company called Tenjin and it's just not working out. And what's funny is, is we're finally playing temple of doom, but it took a long time to do time for this version of the game to get to NES players because the film comes out in 84. The arcade game comes out in 1985. The arcade game is then ported to a bunch of other like computer systems in like 86.

07:29 Finally comes unlicensed to the, uh, NES by Tenjin in like early 1988. And then everybody's like, no, no, no, you can't do that. So mindscape, another company releases the licensed version of temple of doom from Atari in December of 88. So, you know, from 84, 85 and 84, if you count the film all the way till now, it's been in the making, but it's like, finally you can play Indiana Jones and the temple of doom on your NES. And I'm just not sure how many people were looking for that. Yeah. It's actually so, so strange to think about because obviously like in the future there,

08:08 you know, the games would have released sometimes before the movie, like to, to capitalize on the hype. Now it's just like, Oh, that was, that was four or five years ago. It's like a coordinated marketing strategy, uh, in like the nineties and the two thousands. But, uh, yeah, this just seems like, like, Oh, what if, what if we made an Indiana Jones game? Uh, I guess like a, I don't even know. Like what's a movie released four years ago. That would be weird to get like a port or like a, uh, a video game adaptation of now. Venom. Yeah. The movie Venom, the movie Tom Hardy. Yeah. That would be fun. No, I'd, I'd play a Venom game.

08:49 Why not? I, you kind of did in ultimate Spider-Man on PlayStation two. If anybody played that, you can play as Venom inserted. Wow. They came out with the game, like a decade before the movie. It's advanced marketing. Yeah. They're just priming us right away on booting it up. It's, it's on my shit list and I'm sure you can, you can understand why.

09:13 I'd like to hear it from you. Well, you start the game by pressing the start button. The game tells you that much. It says push, push, start, you know, you push start the Indiana Jones music, which is beautifully translated from, um, the score that we all know so well. It's now done, you know, really well on the NES.

09:34 Problem is, is that you push start to begin the music, but you don't actually start the game. Yeah. And then you press start again. We are on the same page there. Yeah. You push start again and nothing happens. And then you're like, oh, it's one of those games where you press a instead. And then you press a and nothing happens. And then you start looking for the shoulder buttons. You're like, are there shoulder buttons on an NES? Like what's going on?

09:56 And eventually you realize, no, it's the select button. So it's really push. You would go to the shoulder buttons before the select button. And start. No, of course not.

10:04 I will say the select button was the last thing I pressed. I mean, that makes sense, I guess. No, I don't understand. I don't understand what the meaning behind that was. I, it's sort of a thing that continues to happen throughout the game. Uh, or just boot. It seems to boot you back to the start screen, but different. And you have to press select to go into the next level. I don't, I don't know what this was for, but it's really getting off on the wrong foot. I think it's trying to prime you into realizing, oh, there's going to be some puzzle elements to this.

10:38 The first puzzle is your controller. Yeah. You guys know that I hate, um, games that make you do inputs that do not matter. Uh, what was that one recently, Sean? The, the hockey game blades of steel where you have to press a twice just to actually get into the match. I have a big pet peeve with this. So this game wasn't about to get away with it. If we can talk about the actual game though, you know, bad start menu aside, Indiana Jones, the temple of doom. It basically, you, you are Indiana and, uh, or Indy as I guess people call him.

11:10 And you have to make your way through the temple in a series of 12 levels or waves as they might call them in the game. They always say wave one, wave two. I don't think of them like that. Cause it's not quite like a shmup. It's just a action adventure game.

11:24 Uh, you go throughout these temples and you have to like find a bunch of children and then they leave you like scraps, like guns and blades and keys. And then you collect those things and you're just trying to collect, round up all the children and get the key and hopefully acquire enough equipment so that you can continue to progress through the game. Yeah. I mean, it's a pretty standard, uh, loop there.

11:48 Uh, one thing that I'll note is, uh, on one of those, uh, press select to actually start the game screens. It, it, it does give you a very brief rundown of what you're supposed to do. Um, I think my, my favorite line, uh, like it was like a subtitle sort of thing is that told you how to play was a touch child to get prize. You know, I wasn't going to say anything, but that jumped out at me also.

12:16 No, I had to bring it up. I think by you saying that the podcast is now on a list. We're on a list. Yeah. Touch child. And everyone listening. Oh, you can put that on a t-shirt. No, but it is funny though, right? Cause the whole aspect of the game is collecting these children up. And I think we joked about this in the pre-show with Sam about how like you're collecting the children, but then they just kind of disappear. There's no like, there's no insurance that they're going to a better place. It's like, it's really more like hide and seek than you rescuing the children. You found them and now you leave. They give you a knife or a gun as the child does usually. And then they just run away.

12:55 This was the whole thing. I said you're collecting children and you said, no, no, no, you're saving the children. Um, right, right. I don't know. You know, there's no way to tell what your character is actually doing.

13:08 These children are wanted dead or alive is I think the underlying statement here. Indy seems like a good guy. So he definitely is saving these kids. Sean, you brought up the weirdest point though. So you save the kid and you walk away and then like a, uh, you know, let's say a sword appears. Right. And you're like, Oh, gotta get the sword. You pick up the sword. You walk away. Another sword appears. You pick up that sword and then you walk away. And then it's like, Oh, one more sword. And I'm just like, what is happening? You'd think these kids could fend for themselves in there.

13:39 It's just funny. Yeah. They didn't have a way to like make the like, Oh, there's three swords in this pickup. You gained three swords. You have to pick one up, walk away, pick another one up, walk away, pick another one up. Although I do have to say the walking is very smooth.

13:54 Not the jumping or anything else. The walking itself. He walks like he's pooping his pants. No, I, I agree, Sam. I feel like with the, you know, with the exception of the weird, uh, like perspective of this game, it looks nice. It looks, the way he walks, the way it animates looks clean compared to a lot of other games we've played. Okay. I will, I will concede that Indiana Jones as a sprite looks fine and he looks fine. But if we're going to talk about the controls of this game, like it, I think that we can't just stop at like, Oh, he moves slow. Oh, he, he moves smoothly in one direction. I didn't say moves. I said walks.

14:36 Big difference. Yeah. We're just talking about the look of it. Aesthetically. I thought we were talking about the smoothness. No, I mean, I mean the smoothness of the, of the animation, the smoothness, the animation and the motion of the walking part. That's it. Not the jumping, not anything else. Just walking around. I felt was very smooth.

14:54 Okay. That's what I, that's what I got. And I'll just rebut that. I think it's worth mentioning that the way that his sprite is designed, it looks like he has taken a dump in his pants and he needs to like, like he's kind of like cowboy walking his way through. It was a smooth. Well, Indiana Jones is historically bow legged. So you're just making fun of a, like a disability in a way. So I, yeah, that's insensitive of me. Yeah. Very insensitive.

15:24 Do you want to talk about how you move around this game? No. Well, I think I know I do. I do. And I think that the most important thing that was brought up was the confusing perspective because you got this like straight top down view of everything. However, the game is more like, want you to think of everything in a 2.5 D kind of way in the sense that like the, the cave has, uh, multiple different layers of hills, if you will, that stack upon each other. So you can't quite like you're jumping down to other things. I don't know. It's very hard to explain the perspective.

15:59 No, it doesn't. It's so I can explain it. Please. Uh, the game is, is stuck between deciding whether, uh, the up, the top portion of your screen and the bottom portion of your screen are above and below something, or if it's in front or behind, because, uh, it does, it does sort of allow you to jump down, but it, it, it's more treating it as if the things that you're jumping across or over are, are just like right in front of you. Like if you're going to jump over something and it's like lava, you would think that you're going to jump over the lava, but no, you fall into the lava and you die.

16:41 So it's, it's like a, an MC Escher sort of feeling. It's very, just it's, it's very, uh, discombobulating. Um, I don't think I ever got it right. Um, cause some things you can and cannot jump over, it treats it as above and below or in front and behind. I hate it.

17:00 Um, I guess it is kind of hard to describe. It's just broken. It's a broken perspective. It doesn't really make any sense. If you look really closely and use your imagination, you can like see what they want, what they meant. Like, like I can see now when I'm like looking at it and say, okay, I guess they were trying to make this look like this was a flat platform and this texture was the wall, but they, they

17:22 missed, I don't, I'm not an artist, but they missed out on like doing something with the angles of the flat platforms to make them look like they're perpendicular to the wall. Well, neither were they. Everything looks flat. It's almost like a child's drawing where perspective is always confused and some things are shown at an angle and some things are shown flat, uh, like straight on.

17:42 Um, it, it, none of it is like, you can get their logic, but it's not, it's not cohesive along the entire level, like within the level. Right. It's definitely not intuitive.

17:53 Yeah. You know how, like when you look at a world map and if you didn't know any better about the earth, right? Let's say you didn't know anything about the earth. You could think that the water are the continents and that the continents are the ocean, right? Like you could invert it in your, in your mind. If you didn't know enough, that was me going into temple of doom. When the game first started, I actually thought that like the walls were what I was supposed to be walking on and that like what the ground was, was not what I was supposed to be walking towards. And I was like, why can't I move? Like my character is just locked to, uh, to these directions.

18:29 And I know that sounds crazy, but it is actually something that happened to me for like one and a half seconds where I was genuinely confused at the startup of this game being like, where do I walk to? Yeah. The thing that got me was that I, after a little bit, I kind of understood like, all right, there's different layers of this. You can jump down onto the other layer, but you really can't jump horizontally like over a gap or anything. You kind of jump down and to the right. Yeah. When you're in, especially in that, um, like the mine cart area.

19:06 Um, I was like trying to jump from one area to the right. And instead my guy just jumps down like 30 feet and falls into lava. Yeah. That's always the most unsettling thing. Cause the lava again, looks like, it looks like in a legend of Zelda game where there's just lava is far away in front of you or behind you. But then like, imagine if in that legend of Zelda game, you, you, you moved a little bit and suddenly you just zoomed to the lava because it's trying to tell you you're falling, but it looks like you're just zooming over the ground. It doesn't feel logical.

19:37 And even if you jump what you think is over the lava, but you may clip another, uh, you may clip another like sprite of lava that's supposedly above you, you're basically jumping into that as well. And then you die. Um, and so that that's again, another point of just like, they're, they're not, it's not logically cohesive. You're, you're jumping above and into something, even though it's a, but I don't know.

20:07 Yeah. What this game definitely needed was like a pass through the, um, the current 3d NES emulator that exists online. Uh, I think everybody has to like manually make those, like tell them what is what for depth, but it's really cool to see games like super Mario brothers and Mega Man in like this 3d, uh, aspect of course you can't roam back and forth, but I'd like to see somebody take a stab at like Indiana Jones, the temple of doom in this 3d NES emulator just to see if they could actually define for people what those things are supposed to look like. Cause I agree. It's confusing of what's a pitfall. What's something you should actually walk across.

20:45 The conveyor belts are also like on a flat plane, but should clearly be acting more like ladders or, or something, you know, but then there are ladders that they don't have the same angle as the conveyor belts. It's all very strange. And you have your little whip jump. You can do too. I would imagine that the 3d emulated version of this would look like some sort of a like optical illusion where something is always in front of the other. And like, it just sort of a mind fuck it. It wouldn't work. I don't think that it would, it would work.

21:15 Well, Sean, you mentioned very early on about the jump and I think we've all been dying to talk about this. So, you know, Sean, why don't you lead this charge and explain to the listeners at home why the jump isn't quite working in this game?

21:32 Well, it's, it, it, it very much ties into what we've been talking about. Um, if you just, if you're trying to jump up somewhere, you're most likely going to be jumping down. I think if you hold up while you jump, you, you have a better chance of landing in the same, like, like on, on the same like level that you want. Like it's a little bit easier that way.

21:55 Um, but otherwise it, it, it just, it doesn't go where you want it to go. Um, that, that's really all I have to say about the jump. No, you're right. It's a directional pad thing. You have to put the, the D pad input in with your jump. So you have to already be holding down on like the left or right or the up on the D pad before confirming your jump.

22:18 Because if you try to do them at the same time, it'll most likely just make you jump down. Um, but overall it's not, it's not that it's confusing. It's that the jump itself too, isn't, um, isn't this great mechanic that allows you to like easily get over, um, obstacles and lava pits and stuff like that. There are these little spikes in the ground that pop up and down and they're caught. They're common obstacles in a video game of this day and age. They'll hit you even if you're jumping.

22:48 They'll hit you even if you're jumping, which is weird. But then there's also like the jump doesn't really jump that far over them. So there's a good chance your jump is also just going to land you right in those, uh, spike pits. Yeah. It's all, I almost feel like the jump is like, it's really only there to get you from like one platform, quote unquote, to a lower platform because like, you can't really use it for anything else. And even if you're trying to, you'll probably just end up falling to a lower platform. It's definitely not using the jump as a platformer would. Right. Yeah.

24:11 In the minecart sections, don't they just repeat in every direction? So if you keep going down, won't you eventually kind of restart? And if you keep going right... Assuming there's no lava below you, yes. There are dead ends in which you will die of fear in the minecart, and there are caves that you go into that'll move you into a different screen. Right. So I don't know if you could just stay on one forever and keep repeating.

24:37 But that is a part of the game that makes it feel even more like an MC Escher mindfuck, is that I didn't notice this because I just started walking to the right, and I kept walking to the right, and I thought, like, oh, this level just repeats. But no, it's a torus. You just keep going in the same direction. I think it does the same thing if you go down also.

24:59 Yeah, I think it loops in every direction with no, like, at least in some Mario levels, in Mario 3, some of them you'll loop, but you see yourself come across the other end of the screen, whereas this is just, like, there's no, like, indication that you've looped. So you're just like, wait a minute, am I already back at the beginning? Does this look familiar? This is like that level in Super Mario 1 where you're in the castle, and you have to, like, go through the... You know what I'm talking about? I think it's, like, at the end of 8.4 or something. Yeah, you're talking about, like, 8.4, yep.

25:35 Well, it's kind of like that, Sam, but the only difference here is, like, imagine if, and as soon as you got to the bottom, you just miraculously spawned up to the top. Yeah. And, you know, I'm kind of conflicted about that because sometimes that actually helped me, like, unlock a key on how to save a particular kid or how to progress to, like, a different part of the stage that I couldn't figure out otherwise. Sometimes just, like, understanding of, like,

26:03 spatial awareness, I guess, of, like, where you are in the stage really helped, actually, by that. So I wouldn't ask them to just, like, lock these levels so that once you go, like, as far down as possible, the screen stops moving and you have to now, like, progress back up because I think it helped me kind of figure out, like, no, I'm repeating, I'm going in circles, like, I need to try maybe going to the left or maybe try jumping over one of these things or using my whip. It allowed you to realize your mistake.

26:31 Yeah. I mean, I think that that mechanic is fine. It's more just the lack of any, like, indication that you've looped that felt really weird to me. I don't know what that would be, I guess, but it was just, I guess, at first was very confusing and not clear that that was going to happen.

26:50 I guess if it's, like, between this and something, like, what was it, like, the Lode Runner sequel or... What about Lode Runner? Was it Lode Runner or was it, what was the one where you're in the giant cave that is just enormous? Super Pitfall? Super Pitfall, that's it. Not Lode Runner. I knew it was something like that. If it was between this and Super Pitfall, I would go this kind of thing because you really grow to understand the area that you're in.

27:21 Is Super Pitfall sort of a loop like this? No, no, I'm saying it doesn't. No, no, no, he's saying if you have to choose between the two. Yeah, if I had to choose between some huge, expansive area that I could, that I had to, like, if I knew I had to get back to a certain part of it, I had to go all the way back, or this where I knew it would just repeat, then I'd prefer this. So I think that I'm kind of, like, on the same page as you, Mike, where it does seem kind of clever and interesting as a way of understanding the map, but still disorienting.

27:54 I feel like it would, for me, it would depend on what the game is trying to do. I do think that this is a cool mechanic if you kind of build some puzzles around it. I don't know that they necessarily did. I think some maybe accidentally worked that way. But I think that, like, a one-screen giant map could also be cool if your goal is to, like, have people remember the spaces that they found things, and, you know, I don't know. I think that that just depends on what they're trying to do.

28:27 No, you're absolutely right there, Joe, because I think what I'm trying to get at, too, is, like, I figured out how to do new things because of this warping mechanic of the level in a sense of, like, probably something that they gave on this position. Like, I could actually jump over to this thing and, you know, I might land on the next cliff down or something instead of, you know, using the whip to get over or if there was supposed to be a key I was supposed to get or something. So I don't think it was intentional at all. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is totally just a silly theory by me, but I almost, like,

28:55 I could see it being the case that, like, what if they just, they realized, like, wait a minute, like, man, our controls kind of suck for getting back up places, but you know what a good solution for that is? Let's just have it all loop so you can always get back to the top by going to the bottom rather than, like, fixing the controls. Who knows if that's what really happened, but I like that story. It's funny that, like, this is the second game in a couple weeks now that has a whip as a mode of transportation

29:23 or sort of like the grappling hook in Bionic Commando. It's sort of the same thing except it feels much jankier. The way that it's designed, right, of, like, how to use that to, like, swing across platforms and stuff like that. In Bionic Commando, you had to kind of give a sense of momentum and it was clear on what the arm could latch onto and stuff like that. I'm not saying that they didn't make it clear because they did design an object to, like, register as, like, you swing onto this. That's your grapple. But it blends into the walls itself

29:59 to the point where, like, I saw it in the manual, but until I actually, like, recognized it myself in the game, I didn't know that, like, it was there. And then, you know, it happens fairly early on in the game, but I'm like, oh, yeah, I have to, like, use my whip to get across. And because there's no actual architecture to these levels, they're just a mess, like a mess of maze-like corridors and whatever this 2D space is,

30:23 there's no context to tell you that, like, it would even be there or that this is a thing that you can traverse over. Like, it's not, you don't know if it's a wall or if it's an open gap.

30:36 So it took me a while to recognize those as well. Speaking of the whip, though, I would like to talk about the whip combat because I think it's kind of interesting because you can't kill someone with the whip. You can kind of stun them for a second, but you can keep stunning them until you push them into lava, which as far as I could tell is the only way to kill someone.

31:00 Well, the weapons. I mean, with the whip. Kill someone with the whip. That's true. I actually noticed using the whip because it was, like, the select for the weapon weapons is kind of weird and I don't think I ever needed it because I didn't really get that far,

31:23 but I'd gone. Well, Sean, here's the issue. It's another, it's another input problem for me, okay? You can only select weapons while you're in the actual action adventure environment, right? Yeah. So, like, enemies are coming at you. Let's say, there is not a scenario in the game, in my opinion, because I did play most of this game, but there is not a scenario where you need to actually use a gun, but it will automatically kill an enemy, which is useful, right? Yeah. So let's say you're in a position where you need to use your gun, but you don't have it equipped. The enemy comes towards you at a speed faster than Indy can walk. You then need to take your hand off. Yeah. Yeah, take your hand off of one side of the controller,

32:08 move your, that, let's say your right thumb to the select button, move, keep your other thumb where it is, but toggle through the other weapons using the left and right D-pad, all while the action is still happening. So you actually have to, like, move your hands

32:26 and watch these enemies come closer to you as you toggle through your weapon selections. I don't like that choice. I think this should have been done through the menus. I mean, I agree that it could have been done through the menus, but also I don't think it's the worst choice to say you have to do it in real time because that's the way it would work in real life. You have to, you know, Indiana Jones can't pause time to select things. I think that the problem just solely comes from the weird placement of the buttons you have to hit together.

32:56 Like, there's not a lot of choices on the NES, but at least if they had chosen start instead of select, you could keep your hand in the same position, hold start, and select a weapon rather than having to literally shift your hands and then your hand's not on the button you need to use to use the weapon and that's a whole mess.

33:13 Well, on the same topic of the pickups and items and not so much on the mechanic of changing between them, I know that, like, there were secret rooms that you needed TNT to open. I didn't find any TNT, but I kept finding those arrows that pointed to where the secret room was. Do you, like,

33:35 was I just bad at finding these things? Or, when was the first level that you found TNT? Well, to be honest, I don't know what the first level you can actually find TNT is. It might be, like, hidden as well in those early levels because I never found them, but it is something you can find throughout the game. You bring up a good point, though, with these secret doors because they are, like, a kind of a cool feature of, like, a cave, right? To have, like, secrets that jump you to certain points and you can do certain things and it seems like such a simple concept, but the levels only get larger and, you know, ammo in general, like, is scarce, right? Like, you're talking about this TNT.

34:16 So, even, say, if you knew, like, the arrow for the older ones, right? If you don't know where the secret location is and it's not like it's a dead giveaway based on that arrow, you just have a general idea of the direction, you can't really, it's not like, you know, we always use this analogy of Legend of Zelda spamming all the bushes to find the one that you go into the cave, right? But in that scenario,

34:37 you know, your ammo isn't limited. Like, you actually could take the time to burn every bush. Here, you don't have the time or the, you know, like, the risk versus reward sense to, like, be like, I'll just bomb all these walls, one of them's gonna open up a secret passage.

34:54 Yeah. So, I mean, it just seems like another half-baked, half-baked idea because if you're going to put it in the first level and you're not going to give me at least one piece of TNT to start, like, I'm just not going to look for them anymore.

35:12 It almost makes me feel like they did it on purpose, though, right? Like, you see the arrow, you're like, oh, wonder what that was, but I just treat it like a normal collectible. I just think, like, oh, cool, I got an arrow, you know, like, that's gonna, I mean, I read the manual and I knew what it signified, so I was like, oh, I must have at least one TNT on me if they're gonna start me out this way. Right, but I was saying, like, you know, if they show you the arrow and then in the very next stage after you progress, it says arrows reveal secrets or something, something to that effect, that means, that leads you kind of curious. You're like, oh, I guess I must have missed a secret. However,

35:47 in that same next level, you're in the mine cart and the first kid you save will actually reveal another arrow and then it's just frustrating. It's like, okay, I found two of these things and I still don't have any TNT. Yeah. What's going on? Like, where, where do I get this stuff? I'm missing out on secrets. Very much. But apparently, and I can't confirm this, okay, but from what I was able to read online, if you do use the secret doors, there is a chance that later on, you won't have collected enough to actually be able to progress through the Chamber of Kali, waves 9 through 12. You need, oh, okay, wait, what item will you not have enough of?

36:33 Whatever, whatever collectible I guess you need for that port, I don't think it's, there's a map? I thought it was pieces of a map. I don't know. Oh, okay. No, no, I'm saying, like, that would be cool, but I don't know what it is, but apparently using the secret doors, I didn't use them, apparently it will backfire on you. Oh. Like, the game wasn't programmed properly to use them. Maybe it's like, if you use all of them or something to that effect, but I couldn't confirm or deny this because I didn't do it in my own game. Huh. Yeah, that sounds like a problem. Yeah. It also just sounds like a good rumor. Yeah. A playground rumor.

37:06 Are those, like, parchment pieces you pick up, are those the map? That's part of the map for, like, I guess, level nine or level ten or something. Gotcha. I guess I was just picking those up and didn't know what they were. Yeah. I don't think that they're necessary

37:25 because it says, like, there's a map room at some point and if you have all the pieces of the map, then the map will be complete in the map room, but if you don't then the map won't be complete in the map room. But it doesn't tell you why that's bad? I don't, yeah, it didn't tell you why that's bad or, like, if you could complete it after that just with an incomplete map. I didn't get there. Okay, I think I know at least a little bit of what it's talking about now because I'm pretty, because I'm pretty sure you go into the map room and literally just, you just get a full screen map of, I assume, what is, like, the last level or something. Something like that. And it tells you,

37:57 there's things plotted on it. I don't know, I don't know exactly what, I guess if you're more invested in this game and you're really, like, getting to the end, that's helpful to you. But you got to the map room. I didn't get to the map room. I didn't, I got, like, maybe halfway through, maybe a little more, and then I watched the ending. So I saw, I saw the Let's Player get to the map room and I was like, what the heck is this? It's the one screen that's totally different than anything else in the game. But I guess it must have been because he collected all those pieces.

38:26 So I did my due diligence here because I remembered seeing this rumor. So I went back to the page where I saw it. And the issue here, Sean, is not related to the map. It's actually just the fact that that Chamber of Kali thing I was talking about, Wave 9, that's where, and I don't know if anybody else got here, but this is, that's where, like, those dragon skull heads pop out of the lava and you have to, okay, so these dragon skull heads pop out of the lava and you actually have to stun them and build a bridge of dragon lava heads that you can walk across.

39:03 That you can walk across. It's a 40 minute scene in the movie where he's trying to stun all the dragon heads. Well, that's the thing, Joe. So it really does take, like, a long time because you have to wait for the heads to spawn in the right spot so that you can stun them and then walk on to the next one. And the issue apparently is if you don't have enough, like, ammo and bombs and other things, like, if you don't have enough of that, if you actually run out of that in that stage, that's it. You can't stun them with the whip as far as, as far as this rumor is concerned. So, you just have to be very patient and hope you cross this bridge to make it to wave 10. Wow. It sounds, like, very exciting, though. I wish I, I wish I didn't stop early.

39:49 It does sound exciting, but I can assure you it's frustrating because if you watch a gameplay of it, um, the dragon heads don't spawn in the sense of, like, oh, yeah, the player's gonna try to build a bridge, so we, so we should make sure that the heads spawn in places that the player would want them. Instead, it seems purely random and you just wait for the one that's going to lie. Sounds like a great time.

40:13 There's also a limited number of these dragon heads, so if you do stun enough of them before, like, completing the bridge or you made the bridge too long or something, that's it. Like, Oh, no way. you've now failed the bridge. Yeah, you failed building it. Wow. No new ones will spawn.

40:32 It, it almost is a program a limited number that, that changes the more you stun and then just make it unlimited and then that also wouldn't break the game. I regret that I don't know anything about programming, but it just seems like that's like, Yeah, I feel like it would cause major slowdown. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. And then, Joe, you were talking about

40:52 the map room and apparently what that's about is the next wave, wave 10, that's where if you did complete the map, you'd be able to now, like, get a full picture of this giant level that wave 10 is with all, like, the, the labyrinth and stuff like that and be able to figure your way out of that. Better, if you had the map. You can still do it without the map, but it would help a lot more to have a map. Hmm. Yeah, it looks like,

41:20 I mean, I'm, I'm looking at the map right now. I think, I see, I mean, there's just a bunch of little people which I assume are enemies and there's one X. I assume the X is where you need to go. I don't know where you start from. Wow. Maybe at the bottom of the screen. You sound like just, you sound just like Indiana Jones in the movie. Yeah, yeah, right. He's with this, that whole scene where he's, where he's interpreting the map. Yeah, these look like little people. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I, I don't know. I, again, maybe once, once you're a little more well-versed in this game, maybe this map is very helpful, but I almost feel like I wonder how much more it does for you than just kind of

42:02 trying to, just exploring. I guess if you know, if you know where the exit is, that's great. I just need to know where I start because you kind of start in the middle of the screen. So, huh? I feel like my recommendation is if you get all the way, if you're willing to get all the way to wave nine, right? The, the second part of the game, if you will, the first eight levels are very much the same thing, just different layouts and stuff like that, but you're collecting kids, you're collecting,

42:29 uh, collecting different weapons and ammo and stuff like that. And you're trying to find the key to get to the next wave. You're always collecting anyway. Point being that if you're willing to do all of that, you might as well just keep collecting the map too and doing all the other stuff because there's a ton of like little secrets in this game and little things to find like the map and the idol and shit like that. But you know,

42:51 I don't know. I just wasn't compelled to do it. And I guess that's why I didn't also feel compelled to complete the game, but it does seem like there is reward for people who are willing to put time into this game. I just worry that we haven't, uh, established enough how horrible it feels to play this game sometimes. And that's why, like, cause on paper, it's an interesting game with collectibles, secret passages. You are Indiana Jones exploring a cave with like what later reveals itself to be a labyrinth and Shankara stones and, um, and a hidden idol. And then you have to like climb up these cliffs. Like all sounds cool to me, but if the actual gameplay is confusing from both a graphical, a perspective,

43:38 a, uh, mechanics, uh, the fact that like your whip is not that great and that you're, the enemies just get like stunned into oblivion, but they always respawn anyway. So you just kind of have to figure out how to get through the levels as fast as you want. And you put all that together. I'm not sure if I would encourage anybody to be like, yeah, you should get all those map pieces to make sure that by the time you get to wave 10, you know, like a good player would probably be like two hours, three hours into this game. By the time you get there, that's when things really pick up and get interesting.

44:06 Yeah. I mean, I, I kind of agree with what you're saying, especially your point about like on paper it looking better than, than it is to play. Because like I said, when I,

44:15 once I put this game down and started watching a video, when I was watching the video, I was like, this actually looks all right. Like I kind of, I kind of want to, maybe I'll give it another try. Started playing it again and it still didn't, still wasn't fun to play. So I don't know what I thought was going to change, but you know, there's some interesting environments. There's a little feeling of progression. Granted, it gets a little samey, but, but I feel like it should be more fun than it is. It just somehow fails. I think they really needed to work out

44:46 the, the perspective and the graphics first. I, I know that's weird to say about an NES, a mental boundary for me to like want to continue to work with a game that didn't necessarily want to play. I feel like if they had just made it like a, uh, a head on like 2d platformer, it would have worked a lot better for them.

45:06 Definitely. And especially if now in the context of thinking about this map, if you look at this map, it's just a 2d map. Like you don't see any, you don't see any like elevation change. Then when you get there, it's, there's all kinds of ladders and platforms and whatnot. Like, especially the minecarts thing. I feel like that could have been really cool. Like when I think about Donkey Kong Country and the minecarts in there, that's like some of those are some of my favorite levels. But, you know, and the fact that you can like shift your weight to change tracks and everything. But I, I feel like those mechanics are cool by themselves, but it just doesn't work in the game. And that they have a couple of things that are like that.

45:47 Totally. Joe, you have an interesting anecdote about the, uh, the finale of the game, the final level against, uh, Mola Ram. Yeah, so my, my funny played Crash Bandicoot 2. It was giving me very similar vibes to the final boss in Crash Bandicoot 2, which I love Crash Bandicoot 2, but the final boss, you don't really fight him. You just have to like catch up to him. And that's kind of what the final boss seems to be in this is just, he's running across a bridge and you, you just got to run after him. And when you get him, I, I assume that's all that there is to it. you win. And it says you win.

46:22 Is it the end? Is there any cutscene after or is it? There is. Okay. You get to, you get to see, um, short round. Remember? No, no, just short round. The kid that, Joe reminded me as the, oh yeah, you wouldn't know, Sean. Um, not that I would know either because Joe reminded me before the episode that, uh, he's like the, the child star of the movie. He's in the Yankee here, right? And,

46:46 yeah. Yes. Yeah. Um, and also, yeah, he's the kid on the cover. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Okay. Cause he is. And also, uh, I don't know. Did Indy have a girlfriend? Probably. Cause somebody, she was different in this one than she was in the first one. It was different, a different person, but got it. She's jumping for joy and she gives you like a kiss and short round watches intently. And then it just says you win big man.

47:15 Big man. Which I think, I think short round calls him big guy in the movie. I think that's like a thing. Is this the big man from that game? Yeah. Oh my God. Indiana Jones is the big man from, what was it? That karate. Kung fu. Yeah. Who stole, uh, Sylvia. And that must be Sylvia there. That, there we go. So this was actually a sequel to Kung fu. It's a prequel. He's stealing Sylvia.

47:41 Now I believe in the movie, Indy actually like cut the rope bridge while both him and Mulleram were on it. And then he has to like climb up the, the, the rest of the rope bridge to like survive. That would have been cool if they would have found a way to incorporate that.

48:01 Yeah. Like track and field style. You gotta get like, you gotta do some like climbing mini game. Oh, you know what? It's funny though. Cause I'm watching the ending and they totally did just incorporate that. I'm watching it in real time and they do actually have you like climb up. Oh, that's right. But I, you don't know that it's up because what's the difference in this game? Yeah. You can't tell. I thought you were just going that way. The same as walking. So cause up is straight and left is down.

48:27 And there are like snakes crawling around on what I guess is the wall next to you. So it looks like the floor and I don't know. Well, he hates snakes. That's true. So I meant to bring this up a long time ago because Sam referenced it and I thought it was really funny. But Sam, when you brought up super pitfall,

48:46 okay, I have that in my notes here of like, this game reminds me of super pitfall. and then I have nothing else. I was supposed to just expand on, I was just supposed to expand on that. But yes, it does remind me of super, if you recall,

49:00 super pitfall was also a terrible drag of a game to play in, in the actual mechanics of the character you play as. Fun world, definitely down for it, but it just didn't bring it when it came to actually controlling the character you're supposed to be. I think that the common denominator between the two of them is that they both live in the jank folder. Although, now that I think about it, Sam, I do believe you might have been talking about Spelunker. Spelunker? When you were talking about the big cave game. That's the one. I'm pretty sure it was super pitfall, but let me see.

49:37 Spelunker also, I mean, Spelunker's a little bit better than super pitfall, but Spelunker's also a cave game. With bad jumping. With bad jumping, so yes. But super pitfall is a game with the even worse jumping, if you can imagine it. Spelunker have worse jumps than ice climbers. That's all I'm going to say. I'll just leave it at that. We haven't talked about ice climber in a while. Yeah, we're overdue for another ice climber episode. We're overdue for an open-world ice climber game. Yeah, it's true. Thank you. Thank you.

51:04 It's just important to note that in the arcade version, and I cannot confirm this because I was not going to seek one out, you are unable to jump in the arcade version. Is it the same game minus the jump? It's not really the same game, but it's on the same ideas. Because I can't imagine paying a quarter for five minutes of this.

51:27 It was definitely the same thing of rescuing kids and getting things and moving on to the next wave and stuff like that. The graphics were really good, though, for what it's worth. Collecting kids, yes. Which give you points.

51:43 So that's all I wanted to mention. I just want to throw it out there for anybody curious. If you want to imagine what this game is like without a jump, apparently the arcade version has that for you. Wow. You know, this game is really interesting, though, because it fits two different NES criteria for us. It fits the based on a successful licensed property and also apparently a very successful arcade game that then gets ported to the NES and stinks. So this is the first time we've had like one of those fulfill two of those. Such a pedigree and such a disappointment.

52:15 At the same time, absolutely. If I can do sequels and spinoffs, as you can imagine, Indiana Jones has many games that we are not about to just go through right now. So I just pick some ones that I think are interesting and you guys can comment as you feel necessary. OK, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the first Indiana Jones video game. It came out on the Atari 2600. It was very popular. Not nothing really all that interesting about it. So let's get on to the weird ones. All right. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicle.

52:49 OK, based on that short lived TV show that apparently happened on like NBC or something like that, like a young Indiana Jones and what he did or what his kid did or what somebody who just wanted to also name themselves Indiana Jones did. I don't know. I didn't watch it. But it follows the short lived TV show. It was made by Jaleco. So we have another one from them or Jaleco, you know, whichever way you want to say it. I prefer Jaleco. And we will play that. We'll play that on the NES guys. That's an NES game. So you're not done. 1990. OK. So the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Then Indiana Jones and his desktop adventures.

53:32 I just hate the sound of that title. Yeah, it sounds so like business. Sounds like corporate. It's like, you know, I kind of like it. You know how the movies are all about? Like Indiana Jones is this college archaeology, like history professor, and he goes off on these crazy adventures. This game is like the rest of the time where he's just like at his desk at college.

53:56 Well, finally, we're filling in those gaps. What it made me think of is, you know, those like shitty programs from like Windows 98 era that it would let you like destroy your desktop. Oh, I love that stuff. You could use like guns and bombs. But I'm thinking it's that, but with an Indiana Jones. I would love that. That would be essential in a heartbeat. I thought it was just like something that's like an icon next to like Solitaire and what Minesweep on your desktop. It's also like the Indiana Jones game. It's like a little arcade game. And you just climb up like your desktop icons and stuff. That'd be sick.

54:40 It's one of those games you get in like a trick cereal box. It comes with a CD-ROM inside and you put it in and then you play. You get a virus. From General Mills himself. Like the Bionicle games.

54:54 Indiana Jones and his desktop adventures is set in mid-1930s Mexico. Indy and Marcus Brody have set up headquarters in the small town of Lucasio. And now they are conducting excavations at Site R. I don't know if I'm supposed to know what that means, but I'm reading it. Site R. Yep. Whereupon they are immediately confronted with a series of mysteries, emergencies, and adventures. I wonder if it's supposed to be like Roswell or something. Very desktop. I don't know what it was supposed to be, but all I know is that the game is now considered Abandonware. Okay.

55:31 So it never happened. It never happened in the... Oh, sorry. I guess that's not true then, if that's the definition of Abandonware. That's how it says it on this website. But it did come out. You just cannot find it. Oh, okay. That does count. All right. Okay.

55:49 Probably because it was only in trick cereal, which is not true. That's just something I'm speculating. And then, last but not least, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings for Wii and PS2. Game takes place in 1939 and involves Indiana Jones searching for his former mentor while competing with his rival archaeologist, Magnus, for the Staff of Moses.

56:13 I'm compelled. Yeah. So were the Wii, I assume, was all motion controls? I mean... Whipping things? In the sense, as much as the Wii motion controls were, right? I'll just mention that there's also a bunch of young Indiana Jones games. So clearly that TV show was successful. There's like six more. Not all on the NES, thankfully. But I never even heard of it before this episode.

56:40 It definitely rings a bell to me, which is weird because obviously none of us are very big Indiana Jones. It's a person. I did say live action from NBC. Was I right? Yeah, you're right. But I guess I didn't hear you say live action. Yeah, you're thinking of James Bond Jr. I am. I know I am now. It was a cartoon. Yeah. But it just makes it sound like it would be a cartoon. And he's not really all that young. Like, I just, I thought it would be a kid thing. He's just like a teenager. Teenager. Because it's not about collecting kids anymore. Yeah. It's about collecting teenagers. Well, we... Well, I'm uncomfortable. We have a collection of video games on the NES that we really like. And we call that the Essential Games List.

57:34 All right, it's time for the Essential Games List. Please make it quick, fellas. What do you got? Sam. Hey, it's Sam. Um, this game, like I said before, it's in the gens in it. But I don't feel like I'm having fun when I'm playing it. Because it's just so frustrating to do anything. And I, I don't know. But the walking, though, is very smooth. But stuff...

58:02 You're sticking to your guns there. I like it. I'm not even going to fight you there anymore. Because that's how dedicated you are. Thank you. I appreciate that. Joe, your vote. Yeah, I think this game has, has things in it that have potential to create, to, to be the components of a game that I mildly like. But then they fail to do that. But like, you know, there's, like I said, when I'm watching it, I'm like, I'm like, oh, this looks like it could be cool. You get to, like, these different areas. There's cool little things where you got to build a bridge. Which sounds kind of cool before it's explained, you know, before you notice it in depth.

58:36 But it just, yeah, the perspective, the controls, the repetitiveness in, in a, in a way that's not particularly fun because of the controls. Just all kind of adds together and makes it a not great experience when it could have been an okay experience. It had all that potential to be a decent experience. So I'm going to say no. I like how you're always hopeful, though. Sean, what do you got?

59:06 This game has a lot of the complexity of the more recent games with, you know, like sort of a submenu sort of thing. And like, it seems to be going along the lines of than, than, than this would have been. But it's, it's design in terms of like the action, like the action design of this game is stuck in 1985. Like it, it does not feel good to play in any sense, aside from, I guess, when you're just walking to the left or right for Sam. I, I do not like this game. I am disappointed in this game. It is not essential.

59:47 All right. So there's zero chance that's going to make it on the list. But I will add another vote against Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom being on the essential games list. Because, you know, for me, the level layouts and the way that Indy controls, which is, if you think about it, 95% of the game is always, it always felt like a chore to me. It's actually not fun to do most of what they set out to do. But you, and I don't know if this is because we play these games for the show, but like I kept playing for a good while just because I was intrigued.

1:00:22 I was intrigued by what they, what they positioned on the back of the box and on the manual. I was intrigued because I thought that it was laid out differently than the games were used to. Face it. If this game was just like a weird Indiana Jones shmup where you just kind of walk down a cave and you just whip at the enemies, right? Like as they come here on screen, that would be weird. And I'd be like, oh, I've seen that before. But we haven't really seen anything like this in terms of action adventure exploration. So I wanted to give it a try. I just never really liked it. So it can't go on the list.

1:00:55 And it's not. You can rest easy tonight. All fans of nostalgia, you can rest easy. But I guess if you're a fan of Indiana Jones, you'll sleep on your stomach tonight or something because that's uncomfortable. People don't, I don't know, not many stomach sleepers in this world. How do you know that? I sometimes do.

1:01:15 It depends on what night it is if I'm going to sleep on my stomach or my back or my side, you know? Don't judge me. Okay. Well, if you're a stomach sleeper, just make sure you set your alarm for 8 a.m. on Fridays because we got brand new episodes every Friday at 8 a.m. It's going to be a good time. Next week, Othello. That's right. We've all been waiting for. The black and white piece checkers-like game. No, not to play, but I would be down for that. I'd be Iago in that one.

1:01:49 Actually, no, because that would make a sick, like, imagine if you could play Othello, the Odyssey, and the Iliad. Well, talk about things coming out too late for the hype of their source material. Yeah, I think this game was really hot in 1000. Probably not that hot in 2020.

1:02:07 Give me one second. Give me one second about Othello. I think that it would be great if there were... I mean, since you're telling me Othello was not based on the play, it's sort of like a game about plays in which, like, you play a character in the play. So every time it's your line, you have to type in the line from memory. And that's like you being an actor in a play. Yeah, and then when you're done, you're ready to just be in the play because you know what lines are. When you're done, it plays the whole play from start to finish, and you can just watch it.

1:02:39 It's like a Mad Lib. Whatever you type in will come up. Oh, no, it doesn't let you proceed if you say it wrong. It'll just start from the beginning. And there's a time limit. And you just have that Wheel of Fortune... I was just going to say. That Wheel of Fortune line of the alphabet at the bottom. So it'll be really fun. Let's just do the Othello episode now. We're almost about to because I think we're running out of things to talk about already for Othello. So join us next week for Othello. And the week after that for more real video games like Paperboy.

1:03:13 I'm Michael Esposito. You can find Nostalgia at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. We're always posting stuff and engagements through the roof, so you want to get in while the action's hot. You could say that Nostalgia's Twitter is... I mean, you could say it's lit, but I'm going to let Sean say that instead. It's lit. What I'm going to say is there's never been a hard rule on following at NostalgiaCast. We've never told you to hit the follow button. We've never told you to be a follower to anybody. So we're not going to do that tonight either. But if you ever just see it, know that it's not illegal to press it. It's not illegal to follow Nostalgia. But we're not advocating for it either. We don't need follows. We're perfectly content.

1:04:00 Liking Nostalgia has been decriminalized nationwide. Yeah, we're totally content with the three followers we have. We love you guys. We love all listeners. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter. I have one follower, and I'll talk to that person very soon. You know who you are. I have one follower.