NES box art for Xenophobe, the cover of NEStalgia episode 153

153 · XENOPHOBE

▶ Game info

VerdictSkip it

GenreArcade

ReleasedDecember 1988

SeasonSeason 4

DeveloperSunsoft

PublisherSunsoft

January 8, 2021 · 39 min · transcript available

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Xenos. The very name strikes fear into every colonist's heart. A distress call is received from space stations orbiting your homeworld, then silence. A single ship escapes, piloted by a battered man who tells the tale of pods that hatch into acid-spitting Xenos. A small band of engineers has been dispatched to combat the Xeno threat before it takes over all the space stations and, eventually, your homeworld.

SHOW NOTES

Xenophobe Longplay

Xenophobe Arcade

Xenophobe Lynx Commercial

ALIENS affect on Video Games

Why are Aliens green?

Our verdict: Skip it

Sunsoft made and published this 1988 arcade port, which we called the 100 percent xenomorph ripoff game. Mike and Sean played this one without Joe. The cover art does its job and the split screen is an interesting idea, but the game inside is thin.

What works

The box. We can't imagine fans of Alien and fans of video games didn't see that cover and take it home.
Split screen. It is a 100 percent split screen game, even if you play by yourself. That was intriguing at first.
Two good ideas. A lunging alien can knock you over. You can shoot from your back but can't move until you press jump. Small critters can latch onto you like a face hugger, and you can throw them off. Both show a level of thought most of the rest of the game didn't get.

What doesn't

No reason to keep going. Each stage has a five minute timer, and when it expires you move on. You never have to kill anything, and a pacifist run is surprisingly easy. We think there are eight bases, then it repeats, and the only sign you beat it is maxing out the score.
The shooting. The gunplay is stiff, there is almost no sound design for enemies, and half the screen is your action. Your jump leaves you floating for a second and a half. You have something like a thousand health, so taking a hit of about ten beats dodging.
The laser ball. The floating turrets sit above your jump height and shoot like a "pea shooter." They are the most annoying enemy in the game and the most inconsequential.

Worth knowing

Goofy, not scary. There is no real plot, and the manual doesn't add one. The first character you can pick is a duck, and the aliens look like green Ghostbusters ghosts.
The arcade original. It was a three player simultaneous game that knew where every player was. Here, if a room is empty, the game just makes sure something enters it.
The Lynx version. It has four players, each needing their own Lynx and copy, with the handheld turned upright. If the NES version disappointed you, look for that one instead.

The bottom line

Skip it. Nobody voted it onto the Essential Games List. Sean said that with slightly better core gameplay the split screen tech could have been a 10 out of 10, but the gameplay is boring and thoughtless, so the tech goes out the window. Mike's vote came down to the controls: crouching is down plus A, throwing a grenade from a crouch is down plus A again, and there are only four controls to begin with.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

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

Xenophobe, are you ready for slime time?

And welcome to another year of Nostalgia, chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. Sean, you ready for another year? Oh, yeah. It's just me. Oh, yeah. This is a great year, right? This is 2021. This is what makes everything better. This is the South. Everything's better now. I mean, the podcast is better. There's two less people. It's a lot less noisy. Yeah. No, so everything's gonna be a lot simpler. Hopefully, we'll get those other guys back. They're still stuck in 2020, but I'm happy to be here. Yeah, it's one of those things. It's the holiday season. You know, not everybody could be around, but we're glad that the listeners could join us again. For the Chilling Tale of Xenophobe.

The 100% xenomorph ripoff game. I mean, did you look at the cover art? All the art. All the art. Yeah, that's true. All the art. Yeah, this is definitely 100%. I guess the nicer term we can use is in an homage or homage or however you want to pronounce it to aliens slash aliens.

I don't know. What else can we say about this game? Yeah, I mean, even the, you know, like the idea of going to space bases or ships or mother bases and like dealing with the aliens on board is very much like straight out of Ripley Scott's aliens. Yeah, Ridley. Ridley Scott. Ripley is the actress. Right, right, right. That's it.

I'm doing what I can. I'm doing what I can. You know, if they fuse together, they would be very powerful. Yeah, we're getting into some Metroid action here. You know, we've had that before. We got, we got. We've had that even with Contra, too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was a weird level or something. So it's like the Japanese are obsessed with the movie Alien. They love it. Like they got, you know, they got the facehuggers in there. They got at least a couple.

Like it's basically like the design in this game is if you if you had contacts, but you didn't have them in. And so you had to wear your old glasses and you sort of saw the silhouette of a xenomorph. That's sort of what the xenophobe is, you know.

Right. And this is not xenophobia like that kind of. Yeah, it's not that bad negative kind. Political. Yeah. But the back of the box does put that to be fair to the back of the box. It does put the definition as xenophobe is the fear of anything alien. So, yeah, they're more like, you know, it's trying to be like a early space horror kind of game. Right. I guess so. Yeah. If they're trying to go for that alien thing. Except for it's not because it's so goofy. Yeah. Even in even in design. Like, yeah, it's the design of this game. Like at first, I was kind of intrigued because I had never seen a 100 percent split screen game, even if you're playing by yourself.

And yeah. Yeah, that that is something. And for a game that on its back of the box, they boast that it has over one mega power. OK, you would think that that would mean that it could handle running the game without a separate split screen. What did it has over one mega power? It's just one of those things that you put in red text away from the like, it's not like written into the blurb or anything. It literally is just an out of context line that just says over one mega power. OK, we don't judge things by by powers of megas. Yeah. So it's a made up quote. OK, cool.

Well, I'd like to see a game with with less than one mega power at that. Yeah. I think the last of us part two runs on at least several hundred thousand mega powers. Yeah, that's like giga powers, you know? Yeah. They moved up. Here's another thing for you. The whole game. No real plot given. You know, it's just kind of like aliens have infested these spaces that you go into and then your job to clear them out because you're this alien exterminator, which kind of like it should give me like the Colonel Marines aliens vibes. Right. Yeah. But but instead it gives me like Ghostbuster vibes. Well, I mean, it doesn't help that for some reason. The first character that you have the ability to select is a duck. That doesn't really give you like badass.

Yeah. Colonial Marine vibes. It's it's more like I. I don't know. Yeah. I guess I guess like a Ghostbusters cartoon is sort of sort of the vibe they're going for here. I don't really think that there's any difference between the characters, but there are three. So that's what you would want to play as the duck if you're. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to move away from the duck, but they're not taking themselves very seriously by having like in the year twenty three hundred. Or wherever this takes place. I always shoot for twenty three hundred. That's far enough. Twenty three X. X. Yeah. Twenty three X. You know, they're presuming that ducks would join the humans at that point or that we maybe that we just mutated one duck. Like, to be a human.

That was it. Yeah. Is it like did we did we elevate the ducks to sentience or have we explored space and found a race of sentient ducks? Like that's always sort of like, you know, I like it when games do that and they don't fully explain their lore to you. So you just have to just have to figure it out yourself for playing the game. Right. And this game isn't going to give you any handouts. You're pretty much just traveling to different infested bases. And your job is to destroy all the aliens on those bases. Unless you don't. Right. That's totally fine. And you'd actually for what it's worth, you know, you could you could just play this game by not playing it. You never have to kill anything.

There's a five minute timer in each stage. And when that expires, you just move on. But you do get like a report back at the end of each that kind of says, like, from your commander, how how well you did. And you get a certain amount of points based on how many aliens you killed and how well you performed. Now, we'll get into the actual gameplay for a minute, but it's hard to to not like think of this game as just purely one of those older arcade relic games. That's just like a get the high score points. Same loop over and over again style game, you know? Well, yeah, that's that's what it is. There's really no depth to this game. It is it's like basically a wave shooter, but there can only be one enemy or one or two enemies on the screen at once.

There's not really much going in the way of of like power ups. I mean, there are some, but we'll get there. There's nothing in the way of strategy unless you're trying to do a pacifist run, which is surprisingly easy. It's yeah, it's just an arcade game ported to the NES.

Yeah. And not even ported correctly, though, because the original arcade game was a three player simultaneous game. And what was cool about that is that it knew your positions throughout the entirety of the bases. So you had the aliens like locked to positions where they were. And then it also knew where all three players were. So you had this thing where it was actually like, you know, even if it was a small base or small ship or whatever, at least it was alive.

You know, in the sense of aliens are contaminated in this area. I'm going to go here. You control this side. Like, I think that's interesting as a concept. It just didn't happen here. I mean, it does do that in a way. Like, it does have a I guess the term that you could use for it is it's like a persistent world.

At least each base, which is what like three or four rooms. But so like if you're if both players are in the same room, you'll both show up on that screen. But you can also be in other rooms and sort of existing in that same world. But it doesn't really matter because all that's happening is it's just spawning just spawning enemies into each room separately. I guess it's cool when you cross paths and then you could like take it take them on together. But I don't think that there's enough going on on each screen for it to matter as much as it did in the arcade. I watched a little bit of footage from the arcade version.

Yeah. And so, like you said, the aliens just spawn even as you're in the room, like they'll just kind of spawn somewhere within the room. And I think that's that's missing the like that. What's so cool about the idea of like the base being live and being where everything is, because then you're almost you're not hunting everything down. It's just kind of happening and occurring in front of you. Yeah. And it'd be so much cooler if like you had to be aware of the doors on either side and then like those doors open and you're not sure if it's going to be your split screen partner. Or another alien.

Instead, it's just like if nothing's in the room, the game will take care of that for you and make sure something enters that room. And that almost makes me wonder because I didn't I didn't want to give myself as boring an experience as it would have taken to to do this experiment.

But I wonder if you even have to move between rooms. I know that like only the first couple enemies will drop like a score giving item in each room. To, you know, to boost that score up. But like, I wonder if you could play this game just standing in the same screen because it just kind of ends. It's not like there's any. It's not like there's any like end game in each of these bases. It just like stops you. So I wonder if that's like a timer that would trigger regardless of where you are or if there is some like amount of steps you need to take. Like, I don't know.

Yeah, I think it's a timer, though. I think it's just straight like five minutes in in game time. Wow. And then that counts as like, all right, on to the next the next base or ship or what have you. And what's really strange is you mentioned that there's no ending objective, right? Because the aliens just get spawned. You kind of have to just like always take them out. There's no break period where it's like I can move to the next level earlier because I defeated all the waves or something like that. That doesn't happen. But also there's just no end to the game either. You do the same.

I think it's eight different, you know, ships, bases, motherships, what have you. It's eight of those. And then it just repeats. And the only thing that would like signify that you've beaten the game is maxing out the score to nine nine nine zero zero zero. Yeah, that doesn't sound fun at all. I mean, I guess is that that could have been fine. Like, again, I'm looking rampage. I was talking about, like, I don't really care if it's open ended. I just like to do the thing in the game.

But the game here is like the stiffest gunplay, almost zero sound design for enemies tops. Half the screen is your action. I can't really think of other than the want to beat a game. What would keep me playing for longer than the amount of time I did for this podcast?

And that's why it needs for especially for a console version. Right. And I know we're early into consoles making a resurgence. We really only have at this point the NES and the master system at home anyway. But and maybe some computer consoles if people are like into that scene. That's really all you have. So we were early in on that. But I feel like console gaming needs to offer something in the form of a beginning and end for not even like a campaign. But in the sense of like, imagine if this game actually had an ending after the eighth stage. Right. And then you saw the ending or whatever.

And then you could keep playing for high score. But this way, there's actually like a motivation of like, you know, you've cleared this galaxy and then you move on to another galaxy or something. You know, like it needs a reason to end because like you said, unless you're going for points, there's no reason to keep playing because the gameplay itself will not change at all from the first level. Other than adding some new enemies, some new floors, like, you know, the number of rooms in a base. And I mean, like, honestly, maybe the difficulty ramps up, but, you know, not not like considerably enough to keep a player engaged.

Yeah. And it's like there's no late game gear that'd be like, oh, I can't wait for like right now. It's just kind of tedious, but I'll get that power trip once I get the BFG or something like that. Like this game handles power ups in such a weird way that you can find grenades lying around. And I think it's like down in a or something to throw a grenade. But there's no counter. So it's not like you can do any resource management with that. It's just sort of like you either have them or you don't. I guess there's a like a more there's like a rapid fire pistol. But I'd never got that drop.

So then I guess I got the rapid fire pistol and I liked it. I like that rapid fire pistol because that actually like. Well, you know, OK, so look, when you're fighting the aliens, right, which is a weird thing to say because you're barely fighting them. Yeah, there's this there's this moment where you realize all you have other than these grenades, if you stumble upon them, you just have your gun. So you shoot at the alien and it just kind of like one type of alien. It is it either lunges at you or just shoots at you from a distance or comes closer to you.

There's not really a lot of options in terms of defense for you. There is a jump. But if there's two aliens in a room, most likely based on the jump that they've provided you with and the inputs that it requires, you are most likely just going to jump into the other alien enemy or what have you. You know, like and that sounds bad because there's it's pretty much impossible to dodge. And if you do dodge, it's like it doesn't feel that good to be dodging it because now you just have to go back to shooting until it lunges back at you the other way.

However, you have a ton of health in this game. So it's almost like inconsequential when you get hit by an alien. It's almost like, all right, well, I'd rather get hit than take the effort to dodge and just keep shooting at him. And be floating in midair for like a second and a half. Exactly. And some enemies do take a lot of bullets to to die. So it's almost like a waste of time to be jumping around and dodging. It's like, just take the 10 or so points that it knocks off your health because you have a thousand health or something like that. And you do get health regeneration, too, through power ups, which is a pretty frequent power up you'll you'll come across.

So I don't really see a reason to be afraid of the aliens if if they give you that much help. There was also another there was another little aspect to fighting in this game that was unique. I thought, but it was the only unique thing or it was like it would have been a cool feature if the fighting in this game had any other depth to it. But it was basically like if you get lunged at, there's like a chance that you're going to get knocked over. You can still shoot from lying on your back and you're going to be right in line with whatever put you there.

But you can't move until you press the jump button to stand back up. I thought that that was interesting because it in in some other version of this game, it could have been like an interesting risk reward. If you want to just stay prone and get some shots in and just like finish off the alien or you could get up and try and reposition to a safer area.

But since there wasn't really much at stake there, like it that that part of this game really didn't mean anything to you. Did you did you notice that about like when you get knocked over? Yeah, no, it's really cool. And it's a level of thought that they didn't put into most of the rest of the game. Another thing like what you're talking about, though, because it's just it's weird to have something like that. It's weirder when it happens like twice when there's two like really well thought out things in a game that just clearly didn't play test for very long.

The port specifically. But there's a the critters, the critter aliens, which are the smaller like little blob guys. If they latch on to you, you can actually like there's a there's a special command that the game registers when you are like when they latch on to you that you can throw them like you can pick them up and like throw them away from you. And I thought that that was like a neat context thing, like specific to one alien enemy that felt cool.

You know, again, like if there was an actual sense of danger in this game, that would be a creepy moment where there's like, yeah, a critter on you and you have to like quick, like, I think what I did was I just sort of like mashed buttons and it fell off of me. I don't remember throwing it off, but I did like that, too, as like and like another like that's sort of the face hugger. Right. So, yeah, I like that about the game.

But, yeah, it's just these small little things that would be cool if everything else is sort of cohesive in that way. But everything else just bleeps and bloops and very slow gunfire and basically just boring. The controls was one of those situations where I had to actually like I read the manual ahead of time. Then I started playing the game and then I was like, whoa, let me go back to the manual for a second. Like, is this really all I can do? You know, like it was one of those moments where you look at and you're like, no, there's got to be like some other type of like attack or like I could like I could use my fists in close encounters or something like none of that. None of that. And it was just so strange.

And I remember saying to myself, like, so these are the controls and that's never a good sign. You never want to say to yourself, so this is how they want you to play the game. Like, I don't do that in modern video games ever. You know, like when was the last time in a modern video game you were like, oh, so that's how they want me to control the camera. You know, like it's always the same thing. Like it's it's worked out now. Yeah, I don't think I've thought about that since like 2002 or something when the the the 3D camera sort of standardized. So, no, I definitely felt that way. I didn't actually read the manual. This is one of the rare games. I didn't read the manual because it just seemed so fucking straightforward.

Like, but. And I guess I didn't miss anything. I'd miss anything because they also don't elaborate on a story there either. You know, usually the manual is a chance for an aspiring author to write their magnum opus. I love it. Not not even this time. Wow. Thank God I didn't read it.

Yeah. So nothing lost there. The aliens have pretty cool names and I'll just list them off. Like we have the critter, the snotter pillar, the laser ball, which doesn't sound like an alien to me. That sounds like some robo thing. Yeah. The giant slime amoeba that that one seems just very descriptive. I don't know if that's actually the real name or the the scientific name. That's the one that'll kind of like jump between the floor and the ceiling, right? Yeah, I think so. Yes. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about now. And that is the one. Yes. And then I don't remember seeing this one. I don't think. But the spiderion. Oh, the spider. You don't remember the spiderion.

Is that the one that's actually the xenomorph? I have no idea. Oh, OK. That's funny. You pull my leg. All right. Whatever. Woo. I think we've covered a lot of this game and we're only like 20 minutes in. This is rough. Yeah. I mean, we've mentioned so much that I just kind of want to bring up a generic point, but it happens in this game. So I feel like we'll just get it out of the way. Why are aliens always green? What's up with that? Oh, I mean, that's not really true. I mean, even the xenomorph wasn't green in the movie. That we could tell by our best guesses. Yeah. Um, I don't know. It's just like shorthand now. Like, you know, aliens are green. Uh, wizards have white hair.

That's true. OK. All right. What's what's like what's blue? Blue. What's like something that's always blue? Dinosaurs? Dinosaurs are, you know, like in. Dinosaurs are green, too. Oh, that's true. Yeah. Dinosaurs are green. Um, it's green all the way down. Yeah, it's just. Yeah, it turns out. So it's always been green. One thing. One thing I want to know about this game. And I guess you can explain like, oh, they're, you know, the security systems are going haywire because all these bases have been run. But have been overrun by, uh, by by alien monsters. But like, why are the why are the little floating turrets also shooting at you? They're at once the most annoying enemy in this game because half the time they are above the height that you can jump.

Uh, and the most inconsequential because they're just there. They take like 10 of your thousand hit points away every time they shoot you. And it sounds like a little like pea shooter. Like, why even include that? It was, it's just a frustration element. So that's the laser ball. That's laser ball. And that's why I was, yeah, and I was confused. I'm like, so is that an alien? No. Or is that like a part of the defense systems of the ship? You, you're saying it's a part of the defense system of the ships. I get that. Yeah. But what if it's an alien possessing the defense systems in the ship? Technically it's an alien then. So now these aliens are, uh, they've got psychokinetic powers.

What, what in this game made you not think that? No. Their low intelligence? Like the fact that they just like leap at you? Yeah. Even though you have a gun? Like a blanca. They sort of like do a blanca move at you. Um, I, I guess what could actually happen is, um, that at the, like whenever you die in this game, you're actually just, your mind is being flayed and, uh, it just becomes, you become one. That, that could have been interesting. If, if after you died, you, you could, you could start to be the alien.

I like that. I I'm on board with that. I'm also on board with the idea that aliens, regardless of the game, would, would know how to use guns, right? If they can like travel around the, uh, you know, this, the, this interstellar system and they're, they're like, you know, intelligent beings and what have you, they would have also come to like the idea of guns or even more powerful things than guns somewhere down the line. Well, well, remember Mike, if, if you know your alien lore, the xenomorphs are just a biological, uh, uh, weapon created by the space jockey race. Uh, and they're just there by happenstance.

Uh, the xenomorphs don't know why they kill or how to kill. They just kill, you know? Who are the space jockeys in relation to Prometheus? They're the Prometheus guys. Oh, okay. So they are the, yeah, cool. Yeah. And how is a space jockey different from like, say a disc jockey?

I think the term just came from like in alien. There's like, they just discover a bunch of dead dudes. And one was on like, uh, one was on like a, like a saddle sort of thing. So they just called them like a space jockey. And then, you know, Ridley Scott had to go and explain everything in Prometheus. So, uh, that's where we are. So you're talking a lot about alien. Are you putting xenophobe in the alien universe? I am just, I, I, I just am finding things to say about this game. The most, you, the most interesting thing about this game is what it is trying to rip off. So. That's true.

And, and fair enough. Like, I think that on some level, right. It does succeed in, in ripping off the thing that it like sought out to rip off. Now it didn't execute on it. Right. No, but there's no, there's no like way you could convince me that fans of alien and fans of video games didn't see this box and be like, Oh, I'm bringing this home tonight. Yeah. It was probably a really good marketing scheme. I mean, like, look at how many ports this game has, uh, on the wikipedias. Uh, I imagine that that contributed to it. Uh, I, I don't know, you know, firsthand, but like this has to be, this had to have been a relatively popular game.

Yeah. I mean, if you don't know any better too, like you see the, the exact ripoff of what a xenomorph is on the front cover of the box and you're like, Oh, this is like part of that universe, which I guess is what I was trying to get you to admit earlier. No, but like people could, people could think that. Yeah, for sure. Back then, especially, you know, like if you told me that there was a game that was like, instead of star Wars, it was space wars, right?

Like if you could make it look like a Darth Vader like character and you called it space war, there's no way that every little kid who loves star Wars isn't asking for that game for Christmas. For sure. And it's really weird because I thought maybe the, uh, the arcade game would lean into it more. But, um, I, when I was watching the, the footage of it, it actually looks like it's taking a lot more cues from star Trek than, than alien. Like the, the characters that you have, have those really like sleek, like star fleet uniforms on and they got the, the big muscular, I'm sorry, the, the big heroic chins. And, uh, I don't know. They're kind of like mixing their, mixing their, uh, origins there.

Yeah, no, I, I think that's a good point because one thing we didn't talk about was the, the look of the game, which is kind of cartoony. Like you would expect something a little more like gritty and realistic and trying to be like, you know, Ooh, these aliens are scary.

Instead, the aliens look kind of, um, you know, we said ghostbusters earlier, but they kind of look like they could be friendly, uh, ghostbuster ghosts if they weren't aliens themselves, you know, like we didn't have the context. They might as well just be green ghostbuster ghosts. Like in the first movie. Um, so that's like another weird thing. But again, I can't imagine that marketing didn't think about that being like, this is great. It's alien and it's ghostbusters and it's the 1980s. Like we can't lose.

Guys, it's the current decade. This is, this is a home run. I mean, there was definitely a bull market going on in the eighties. So, you know, like everybody was happy. You're right. Anyway. No, no, no. Let's keep talking about the, no, no, no. Sequels and spinoffs. Okay. Sequels and spinoffs. Cause as you can imagine, there were none.

Game died at the arcade. That is a surprise to me as well. And, uh, here's the funny thing though. Uh, there were many ports as you mentioned. So it is kind of surprising that they wouldn't get another one, another sequel or something. But out of all of the ports that are available, it's the Atari Lynx version that had me the most interested. Remember that from, uh, I think we're talking about that last episode or no, no, sorry. A skate or die episode with, um, Atari and, uh, EA and epics all like having a fight with each other. And then that ultimately made the Atari Lynx. Turns out the Atari Lynx, very interesting console. It just takes like nine AA batteries to get the thing to run.

But once you have all that, the Atari Lynx can somehow like hook up between four players to allow everybody to play, um, yeah, through the Lynx, uh, they Lynx up and they play Xenophobe and you have to turn the handheld console, which is relatively big. Think of like the size of a switch, right? Yeah. You have to turn it upright and you play it vertically, but the buttons are still like designed as if you were holding it like a controller, but now they're, you know, now they're up and down. Wow. So you have to hold it like you're holding a phone. That sounds terrible. But two hands. Yeah. But it's like, so. Imagine yourself holding a phone. So you are, yeah, imagine holding a phone.

Uh, so you're saying that all three players, is it the three player version or two player version? I think it's three players. So all, like all of their stuff is showing up on each Lynx. Yes. And, but only one player can control, can use the Lynx as a controller. No, no, no, no. Everybody uses the Lynx as a controller. The same Lynx. No, no. You need, everybody needs their own Lynx and their own copy of Xenophobe. Okay. All right. It just sounds sort of poorly thought out, but you know, I guess that was the Lynx.

And, and on top of that, uh, I know you said three players, but I was not mistaken. It is four players in the Lynx version. So it has even more capability than the, uh, arcade version.

Technically speaking. Yes. And it came out in like 1990. So not even that much to extra time. Next gen Xenophobe action. It just sounds like a really cool idea. And I think we should all buy our copy of Xenophobe on the Atari Lynx and an Atari Lynx. And we should get together once this whole pandemic thing ends and we just play the real version of Xenophobe. Cause that's, that's my sequels and spinoff section is just to let people know if you were disappointed by the NES version, don't go look for the arcade version, go look for the Atari Lynx version. It sounds really cool and unique. We have to pump those numbers up. We, we, we, one of our, uh, our essential pricing list, the, uh, the Xenophobe on the Lynx. We need to pump that price up.

Yeah. It got a five out of five on Atari.io. Wow. It's just a random website that I just looked up, but say no more than that. All right. We're done here, right? I guess so. No, we have to vote. It's still, you still have to vote for these games. So that was a test. Looks like it's going to be a one man show going forward because you've failed the test. No, no, no. Fear not. Um, we're going to, we're going to still do. Well, a little thing I like to call the essential games list.

Sean. Yes. You can vote however you like, but I would like to hear something nice as well. About Xenophobe, not just about other things? Yeah. About Xenophobe. Okay. Um, I, I will say that, uh, Xenophobe definitely has some unique qualities to it. I, I think that if their core, if their core gameplay was just a smidge better, like, you know, this game, it's, it's 1988, like that we're not going to give passes to, uh, half ass combat or anything like that anymore. If this, if that was any better, this whole split screen thing would have just, would have been, would have been like 10 out of 10, like best game. Um, but, um, no, the, the actual core gameplay that you're, that you're doing is boring and thought thoughtless.

Uh, so all, all that cool tech that went into being able to handle people on different screens at the same time and all that, like that goes out the window. So, uh, this is not an essential game. Thank you. And I do appreciate you saying something nice about it because here's the bottom line guys. I mean, look, it's 2021 now I'm saying it seven out of 10 NES games going forward are going to be bad. They're going to be things that we don't like.

There's only a three out of 10 chance that we'll get a game that we, that we'll actually have something that we like. The current stats, as I break it down are 70% bad shit, 17% sure you should play it if you like NES games and only 12% essential games. Now that you might do the math on that and say, Mike, that's 101% or whatever, but I was rounding up or down on the certain percentages to give clean numbers. So don't fight me. I am keeping it all active and we're not holding this information hostage either. We'll release it in 2035 when the show is over.

Now that said, I do have to give a vote on this particular game and we complained for a long time about this game, but we didn't even get to like really talk about the game in a nuanced way because it wasn't worth your time. I could have explained that you have to press the down and a button to crouch and then the down and a button again, when crouched to throw grenades.

Why you can't just press the down button? I don't know. But that alone is enough to put this on the... That's a jank folder. That's like peak jank folder right there. Exactly. That's what puts this... That's what doesn't even make this considered an essential game for me is something where like you only have four controls anyway and then you make it like ridiculous over one

move like that. Keep in mind, you want to crouch in certain areas. It's not like it's like a... Oh, well, the crouch is not something used that often. You crouch. In this game. You're a crouching character, you know? You crouch. I'm a grouch. And this game is not on the essential games list. You could have just said, uh, you crouch. I'm a grouch. And this game is kind of a slouch.

Ouch. All right. Well, I'm glad that we're all still in good spirits. As Sean said, 2021 is when everything ends. Everything. Including life on earth. Yeah. But if it doesn't end, there's plenty more nostalgia to come. And I know what you guys are thinking. Mike, this was episode 153. You promised a 153rd episode spectacular. Oh, no. Those specials don't count.

They don't. They don't count. Um, and they don't count here either, though, Sean. This really is just the... This would technically be like the 156th episode by those standards. Oh. So... But we're just not doing it, is what I'm saying. I'm just saying, like, screw whatever past Mike told you. And stay with... Stay with present Mike. Because he's going to promise something that's real. Okay? I can't wait to meet future Mike.

Future Mike is reckless. And he... Yeah, he is also undecided. He may or may not show up. But one thing I can promise is that the very next game on Nostalgia, that is next Friday, is the final game of 1988, The Legend of Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link. Finally, we get to find out what this Link guy is doing. The whole first game was about Zelda. So, finally, we get to see who this Link guy is. Is that, like, Zelda's dad?

I heard he's in Smash. Yeah. But, no, it's going to be a great episode. And that's why we didn't blow this one out of the water. We didn't want to make a game like this, the 153rd episode spectacular. Spectacular. So, Zelda 2 will just be the 154th episode spectacular. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then that's fine. But you're not listening to every episode, and I caught you.

After Zelda 2, we have the best of 1988, a classic episode where we will rework the essential games list. Think you heard it all? Think you heard everything there is to know about 1988 by listening to every episode? You're wrong. Because we're going to change history in the best of 88 episode. Vote to caucus. There you go. And then, it doesn't stop from there. 1989 comes in, and we got games like Bomberman, Sesame Street 1, 2, 3, WWF WrestleMania, Friday the 13th, and our first real RPG, Ultima 3. Oh, shit. So, anything can happen. Anything can happen. All we ask is that you keep listening every single Friday. Sean, where can they find us?

Uh, uh, uh-oh, uh-oh. You can find us on the internet. The internet. That's Twitter, specifically, at NestalgiaCast, N-E-S-T-A-L-G-I-A, cast, like a cast that you wear, or a podcast. Um, and there, we post, now we post memes. We don't even care. I know, like, N-E-S memes, like, they're old, but they're new, and they're hot, and they're funny. Okay? So, be there for the laughs. Find us on Google. Like, if you just- Find us on Google. Yeah, like, if you just- Just type it in. Like, Nostalgia Podcast.

Uh, we'll be there. Yeah, that's true. Yahoo. Bing. If you look up, is N-E-S baseball haunted? I think it shows up again. I think that's pretty spooky. We gotta be the first result, you know? Well, the website's down, Sean. I mean, how often do they check those things, though? Right, maybe they can go to, like, the Wayback Machine. Yeah, just find the cached version of our website. Read that article.

That's all we ask for. Uh, this has been a very long, uh, post thing, but we're just trying to- You know, we get paid by the minute here on YouTube. YouTube. So, we're just doing what we can.

Not true. But we are gonna sign off now. Please join us next week for a good game. Or not. I don't know if it's good, actually. I'm gonna tell you next week. Uh, alright. I'm Michael Zieg. Find me at Esposito Film on Twitter. Or if you just spot me in the street, be like, you're Michael Esposito from Nostalgia Cast. But, uh, that's- That's something you are allowed to do. I don't know if it's good.

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153 · XENOPHOBE

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