162 · GYRUSS

• 300 Billion People Are Counting On You – So Don’t Choke!
• Introductions
  • Legendary NES Shump developer Konami is back with a new SHMUP
  • How to say this: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/how-to-pronounce-gyruss.145359/
• Overview
  • It’s A.D. 2500 and mankind has penetrated the galaxy’s fringes, establishing colonies of peace from Mercury to Pluto.
  • Suddenly, the tranquility of the Milky Way erupts into a frothing fury as armadas of alien deathships swarm into our solar system like killer bees preying on an innocent bystander. No one is spared. Even beloved Mother Earth is stung.
  • These vicious cosmic Visigoths are war starved Gyrusians. And, led by the immortal Genghis Khan (whom they recruited from Mongolia centuries ago), they’re out to trash civilization.
  • With our galactic fleet flattened, you’re the lone space cowboy who escaped the Gyruss shroud of doom.
• Gameplay
  • The decision to only control your ship in a circle.
    • Enemies fly in mostly from the outside and then attack from the center
    • Very much like Tempest, but with visual flair
  • Control A or B
    • How would you design a controller for this kind of game?
  • Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
    • ACTUALLY ALL THE MUSIC
  • Enemy variety
  • Super Blaster
  • Lack of Power Up. Does the dual even feel more powerful?
  • Saving OUR solar system
    • Neptune before Pluto?
  • Boss battles
    • Arcade version didn’t have these! Or the Super Blaster
  • No ending so this really is arcade like. Is there enough here to keep you going for additional loops?
• Development
  • Gyruss is the second and last game Yoshiki Okamoto designed for Konami, after Time Pilot. Due to pay disputes, he was fired after the release of this game, and he soon joined Capcom, where he wrote 1942 and produced Street Fighter II.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Many Ports, no true successor!
    • PSX - Hidden in Contra Legacy of War
    • GBA - If you input the Konami Code, you play a retrofitted version that includes three new levels at the beginning
    • Xbox 360 Arcade - Updated GFX
• EGL
• Next week - Qbert!

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

00:00 Jairus, 300 billion people are counting on you, so don't choke!

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. I don't know, I feel like there's got to be more than 300 billion people in a fully functioning galaxy that has, you know, that has, like, figured out time, not time travel, but space travel at the least. Yeah, but you only ever see our solar system, in which case you assume it's only the Earthlings, right?

00:51 300 billion Earthlings, okay. Yeah, that's a lot of Earthlings, though. There could be, like, a couple of things going on, like, Mars at this point, but beyond that, I don't know if we could get any more. Yeah. It's weird. It's a weird number. Did it say people, or did it say, like, life forms? People. Oh, okay. And it is AD 2500, so, um, is that how you would say that year, if we were living in that year? It just feels wrong. I think it'd be 2500. 2500, right. Because we were living in the year 2000, so I thought, like, maybe you would say 2500, but I like the year 2500 better. I feel like if you were, like, in the year 1900, you'd say 1900, right?

01:31 That's what we used to say. That's also true. That's what we used to say. We never said we were in the year 1900. Of our lord. We should have. Only of our lord. This is legendary NES shmup developer Konami. Don't be fooled by that ultra game stuff. This was developed by Konami. And, uh, the reason why I say legendary NES shmup developers specifically because a lot of their games have a great chance of being on our essential games list. Uh, Lifeforce, Gradius, uh, even Stinger was on there for a minute. So, uh, sky's the limit, or maybe solar system's the limit in this game, uh, for what they're capable of.

02:08 Yeah. And I did say Gyrus at the start of this episode. We kind of joked at the end of last episode, how do you say this? I went on the ArcadeMuseum.com to find out how to pronounce Gyrus. And, basically, people were saying, well, it's not Greek. So you wouldn't say it like Yyrus.

02:27 That's what I was saying. That's enough proof for me. That's all that they could, is that all that they could, uh, rule out? Just that it's not Greek? I think eventually the conclusion was Gyrus, but I guess there's no reason why it can't be Gyrus. Yeah. I mean, if it means anything, whether or not there was actually, like, a real way to say it, I'd still say Gyrus. That's all I need to know. So, uh, two people can't be wrong. Uh, you know, that's the fail-safe system around here. Yeah. Anyway, it's, as I mentioned, AD 2500, and mankind has penetrated the galaxy's fringes, establishing colonies of peace from Mercury all the way to Pluto.

03:17 Suddenly, the tranquility of the Milky Way erupts into a frothing fury as armadas of alien death ship swarms. Those are their words. I'm not coming up with anything playful here. These alien death ship swarms invade our solar system like killer bees preying on an innocent bystander. You'll notice that none of these alien ships in the game look like killer bees. So now the, like, the manual's really getting into the nitty gritty of it. See, I don't even see that in my manual. I think I'm reading off the arcade manual. I think that's right. Oh, okay. Yeah. Uh, they mention that no one is spared by these killer bee death ship swarms. Even beloved Mother Earth is stung.

04:00 These vicious cosmic visigoths, uh, are war-starved gyrisons, uh, and, and they're led by the immortal Genghis Khan, whom they recruited from Mongolia centuries ago. Wow. That's incredible. So that is, okay, because in, in, in the other manual, it just says Genghis Khan, and I thought maybe, like, oh, there's a guy who took that name, uh, you know, out of inspiration in the future or something. They mention it just briefly that a picture of Genghis Khan appears, and that's all. Not, not just a picture, though. A neo-revolutionary portrait. Yeah. Of Genghis Khan. Yeah. Genghis Khan. And why it's neo-revolutionary, I'm not sure.

04:51 But it's great. It also just, like, it, like, delivers that in the manual as, like, part of the instructions. Yeah. It's like, when the opening screen appears, displaying a neo-revolutionary portrait of the savage Genghis Khan, press start. Yeah, I love it. That's literally what it says. It's how to save the universe, and then no backstory, and it's just, when you see the picture of Genghis Khan, press start.

05:11 I also like that they chose Genghis Khan as, like, the big reveal that, like, oh no, he didn't ever die or lose. Actually, he was recruited by, he was so good that he was recruited by these aliens centuries ago just to wait to strike once the, like, because Earth wasn't enough for him, he needed the entire solar system to conquer.

05:31 Incredible. Also, shout out to the use of the word zaptifying, uh, describing how many stages there are. I don't know if that's a word, or even if it was a word, if it has any meaning, but it's great. I believe there's 39 zaptifying stages, right? Absolutely. That's, that's correct. So, uh, with our galactic fleet flattened, you're the lone space cowboy, again, they're words, but I love that, uh, you're the lone space cowboy who escaped the gyrus shroud of doom. I'm in. I'm hooked.

06:03 Yeah. Sometimes we're like, you know, there's not enough investment in the story or the plots of these games to, like, understand what's going on. I feel like this was the right level of absurdness meets, like, hell yeah attitude for me that I was like, I want to beat the game. Like, I want to take down Genghis Khan and reclaim the solar system. Yeah, I mean, now that you've given me, like, an extra piece of deep lore that we didn't get with the NES manual, I'm definitely down for it. Like, just what's in the NES manual, it feels like a drunken rambling. But when you give that context that's not in the actual manual, it definitely works better. Yeah, the manual has a little bit of attitude in the beginning.

06:49 Like, when it's saying what the planets are, it says, uh, for those of you who flunked astronomy, those planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Right? Which is good. Those are the planets. But you don't start on Earth or Pluto, you start on Neptune, or you start by approaching Neptune.

07:13 You gotta figure that maybe you were based in Neptune, and then it was like, oh, right, right, Pluto is a planet now again in 2500, like, right, right, I gotta go back and save that too. And then you go the other way. Well, here's the thing, maybe what they're saying is that, uh, because the elliptical orbit of Pluto, uh, actually intersects the orbit of Neptune in 2500 AD, Pluto will be within Neptune's orbit. Can you explain everything just in that voice going forward?

07:48 Absolutely. All right, but before we get too deep into where you go in this game and what you do, I feel like we do need to explain that this isn't, uh, the shmups like Life Force and, uh, and Gradius and stuff. This is a little different, kind of like, uh, Tempest, but with some visual flair to it other than vectors.

08:04 Joe, do you want to give a good stab at explaining what you do in this game? Yeah, because at my first thought, I was like, oh, this is different. And then, like, you know, a couple seconds in, I was like, wait a minute, this is a shmup. Like, it tricked me at first, because it's, it looks like you're going forward, you know? It looks like it's, it looks like it's like, um, I don't know, like a more modern, like, rails shooter that's, like, in 3D space. But what it really is, is kind of a shmup that's been, that's been rolled up into a cylinder.

08:33 So instead of going side to side on the screen, you kind of roll around the outside of the screen as, as the stars come at you and all your enemies come at you. And it is actually kind of cool, it's a nice little change of pace. Um, but that gives you all kinds of different things to think about. Like, the fact that you can't shoot across the screen, because you're shooting into the center of the screen, which is, like, further in Z space.

08:53 So, I thought that that was actually a nice little, uh, a nice little refreshing touch on, on shmups. Yeah, I, I very much appreciated that they, they did something unique with the presentation. Um, and I guess all that you need to keep me from getting bored is to, uh, make it a circle. So, I also thought that it, it was a refreshing shmup. Exactly. Yeah, I, I think it really changes the way you think about your movement.

09:26 And, like, zigzagging is a lot different, and it has different implications in this than it does in a typical shmup. And the fact that you also can't move forward and backward, I think is interesting, too. Yeah, so you're really, you're going around in a circle here, and I think we should talk about that decision a little more of being able to only control your ship in a circle. Because they do give you two different control choices, control A or control B.

09:50 The difference being control A, you actually use all four, uh, D-pad buttons. So this way, as you make your way around the circle, you have to switch between using the left D-pad, the up button, the, the right. Uh, and then control B is only using left and right, and at times that can get tricky, too, because you might be at, like, um, you know, three, you might be at three o'clock. And now all of a sudden, left suddenly might feel different than going right if you were locked in that space for a second. You do have to kind of keep track of where you are. Did you guys have a preference, control A, control B?

10:27 I'm actually surprised that they made control A, which is the more context-based, uh, control scheme, uh, that they made that, like, the first choice. Um, I guess, like, now, whenever, I don't, I can't even think of a game in which this is sort of, like, you're always going around in a circle, but, um, I would assume that it would be this control B, where you just move left and right, and depending on where you are on the screen, that's going to move you, uh, clockwise or counterclockwise. I, I prefer control B, uh, because it's sort of got, like, it just has that one rule, clockwise or counterclockwise.

11:08 Um, though I guess control A may make more sense to some people that, like, it's more of, like, an absolute, uh, direction. Um, but yeah, definitely control B for me. Yeah, I, I tried, um, control B first.

11:25 And, and I liked it, but I, you know, it did get confusing when, uh, a little bit, until you get used to it, when, um, you know, right, I don't remember which one's which, but let's say right takes you clockwise and left takes you counterclockwise. Suddenly, when you're at the top of the screen, that feels reversed. It's not, but it feels, when you hit right, suddenly it feels like you're going left. Well, you are going left, but you're going to the ship's right. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that would get confusing once in a while. So I thought, okay, let me, let me start over and I'll try it with control scheme A.

11:52 Um, because then I can just press the direction that I want to end up in. If I want to end up on the left side of the screen, no matter where I am on the screen, I can press left and it'll take me towards that side of the screen. Um, and I liked it for a minute, but I, I pretty quickly went back to the first control scheme scheme because I think the problem for me with control scheme A is that it's harder to be fluid, like to have fluid motion. Because if you're, if you press up, once you reach the uppermost point of the screen, you do an abrupt stop in any direction that you're going.

12:24 So that kind of, uh, while, while the other, the other control scheme might have a little more of a learning curve, I think if you have much more of a handle over it with that.

12:33 Yeah. It's essentially the same like argument for like, if you're playing like an old school, uh, survival horror, not, not quite as old school as Friday the 13th, but like resident evil, um, where whether you're doing tank controls, which again, it's just clockwise or counterclockwise. Or if you're doing like absolute directionality of whatever, uh, uh, whatever camera angle you have, I think it's sort of, you run into the same problems with both where you can get turned around basically, uh, with the, uh, with tank controls, but it is, it's basically more, uh, consistent, at least in my opinion. I don't know if you guys see the same similarities there. You know, I think that's all, that all makes sense to me.

13:21 I was a control B guy as well. Uh, but I also think like this might not have been just the best decision for a control scheme with a D pad, you know, like, like for a D pad, it's suffices. I don't know what they even did at the arcade to be honest, but it feels like the actual correct way to play this game would be with a, like a wheel, right? And just like spinning around in a wheel to understand the direction at all times. And like, that's something they could have done at the arcade, I suppose, but I don't think they did. That's kind of what I'm looking for. But I wonder, can you guys think of a better way to handle controlling yourself around the ship? It would take an analog shit, an analog stick, I think.

14:02 Uh, if it's just going to be D pad, I think it has to be one of these two situations. Yeah, I, I don't know. I was also a control B guy. I tried to do control A for the, for a while, because I thought it was interesting that they have this kind of unique scheme, but sort of what everyone's been saying, it's a little bit too context dependent. Like if you're on this side of the screen, then up will send you up in this direction. But if you're on this side of the screen, up will send you up in the other direction. And it just got a little bit too confusing for muscle memory's sake for me.

14:36 So I went back to A and B, but I wasn't, uh, Arkanoid or something. The one that had a dial. It did have a dial. Yes, it had a dial controller. Yeah, I think that would be perfect for this game. I wonder if it would work. It's an NES controller. I feel I would love to try that.

14:54 Oh, so Arkanoid came with the controller? It came, it came on the NES with a dial controller that you could plug in. And that's how you could play specific to Arkanoid. But I don't see why it wouldn't work if you plugged in. I mean, it only has one other button. So you wouldn't be able to use your special power up, but you would be able to fire the blaster theoretically. Interesting. But maybe you wouldn't even be able to start the game. I don't know. I don't have that controller.

15:17 Yeah, but I think if they had made it, if they had made it like that, but with a, another button, I guess. Yeah, totally. Another interesting thing about being in a circle, and I think Joe touched on this when he was explaining the game, is that the enemies, they fly in mostly from the outside. Some come directly from the center.

15:39 But when they fly from the outside, as far as I could tell, they actually don't hurt you on their way in. Like, you can't accidentally be surprised by like a jump scare alien ship that then like hit you immediately. Like they get to fly into the center.

15:54 And then as they get closer, as they work their way from the center back to you, that's when they're on the attack. But where they place themselves in the center matters because you're shooting into deep space. So you can't just be on like the left side and hit something on the right. You'll just shoot into the left side of deep space. You have to go over there and it's a little more precise than what we're used to usually with shmups that are either horizontal or vertical because those you just shoot across the screen. And if it ever makes contact, it makes contact.

16:26 This you're kind of shooting into a void. So I like the enemies can't hit you right off the bat and just, you know, take free lives from you. But there's also like this interesting challenge of not letting the enemies develop quick enough so that there's too many on a side or that things become overwhelming. Like you kind of have to attack them while they're far out because the closer they get back to the outer circle, the tougher it's going to be for the player. Yeah, I think that if they were to make you like allowed to get hit as they're coming in, this that would have been a deal breaker to play this game at all.

17:02 But no, I do. I do like the idea of again, it's sort of like a crowd control thing. But I guess a lot of shmups are like that where you're just trying to make sure that they can't get back to you because there are a lot of enemy types that at least later in the game make it pretty easy for them to get right up in your grill. And that's sort of what you're trying to avoid the whole time.

17:52 There's also this weird design decision, though, that like, and I don't know if it's because the game is an architecture. Arcade game, so it's mostly based around points. But if you're not on the same, you know, plane as those enemies, let's say you're at the bottom of the circle and they're approaching from the top, they're just going to kind of continue to drift out into the corners of the screen until they are no more. And there's no penalty for missing them.

18:19 You just don't get those points. But theoretically, you could do like a pacifist run where you don't really shoot at anything and just wait till everything enters the center of the screen and then clears back out. And then you'd be able to move on to the next stage, which are referred to as warps in this game. I think that that's a little weird. Can you confirm that?

18:42 Have you tried? Have you to play a pacifist run? Or at least like for one level. Yes, I didn't do a complete like I did. I did shoot things, but I definitely was able to let a significant amount of things go by and then and move on to the next level. They don't just continue to spawn. Gotcha. It's like I wouldn't. I wouldn't have known because I was I was shooting stuff. But I was wondering if it was like it keeps going until you clear or you kill this many enemies. But I guess no, it's just on a timer.

19:13 So that's best I could tell. It's either a timer or a set pattern. You know, like once it's spawned the last one for that level and granted the levels do get a little bit longer. Once it's spawned that last one, that's like that's it. And you either get the points or you don't. What about the structures that come up in levels that are like mini bosses almost that those you have to take care of? Yeah, right. You have they don't leave the center.

19:36 OK, I wondered about what you were saying to about like since other than those big structures that Sam just mentioned, can you know, could you just go through the whole game? And like what's the penalty for not doing it? And my thought on it is just that you probably could do it and you're probably going to it's probably going to be a harder game for doing that. So it doesn't feel like you're cheating by doing that.

19:56 Like the reason my incentive for shooting as much as I could was to get things out of my way, you know, and I let things go by when they weren't bothering me. But usually I wanted to kind of clear things off the screen so it was never congested, you know. And plus, I think the more the more you kill, you get more ultra lasonic phaser boosters, which makes the bosses easier. Right. And also, like, do you want to let Genghis Khan have that last laugh of like you didn't you didn't fight his fleet off? And anybody you let go by is just going to go back to Pluto and clear out that house because you're not there anymore.

20:27 Right. Yeah. Do you think that like if you let them go by, but then you wind up getting to Genghis Khan that like that's it? Like they're just going to give up? They're going to be like, ah, you know what? We're done taking over Pluto. Actually, this is this this war was for naught.

20:41 Yeah, I think there's an alternate ending. Yeah, they just keep going out into deep space like they don't stop since we're talking about the game here. I feel like we missed the biggest thing, the eye opening moment for me, at least starting this game and hearing Takata and Fugue and D minor. Wow. That was impressive for NES sounds, but also just like really brought on the like, OK, like, let's do this. Like I am ready to take down this this dreadful fleet of enemies. And then the rest of the music is pretty is pretty playful and exciting. And, you know, it's a fast boost of stuff. But I don't know. There was like an adrenaline kick to that like eight bit version of Takata and Fugue.

21:25 Yeah, no, I like the music. I didn't recognize it. I don't know how I didn't recognize it. But it is very energetic. And Sam, you're telling me you felt nothing? When that song came on? When that song came on, you weren't like, whoa, that's that's awesome. I thought it sounds awesome. I thought it was cool. But like my first reaction whenever I hear a song that is not there, like whatever, whatever the game is not. My first reaction when I hear a song that's not original and specific to the game is like, oh, they just picked a different song. They didn't come up with one on their own, you know, and even though shame Konami.

22:02 I mean, a little bit. That's just how I react to it. Because I feel like you have the chance to set the stage for this game. It's your game. You did the art. You did the, you know, the gameplay, the coding, all of it. Like, why would you use someone else's song in it? It just that seems a little weird to me. I don't know. I mean, I kind of thought a little bit of that, especially honestly, particularly because it was such a recognizable song. And it's just so like, it almost feels like a parody at this point because that's like in everything that's supposed to be like ominous.

22:35 It was like that. It was maybe that choice that actually threw me off a little bit. But I'll say that I completely have, it doesn't bother me at all because of how good I think the rest of the music is in this game. I think it's pretty good. Yeah, there's something about the music in the game.

22:47 Because it's so fast and fun, it complements the stages well, too, because we haven't talked about this. But the stages are pretty short bursts of enemies. And you can clear through warps pretty fast. I'd say it's like maybe a minute, minute and a half of total gameplay for a warp stage before you move on to the next one. And that was like really refreshing that it wasn't like a five minute long stage and there's 39 of these and it's going to take forever. And granted, you know, do the math, it is still a very long game.

23:19 But I liked how quick and energetic it was at the start to allow you to flow. I think you can get from Neptune to Pluto relatively quickly. Yeah, I appreciated that. And like the between planets, which basically are just the boss battles, they do sort of change up the... I mean, the basic gameplay doesn't change from level to level, but at least they will throw different patterns at you. So it's not like a minute of one thing and then another minute of the exact same thing.

23:56 They do some things to spice it up. Between these like mini levels or warps, I guess. But I guess they could have also just squished them all together and it would have just been like nine or ten, like five minute long levels. But I guess there's no reason to do one or the other. But I did like the bite-sized nature of them. I also think it was cool the way that they made a few levels between each planet, but still the planets being like recognizable landmarks were like a nice little bookmark for you, the player, to make you feel like you're making progress. For sure. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I think it's more about the progress in the decision to make it bite-sized. I don't think that's like something that would work for every game.

24:47 I think like Bionic Commando would be really weird if they were just like short one and a half minute levels and then you just kept moving across. You're like, I'm doing something. You know, in games like that, it kind of does help to pad out the levels to make them feel more epic. This, I don't know, something about like the way you clear out ships, the music, the speed at which you're moving at too around the circle to take care of the different enemies. It just felt like it worked really well for being bite-sized. And also with the arcade nature of the game, just made everything feel like it was moving a lot quicker than it probably was. Because 39 stages is an awful large amount of stages.

25:23 Yeah, and it's just nice to like, while they have like the different stages between the planets, it's just nice to not necessarily just be like, all right, I'm on stage one and I'm about to be on stage two. It's like, I'm at Neptune. Like, I can contextualize that and it makes it feel a little cooler.

25:40 Yeah, it feels more like a journey. Yeah. I also think it's like if you die and I don't know, in other games, going back to the beginning of a level is like, a really weighty penalty. And I didn't really die that much in this game. So I'm trying to think if that's the penalty for a restart or a game over.

26:05 But just something... You're asking when you get hit? Not when you get hit, but when you run out of lives. Then the whole game... Oh, I think when you run out of lives, I think that's game over. That's game over. Okay, then I just... Never mind that. But I also enjoyed the bite-sized nature of it. And it does feel like you're progressing really well.

26:25 I also appreciated that in the beginning, you can kind of see a pattern of what the bosses are like, where I think the first two are just, you know, blow up these little eyes. And then you move on to another boss and it's just got more eyes that you have to blow up. And they more or less stuck to that. But there were a few planets that had something new. Like, I think Earth, you fight three other spaceships that are kind of like you, but coming from the inside. And I forgot what planet has a boss that's like an orb with arms.

27:06 Oh, yeah. That was... I think that's either the end of Pluto or the end of Urinet. Yeah. So I appreciate that they didn't just stick to the same skeleton for each boss, even though a lot of them are kind of the same, just with more bulbs.

27:28 Well, would you be shocked if I told you that boss battles were added specifically for the NES version of this game? They didn't exist in the arcade. That I didn't know. The arcade version didn't have boss battles and also didn't have the super blaster. I don't know what you called it, Sean. You had a very fancy name for it. But that B button that does like a super powered attack that can kind of just kill enemies in one shot, that didn't exist in the arcade either.

27:54 And I feel like that's very surprising that the NES got things that the arcade version didn't. So you're telling me that the arcade version only had the Neo-Teutonic cannon or the Neo-Bomblastic cannons? There was no ultra-lazonic phaser booster? There were no ultra-lazonic phaser boosters in... Can you imagine? Yes.

28:13 I know, Joe, the nerve of the arcade version to just be like, you know what? This is actually just a game. Well, you know what? Because here's the thing. We haven't talked about it, but this arcade game is old. Like, the NES is getting this game in 89, but I think it came out in like 83, the arcade, and was clearly doing like Tempest meets Galaga.

28:34 So, you know, they probably just didn't think that they needed much more than that, considering what was successful at the time. But I think it's just wild to think that the, you know, we're always ragging on NES games for being like, well, you know, the arcade version, the graphics look better, and it has more going for it, and it's more fun. I don't know. Here, I'm actually shocked. Like, the NES version is like the feature-complete version of this game. It's another... The word of the day is refreshing that we're not playing the dregs.

29:31 And we talked about saving the solar system, as opposed to just some other made-up planets that the developers would make. And, Sam, I think you said that felt like a journey. I like that description, because I do think that saving our solar system

29:47 is something important in terms of investment at this early on in video games that we haven't really seen, right? Like, sometimes you get World War II games or whatever, and those are like, you know, relive history in video games. But this is like sci-fi meets grounded... Not reality, but groundedness in some kind of way, you know? Yeah, I don't... I mean, I guess so. If you don't read the manual, and especially if you don't have the extra appendix that you have, it just looks like you're shooting at aliens until at the very end you have to fight the sun.

30:26 The sun has like a tummy ache or something, and then you have to make it not hurt anymore, and then at the end it just says, there is peace in the universe. So I don't really know how grounded fighting the sun is, but I see what you're saying. At least it's real places. I like the idea that the peace in the universe was just like a coincidence. Like, you get to this... You defeat the thing at the sun, and it's like, oh, check it out! There's peace in the universe! I also just like the fact that the ultimate goal of this is to save the sun.

30:57 Well, that's what was holding us back from peace, right? It's like, we don't know it, but we actually have an evil sun now. You know how like in Majora's Mask, the moon is evil? Like, the sun in our reality is actually evil, and we just have to beat it in order to achieve world peace. Yeah, maybe it's like the Mario sun.

31:14 Oh, the angry sun. Yeah, terrifying. But yeah, even in the manual though, it says, ultimate victory will occur only after you free the solar system's life-regenerating sun. So it's basically saying that they're holding the sun hostage. And I feel like it's got some... What's that? Stockholm Syndrome. It's like the sun fights you. I don't appreciate that. So there is a lack of power-ups in this game. That's usually what we talk about when we talk about shmups. I don't even know if the dual blaster thing even counts as a power-up. You get it almost immediately, and then it's like, does it... Is it even more powerful? Like what? Now it takes like half as many shots? I doubt it. It felt like it was not doing anything at all.

31:58 So what do you think? Like, should there have been power-ups that make it so this way you can shoot from, you know, different... Like, I don't even know what you would do because you're going on a cylinder here, but like, could you shoot in a spread or shoot from behind you

32:14 or a laser that could go across the center and actually hit those things over on the other side? Would that just have made the game too easy? Did you not care the power-ups weren't on there? Somebody saved me from talking too much? I was just gonna say, I think that it could have been cool to have more power-ups. I do think that they'd have to increase the difficulty,

32:30 but it'd be nice to see... I don't even know what it is, but once in a while you hit something and like two little stars come out and they spiral around the outside. You just said exactly two points I was about to exactly say. We should have just said them together. We should have just said them in unison. Yeah, I think that this game is really on the easier end of the shmups that we've played.

32:52 So it would definitely need a difficulty spike to need power-up. And yeah, I also thought that that was gonna do something. I thought that that was gonna be like, that's just a special way to get stuff on the opposite side of the screen, but I think it was just for flair.

33:09 Yeah. So it seems like a missed opportunity. Oh, you're talking about... Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're talking about the thing that goes around in the center, those two dots, and then it connects with you? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's when you get a level up or when you get a light. Those give you the super blaster. Yeah, those give you the dual neobomblastic cannons. Yes. But where do they come from? The visual element of it makes it look like it's supposed to hurt things. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. And it also just shows us that they can do that. So why not make a bullet that does that? Yeah, exactly. But to answer your question, those come from the mines. So you'll see these little sets of... They look like jacks almost.

33:46 And there will sometimes be a little object in the middle of them, and if you hit the object in the middle of them, that's what releases those two little things. And that will give you the dual blasters. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. See, I like that. I like that context. I wish I had noticed that because it kind of makes it a little... It's nice that it wasn't just pick up this power up. That kind of goes into... Or for me, that kind of goes into this

34:13 issue that I have with the game a little bit, which is that because of the nature... Because they want to show that you're traveling forward through space, they have the background kind of coming at you a little bit. But that's also how all the projectiles travel at that same speed. And sometimes, for me, I found that I got the projectiles a little bit confused with the objects in the background. So it just seems... Yeah, I can see that. It seems a little busy. And so when those things come around, it... I don't know. I think it'd be interesting to see more objects behave that way, whether it's things that fire at you or you have to outrun things on the outside that are...

34:59 I think I said the opposite of what I meant to say. You firing those at enemies or having to outrun projectiles that the enemies fire at you that behave that way to a certain point. Yeah, it would have definitely changed that. And to your point about them looking confusing because they look like the stars that are coming at you, I think one thing they could have done to make it a little easier is make all the stars one color. The stars are like a multi... It looks like a Pop-Tart. It's just like a multicolored

35:26 thing of sprinkles coming at you. So then when a projectile comes at you, it kind of blends in because no matter what color it is, there are a couple stars around that are that same color moving in the same direction at the same speed. Well, you should be dodging the stars too. Just get good. Oh, right. Right, I should. So, 39 stages.

35:48 Chance stages, which are kind of like no consequence, shoot all the enemies and get points. Boss battles and traveling across the nine different planets plus a boss fight with the sun, as John mentioned. Is there enough here for you guys to continue to play through the entire game regardless of, you know, whether you're good enough to get there? Did this game with everything that it has in it right now hold your attention or were you hoping for more as the game went on? It's pretty low content

36:21 compared to what we've been playing recently. I think this would fit better in the early days, like 86. This would sort of be more among its peers in terms of like how much content is in the game. We did get more than what was in the arcade version, but I still think that it's not quite a full priced game if we're going by that. Yeah, I completely agree like that. I do think I would have seen it differently early on,

36:51 but also, I mean, I've got to say I'm just not the guy to tell you. You know, like me personally, no, it didn't hold my attention, but that doesn't mean I think it was bad or wouldn't hold anyone's attention. Probably someone who likes shmups would really enjoy it, but that's why I find these games so much harder to judge just because of my personal opinion on shmups, you know, is not particularly positive, which doesn't mean that I think that the game is bad for everyone. It's just not my cup of tea. I think that the

37:23 gameplay loop is good, though, and even though there's not a lot of variation, the main thing that you do in this game feels good to do over and over, and the fact that it's in these little bite-sized bits helps a lot, and I think that helps make you want to go more because you know, oh, it's just this much until I get there, and this much until I get to the bonus stage, or chance stage, and a chance to increase my weapons if, let's say, I just died or something.

37:54 And, I don't know, I feel like there isn't a lot in it, but it still, it still makes you want to play just a little bit more, and then that kind of becomes a little bit addictive. And also, Yeah, it's not Pac-Man, mow your lawn levels of satisfying, but there is something satisfying about clearing things out from the center and the short-bursted nature of the game. Yeah, I, I think it did give me that satisfaction for a little while and make me want to keep going. But I think that the loop being repetitive, which is fine, but combined with the difficulty never really seeming to get that much harder,

38:33 didn't, kind of made it to about halfway through the game. I was like, well, that was fun, and it was fun being repetitive for about half the game. Maybe it would have gotten better in the second half, but for me personally, I was like, okay, like, I don't think I need to keep going. It's funny because I would say, past Saturn, all of a sudden, the game does that thing that most people hate, where all of a sudden it just gets a lot more difficult.

38:56 And I don't know if I, I wouldn't say it became like an incredibly hard game. It was no Ghosts and Goblins or anything. It just, for some reason, after Saturn felt like to me, all of a sudden, I was actually dying. I actually had to be like, oh, I'm probably going to run out of lives. Like, there's just something about that moment that I remembered. And I didn't, I never beat the game in its entirety just because of the difficulty picking up, not because of me not wanting to beat it. Yeah, I think that was more of like a difficulty

39:26 plateau. Like, there's only really two or three difficulty levels in this game. Like, after Saturn is definitely one of them. And I think once you hit Earth, things get a little more dicey. But it's, it's much more, it's a much

39:41 gentler gradient than I'm used to. And I, I guess usually I'm complaining about these games being too hard, but I think that this hasn't quite hit that middle level of challenge. Because I was able to beat the game. I was losing lives, but I was able to beat it, which is weird for a shmup for me. Well, that's awesome. And that's why you know so much about this sun battle. Oh, the sun's in that game? Oh, the sun says that.

40:33 All right. Uh, development time. I have a small little anecdote here about Dyrus. It is the second and last game that Yoshiki Akamoto designed for Konami. Now, that might be like, okay, who's that? Why does that matter? Apparently, Akamoto got into paid disputes with Konami over the game and then was fired after the release of this game. So as retaliation, he joined rival company Capcom, where he went on to make 1942 and then produced Street Fighter 2. So I think Konami took a loss there over what they potentially should have paid him for this game only for him to go on and make two amazing franchises for Capcom. Wow. So he was like

41:19 Kojima before Kojima. Well, he wasn't the designer of Street Fighter 2, but, you know, anybody who's involved in the making of Street Fighter 2 is kind of a big deal, right? Like, you're creating an entire genre and community that's worth who knows how many millions of dollars today. For sure. And then for sequels and spinoffs, you know, it's interesting. Many, many ports of this game, but no true successor. There's no Jirus,

41:46 Gyrus, anything. You know, I figured they could change it. Yeah, they could finally change it to be the other ways of spelling it. There's none of that. And then there's also just no, like, spiritual successor either. So instead, I just want to talk about a couple interesting things on the port side. For the PlayStation One, Jirus was actually hidden inside of Contra Legacy of War. There was like a specific way you could unlock Jirus, and I'm like, wow, that's a weird game to include in Contra Legacy of War, but whatever. So you can play it on that, and apparently it's a pretty good port on the PlayStation One.

42:21 in the Game Boy Advance version, if you put in the Konami code, instead of having it with, like, the GBA graphics, you get a retro-ified version of the game that also includes three new warp levels at the start of the game before you then go on to play the rest of the game. That feels strange, but I think they knew that nobody was going to play through the entire game and then get the three bonus stages. Yeah. They just put them up front. That's a good job there. Yeah, but I mean, if people, if that got out, people would have incentive to play the game a second time. Replay value. Yeah, I mean, people do that all the time for the Mario games, right? Like, you'll buy

43:00 Super Mario Bros. 1 for who knows, like, the fifth or sixth time and then it'll turn out, like, yeah, if you beat the game on eight times in a row, like, it'll unlock Super Mario Bros. 2 Japan and people are like, what? No way. Like, and then they go do it.

43:18 Xbox 360 Arcade, not, it didn't come out for like Xbox 360, it just came out on that arcade platform if you guys remember that deal. It was download only, you need an online connection. That is the same exact game but with updated graphics that, in my opinion, have now aged pretty poorly even just two console generations later. So, I don't know if I would recommend that one but it also came there. So, it went to everything pretty much. I didn't list off the other 14 consoles but, neat to see that this game continues to get some life from Konami. Yeah, uh, I can't really see how a space game that is this sort of bare bones can look that bad on the Xbox but, I'll look up some, uh, I'll look up some screenshots.

44:04 Oh, it's not even that it looks bad though, right? Because it's like, they updated the graphics so it's just like, why? You know, like, at that point, just release the original, like, arcade version to Xbox 360 arcade. Like, that's what it's called. Anyway, we're gonna see if this game has some life of its own since it never got any sequels or spinoffs when we decide whether it's on the Essential Games list.

44:33 All right, it's time for the Essential Games list. We're, uh, we're still in that Essential drought where there hasn't been a single Essential game in 1989 and I think every episode somebody's like, you know, that game should have been Essential. Bandai Golf Challenge Pebble Beach should have been Essential. But, you know, I think that we've been doing an okay job so far policing the neighborhood and making sure that the right games get on. So let's take a look

45:01 at Jairus and try to figure out whether or not it's going to be on the Essential Games list. Sam? Oh, talking to me. Okay. Um, so going into this, I was pretty sure that I wanted to make this game Essential because I thought it was, it did something different that I haven't really seen a lot of games do and I can't really think of a game that's like this and it had a fun feedback loop and it was polished and had great music and all this stuff but I think that there's just a little bit lack of, a little bit of a lack of substance that would be required for me to feel comfortable

45:43 actually voting it Essential. I think we need something like a little bit more variance for it but it was really close for me but I think if you like shooters like shmups and especially retro ones then definitely give this one a try. Alright, Joe? So I kind of touched on it prematurely earlier in the episode but I have a hard time with shmups. Well, not just with playing shmups but with voting for shmups. I did enjoy this game but I wonder did I not enjoy it enough just because I'm not a shmup guy or did I not enjoy it enough because it's lacking?

46:21 And I do think that in the end as much as I think this is a great game I don't think that necessarily means that it's a must for today. And I do think especially now after I played it I kind of was looking around on what people think about this game and I do think that this probably will be one if it doesn't get on which it looks like if I'm voting a no then I guess it can't but we probably will get some messages. So I'm not saying I'm not open to reconsidering in the best of 89 in like 30 years when we get there

46:55 but right now I'm kind of with Sam I liked it a lot I think it was great but I just don't think I don't think there's anything about it that's going to make me think like I want to come back to this over some of the other options we've had or even just at all so yeah it's tough sorry if that's a little vague or non-committal but it's hard for me to do it with shmups. That's fine that's fine Sean give us your vote. Yeah I'm kind of with Sam where I'd say that this is lacking some substance I think that if it were if there was a little bit more variety in power up and a little bit more difficult to accommodate for the increase in power that you have

47:38 maybe this would be one of my favorite shmup but right now it's it's kind of it's lacking in that regard so I'm also going to say this is not a sentence. All right three no's so far but seems kind of close. I will say my mind was pretty much made up before we recorded the episode we talked some things through and I think that where I landed is exactly where I was after I finished playing this game yesterday

48:09 something about this game it reminds me of you hear about games like Pac-Man Galaga Donkey Kong you know those are really famous arcade games that you know you can't get enough praise about them but they're kind of like spoiled for you in a way because you either experience them at a very young age or you just know enough about them so when by time you get to them there's not like you didn't get that special hook you know like everybody has seen how Donkey Kong is done everybody's seen how Pac-Man is played so even if you're playing it for the first time it doesn't feel as special

48:42 something about Jairus here felt really special to me as I was playing it especially as an arcade game and knowing that the NES version after playing the arcade version too knowing that the NES version is like just an overall better version of an arcade game something that we didn't ever think was possible when we started talking about you know oh well this would go on our essential arcade games list but it can't go on the essential NES games list

49:08 this really feels like to me it deserves to be on the essential games list because it's it's not even a schmuck to me it's just it's just an arcade game it's just arcade fun it's just it's silly it's short it's sweet it's enough to keep me hooked on that I wish I could have beat the game like I wanted to be good enough to beat the game and I wanted to keep going back to it but it's also something that I could see myself just being like well if I can only make it to Saturn who cares

49:35 anyway I'll do that I'll just play through that I wasn't trying to keep track of my score at any time and I wasn't also trying to keep track of my progress I just like the short bursted nature of the game in many ways for me the closest thing I can think of for NES games is that this is like balloon fight you know people continue to ask me why is balloon fight on the essential games list why does Mike love this game so much it's just enough simplicity

50:02 meets raw fun you know like balloon fight is always going to be fun to me and I think Jairus will show that to me as time goes on that this will be a game I continue to go back to and I'm just amazed that I never experienced anything like it before and I know that's crazy right like we played you know 20 years of video games since then I'm not saying that this created a new genre or anything I really think that this game just opened my eyes to an experience for an arcade game that I didn't think I could have after experience so many arcade games so for that reason Jairus has to go on the essential games list for me I think this NES version

50:42 is better than the arcade version and so I really don't have any complaints putting it on there wow well I'm sorry we disappointed you but you know what it was close it was close we'll see we'll see what happens in best of 89 but I think in the meantime I think everybody gave solid answers for why or why not they couldn't put it on the list and that's what this is all about at the end

51:01 of the day and it stays a play it it stays a play it right and you know what I thought about recently a little non sequitur here though we have our essential games list which are the games that you should play and then if it doesn't make the essential games list it becomes a play it which are the games that you should play so like you know it's fun to have the essential games but you can still

51:22 there's nowhere you can find those list of games on purpose essentially I like the golden golden play it then there's the golden play it and then there's the play it yeah where does gyromite fall on that list it's a bronze just bronze

51:40 absolutely well you know I think we can all kind of agree that this is you know one of the nicer surprises of 1989 so far a lot of times you know I don't think any of us knew this game going into it am I right I had no idea what this was before I played it I did not I didn't either no I never heard of it I also did not that's just going to keep happening you know we'll see what surprises us next but

52:05 you know we've got good games coming up like another arcade classic Q-Bert is our next game of the week so guys Q-Bert any love for the little orange man I appreciate Q-Bert I've never actually played it so it'll be interesting same here and I'm just looking down the list for like what's the next game that would just surprise us and I think it would have to go to Mystery Quest because that's just vague enough that nobody could have any idea what that is about yeah I don't know what is Mystery Quest

52:37 I'm guessing it's gonna be a it's gonna have some first person parts in it but that's just a guess I think it's gonna be like gumshoe a one of a kind game as well all right well I think that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia

52:52 thanks for joining us and next week as I mentioned we'll have Q-Bert and then Tecmo and then finally a real RPG Ultima 3 Exodus so keep keep it here because we've definitely got a lot more coming we have that game jam which you can hear more about in our post show right after Sam's awesome ending song which is kind of like the intro song but just the second half of that which is it feels more like an ending that way yeah it feels more fanatic is that no that's not a word I'm a fanatic yeah it has some finality to it there you go I'm a fanatic for Sam's music

53:29 I'm the Philly fanatic he pisses off a lot of people and so do you so that makes sense absolutely you can always find Nostalgia at Nostalgia Cast on Twitter you can find me Michael Esposito at Esposito Film on Twitter and we'll be talking to you real soon

54:09 and it's a very exciting day here for Nostalgia whether you listen at 8 in the morning or 11pm as long as you're listening on Friday March 19th the date we release this episode this is also the day that we started our Nostalgia Game Jam with listeners from all over joined in and some of them are going to make some really cool games but I don't know anything about making games so I'm actually going to throw this over to Sam who could explain what our Game Jam

54:40 you know how that process goes on and what these next two weeks are going to be like so Sam why don't you take it away alright well it's not quite two weeks that this lasts that's why I already threw it to you I just knew I couldn't handle the stress of explaining it so the Game Jam goes from March 19th which is today if you're listening to this on Friday the 19th until March 28th which I believe is the following Sunday

55:07 next Sunday at 11pm and during that time period the goal is to create to conceptualize and then program and then publish a game that looks like it could have been an NES game so it should all the games will be in 256 by 240 resolution they should all sound like an NES and the control scheme should reflect the NES controller in some capacity whether that's you know however you want to map the controls there should be a d-pad start select and an A and B button somehow incorporated into it and that's about it we're also going to have an optional theme that I guess at this point will be announced and if you

55:59 are making games I guess this is if you're listening to this and you say like wow I'm not doing anything this weekend that sounds great then you can go over to itch.io and look at the game jam section and it'll be going on you can sign up right away that sounds jammerific there we go

56:17 I think we got one but also if you want to just check out the game jam and just kind of stay tuned on it these people will be submitting their games so you can play them and see what you think of them and that's what we're going to do we're going to play the games once the game jam is over

56:37 and then we're going to talk about them on a special episode of the podcast and it's going to be super fun and I think that's about it I agree with all of that and now that we have Joe's sign off there's nothing else we can do except wait until the fabled March 28th assuming it happens this year and if it does that's when the jam will end and we'll start diving into these games and we'll give you an episode when

57:02 can't say for certain soon absolutely but what really is soon in the concept time you'll just have to keep listening to nostalgia every Friday at 8 a.m. specifically we want we're going to start deleting the episodes at 9 a.m. so make sure you save them fast I kid of course nothing gets deleted everything is forever and so is nostalgia so keep checking in and keep listening and enjoy your week or whatever you do