147 · Paperboy

• Hop on your bike for a free-wheeling ride up the avenues of not-so typical Suburbia.
• Introductions
  • This is one of those old school jobs that doesn’t really exist anymore...or am I out of touch?
• Gameplay
  • Overview
  • The creative world
  • The massive hitbox
  • The obstacle course
  • But it’s just points so it doesn’t hold up for long or repeated playthroughs for most players
• Arcade
  • The joystick are BIKE HANDLEBARS
    • One button on each side, used to throw papers. The handlebars can be pushed forward to accelerate and pulled back to brake.
  • STEAL THIS CODE AND YOU DIE.. ATARI 1985 J.F.S.
  • GDC on Paperboy development by the co-creator
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Paperboy 2
  • Paperboy 64
  • The paperboy makes a cameo appearance in the 2012 Disney animated film Wreck-It Ralph. The paperboy also makes an appearance in the 2015 film Pixels.
• EGL
  • A great fun game with an OK port, but this exists in the Arcade for a reason and it’s much better there.
• Next week - Platoon

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

00:00 Hop on your bike for a freewheeling ride up the avenues of not-so-typical suburbia. This is Paperboy.

00:23 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, this is one of those old-school jobs that doesn't really exist anymore, right? Or am I out of touch? I don't know. I mean, we gotta get the paper somehow. Both of my stepbrothers were once paperboys for the Buffalo News, but that's the last I have had in any interaction with a paperboy. So, I don't know.

00:55 It just seemed to be there was a time where every 12-year-old boy needed to become the paperboy. It was like, well, you're 12 now, so it's time to get on your bike and deliver paper. Was it 12? Holy shit. Well, because it's like a rite of passage, because then you have the training courses, and you have all the three fans in the crowd, and it's a big thing. Yeah. I remember when they would go through their training courses. Yeah. That's a coming-of-age story is really what the paperboy video game was.

01:25 But, you know, we could talk about the game for a second, too, but I'm just thinking about jobs that we had as kids. It is kind of funny how we make a lot more money now than we ever did at our childhood jobs. But those jobs, it was like, man, when you got like $20 in your pocket, you could buy anything you wanted. Oh, yeah. You felt rich. Especially, like, in high school. Like, about how many chicken tenders. You got cafeteria prices. Yeah. You go to Louie's, you get some chicken tenders with some ketchup. That's like three meals of Louie's right there.

01:59 I'm thinking food, because I would just go right to the video games. Like, I remember saving up, like, okay, if I make, you know, even my lunch money. My parents were giving me $5 every day. I would just not eat. Yeah, I would just not eat. Instead, I would be like, I'm just going to save this $5. And in, you know. Was that the cost of your public school, like, lunch?

02:23 So, we had a situation at our high school where you could leave. You got to leave the high school and go out to eat for lunch. I forgot you told me about that. It was great. So, then I feel like you have the opposite problem. Where do you go for $5?

02:36 I think they were aware of that, though. I think most of the, you know, it's a true story, because there was a lot of people who had, like, you know, it was like a class system. You couldn't hang out with some kids because they had more money for lunch and you couldn't go to the places they went to. Oh, yeah. Your school was very different then because of that. Yeah. You couldn't hang with the rich kids that went to Applebee's every day. You couldn't. Instead, I actually, I lived close enough to the school, I just walked home and I would play, like, Guitar Hero or Super Smash Brothers with some friends during the lunch break.

03:05 Wow. It's a different world. I would just get $1.50 for lunch. That was great. And it was a good amount of food, too, for $1.50? Wish I could go back. I don't even know how many 1904 Nathan's Hot Dogs that is.

03:21 Anyway, Sean, you know a lot about Paperboy because both your brothers were Paperboys. So, you want to give us an overview on the game? All right. So, yeah, the game is, it's pretty much a simulation game of any paper delivery person's career. I know because sometimes I had to cover for my brothers when they couldn't do it.

03:44 But basically, every day you would get, you'd get this printout of all of the places that are subscribed to the newspaper. But it didn't really matter because you knew based on the color of the house who was subscribed and who wasn't. So, you would, you know, take a nice bike ride down the street, the only street you were assigned, and try to avoid all of the crazy people and possessed objects on that street. And you would just try and throw your paper as hard as you could and hope you hit the door of the mailbox and you'd get points or money at the end of the day.

04:29 Not when they mandated that anyone who didn't have a newspaper subscription had to paint their house red. Yeah, it happens. It happens. It makes you wonder though, who pays for that? Is that the paper company that pays for that? Or is that like a homeowners association? It's definitely an HOA, yeah. Okay, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha. You know what's interesting though? You brought up a great point about how the game has, you know, even from the back of the box, not so typical suburbia of like, this idea that you're going to be a game. It's that, I don't know, most of the objects there are things that you might run into if you were biking down a street. And then all of a sudden there's also the Grim Reaper.

05:06 Yeah. And a breakdancing dude in the middle of the sidewalk who shows up at the same place every single time. And then there's a dirt bike course at the end with an obstacle course, if you will, with like ramps and hoops to go through. You know, so it is like a fine blend between a simulation of a paper boy game and this like really fun, cute arcade game. Yeah, I mean, just in terms of the design of the obstacles being, you know, like the Grim Reaper and like maybe a crazy woman with a knife.

05:43 Like, and I think in even like the arcade versions, was it a rolling pin? There is someone with a rolling pin, but there's also someone definitely, I'm pretty sure a different person with a knife that's doing like a stabbing motion as he runs out. Yeah, when I was a kid, though, I was terrified of this game. It was a scary game to me because like, I think I remember the arcade version, like some of the houses looked haunted. And then like even in this version, there are there are like gravestones and you have those monsters like the Grim Reaper and a tornado.

06:18 I kind of maybe thought that the guy that was breakdancing may have been a monster, too, when I was a kid. But like it was not fun to play this game for me when I was a child because I don't know. It just it just had a really weird, really weird tone going on.

06:34 See, I had like a different, weirdly different experience that makes less sense because I play I used to play this game a lot and I forgot a lot about it. But when I when I was a kid, I don't remember like noticing that like these were weird obstacles. Like I don't remember I don't remember the Grim Reaper being there or like the tornado. I just totally blanked all that out. So I was playing it this time and it had been so long and it was kind of like that that like nostalgia. You forgot you had experience.

07:00 Yeah, but then like all this other stuff came out and I was like, was this the same? Did they make two NES versions? But no, it was definitely this. I asked my brother about it, too. He remembers all the weird stuff. So I don't know why I blocked that stuff out, but I was actually kind of like it gave me a good laugh this time around because I was like, wow, this game is way more ridiculous than I remember it.

07:20 But and it's not shy to just like have that be something that you become acquainted with right away upon starting the game. You know, you you you get to like maybe throw a newspaper to one normal house with maybe like a dog outside that you're like, oh, that dog's kind of scary. I'll stay away from being too close to the house. But, you know, for the most part, it's pretty normal.

07:41 And then like the next house, all of a sudden everything ramps up. It's like if you're in the street, boom, there's a car or the sewer grate. And then like, you know, like you said, the woman with the rolling pin comes out and charges at you or the tornado thing is very strange to me because it's also the world's smallest tornado localized entirely to the paper boy. And it's also the most unavoidable.

08:05 Yeah. Yeah. It just it just like chases you. It's targeted at you. It does not care if the lawnmower or the RC toy is nearby. Like, I mean, you know, we're constantly listing off objects here. And I think it is pretty cool that they managed to include like so many different things. And it really makes this a very creative world that takes all of two minutes to like understand.

08:29 Yeah. Yeah. And I'll say even there were a lot of there were a few obstacles like the rolling tire that just turns randomly or the tornado that seems at first like it's impossible to avoid. That at first I was thinking like, well, this is kind of this is like a little bit of a damper in this game. This is like a point against it because that some of the obstacles are like unfair. But then for a lot of them, I did sort of learn. Like, I think that's part of it. Like at first, for some reason, because some of them are like recognizable objects, I don't give them like that video game benefit of the doubt that like I have to learn how to beat them.

09:03 So so at first I was frustrated. But then once I've kind of figured out, oh, like I kind of see the pattern in the way the tire moves. And I and I found a little strategy to get away from the tornado. And once you like learn that stuff, it actually feels kind of fair for most of them. Well, there's no reason to have to like learn any, you know, like like the whole game is just you in constant motion. It's an auto scroller, right? Where you're just constantly going forward. And it is like the anti shmup, you know, like, yeah, you can throw newspapers at some of these things to like stop them in their tracks. But for the most part, you just have to constantly dodge everything and hope to deliver the papers, too.

09:42 Because don't forget, that's the actual point of the game is throwing the newspapers onto the stoops. But that is a good point, though, because like you're trying to conserve your ammunition, which are the the meet the newspapers, because you never really know when you're going to get a new bundle. And if you're trying to get like extra points by not just delivering papers to the people you deliver them to, but knock over trash cans and gravestones and break the break the non subscribers windows, which is encouraged.

10:17 You could end up with no new no newspapers and skipping houses you need to hit. So, yeah, it's it's like you're just trying to conserve resources during this very hectic jump down the street. And then there's the whole, you know, timing aspect of when to throw the papers. I think, you know, for the objects that are obstacles that are in your way, that's a little easier because you're very close to those things.

10:41 But if you're hanging out at the sidewalk or in the street, there's like this weird delay of when you think you should be throwing the paper versus when you should actually be throwing the paper. If you want it to land on the stoop or for even more points in the mailbox, which is a really cool feature that like it won't count if you just throw it on the lawn and get it like in the vicinity. And it definitely won't count if you break a subscribers window like that's going to hurt you.

11:07 But it's neat that they have like two different variables for like scoring points in the sense of like you don't always have to just get it in the mailbox because I feel like that would be a very tough objective. But the stoop is not necessarily this gigantic goalpost either. Like it still is a tight spot. I was going to say, I do think that like the getting the feel of that is very satisfying as well. And there's also like interesting little ways to cheese it.

11:36 I actually tested this pretty extensively. And I'm and I'm pretty certain at this point that once you've thrown the paper, it scrolls forward at the speed you're scrolling forward. So if the paper is in the air going horizontally towards the house and you slow down, the paper will slow down its vertical motion. So you can sort of like cheese it a little. If it's like going close to the mailbox, you can slow down to like pull it back a little bit or speed up to push it forward a little bit.

12:06 But I did a few times where I like went through and like as soon as I get to this line, I'm going to throw the paper. This time I'm going to go really slow. Next time I do the same thing, I go really fast and there's a noticeable difference. Well, I never tried that. I was very bad at this game. This is a this is a pretty tough game, even though it presents itself as kind of casual.

12:26 But I broke more subscribers windows that I that I ever needed to. And even I was aiming for my non subscribers windows. I was just hitting the wall. That whole situation with the newspaper traveling at the speed that you're going, I never really put that together. I was just so curious about it the whole time. I was trying to figure it out, but it's so hard to tell until you just like do the do the same thing over and over again and see what the difference is. Yeah, but it was significant. So I think it actually would be like a.

12:59 A strategy for the speed runners out there. Well, I also think, Joe, that you is just a strategy like speed running or not. Like, I agree that it makes sense, even though, you know, you wouldn't be able to just because you're riding your bike fast, you wouldn't be able to throw faster. I think it makes sense in the gameplay point of view that it would be weird if no matter what speed you were going, the newspapers always traveled at the same length.

13:23 Like there's something satisfying about the momentum of the character carrying the newspaper with it. But it's not it. But it's actually it's not the realistic way that you're talking about the way you're talking about would make more realistic sense. But I'm saying that once the paper is already in the air, you can still slow it down or speed it up.

13:40 Oh, I didn't catch that the first time. Yeah, that sounds like that sounds like it might even just be limited to the NES version of the game. I don't remember that happening in other versions of this game. Yeah. Also, speed runners probably the wrong maybe like like metagamer. Not necessarily speed runner, but metagamer. Going for the high score. Yeah.

14:00 So, Sean, you said you had a tough time with the game. Did it have any did it have anything to do with the massive hitbox that you are as a character? 100 percent. Yeah. So when you're there are two like lanes, there's the sidewalk and, you know, the lawn. If you can navigate all the lawn ornaments and stuff. And then there's the street and you can only cross over between the lawn and the street or at least. From the street to the to the sidewalk.

14:33 When there is like a driveway or wherever a curb is not. And it always seems to be that if you get stuck on the street, you're going to run into a car. And there isn't really enough room on the street to avoid cars or or like the God forbid you get a car coming at you. While there's also a sewer grate coming up. And it just seems to be like it's just inevitable that you're going to get hit and you're going to fall over and you lose one of your precious three lives. Um, that wasn't cool. And even when you're on the sidewalk and you have to navigate around like, uh, plants and dogs and skateboarders. Because it just seems like the, uh, yeah, the hit boxes don't really conform to the sprites very well.

15:26 Yeah, I feel like the to the your point about like the street being small because the street just takes up like to just to paint a picture for anyone who hasn't played it. The game is kind of scrolling diagonally at the bottom right corner, just the smallest part of the bottom right corner. And even like the whole area that you can because of the way you're throwing the papers across the screen to the houses, the entire area that you can occupy is like it almost it almost feels like less than half the screen.

15:53 Oh, it's definitely less. So it's very tight. Yeah. And I would I would argue there, though, that there is there is probably some conscious decision on that, too. You know, assuming that it's an arcade game that's supposed to eat your quarters. Sean, you mentioned that there's like the lawns, too, that you are able to bike on, but they're filled with various lawn objects or like obstacles in your way. So that's not really that encouraged, but it is a path to go to try to get around sidewalk obstacles. But then there's the sidewalk where you're supposed to be, in my opinion. I feel like, you know, for the best way to, you know, hit the stoops and to avoid most things like you want to be on the sidewalk for the most part.

16:38 But if you have to go into the street to Joe's point, yeah, it's only like it's only like 20 percent of the entire screen gives you the street. But that's like a do or die moment for you. It's like, you know, never ride your bike in the street, kids, because now anything can happen. Like now that you're in that street, very little control over what's coming at you. You won't be able to see it in time. So only go into the street if you think you have a quick entrance back onto the sidewalk. I feel like there is a lesson there.

17:05 Because it's also apparently like the street is only the oncoming lane. There's no, you're never traveling with traffic or there are cars that are parked in the oncoming lane. But yeah, no, I mean, it definitely is like a tiered thing where you're only supposed to be down there if you have somehow run out of options on the sidewalk.

17:29 Yeah, I did feel like maybe it wasn't quite so intentional, though. Because I did feel like there were a lot of times where it felt like, OK, these enemies, it's better if I'm in the street and these enemies better from the sidewalk.

17:41 But like you said, Sean, I mean, like some of the parked cars you can figure out how to avoid after practice. But like the car, the oncoming cars, if you're not, if you don't happen to be right by a driveway, you just will get hit. There's nothing you can do about it. And there's almost no warning. In fact, there is no warning. I mean, it beeps at you like literally as it's hitting you. So there's no warning that that's coming. You just will just automatically die.

18:05 Yeah. And after a certain amount of houses that you have, you know, it doesn't really matter whether they're your subscribers or not. There is like a another kind of crosswalk will come horizontally, you know, bikers and cars and stuff like that. And that one felt a lot more fair and like thrilling. Like that's not one that you're going to get hit at too often. Yeah. But you have you have a moment to gauge the speed of the car and you can adjust yourself accordingly.

18:37 Right. And that feels better, I think, like being able to actually have some control and think about like, OK, I'm going to go now. Like that feels like how an actual biker bikes, you know, in a city or whatever. Like that just feels like how things are. It's not like if I saw a tornado, I wouldn't just get off the bike. You know, like if I in certain situations, I understand that the game, you know, the idea is like, you know, you got deadlines. You just got to get these papers in on time so you can't stop or anything like that. But there should have been more control over the bike, because even if you are in a tight situation, let's just say in the crosswalk, even if you just happen to not be timing things right.

19:16 There's very little you can do in the moment. There is no swerving. There is no like, OK, that car is coming and he's coming really fast. I'm going to swerve to the left. It's like, no, you're just really like moving a little bit to your left. There's there's not much you can do from a movement perspective in the moment. You have to plan these things out ahead of time. I mean, if there was like, yeah, if there was like that little slit of of like a where your hitbox does not intersect with the cars like that, that could be like a skill based thing that like, oh, I could I could get out. I could get out over this. But that doesn't seem to be the case. So it's just a death sentence if you're if you're out there.

20:01 And that makes me think that they needed to make the game. How do I put this like longer in the sense of grosses just should have been wider. Everything should have been wider. There should have been more openness to this, because the fact that they try to do everything like to the scale of you, the paperboy, causes some weird like amount of obstacles and things that you'll run into without a chance to do anything. Whereas if you had more time between each house and between between obstacles, I feel like you could better plan for something. Now, that's just maybe an easy mode. Maybe that's not a real suggestion. My question is just to because I'm not really sure what you mean. Are you saying like.

20:43 Would it still be isometric? Are you talking more like just the houses themselves are farther apart and with the same the same view down the road? Same view down the road. Not even that the houses would be further apart, but that they just like I don't know. You would stretch all the graphics so that everything is just everything just happens longer. Like, you know, in the game, everything happens. But I'm assuming you don't mean actually stretching the pixels, but just moving the houses further away from the paperboy. Yeah, I'm not actually saying stretch that. So there's more lawn and there's more driveway to drive on.

21:18 Exactly. I'm not saying change the aspect ratio or anything like that. But like the time that you spend at each house right in the in the actual game on the NES is probably like five seconds. Right. So I'm thinking maybe even less, honestly, depending on what speed you're driving. Sounds about right. But I'm thinking like if you could just get a little more time between obstacles, it wouldn't have to be this constant like, oh, well, I should have thought of that ahead of time. Like now I'm dead. Like I have no I can't do anything in the moment. You feel powerless to too late, you know?

21:50 See, I think that that could be a solution. But another one that I was thinking you meant was actually taking taking the houses and moving them all just further back to the left so that so that there is like a longer lawn and there's just more space for the for you to maneuver. You'd probably also need to make the controls a little easier to turn and everything. But then keeping the same speed, keeping, you know, everything the same. But now you have more places to go to avoid things. Because I would say it's nice that like the houses actually look there. They look really good.

22:16 And, you know, you can see the whole thing coming up and you could see the side of it on the way up. And that's a nice touch. But I wonder if just sacrificing that nice like aesthetic for just seeing like mostly the front of the house and like, you know, getting rid of a lot of the side of the house that you see on the way because you pushed it back. And then like instead using that space for lawn might have might have positively affected the gameplay.

22:41 It's hard. It's hard for me to envision it without seeing it. But that's kind of what I'm imagining. I was just going to say that, you know, somebody who's listening to this who is good at this game probably thinks that all of these current line of suggestions are awful because the game is actually like rewarding someone who thinks ahead of time, I suppose. Right. Like you should be planning out where you're going to be at any particular moment, three steps ahead of yourself. I'm not saying that I want the game to be any easier. I'm saying that there's a problem with controlling the bike. Like the bike movement in the game itself is bad.

23:14 And, you know, if you if you had so much control over the bike that you could like swerve 180 degrees or something like and completely avoid obstacles without any without any penalty like that would suck, too. So that's why I'm just arguing, I think, more space between things would solve the fact that the bike is so rigid.

23:37 I think it's also like just a side effect of of that isometric viewpoint, like the fact that it's not I think it all comes together, like the rigid controls of the bike, the kind of confusing isometric. Isometric isometric viewpoint with the weird hitboxes. It's like it's not just one thing. They all are kind of annoying, but together it becomes very frustrating.

24:09 And I don't but I think that like that isometric view is part of like the everybody everybody knows paper boy because of that. I really don't know how you would fix this and have it still be paper boy. Yeah, yeah, I was almost before going to suggest like top down, but I agree with you. I think that like I think that like the technical problems that it brings aside. This game is like kind of impressive, like the way it looks and everything. It's very cool. And maybe maybe it wouldn't been worth sacrificing that. I agree. Yeah.

25:22 Well, we have to move on to what is surely the most unexpected but coolest part of the entire game, where you finish your route for the day, and all of a sudden it just says training course, and you're on a dirt path, and there's like three different ways you can go, but they all lead to the same exit at the end of the day. But you kind of go over rams, you can go over water. Was this better than throwing the newspaper section? I'd say that it just exacerbated all the problems we just mentioned.

25:58 It seems even harder to hit one of these targets than it does a porch or a mailbox, because I was definitely, like, the sprite of the throne newspaper was definitely intersecting with the sprites of these targets, and I wasn't getting half of them. And it's the same with the hitboxes of the ramps. Like, I would hit the hitbox of the ramp, and I would not go up the ramp. I would go into a wall.

26:30 I mean, I do think that it adds another layer of authenticity of, like, you know, most of these suburbs did have training courses at the end of the streets. But, like, there's only so much you can do with authenticity. You have to actually execute well.

26:48 Yeah. I mean, I will say that I definitely agree with the hitbox problem. That was, especially those ramps. Those were really frustrating when I was clearly on the ramp, and I just run into the wall anyways. Yeah. But I think even if that was fixed, I'm glad that this is here, but I don't think it's more fun than the other part of the game. Like, I think it's a nice break, but I still think that it just feels like a little bit of a bonus to what I think is the draw of the game is the drawing of the papers.

27:25 So here's a weird thought, okay? Points mean nothing to me in these kinds of games. So for me, when I saw, like, how complicated some of the paths were versus, like, you know, the ones that were like, oh, I could definitely, like, make that ramp and not have to worry about what comes next, you know,

27:44 because hitboxes is such a problem and just controlling the bike, I took the easiest path I could every single time, and that was fine for me because this is a game about, for me, it's a game about survivability. I just want to play for as long as I possibly can without dying. I don't really care what the high score is. I just want to get everyone on the block to subscribe to my newspaper. That was my own personal goal. However, you know, that makes me wonder,

28:08 I don't know if this is just, like, a player-to-player thing, but if there was a part, like, a fourth fork in the obstacle course where it was just, hey, this is the dirt road with no ramps, no nothing, like, it's just a straight line to the finish, not going to get any points, but you're also guaranteed to survive, right? It sounds really boring, but I'd be inclined to think that more than just me, you know, other players, too, would take that path knowing what's at stake. Wow. I mean, I know you're not, but it just sounds like with a lot of this, it's just, like, just make it easy. Just make it all very easy.

28:44 Well, that's the theme here tonight. Yeah. I mean, I kind of agree because it doesn't seem that, like, the hard parts in this game are fair. So I would always take that dirt road as well, but it just seems sort of counterintuitive when you're trying to make a challenging game. Yeah. I mean, I'm also, like, I think we've talked about this before. I'm also in the camp of, like, I usually don't care about high scores. So the first couple times I came up to this obstacle course, I was just like, okay, I get to see if I can survive this obstacle course and not lose a life.

29:12 But then, really, I do think that all the paths, if you're just trying to survive the obstacle course, aside from the ramp hitboxes being sometimes finicky, I think the obstacle course isn't that difficult to just survive. So then, just for the sake of the podcast, I was like, well, let me try playing it in a way I usually wouldn't, and that's trying to get a higher score just at that point. I mean, I still wasn't even paying attention to score, but I was just trying to hit the targets.

29:36 And it was kind of fun, you know. But yeah, so long story short, I think that maybe if I were playing this more often, just casually, I probably wouldn't be focused too much on the scores you're getting in these obstacle courses either.

29:51 No, for sure, Joe. And I don't think what I... It's not that hard. Like, the obstacle course definitely has certain patterns that would set you up for failure if you're not good at the game. But there is also, like, an easy way to success. I'm kind of driving to, like, a longer thought here of just, at what point do you just, like, say,

30:10 well, you know, if this game just gave itself the option to play itself, I'd be satisfied with that too, right? Like, if it just gave me the dirt path with no obstacles, or if it gave me, like, everyone's a subscriber and they don't really care if you hit their windows as long as the paper gets to that. Like, at what point do you say, like, all right, do something to the game. Like, make it do something. So you can remove a lot of things like I'm offering.

30:33 But, you know, that was the problem I had too, is a lot of times I'd be saying I'd be in favor of these ideas, but then I'm like, well, you're really changing the game though. Yeah. It's hard to complain about this game, Paperboy, because in concept and execution, it's actually, like, pretty true to itself. Like, the rules that you hear in the manual and that you, the objective of the game that sets out, none of those things are, like, entirely different from the actual playing experience. So when I start to complain about things like controlling the bike or, like, the hitbox and meaningless deaths, it's like they have to kind of do that stuff. I just don't like that it's there.

31:13 I think that it would be totally fine if you just had more agency over avoiding some of these things. Just because, like we were talking about with, like, if you find yourself in the street, you're more or less going to die if you get unlucky. It would just be nice if there was a little bit more leniency. Like, all those, like, obstacles should still be there,

31:39 but maybe if it's just trimming your hitbox a little bit to make it easier to avoid, like, I think that it wouldn't take away from the soul of the game just to make it a little bit more forgiving.

31:53 Yeah, and I think that, you know, again, for anyone who hasn't played it, like, Sean saying that is not even really asking it for it to be forgiving in some instances, like the red car that's coming at you. Like, the way I'm interpreting it is that you're asking it to be possible to avoid. It's not even like, oh, we want it to be really easy. It's like, the red car when you're on the street, I think is literally impossible to avoid unless if it just, if it surprises you. And it will surprise you because there's just no warning.

32:20 Yeah. There's a second part to this, though, with the points guys and that problem of that, you know, other than gaining subscribers and losing subscribers, when you've done this course once, you've done it. You know, they didn't save anything in terms of, like, new obstacles. You know, it might get a little harder, I'm sure. You know, they might add more obstacles throughout, but, like, in terms of variety and stuff, you've really seen it all in a single playthrough.

32:47 So, I don't know, it just doesn't really hold up for long or repeated playthroughs, but it's the kind of thing that is very easy to just pick up and enjoy playing it, you know, for a short first. Yeah, I think any replayability that people get out of this is just trying to optimize and see how long they can go without losing a house or, you know, I mean, it's just, like, it's a very quick gameplay loop, and it's all just about, like, perfecting that loop. Does anything happen on Sunday? I never got to Sunday.

33:28 Yeah, I think you play through Sunday, actually. I thought you weren't going to, but I'm pretty sure you do. I can't remember. You just start something on day again? I think Sunday's just another day. No, I think Sunday's another day, and that's the end. It definitely ends after the week. I'm pretty sure it ends on Sunday and not Saturday. Unless I just didn't do good enough, maybe it would keep going if you had, like, a higher score or something.

33:49 What does the newspaper say on that Sunday, though, Joe? It says, well, so if you finish it and you don't, like, lose or lose all your subscribers, it says something like, like, Paperboy retires in glory or something. Something that I did want to get to, like, this game is funny. Like, it's intentionally funny. Like, in a lot, like, the newspapers, the little articles, like, saying, like,

34:12 Paperboy retires in glory, and then underneath it says, like, Mysterious Vandal never caught because you broke all those windows and, like, things like that. But even, like, the... I mean, obviously, there's the obvious stuff where, like, suddenly, like, on day one, there's, like, a dog chasing you, and then on day two, the Grim Reaper's chasing you. Like, that's funny. But also, like, you get to the end of the... The obstacle course at all,

34:32 I know it's part of the game and it adds to the gameplay, but I think... I really feel like they add that also because they thought it was funny. Especially because you get to the end and there's two full sets of bleachers with only three people in it just going wild for the Paperboy. And then the Paperboy just, like, does, like, a bow. Like, it's a... And it's just really funny to me. Like, oh, these three major Paperboy fans are just going nuts in these empty bleachers. It felt very intentionally funny to me.

35:02 Joe, you know, I am glad you brought up the comic aspect of the game, too, because that is something that we missed. You know, forget about, like, the newspaper is something that is very funny. You know, it starts the game, but it also ends the game. That is something that, like, they've continued throughout the multiple ports of this game to, like, change the copy of what that says. And some versions get, like, really extreme with the game over sequence. Some will just say, like, you're fired. Others will say Paperboy calls it quits. This version, I think. Yeah. There's one get well soon, Paperboy. One crash too many, says Doctor.

35:40 Headline news. It's front page news is whatever's going on with the local Paperboy. There's one for the Apple II that is just extra, extra, you are fired. And that's it. Nothing else. Everything else is like, blah, blah, blah. That's how they tell you. They take out an ad in the newspaper to tell you you're fired.

36:00 So, you know, there's that element of it, too, but the art style, too, is cute. You know? Everything is, as I mentioned, like, kind of to scale. There's no, like, ridiculously oversized object. Except for the tornado. The tornado is definitely, like, what is that? Is that a tornado? It's like a little dirt devil. Dirt devil. No, it's even smaller than that. I don't know. Yeah, and then there's, like, you know, the cat and stuff like that. The sewer grates. I think in some versions of the game, I don't recall seeing the NES one, but in some versions,

36:31 there was a manhole, and a guy will, like, peek out with eyes. Oh, that's not the NES one? Okay. Yeah, I died on that a lot. Yeah, I love that, though. Because it's on the street. That's funny. Yeah, yeah. What's he doing? What's he doing down there? Yes, there is something, also just, like, there's a certain sense of joy from just, you know, being the paperboy. I'm still scared. I'm still scared of this neighborhood. That's true, too, though. You can be scared. I can understand how some kids would grow up scared of being a paperboy because of this. I can understand how some kids

37:38 So, let me just tell you guys about the arcade version of this game. If for no other reason than that, instead of having, like, a joystick or, you know, the normal buttons that you would have at an arcade machine at the time, in this arcade machine, the joystick are actual bike handlebars.

38:05 and then the and then the and then the

38:29 tabletop of the arcade itself, that'd be bad. So instead, there are buttons on each side of the handlebars that you use to throw the papers. It's still just one side of the street. But I think that's cool that you accelerate by pushing the bars forward and you pull back with the brakes. So in a way, this handlebar is the entire control of the game. You're just really a motion-based arcade game in the early 80s. Yeah, I'd prefer to play that version. Yeah, I watched some videos of it. I actually didn't realize that that's how it was being controlled.

39:11 It does look like it controls a lot smoother. And deep buried inside the arcade game, if you look into the code, there is a message from one of the programmers of the game that says steal this code and you die. Atari 1985 JFS. Very threatening.

39:33 And, you know, that was a thing, though, that was happening specifically to Atari and Namco. Their arcade games were being essentially, like, stolen and then put it under new names that were very similar in-game. game. And I think Atari was the first one to actually win, like, a lawsuit being like, yeah, you can say that that's a different, like, you can title it differently and you can color it differently. That's our code. And so, you can't make that game anymore. And they, like, won the rights to that. I don't know. It seems kind of hypocritical of Atari because they've done their own shady stuff. I mean, isn't Tengen just a way to get around, like, Nintendo things? 100%. So, you know, check yourself, Atari.

40:18 Yeah. And if anybody is interested in the, like, like a really good deep dive onto Paperboy, I'm not going to cover it here, but the Game Developers Conference, like, I think now three or four years ago, had the co-creator of Paperboy come on and do, like, an hour-long lecture on how they, like, program the game and design the game and their philosophy behind the way they do things. And I will say, like, I didn't watch all of it, but that's the one that made me think,

40:51 you know, who am I to be picking on some of these things that I want to change the game of because they were clearly, like, thought of as elements of the game that they purposefully wanted there. It's not, it's not programming errors or just difficulty induced. Like, they wanted the obstacles to be threatening to the Paperboy. Makes sense. Believe it or not, there are sequels to Paperboy.

41:17 Why not Paperboy 2? We're going to play that, right? We're going to play that, Sean, on the NES itself. I don't know what you'd do differently. Maybe you just amp it up, like, 100%. You just say, you know what? Paperboy was crazy and it had an obstacle course. So, in Paperboy 2, you're going to be in a monster truck rally, but as, on a bike. Is that a thing?

41:41 No, absolutely not. Okay. I don't know what they're going to do. I didn't want to spoil it because I imagine, I imagine they're not going to change throwing papers to houses, right? Like, that's the whole conceit of the game. So, I think the only thing they can really do is just make it more ridiculous in terms of obstacles and design. Well, I was thinking maybe there would be, like, a secondary, a secondary mode where you have to go and collect the bill after,

42:07 like, after each week and then you'd have to do some, like, business management to talk prices. You know what? I'm going to make this. Yeah, it's like a career mode. Yeah. Yeah, or maybe it's an open world game. Open world game. Yeah, Yeah. Where you can freely explore the entire continental United States on your bike, but you have to, you have to advertise yourself first as the Paperboy. Yeah, it's a freelance Paperboy. Yep. And that's that. And then we have Paperboy 64, which came out, believe it or not, on the Nintendo 64.

42:44 And I didn't even know about this one. I can't quite tell if it's a remake of Paperboy, but just in 3D. But thankfully, if everybody remembers a friend of the show and occasional voice of the show, Sam Smith, who also designs the theme song for Nesta. That, you have him to thank. He wrote a little blurb to me here. He could be on the show today, but he said, when I was little, my parents gave me Paperboy 64 for Hanukkah. I was super excited to play a new game, so I gave it a shot. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. The graphics go beyond crappy early 3D graphics and into barely polygonal smiling stick figure horror.

43:27 I can't stress how uncomfortable this game is to look at. Like if Psychonauts tried to take itself seriously, the first level is a training level where you learn the clunky 3D controls throwing papers and doing sweet tricks on your bike like a rad 90s kid. All the levels are on rails, culminating in a boss fight where you have to take down, I think, Frankenstein's monster? The only saving grace for the game was that it had a memory pack manager built in and it was the only way I could edit my save data for all my games. Sam gives it a 3 out of 10 and if you look up a video of Paperboy 64, you'll think he's being generous with the 3. Wow. That's insane.

44:10 I think the best part is the, like if Psychonauts tried to take itself seriously because I understand what he's saying there and Sean, if the original Paperboy gave you nightmares, imagine, you know, dreaming of this. Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to take a look at it. I'm having some trouble right now, but I'm very sorry. I'm trying to take a look on YouTube too. It's not letting me watch any Paperboy 64 videos. as we're recording, YouTube is down.

44:39 That's so weird. Yeah. So anybody who wants to know why we're like shooting a lot of stuff on the fly, it's because YouTube is down at the time of the recording. Well, that's good to know, but no, I believe him. It kind of makes sense. I'm looking at the thumbnails of some of these and it looks kind of like,

45:00 I can see why it might be a little, what do you call it? Uncanny Valley. This is way beyond Uncanny Valley. Yeah, it's actually not even like comprehensible. Yeah, we haven't gotten to the part where the valley dips yet. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. You know, not to derail, the last game was on rails, not to derail the conversation, but there is more Paperboy stuff, not video games, but Paperboy made a cameo appearance in Wreck-It Ralph, the 2012 Disney film, and I think that that's weird that you had Bowser and Zangief and Sonic the Hedgehog and Paperboy. I mean, there's a lot of Easter eggs in that movie that I kind of vaguely remember.

45:48 But maybe up there in ones we got to include because he also shows up in Pixels, the Adam Sandler film. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, I don't know. Paperboy's pretty iconic, man. Yeah, I wasn't sure if I had a distorted view of it because it's one of the few games on the NES I grew up with, but I always thought it was very popular.

46:08 I mean, that could have just been because it was one of the few I played and I was like 10 years late to the NES party, but... I think that just the fact that they were in both of these movies should enlighten you to the idea that this game was pretty popular and iconic. Well, I'll just, you know, I'll give you the ultimate counterpoint and ask where was Paperboy in Ready Player One? The, you know, the quintessential reference of material of our time. Yeah. You're right. I didn't read that book or watch that movie, so... Well, you're saving yourself a lot of time and I'm saying that as someone who didn't do it either.

46:46 I hear about Ready Player One and I say no. I read the book and it was okay. Okay. It kind of wasn't crazy. Well, it was good. There were some good parts. The ending was pretty good, but I think the overall was okay. Best of times and the worst of times. I got you. Is it an essential book? I wouldn't put it on my essential books list for our other podcast. Thankfully, we don't do an essential books list, but we do an essential games list and we're going to do it right now for Paperboy. This is the essential games list. Sean? I mean, I did just get done saying that this game is iconic and

47:35 is but this game was also so incredibly frustrating, at least on this platform, that I can't in good conscience say that this is essential. Like, I guess, played on the arcade, it's not an essential NES game. Well, yeah, similarly, I really, I actually really wish I could give this an essential. I wish it was up there because I really, I actually had a lot of fun playing it, like revisiting it.

48:00 Yeah, those flaws definitely keep it off of the essential games list and the fact that there's already clearly at least one better version and it's not the old argument of there will be a better sequel or there will be better types of this game. There's actually a better version of this exact game. So, maybe if we played the arcade game I'd say essential but, who knows? But I, I would definitely give this a play. I think that this is,

48:27 I don't think you'll regret playing it. You might get frustrated at times but I thought it was actually a lot of fun. Yeah, I'd jump in and say that I think this is a game that you could probably find online very easily, like play in browser and experience that like everyone owes themselves to do because it, you know, one of our last points before we started moving on to sequels and spinoffs was that, you know, at the end of the day the game is really just about scoring points and it, it's better for like short bursts than for me to play like a whole like seven days inside the game. So, this is a game I, I pick up very often

49:04 on various different consoles. I own this on Sega Genesis and, it's on Game Boy and, you know, it doesn't really matter what version you're playing it on. The idea is always still the same and yeah, some versions are better than others but it's just a fun I don't know, even just play for four minutes. Like, it's one of those things it reminds me of um, it reminds me of Balloon Fight in that way and I do think Balloon Fight's

49:27 a much better game and it is on the Essential Games list but I'm not gonna put this one on the Essential Games list even though it reminds me of Balloon Fight but it is fun to think of like the kind of games that fit the criteria of something that like well, if you told me I could play it right now and I didn't have any other obligations I'd probably be like yeah, cool, I'll play that right now.

49:46 And I'll always look for those kinds of games you know? It's very hard sometimes, you know, when you, with today, modern games and you have you know, the hottest new game comes out and you're like oh man, I can't wait to play insert hottest new game and then you start thinking about it and you're like well, it's a 60 hour game and I kind of got this thing going on tomorrow so if I start it today it's not gonna you know, I'm not gonna be able to play it again until, you know, Tuesday I'm just gonna play another round of Rocket League

50:15 Right, yeah, and so you just go back to the short burst games and sometimes I think that like those short burst games aren't holding back these longer games they just have a different kind of merit to them Yeah, totally I do want to react to something there, Mike, like I, personally, I actually felt like the seven in-game days was like the perfect length of like a playthrough of this game I just felt like that's like that's exactly what I want it's like seven times you go down the street just before it starts to get stale to me but I still like each time I'm like how many subscribers did I gain versus lose and can I end higher than I started I don't know I didn't think that

50:52 that seven in-game days was too bad I know that's not what you said that it was bad but Yeah, I just couldn't get in I couldn't get to the seventh day I was so bad Yeah, I mean, that was the other thing it did take me a long time to be able to get through seven days so I mean, I guess that that definitely greatly extended my playtime All right, and that's about all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia

51:16 I'm Michael Esposito you can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter Nostalgia can always be found on the web at NostalgiaCast on Twitter or just wherever you listen to podcasts believe it or not if you're listening to this episode on a podcast player you're not locked to that podcast player if you want to then listen to this same episode on, you know,

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