171 · World Games

• TAKE ON THE WORLD!
• Introductions
  • Welcome to the offbeat Olympics
• It feels like I’m playing this on a computer. You guys know what I mean?
• Gameplay
  • Weightlifting (Russia)
    • No buttons, just d-pads
  • Slalom skiing (France)
    • Rare only published so it’s not quite the Slalom we want
  • Log rolling (Canada)
    • Lack of sound during the game
    • Computer significantly stronger than other modes
    • The Shark
  • Cliff diving (Mexico)
    • Too easy? Again a lack of buttons
  • Caber toss (Scotland)
    • I don’t want to offend any Scotts but is this the best they got?
    • It feels like I’m doing nothing helpful
  • Bull riding (United States)
    • I could try to explain what you need to do but I’m the least qualified
    • The gfx of the bull and the movement of the bull are not the easiest tells
  • Barrel jumping (Germany)
    • The rhythm of the skate is harder but landing is much easier than figure skating in winter games
  • Sumo Wrestling (Japan)
• Are these the best games they could’ve picked?
• The small amount of controls
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • The last of the games releases, but not the last for us
    • We played Winter Games, but we still have to play California Games
• EGLm
• Next week - WORLD GAMES

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

00:00 World Games, take on the world!

00:18 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. And I'm Sam. Guys, I'm sure we're all familiar with sports like weightlifting and, you know, maybe a little familiar with cliff diving, but who really knew about the caber toss before today's episode?

00:43 My great uncle was a famous caber tosser. My great uncle was a famous caber. Yeah, my parents put me in Little League, Little League caber tossing, so... You know what, we'll get into the games individually, but there's just, there's something funny about the caber toss one, because now I'm picturing, like, kids trying to do that same thing. And they would be awful at it. They would just suck. Well, how do you think they get trained? I mean, how old do you think the people that caber toss are? I mean, they gotta start somewhere.

01:14 Okay, but like, you know how it's painful to watch, like, kids in chorus or in band, and you have to go to their, like, you know, local auditorium and watch them do their recitals or whatever? Because you're, like, so inspired the whole time? Yeah, exactly. And it would go through your tears? Exactly. And now you have to do that with caber toss. You have to be like, oh, alright, he's gonna pick up the log again and try to balance it while he walks and then toss it a little. I feel like that would be very fun to watch. I don't know about you guys. It would probably be tough, though, to see the kids get smushed into the ground when they drop the caber and it lands on their head three distinct times, like it does in the game.

01:49 Yeah. It's a low, it's a high turnover. A lot of people lost their lives. Yeah. Oh, geez. Dark turn. World Games is made by Epix, who also made, if you guys will recall, Winter Games. The game that we absolutely hate and has that ice skating game that doesn't make any sense.

02:09 Did you guys know that? They fixed it in this one. I didn't. It's, you know, these sort of, like, these Olympic games. Olympic-ish games all feel a little similar, but this one felt more different than the others, if that makes any sense. So I did not think that this was the same company. Yeah, I didn't either, but I was comparing them a lot. I think I was comparing them to Winter Games. Like you said, Sean, they kind of blur together for me, too, but I was comparing them because I remember really disliking some of those other ones.

02:40 This one, I think, you know, there are some instances of improvements in this one compared to some old ones. Yeah, I think especially the, I mean, we're going to get into it, but I think especially the ice skating felt familiar to me. Like the barrel jump.

02:57 Right. You're on skates in that one. Yeah. And so, you know, Epix released Summer Games first, and as you could imagine, that was a bunch of summer-themed sports that you would see in the Olympics and so on. And then Winter Games came, and that was like the Winter Olympics. They just couldn't use the name Olympics. I wonder what made them think like, you know, let's go with like a worldly motif and just grab like from different countries around the world a sport specific to them. Their most cartoonish sport.

03:27 Right. Choose their most cartoonish sport in the sense of like characterizing the states, not the states, you know, like the United States there as like, you know, oh, they're cowboys. So do the bull riding, you know, it's like there's something funny about like Mexico and cliff diving. I don't know. Is that really like what they're famous for? I have no idea. I'm just going to take their word for it. But I do like, I do like that. Is it Germany that you have to just jump over a bunch of barrels or something? Yes, that's the barrel jumping. Yeah. That's, that's funny too.

03:59 So, you know, but it's a good conceit though at the end of the day. Like I do have to give them credit that they followed through on it really well of like, well, if we're going to make it the world games and everything, and these are going to be kind of weird games that, you know, might not be familiar to everybody. It's going to make you more culturally aware. And then we're also going to give you these like splash screens before you go into each game that explain like, you know, a little bit about the, how the sport works and the history of it and stuff like that. I appreciated those insights because when I selected log rolling, I had no idea what I was going to be doing.

04:32 Yeah. It gives you a little insight, like lets you immerse yourself a little more into it. It gives you a little history lesson on what you're playing and where it comes from. I think it's just a glorified, like we didn't make this up. I feel like a lot of people would think they did. That's fair. And there's something presentationally, like the way it's styled, this game makes me feel like I'm playing this one on a computer. Do you guys know what I mean? It has like this like Apple II style graphics look to it. It feels like pitfall.

04:59 Sure. That's a good, yeah, there you go. Yeah. I think it's like the straight lines or something like the, the, it's like very like geometric. And that always reminds me of those little computer games. Even just that UI and the way that it like lays everything out, like the spacing of the menus and that the, like the options aren't terribly different from each other. But you still have to choose between like, play all of these, play some of these, practice this one.

05:26 You know, it's like, I think that there's just something about the nuance of the way they designed it. And to be fair, this game was totally on computers first, but it just feels weird playing this on the NES and made me want like, you know, an Oregon Trail or a number munchers version on the NES. Oh, that would be great.

05:43 But no, I get that. It's almost like a, a two faithfully done, uh, or taking, taking UI elements from the computer. I, I can see that. And then the second step of that though, which is kind of strange is that when you go into each game, you need a manual, uh, in order to figure out how to play those games.

06:06 Because if you don't, you know, if you just like go into the level, there's no like assistance of like, you know, using the D pads or using the, the buttons. And so you, you need the manual there. And I know that sounds strange because like technically you always need a manual to find out what you control in a game. But when you're talking about, you know, I think eight or nine different, um, you know, little games inside of one game, it feels like that splash page could have benefited from like a little line on the bottom, just explaining the controls.

06:35 They could have had two pages. There's no reason not to. Um, uh, the fact that, that how to play the game is buried in the, is buried in the manual, like beyond the, like just like, like a lot of man, like a lot of games you want to read the manual just for like broad strokes. But this is like, uh, it's like an instruction manual, like an instruction booklet of how to build an Ikea chair and given you like the exact like button inputs that you need to, to actually do the thing that you're supposed to do.

07:08 A game, a game built out of many games needs to have those instructions in the game experience, in my opinion. Yeah. It's weird that when they were play testing this, that they didn't, there wasn't someone who realized, hey, every time we play a game, we have to reference the manual every time we get to a new thing.

07:26 And we also have these splash screens that have information on them. And like, why don't we meld the two? Yeah, I agree. Yeah. It reminds me of, um, Mario Party, you know, like there's like 70 mini games in there. If they didn't explain before you play that very mini game, if you had to go to the manual, like those board games would take even longer.

07:45 So yes, it is a little bizarre, but it also doesn't help that all of these games, uh, you know, don't control in the most intuitive sense that you would think of. You know, I don't know how you guys felt, but it's a lot of just left and right on the D-pad, uh, in a, in a rhythm fashion. And I just thought that was like very strange. So I would never guess to do most of the things that they wanted me to do in these games.

08:08 So I definitely needed to keep going back to the manual anytime I played one of these. I, I'd say that like my experience with this, this game with many of the mini games, not all of them, but, uh, it almost felt like, like, like a rhythm game, like you said, but it was like, if you're playing DDR, but you didn't get to see the inputs like scrolling or like guitar hero without seeing what button you're supposed to press. You just sort of have to, like, you know, that you only have this many options of what to do, but like the rhythm changes depending on, uh, like whatever sliding scale that you're allowed to adjust, but you just, you, you have to keep, you have to keep doing this just to figure out what the correct, like rhythm of input is.

08:55 Yeah. I felt that way, particularly like about the weightlifting, maybe just cause it was the first one that I played, but. But that felt very much like, okay, the more weight you add, it like increases or decreases the window in which you have to like, it changes when you have to change your position of your character. But like, you don't know when that is. Yeah. You have to do a lot of experimenting to figure that out. There are, there are cues, but you have to, you have to learn them by failing 500 times.

09:22 Right. There are cues for some of them. For others, I feel like I, well, I think that there's no feedback. Not, not just cues, but like feedback for when you do something wrong. Oh yeah, for sure. It just, in some of the games, you can't tell if what you're doing is good or bad. Where I, if I'm, you know, rolling in the log and my guy suddenly falls, I'm not sure if it's because the other guy changed direction or if I went too fast or too slow or what, you know? And I know there's like the meter or anything, but it's not really explained.

09:56 And don't even get me started on the bull riding too. Oh God. No, I, yeah. There's a couple of games in here that I was just like, all right, no, no chance I'm doing well in this. And there's other games that I thought were too easy.

10:08 It seems like we have to start breaking down the games before we go any further. Cause otherwise we're just going to accidentally do it. But I'd like to start with the game that I actually thought translated maybe the best out of all of them. And that was the weightlifting from Russia. I technically, I think we lift weights all over the world. With love. Yeah, sure, Sean. But you know what I mean? Like we lift weights all over the world. So again, I'm not sure why they chose Russia for weightlifting. It's not like they're doing specific Russian power lifts either.

10:38 So in this one, you have to like, you're just using the, the up and down deep head buttons, but you have to time them based on like your lift and your like maximum pull. And if you hold too long, you'll, you'll drop it. I thought that was kind of interesting. You have to change between like when you should go up versus when you should bend back down and you know, uh, all that. So even though it was only two buttons, I found this one to be very, uh, easy to pull off. The lower weights are definitely more forgiving.

11:08 Um, but I actually did eventually clear like the highest weight. So it's not impossible, but it's fun to like learn the instances of like, okay, I need to hold for a little bit longer before I lift to the next step because otherwise I won't have like enough energy and I'll just drop it right away. You guys, do you guys know what I'm talking about? I get what you're saying, but this is the, this is the mini game I was referencing where it just felt like I was playing DDR without the, like the input scrolling. It, it, it really kind of annoyed me that again, like there just wasn't feedback to,

11:41 uh, to, to, to show me how I was doing it wrong. Uh, this is like, this is the one where I'm like, yeah, I, I, I eventually found the, uh, the cues for when you're supposed to shift to the opposite direction, but I didn't like this one at all. I think I fall kind of in the middle there. Cause I, I see what, I definitely saw what you were saying, Mike, while I was playing it where I was like, well, this is interesting the way they did it. But I did wish that they gave me some indication of like teaching me how to do it or, you know, like giving other than just trying over and over again and failing.

12:11 Um, but yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was, it, it would maybe even be like something if you, if you've never, if you've never lifted weights before, this would like, Hey, give you an idea of like what to expect. Like this is the kind of, it gives you the idea of like how you should do it technique or whatever. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like an entry level thing.

12:26 Um, so I was like, Oh, that's kind of cool that they translated it like that. But I did feel like it was, it was definitely lacking in like, I don't know. So yeah, feedback, I guess. Yeah. When I got it and when I completed the lift, I felt like, all right, yeah, I get this. Like I understand the motions of it. I kind of feel the flow of this game, but then sometimes I feel like I do the same thing and then I just drop it and I wasn't exactly sure why.

12:54 Um, I don't know. I guess it's the kind of thing where if I play more than I would, I would really hone in on what exactly to do, but just because there is this lack of feedback, it, it gets frustrating.

13:07 Right. I see what you're saying there, Sam. Like ideally, right. The NES has like a rumble pack built into the controller and you're able to like feel your legs shaking. If you, if you like hold in the position too long or something like that visually though too. No, that's what I was going to say next is like, yeah, they could have totally done that, you know, where, um, you see the legs quake or you see the arms start to give out or change a color or something like that.

13:31 I just, I don't know. I didn't find it to be that difficult though, because I guess I'm thinking about it, you know, as, as like the lift, you know, it's like, you can't just jump right into the next pose when you think you kind of need to like hold where you are for a second, get your footing and then go. So you have to like almost, you know, you have to have like a beat in your head to it of like, okay, you know, I I'm in the squat. Now I got to like come up a little bit and then I got to switch back over to, you know, get rested on my, uh, collarbone. I, you know, I thought that was working. Okay. I mean that, that to each their own.

14:32 All right. And, you know, Rare only published this game. Epix was the one who made it. So it's not quite the slalom that Sam is looking for, but Sam, what did you think here of another variation of slalom on the NES? Oh, this one sucked, man. This compared to, especially compared to the goat slalom. Uh, this one I felt it was just, it was just weird. And I don't know about you guys, but I always felt like, like the controls were backwards sometimes, like not actually backwards, but it like mixed it up in my head. And I don't know. I could see how there's like a rhythm and there's physics to this one, but I just, it just didn't seem that fun to me to act to when to finally get it.

15:23 I don't know. I wasn't feeling this one at all. I much prefer ski free. Oh, ski free. Yeah. I thought you said ski three. And I'm like, oh. That's a different way, right? Of handling, um, the skiing thing. It's like this view is, it's a little too tight for what they're trying to do. They needed to like pull back and spread out the flag poles a little bit, you know, like I'm sure whatever they were trying to do it, like how it is done in the Olympics or what have you. But like, it would have just helped the user a lot more to prepare for these turns.

15:54 I felt like some of them, I was just like, I just accepted. I was like, all right, not making that one. Try to make the next one. You know, like you just move on. Yeah. I couldn't miss, I couldn't miss less than seven of those. Like every time I had to miss at least seven if I wanted to, to make it, you know, without, without wiping out.

16:13 I feel like, yeah, if they, if they zoomed out a bit, uh, made the, uh, made the flags a bit further away and also sped the game up, we might just, we, I might've been just as bad at it, but it would have felt a bit more fun just with that added sense of speed. Because the, but when you see like the, when you see skiing in the Olympics, like you'd get that sense of speed. It's really not here. Yeah. I feel like I was grinding to a halt to make some turns.

16:43 Right. Yeah. And then also, did you guys think, cause I thought I did pretty poorly every time. Uh, I still got gold though, which I feel like it was a little too easy. Cause I was like, wow, I barely hit any of those. And like, I, you know, I, I don't know. I felt like maybe, maybe the, the world records that the, that they start with are a little low. Well, Joe, don't you think that's just a problem with this game in general though, is that most of the games are very forgiving to you? Like I didn't say, I wouldn't say I got gold in all of them, but you know, it didn't seem like the computer was putting up much of a fight.

17:14 Well, you know what, what I'll say is I'll say that I think about roughly half of them were too easy. Maybe a little, maybe like four of them were too easy and three of them for me were just impossible. Or are those just based on how intuitive they were to use? Like the, yeah. Right. Like when you somewhat understand, you're going to get the gold medal. You're right. Exactly. And there, there, there's one we'll get to at some point that I just literally had, didn't even know. I was just finally just skipped it. I was like, I can't even get this to do anything.

17:39 Um, but yeah, so this, so this one, uh, Slalom was, uh, I'd say somewhere in the middle on that scale for me. And I mentioned it briefly, but it's just kind of funny that like Rare published the game and that doesn't mean anything, but I like to think of them, you know, opening up the game, checking it out, being like, oh, all right, we're going to distribute this one. All right, let's take a look. we could totally do a better version than this and then just choose not to.

18:06 Up next log rolling from Canada, you know, cause after you, uh, extract all the syrup, uh, from those trees, you just knock them down and then roll on them. So, uh, and then you put them into shark infested water. Log rolling is something that I don't think anyone is familiar with, Sean. So why don't you break this one down for us? Um, okay. I mean, the, I get the concept of, of what's supposed to be happening. That's all I want to hear. I want to hear what you think is supposed to be happening.

18:36 Um, I guess you are, I guess there's a designated, um, there's a designated adversary. They don't think it, uh, it's, there's two people, there's you or whoever is the contestant. Um, and whoever this other guy is, and you're trying to stay balanced on a rolling log floating in the middle of the water, uh, and to knock off the other guy. Uh, and that's pretty much all I can. And you can use techniques such as going fast, uh, going slow or going in a different direction. Uh, yeah. Ancient techniques passed down for generations. You guys have never seen this? In real? I'm not kidding.

19:22 I've heard of this. I've actually seen this before. I feel like I've seen cartoons of it, at least. Yeah. I think I've seen Bugs Bunny do it. Like, I've never seen it in person, but I feel I've definitely, maybe it's because I'm a survivor fan and it might just be a common challenge of a survivor, but I feel like I've seen it, uh, like other times also. But, yeah, people do it in a log roll. Are there sharks in the, uh, in the survivor version? Yeah, yeah, there's always sharks. Yeah, there has to be sharks. I think there's sharks in the Bugs Bunny version. The shark is the penalty. That's like, you know, uh, it's not win or lose, it's win or die. Yeah. It seems to be what happens in a lot of these.

19:58 Now, I noticed with this one that, uh, I don't know if I would consider it easy or hard because I didn't really have any trouble not falling off, but neither did the computer. The computer refused it. My game went for like three minutes. It's like you gave a chicken with the computer. Yeah. How long did you go? It's just a game of like, how bored are you going to get? Because I was, after like three minutes, I was like, do I even want to beat this guy? This is really boring. Honestly, I was like, I was trying to figure it out. I read the manual several, several times. I was doing what it was telling me to do. And those two bars at the bottom, they just looked like alien glyphs to me. I didn't know if I was affecting one or the other or both.

20:34 And nothing I did work. I just kept falling off. So I guess I have even less of a concept of this game than you did. I was kind of not quite there. Like I beat the opponent once and I don't know how I did it. And that bar also confused the hell out of me too, because it's not in the manual. The manual doesn't mention what the bar means.

20:59 And if it fills up on one side, is that like, what is that? Does that mean it's too fast? Is that your balance? I have no idea. I was thinking it's your balance. I was thinking balance, Sam, because I, you know, if you, if you slow down a little bit, it seems like you get your balance back, you know, a bit, but I couldn't figure out like how to counterbalance that, you know, like it just happened on accident.

21:22 Yeah. I thought, see, there were a lot of times where I was like, oh, I get what it's trying to indicate. But then when I would like put that into practice, it didn't seem right. Like I thought it was like, if I was, cause you alternate back and forth with the left and the right D pad button and you, I thought like maybe I had, I was favoring one side or something. And it was, and if I, and if I started to kind of make the, like hit the right side twice before I hit the left side or something, then I would start leaning the other way. But like none of that ever really worked. And then I just noticed that like, if it starts to lean one way, if I just keep going at like a good rhythm, it'll just correct itself.

21:58 So like, I really don't know what was happening there, but like sometimes it would look like, oh my God, I'm about to fall off. Cause that bar is filling up. And then I would just keep doing exactly what I was doing and like, and like want it to go back and it would just go back. Like there was no actual input that, that I could, uh, attribute to it. There's also a distinct lack of sound during the game. Uh, you know, like no sound whatsoever until you fall into the water. I thought that was strange. It's, uh, it's spooky.

22:26 Like I was like, oh, am I, is my TV muted? So I like raised the volume dramatically and I was like, oh, guess not. And then I splashed into the water and then the shark came out and it was kind of startling because I had my volume up so much. Yeah. Insert lap track. You do get those little jingles before each event though. Yeah. That's true too. Yeah. You, so you get the jingle and you get the outro and the national anthems. Yeah. But, but you don't get anything while the game is happening. And I'm just like, there's gotta be a sound. I guess there, you know, feet or something that you could have put in there of like feet smacking a log.

23:00 It's grunting. Water splashes. I feel like they're anticipating like you and your friends just like yelling the whole time, you know? Yeah. It's like a wild, it's like the Superbowl. Yeah. That's why the Superbowl is, is muted when it airs.

23:16 Well, they don't play music during the play. Yeah. But they don't turn off the, the like sound of the arena either. I just meant it's like the Superbowl in the way, in the way that, you know, the, you and your friends are reacting to it while watching it. This is silly.

23:33 All right. After log rolling is cliff diving from Mexico. That famous thing that they do all the time where they get to the highest points, uh, near the ocean. And then they just take a giant dive into very shallow water and, uh, they're graded on it essentially. So that that's cliff diving here.

23:55 I thought this one, you know, graphically made a lot of sense. What they asked me to do made a lot of sense. These are good check marks for me, but was it, was it too easy? It just felt like there was a lack of things to do and a lack of consequences. So as long as you, as long as you kept going further out and you didn't hit the cliff, you'd, you'd be okay.

24:15 Sean, am I wrong? Sean, I, so I actually liked this one because it's, it's a bit more free form and, uh, it's not like there are fail states, but, um, you're supposed to at least be able to complete this. And it's just a, uh, a, uh, a decision of whether you complete it better than the rest of them or not. Um, and I know that, you know, the computer players aren't very good. Uh, but I, I did like the, the grading, the fact that there's a rubric depending on like how, uh, how close you stay to the, uh, like next to the cliff without touch, without actually hitting it. Um, and, uh, so I liked that it was a bit more free form.

24:59 Yeah. And this one I thought was a, was a pretty good, like translation control, control wise. It was, I also thought like a little easy because I felt like, um, no matter what I did, no, but even if I, whether my score was high or low, I felt like I always got gold again, which just felt like there should have been like, I don't know, it should have been a little, a little more challenging there.

25:18 But, um, but yeah, I thought it was kind of cool. There's like a different, um, different scorings based on like when you pull out of your dive and when you, how close you get to the bottom of the, of the, um, the lake well, ocean floor or whatever it is, uh, that before you pull up and stuff, which, you know, you play around with that and get different scores.

25:40 Kind of shallow though, after, I mean, no pun intended, but kind of shallow after a while, you know, it's how much can you really do with it? I think this one would be, uh, like a better multiplayer one because the deer people you're going to be playing against are probably gonna be better than the computer. And that can be said for all of these games. But I think like to, for one player to inexplicably get one more point than the other would probably result in some pretty funny arguments. So I'm, I'm, I'm always down for that. For me, I feel like the, I had more trouble with the, the lower dives than the higher dives. I don't know if you guys felt that. I feel like I couldn't get away from the cliff.

26:20 And they give you less points anyway. So there's no reason. Yeah. I feel like I kept bumping on the rocks, even like keeping my body, uh, not in the diving position. The one that, you know, my back arch to, uh, arch to keep it, to keep you like soaring away from the cliff. Even with that, I felt like I'd still hit the rocks.

26:41 Sam, it's funny. Cause I, I just realized I'd never done anything but the highest point, which should be a hard thing to pull off. But it just makes sense since it gives you the most points that you just do that one and see what happens. And I'd say it's also the easiest.

26:55 Right. As I was going to say, even I just didn't even know it was the easiest. I just thought like, well, if it's worth the most amount of points, that's the one I want to do. But it's funny to find out that like the, you know, the ones that reward you less are actually more difficult. But I believe that because you have to pretty much always be extending, uh, your arch outwards. Otherwise, you know, if you let up any time before that, you will hit the cliff.

27:18 So it's more about like timing the part where you pencil out, you know, is that, is that the, I don't know if that's the right term, but whatever, you know, like where you become a straight line with your body. That's, that's the only part that really starts to matter. Otherwise it's like, if you're not arching yourself out to continue to go further away from the cliff, you're guaranteed to hit the cliff at one point or another.

27:37 And you could also sort of adjust the speed at which you move from, uh, like it's not just a binary. You're, you're diving outward and then you're diving down that you can sort of slowly change from like one state to the other. I have no idea what that does for your points, but it at least made me feel like it could be creative with it a little bit. Not so much thinking about the statistical maximism, like optimization of it. Yeah. I guess they're just relying on like fear of heights to keep you away from the top one. Yeah. You get a lot of vertigo watching on this. Yeah. Like the nerves go, start going crazy when you get high up, even though it's easier in like to play the game. Yeah. They should like patch a VR patch in or something.

28:25 Yeah. so next we have the caber toss the one we were talking about in the beginning all the way from scotland uh i i don't want to offend any uh scots here but this this can't be the best thing to represent scotland and if so why choose it like there's so many other countries they didn't pick from why choose this that's so that's so backhanded i love it i feel like this is a cool concept for like i i think i may have seen a couple clips of people actually doing this and it's like really cool because it's balancing and like brute strength and agility with that strength and it feels like there's a lot of things and precision that goes into it it's like a dynamic shot put in a way but

29:40 this i i could not figure out how to make my guy walk at the correct pace to go fast enough to start running to be able to throw it and i don't know if that was me or what but i just could not get the dude's legs to work yeah i was really bad at this one too i was the same way i thought that you had to get a running start to in order to throw forward momentum um only literally right now i always have uh footage playing in the background we're recording this i'm i'm seeing this youtuber

30:09 do it and uh realizing that you're supposed to get a little bit of running start but then wait until it starts to lean forward and then throw it i don't know if you guys knew that i did not know that this is the one i was talking about earlier when i said that there's there's at least one that i just had no idea how to do it um but now i feel kind of stupid well joe if it leans forward that that uh will help with your momentum as you throw it into the air right i was trying to get a running

30:34 start i thought leaning forward was like a warning like oh it's gonna fall like watch out and then i was like oh if i can run fast enough it'll like he'll be able to throw it forward and i just thought every time i threw it it was like oh not fast enough it didn't go anywhere gotta let the camera do the work man yeah i realize that's i i maybe i would have loved this game maybe this would have my favorite game of so far i want to find this one in real life like i want to watch a video of

30:59 someone actually do it because i and i'm not trying to harp on the actual like let's talk about it from a gameplay perspective here right i feel like what i'm doing what i'm pulling off in the game world is nothing helpful at all like it feels like it's just something that two brothers made up over the weekend because the way it looks you know it's just you don't run all that fast for what it's worth and you know then you just hold this log and it starts to like teeter and then when you like to joe's point if you think it's teetering too much you're like it's probably gonna drop then you just

31:30 throw it and you throw it like a measly amount then it like either falls backwards or forwards and and then and then you get like rewarded like everybody's like holy shit he did it you know they're like i cannot believe that he just pulled that off and i i liken that to javelin you know like when you throw a javelin that looks awesome that looks like you're doing like some you know roman 300 shit or something like that you're really going all yeah greek whatever you're really going all out with it you know you're really throwing this uh you know this this weapon very far across a field with this it's like you're doing nothing you you might as well balance it on

32:10 your head it would have been more impressive this isn't very multicultural of you mike i just have to say it's not about the culture it's about the way that the game decided to present it like it's a video game make it look freaking cool i hear you they got a that's pretty cool i do appreciate the guilt and i guess that's a um at once once you actually complete a caber toss they do what i imagine is a uh a a dance from uh like the olden days like a of like medieval scotland i don't know if it has anything to do with uh with nationalism but it's there you know what i appreciate i appreciate

32:54 now just thinking about it you're a guy who is competing could be from anywhere but he still has to wear the kilt to do the caber toss it's part of the event or does that mean that like you know the weight lifting like you're you are the russian guy no because you're playing as like whoever you gotta name your guy oh right right sorry i'm thinking about because i played most of these games in practice mode well you can tell that you're in you're you're in russia because of the you know like they have a huge vitamin market and they've got that poster in the background that just says

33:30 vitamins so that's how i don't have russia they don't have vitamins it's just sponsored vitamins i think we know what those state sponsored vitamins are all right up next placebos bowl bowl riding from the united states of course uh we all uh tune in uh you know fridays at 7 p.m for the bowl riding competitions on uh it's actually covered uh simulcast on mbc abc fox it's just that big of a deal yeah great american pastime i could try to explain what you need to do for bowl writing but i feel the least qualified after playing this game like i thought i had a good idea of like you just have to stay on the bowl for as long as possible and as long as you do that

34:19 you're a winner is you you know like good job you stayed on the bowl for x amount of time but i don't think i ever stayed on this bowl ever like i've i think i had a better chance of getting like a running start on him than starting on him because as soon as he starts moving i am back to winter games ice skating level of confusion i mean the the way that's described in the manual it seems pretty like it seems pretty normal like you just lean into whatever movement the bowl is doing but in practice like i think i can get one or two movements in and i just fall off and i don't even know if the game is just being nice to me and like letting me have a couple because i don't think i'm

35:01 i'm doing i don't think i'm doing anything wrong but with how often i fail i feel like i'm not doing anything right either yeah yeah i i think this one is another one where the lack of feedback just kills it because i i'm like i i totally understand what it wants me to do and i think i'm doing it but then i'll fall and i'm like well i don't know if i was doing it because there was no nothing changes based on what buttons i hit so i have no clue what's going on yeah that's exactly what i was gonna say so i'll add that i think it's funny that you can pick which bowl you want to ride and you get no difference in appearance or anything except that you know that that bowl is bob

35:45 it's supposed to be harder with like you know the cooler the name but it ends up being just as hard for us at least well it's the graphics of the bowl and then the speed of the movement of the bowl like the bowl what they want you to do in the d-pad which is like i you know i could liken it to if the bowl moves forward you should move backwards on your d-pad right like you should always kind of

36:11 like fight in the opposite direction yeah but the movement of the bowl is so fast and the graphics are so unclear that i would have had a better time just guessing on my d-pad like just spamming input buttons and lasting like you know a few seconds longer i didn't by the way i'm just saying like that's what i would have been better off doing all all all right it just was not it wasn't happening

36:35 for me yeah and i'll add that bullfighting is actually pretty messed up yeah if you look up what goes into it not bullfighting i'm sorry bull riding bull riding is pretty messed up if you look up what goes into it and why the bowl is bucking don't think about that this is merica i won't say it on the podcast but it's it's not it's not fun all animal all animal related sports are bad not like the westminster dog show it seems pretty fun yeah think about what those dogs do you think the dogs want to do that they're trained to want to do it oh cool okay so now we're just talking about brainwashing good job sam that's what dogs are yeah through through the power of vitamins otherwise they'd be wolves

37:20 all right so after bull riding comes barrel jumping uh from germany this is um you know actually i'm gonna let sam take this one because you were excited about this when you said this is like translating really well in the new the new version of ice skating so or figure skating as it was in winter games do you want to talk about it yeah so not the the figure skating one but the uh the speed skating where oh right right yeah this is i feel i feel like this controls like that should have controlled for that part of it and all in all i feel like this one was the best one like it it's i understand i understood completely what i was supposed to do i felt like the motion of skating was comfortable

38:04 and i didn't i didn't have like a a log rolling kind of time with it where i felt like i was moving with purpose the whole time and the jump was slow but that's cool because you have to time it and then you have to hold down on the d-pad when you're landing so you can land correctly which is whatever but i don't know it was it was very basic but i feel like they nailed this one yeah no this is my favorite uh i really my favorite thing about this is that you get to choose how many barrels you jump over so like you can have like a like a hold my beer moment of like here watch me try and jump over 19 barrels which i don't think is possible uh and there's always a really funny uh wipeout animation

38:48 with that um but you can sort of like fine tune it and like just let me just add one more barrel i think it could do it uh it's it's silly but i enjoyed it yeah this was this was my favorite also i just feel like it feels the best um and and what i liked about this over the other games is that i actually had some fun with this one like compared to most of the other games in this um but i i so i don't know about you guys but i i found 13 was the most that i could get but i swear i if i did it long i feel like 14 was possible what'd you say sean i said yeah 14's in yeah i think you can do it

39:24 okay okay well you know uh sam you mentioned it as like a throwaway thing but the the landing the fact that you have to just hold down on the d-pad is kind of important because that was one of the things about figure skating that sucked nobody was able uh on this podcast and probably in the world to successfully land uh their figure skating move because it required you to like land perfectly when you hit the ice and then it was like you know due to lag or whatever or based on like shitty

39:53 programming it just never really worked out at least in this one they give you the leeway of like so long as you're holding down on the d-pad at any particular moment before you land you will stick the landing which is like the correct way to handle um a multi-input uh you know multiplayer game uh not multiplayer mini game yeah yeah was was figure skating the one where you had to put in like a it was like a password almost and a pipe should land like on their way down that was it yeah absolutely it was absolutely was all right last one sumo wrestling from japan a game where they included a lot of

40:31 thought into it and a lot of different things you can do but at the end of the day you might as well just hold the d-pad in the uh direction of your opponent and push him off the sand yeah that's sort of what i did i don't i don't think uh i ever failed um in this one i also don't know what else i could have done so yeah that's pretty much how i felt yeah same here i i felt like the times that um it felt like the opponent was getting the upper hand on me there's two there's two forms of every input

41:00 one where you're holding a which apparently means you're holding the the opponent's belt while you're doing it and one where you're not so i would just switch that up and it would like if he starts to get the upper hand i just hold a and continue hitting the right d-pad button and then i let go and continue here the right as long as i'm just ramming that right d-pad button we're gonna go to the right i tried being a little bit trickier and doing different kinds of inputs and i i lost

41:27 that's that strategy doesn't work i think just holding right is the way to with the way to go i was like yeah i'm gonna go around here and then you won't expect me to do this and then he's like no i'm just gonna push you you played yourself yeah i feel like we should just become sumo wrestlers at this point like we got the strategy down no one else knows just i gained enough weight during quarantine there's also like something funny about uh you know not having to use any strategy to win and like you know sean was saying that i was being offensive to countries think about how offensive the game is being to japan being like you know if only these guys just went to the right they'd never lose

42:13 so now that we've covered all the games are these the best games they could have picked um what's that one game uh where you have to like climb up a log as it's falling across a river and then jump off the top of it you know what i'm talking about is that real yeah i think it's that sounds awesome i think it's an irish game i'll i'll watch that cabertoss reminded me of that one so i feel like they

42:37 could replace cabertoss with that one there's that one where you just try to go down the hill the fastest do you guys know what i'm talking about you just like it's like skiing yeah yeah and it's a very yeah the cheese wheel yeah oh yeah yeah yeah i would play that i think there should have been like it should have been all these and then like an inexplicably robust uh

43:02 flugetog like where you have to design your own um it does design your own like weird machine to jump into water um that that could be like sweden or something right what what is that

43:15 the flugetog is that what i'm am i saying it right i don't know what that is if you are i can't confirm words than that oh it's like a red bull thing where you make a plane but i guess that's not actually any country that's just red bull red bull will be really funny red bull is like on the end of the options of countries a sponsor so if you ignore the fact that they're missing all of africa right um they're also missing antarctica so each one of those continents if we're gonna call this world

43:48 games should get like a representative and i just feel like you know it would have been so cute for antarctica to include like some kind of penguin sliding game where you know like where you just play as a penguin and and try to like you know go down like a half pipe made out of ice or something i'm creating my own game here of course or like i thought that would have been a nice touch for world

44:08 games or like australian australian like uh spider avoiding something along those lines yeah well okay that's you know i don't know how they feel about that they might be terrified of spiders and now you're just bringing that up again you know i i think they can handle it and then you know we keep talking about they only ever really want you to use like the d-pad alternating like between left and

44:30 right or hit the a button occasionally there's a small amount of controls in all these games you know like the fact that most games are just like two inputs or or a button press is that a problem i i say no i say it's not really a problem because any more buttons and i would have been even more stressed about like okay i gotta relearn every single one of these games every time i play them

44:51 yeah i don't think it's a problem at all no they're because they're many games yeah i think that it was uh it's it's a nice change from something like winter games where they realize like first of all that you can translate something that's complicated with few buttons you don't need to have every little thing being as precise um so i thought with with a couple of exceptions they were all pretty um

45:15 doable yeah i think it's not the buttons that was the issue for me it was just the feedback from the buttons and if they could have more feedback then i think it would work a lot better so we played winter games and uh world games is the last of epics game series but it is not the last for us because they haven't ported california games to the nes yet we will get california games sometime later this year look forward to it it will be games exclusively based in california i imagine um guys guesses on california games uh professional venture capital maybe some surfing some kind of skateboarding maybe yeah maybe like water housing crisis

46:05 escaping from wildfires i don't know all right it's all there it's funny because it's like these are all not problems probably for california in 1988 but are now you know so we are outdating ourselves in the past yeah people are gonna now know that we didn't record these in 1988 so right right you're so new fashion mike anyway we pretty much covered these games at length it's kind of incredible the runtime we've gotten out of this episode and i think the only thing left to do is a little thing we like to call the essential games list

46:43 sam i need you to tell me if world games is an essential game or not but i also want you to tell me which of the mini games was your favorite of the mini games i gotta say that uh barrel jumping was my favorite just because it felt the best um but this game has it all honestly like it's got multiculturalism it has all sorts of games that you can play you it has very long uh national anthems for countries that went on longer than i thought that they would um and it also has super janky controls and it's not super fun to play so for that reason it's not an essential game this is very confusing

47:32 and yet he said it in a way only sam can

47:36 joe same thing favorite game uh not on the system on this uh on this particular game what is your favorite game and uh is this game an essential game i mean game game game game right not to be repetitive but i'm also gonna say barrel jumping i just felt like it it felt the best and it you know controlled well that was my that was my favorite on here um as far as my essential vote i mean i had

48:03 mild amounts of enjoyment with a few of the games on here but but really i think overall um it wasn't particularly fun i mean even some of the ones that i enjoyed more even barrel jumping how many times can i do that before i'm like okay i did it three times i got 13 maybe i'll get my 14 and then i'm probably done playing this forever so i mean it didn't really leave much for me to come back for and i know i say this a lot but i just think that this i i i don't see why you would make this game without making a two-player i i think these games the only way to make these games kind of fun is to compete against someone they're just compete against the computer and you know in weightlifting

48:45 oh you can i don't know not particularly do multiplayer you can do multiplayer in this game yeah you just make more than one character you sell it back this is like eight characters right yeah this is an this is an essential game and uh and i guess now that i'm thinking about it even if you didn't do multiplayer you could you just compare your scores so wow this is an essential game probably my favorite game of the nes no i still don't think it it has enough to offer i do think it is better now that that uh that i i feel kind of dumb for not realizing the multiplayer but i do think it's better now but not even close to a central game someone someone else talk someone else

49:21 i'll talk i'll talk um i will i will say um here and now that barrel jump is an official essential game on world games uh because i'm also voting for uh barrel barrel jump uh but as for world games as a whole uh i'm just going to repeat what they said and said and say that like this is not enough most of the games are jank uh i did i did read that this was pretty popular back in the day uh i guess as far as this sort of thing goes uh i i don't hold that against them but it's not an essential game all right and i will say that uh caber toss was definitely my favorite game on this uh on this collection uh it's just such a

50:06 unique spin on a sport and it it proved to me that anything can be a sport so uh for that reason caber toss is my pick but also world games is surprising right like coming off of winter games which i'm sure kids would never make the connection to even though it says games and games uh you know if you come off of that i was expecting garbage but this is okay it's not great it's not fun even most of the time but it is an okay game to the point where like i actually don't feel you know if you got this for your birthday or you bought this by you know based on the box art at toys r us you didn't

50:43 get completely burnt you probably found a way to make it work you know like if you're eight years old and this is the game you have and it's your game you know that you rented from blockbuster for the week or whatever you're gonna find a way to make this fun and then 30 years later have good feelings for it you know it's not it's not so bad that you hold it against it so it's an interesting uh it's an interesting type of game that i feel like we've never you know there are other examples sure but like we never really brought up that kind of thing where it's like well it wasn't disappointing

51:13 um but yeah it's not an essential game by any means and i wouldn't say go check it out if you're just hearing about it now but i could understand sean why people might have received it well back then because it was like you know one game why would i pay 50 for one game i just got nine

51:30 that's true i i so i stand corrected that is um that is world games not essential um but a collection of games that happen to take place on this earth now next week we are playing a puzzle game called the adventures of lolo which does not take place on earth i just think it's worth mentioning the nes uh and the fact that this is a chronological explanation of north america doesn't mean that the games that we review have to take place on earth or even north america brothers yeah i was gonna say super mario brothers technically does because uh those pipes don't lead to another dimension they just lead to the earth's core where the mushroom kingdom is

52:12 you know like brooklyn pipes lead to the earth's core which lead to the mushroom kingdom all pipes lead to the earth's core that's a fact but ask any plumber anyway adventures of lolo next week um we'll see you then remember every friday we post episodes and all week long we post tweets on our twitter at nostalgia cast and that's where you can say um you know hey i'm from scotland and the caber toss is like my great grandfather's legacy and that's where you can let us know something like that but you wouldn't want to make something like that up either you wouldn't want to troll people on the internet

52:49 so just think before you do that instead maybe comment like hey this is a great podcast and i'm so happy to be a listener that would be nice remove any opinion and just and just like say nice things about us yeah we'll put a script for you on uh you know we'll tweet a script for you and just repeat it back to us yeah i'll be posting that on monday so look out for that look out for the script maybe just hit a retweet button um and then uh we'll see you next week for adventures of lolo i'm michael esposito you can find me at esposito film on twitter and i'll talk to you soon you too

53:47 too!