NES box art for The Adventures of Lolo, the cover of NEStalgia episode 172

172 · The Adventures of Lolo

▶ Game info

VerdictEssential

GenrePuzzle

ReleasedApril 1989

SeasonSeason 5

DeveloperHAL Laboratory

PublisherHAL America

May 28, 2021 · 42 min · transcript available

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The lovely princess Lala was kidnapped by the Evil Demons of the Empire. You are Lolo, a round ball-like creature (just like the princess herself), and your mission is to sneak into the empire castle and to liberate the princess.

SHOW NOTES

Lolo Longplay

Eggerland

Eggerland 95

Solomon's Key

Lolo and Lala in Kirby

Our verdict: Essential

The Adventures of Lolo might be the first feel-good game on the NES. Nobody argued with the feeling, though we wouldn't commit to "first" without combing the library. It's a top-down puzzle game from HAL, one screen per room, with a round blue hero who waddles when he walks. Mike owned it as a kid.

What makes it essential

One rule set, 50 rooms. Collect the hearts, open the chest, reach the exit. Lolo shoots enemies into eggs and pushes blocks, and that is the whole toolbox. New enemy combinations keep every room feeling fresh, and we thought it beat Solomon's Key.
Everything is on screen. Each puzzle fits in a single room, like one room of a Zelda dungeon or a chamber in Portal. You can, in principle, solve a room before touching the controller, and nothing is cheap.
It commits to being a puzzle game. No timer, no combat. The enemies are obstacles, and the few that chase you, like the skulls, only wake up when you act. Even those moments turn into planning: where do you stand when they wake, and which tiles can you only cross one way?
Small discoveries. An egg pushed into water floats and becomes a moving bridge. A block shoved half a space can seal two tiles at once. We wanted more of those, but plenty of rooms still ended in a satisfying click.
The charm. The cute cutscene, the Kirby-like silhouette, and an item jingle that sounds a lot like Kirby's extra life.

Where it nitpicks back

Lives. We wrestled with them. Blocks can be pushed into spots you can't recover from, and there is a button to restart the room, but a failed attempt can cost a life. We came around to the idea that it makes you slow down and plan.
Hidden hearts. Which heart triggers a power-up, or more eggs, isn't something you can know in advance. The hearts flicker when a power-up is about to land, which helps, but guessing wrong can lock you out of an option.
A one-song soundtrack. Cute, and it will follow you on your runs.
A letdown ending. After 50 rooms you reach King Egger and he never fights you. A final puzzle room built around him would have been better.

Beyond the game

It's built from levels of two or three Famicom Eggerland games, polished into a new game for America. Lolo and Lala keep turning up in HAL's other series, and Eggerland for Windows 95 let players build their own maps. A Washington Post piece quoted Nintendo singling out Lolo as a way to stretch kids' imaginations. Lolo 2 and 3 are coming up.

The bottom line

Essential. The vote came out four for four, and Sean, who wasn't looking forward to it, called it a huge surprise. Joe called it the first really good puzzle game on the NES. Sam pointed to its polish. HAL clearly solved every room backwards, and fifty levels of the same thing is still a step beyond most of what we've played.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

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

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

Adventures of Lolo, overcome the challenges of each room in the great Devil's Castle.

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. We are playing quite possibly the first feel-good game of the NES. Am I wrong in saying something like that?

You're not wrong. It's an odd thing to say. Come on. This is like such a... Look at Lolo. He's such a cutie. And the puzzles are like, you know, they're pretty easy to start. And they get progressively maybe a little more challenging or what have you. But everything's fun. The song is cute, even if it is just one song. You know, like everything about the game is just pleasant. I'll say that I definitely agree that this is a feel-good game. I just don't want to commit yet to saying that it was the first one without having... Without thinking back through the library. I feel like we might have had another feel-good game. Yeah, what about Gumshoe?

It sounds like you have a personal attachment to this game, Mike. Well, that's a great segue, Sean, because this was one of the few NES games I owned as a child. So I know this one pretty well. That song is something that I will just think of from time to time while I'm running. And I don't like that one bit. That it gets stuck in my head like that. You know, it's not even like an earworm thing, right? Like it's not something that should be stuck in your head. But you play the game enough and it just winds up being there. No, I totally get that. That sounds like something that would happen to me.

Joe was singing it to us in the pre-show. I was. I've been singing it all week. Can you do it for us? No, thank you. Oh. Sorry, you'll have to play the game. I don't want to, you know, give people a reason to not play it if they're like, Oh, I already heard the music.

That's one of my top things is like I only play a game for the soundtrack. I'm like, oh, shoot. Like if only there was like a way to hear all these songs without having to play these boring video games. Right, right. So Adventures of Lolo. Top down puzzle game where the goal in each room is to collect all these like cute little hearts.

And then if you collect all those hearts, it makes like a chest appear that makes an exit appear. So, or sorry, the chest opens. The chest is always in the room, but then it opens once you collect all the hearts. And then from there, you can go to the exit once the chest has been collected. So to collect these hearts, Lolo moves blocks and he turns enemies into what I'm going to guess are like eggs. Right. That looks like eggs. They call it eggs. Yeah. Cool. So they can break out of the eggs too.

Yeah. And like, you know, I think when you lay out that those are the rules of the game, right? Like you, you put them in eggs, you move blocks, you collect hearts. It sounds pretty straightforward, but there's some, there's some decent puzzle action going on here. Right. I'm not saying it's Solomon's key levels of difficulty, but like there's a lot of options. Oh, see. Based on moving blocks and dealing with enemies.

Right. Did we feel like this was, this fits the puzzle game genre? Oh, for sure. This is, it's got lots of different mechanics going on with, in terms of like what different enemies do as like obstacles. It's a, it's the, it's the quintessential puzzle game. Yeah. I I've heard that this game actually helped define the puzzle genre with those block puzzles specifically.

And that it might be a reason why we see them come up in more games and in more like Zelda dungeons, you get those block puzzles a lot. And so this may be a precursor to all of that. Makes sense. Yeah. I think that they did a lot with it. And I think it's funny that you mentioned Solomon's key. Cause I actually thought that this was an improvement on the puzzle mechanics of not the puzzle mechanics specifically, but just puzzle design from over Solomon's key.

I don't know what you guys thought about that, but I felt like Solomon's key was good, but had, had some, some flaws. I felt like this, every puzzle felt like there were first of all, increasing level of difficulty. And second of all, you know, made you think about things in different ways. Even after you thought like, all right, you got the game down. It was, it was, it was a nice progression.

I'd say each, each puzzle in this game. Uh, and again, like the, the, the basics never really changed. It just adds more layers of, uh, of, um, like enemy combinations. Uh, but like every, every, every puzzle feels fresh. And, uh, it sort of reminded me of like, cause I never really played puzzle games until like the indie, like all the indie games were sort of coming out like braid.

Um, and, uh, this kind of reminded me of like starting to really get into puzzle platformers, puzzle, top down puzzle games. Uh, I think it's a, uh, this was just really good at doing that regardless of when this game came out.

It really helps that all of the action for each level is just one screen. Um, think of it like one room in a Zelda dungeon, right? Uh, I, I think if you actually had like a gigantic map for each level where you couldn't see what was going on throughout the entirety, um, of the puzzle, that would hurt this game a lot. So it was very smart of them to make these smaller contained puzzles, um, that again, you know, still have, still have a lot of unique characteristics around them. But I had to say like, that seems like an easy mistake to, to, to think like, oh, the puzzle should be bigger than just a one screen thing. And this was the time where like smaller bursts of gameplay, uh, made it more fun, right? Like it, it, no challenge lasts too long.

Yeah. It's sort of like, um, like with portal, like each, uh, like each, uh, little puzzle is just a room in portal. And you don't have to, I think later in the game, you start to think about, uh, larger scale, uh, thought, uh, problem solving, but everything that you need is right in front of you. And it's, uh, it's easy to sort of get into a more problem solving, abstract way of thinking when, uh, your scope is smaller.

In terms of enemies though, you know, cause there are a bunch and, uh, you know, some are like completely harmless, won't even move. Right. And then there's other ones that, you know, I'm sure the manual explains it to you, but if you didn't know better, you wouldn't think that that's how you have to like handle them at first sight, you know, and you have to kind of like fail once or maybe a few times and then figure out how to do it. Like, oh, that's how these enemies behave or something like that. I'm not sure if that's like a problem, you know, that's just like a way that you, you learn to play the game.

Uh, but was the, you know, like were the enemy variety, it wasn't enough. Did it feel like that was adding a lot to the gameplay or should they have tried to, um, you know, to make combat based enemies too?

I'm glad that they didn't try to make too much combat based enemies. I think that like a problem we've had with other puzzle games so far, maybe this is personal preference, is that, that they, they didn't just commit to being a puzzle game. Like there, there would be, there'd be timers or there would be enemies you'd have to fight while playing it. It didn't really give you the time to kind of like, to kind of sit and kind of get absorbed in the puzzle, which this game does a pretty good job at. There's a couple of times where there's like, there's some enemies that chase you. Um, but like it's infrequent enough that it feels like it's a nice, like refreshing change of pace to that puzzle compared to others.

Um, but I'm glad that they didn't, that the, the enemies are all for the most part, part of the puzzle, either something you have to avoid or sometimes something you have to use to help avoid other enemies or help you get to something.

Yeah, I, I agree. I was going to say that I don't really see, uh, these enemies as enemies, more so just obstacles. And I think if they added combat to the mix, that would really confuse me because they have a pretty, um, uh, they have a pretty good gig going, uh, with what they have. I think that if you had anything beyond just like the little, uh, gun that, that turns them into eggs, it would, uh, it would sort of mess with the purity of, of what they have here.

Yeah, I agree. I don't have much to add, but I like that it remains true to a puzzle game. Um, and, and like the, you know, the elements of all that stuff that we're talking about, right? Whether it's the enemies or, uh, you know, transforming them into the eggs, like all of everything that you're dealing with per stage is in a limited supply. So you do have to think about like which enemy you will turn into an egg, you know, like if, you know, there are some puzzles that depend on that.

Like if you do the wrong one, you're just, you've kind of failed the puzzle, but the blocks too, it's like you can move the blocks in a way that you can't get them out of. And therefore you'll have to think about that too and restart the level. Uh, thankfully there is a like, you know, kill button to, uh, to restart the level. Like to the, when you realize you're locked in.

Yeah. But I, I thought that was an interesting, um, you know, an interesting take on your, on your resources and just on puzzle solving in general that like every element of this game, you know, whether it's the immovable objects, the blocks, the enemies, or the, your, your power. Or the ability to turn to eggs, all that stuff counts towards the puzzle aspect of it. So you have to think in a, um, in a variety of ways. Like you can't just like, you can't take it as you go. You have to look at the whole puzzle because you might do something that's going to make the puzzle later on unsolvable.

Yeah. I guess that that's sort of, I was sort of, uh, wrestling with the idea that I didn't really like the fact that there were lives. Um, and I think that the puzzle, the puzzles themselves were enough to keep you engaged in like there, they are, um, uh, they're challenging enough. Like once you start to get further into the game that like, you don't need a, uh, an artificial way of, of extending the game. Um, but it gets, I guess it does sort of, uh, it does give the, uh, the player more of a reason to think more slowly instead of, uh, instead of just like, well, I'll just reset real quick. Um, that, that the fact that there is a fail state that would make you lose progress.

Um, so I guess I don't hate it, but it is still something that I was sort of, uh, it was something that I had to grapple with. Yeah. I kind of, I sort of felt the same way too, but now just you explaining it right now actually kind of made me change my mind a little bit where I do think that it's, it's, it's not a bad thing to have to encourage people to like stop and really look at everything and think like, I think that's, what's fun about this game is that like the puzzles are designed in a way that you could, solve them, you know, it teaches you what everything does in a, in a great way that you could solve them before you even touch your controller.

But if you, if you're really, really careful, but like that can get confusing cause you might, you might miss things and stuff. It just, it just makes it, um, I don't know. It's like a game about planning. And, and, and I think that, yeah, if you were able to just constantly use the, uh, the like reset button, you could just, you could just guess and check until you solve it.

Yeah. But a part of me, you know, like appreciates the simplicity of it, you know, like of, of everything in the game. The fact that like Lolo is pretty much just like helpless, you know, like he just needs to figure out how to solve the puzzles without anything.

But there's, there's some cool moments, you know, in the game where like you turn, uh, an enemy into an egg and push them into the water. And then like that egg becomes like a moving, uh, object in the water that you can use to like become bridges and stuff, you know, and stuff like that. So this way you can cross the water.

Those are all interesting moments and stuff. I kind of wish that there was, there was more surprises like that where, uh, you know, these limited resources that you have actually turn out to like, you know, the, they become a consequence of what you do with them. So to just to use that, uh, the egg analogy again, when you push that in the water, that's not something like you could do that on accident the first time. Right. And be like, Oh, now the egg floats. Like I thought it would just like go away or like that would kill the enemy or something. Like now you have to think with that in mind.

I was kind of hoping for more moments like that throughout the game. Yeah, I get that. Uh, I'm always a fan of, uh, of there being more like things that do more than one thing. And I know that there's a better way to describe it than that, but I feel like you, you, that's just what you were describing. Um, uh, but I, I do think that this game still has enough that I would qualify it as a game that, that, that does well with the amount of sort of interconnectedness, uh, of all of it. I, but you're right. There, there's always, I'm always a fan of more stuff like that.

I think one moment that kind of strikes out like that is you, you can move the blocks around. Uh, but they, instead of moving it in like full, like when you push a block, it doesn't just move a whole block space. It moves half a block space. And sometimes that becomes useful because you can block two things if it's on a half of, um, if it's like, Oh yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like if it's like not right on the grid. You know, it's like in between two points. Yeah. If it's in between two points and there's enemies or something that you need to block on both of those two points, then one block positioned correctly does the work of two blocks.

So I think that's like another one of those like aha moments that Mike was talking about. Yeah. No, those, I mean, I, I, you guys, I agree that there could be more of those, but also like those, that itch that those aha moments scratch for me. Or like just very, that very satisfying feeling of like realizing something does something else. I got that feeling just beating half of these puzzles. I mean, like they were, some of them, you know, you'd be like, okay, wait, this doesn't make any sense. And then like when it clicks, it's really satisfying.

And I compare that sometimes a little bit to like early on when we played Wrecking Crew where there were some puzzles that were like, ah, yeah, I figured that without satisfying. And there were a lot where it was just like, okay, they, you gotta do this and you gotta do that. You gotta like this. This, every, every puzzle feels like a lot of thought was put into it and, and there's like a satisfying answer.

And there's also a joke to that, you know, like, yeah, it is satisfying when you solve them. But there are times where you can solve a puzzle and then screw it up in like the final minutes where you like accidentally push a block into a place that now you can't get to the door. You know? Yeah. I like that. You can never, yeah, I like that about it because you can never be like too confident and, you know, it's great that there's no time limit. Time limit would have killed this game for me personally. Oh, yeah. Because you really have to look at everything that's going on.

And, you know, again, like that's why I was saying it was like feel good. Like everything's cute. There's never, you know, like other than those skulls that kind of like rush at you, there's really never any inherent danger as long as you're taking care of the whatever's at hand. You know? Those Medusa things too. Like as long as you've blocked them, they're not really a threat. So, I don't know. Like I appreciate that the game lets you go slow because ultimately this is a thinking game. This is not an action game.

Right. Yeah. And even the skulls, I mean, while that is action-y and you're running from them and whatnot, you wake them up. Like your actions wake them up. They're usually just somewhere still on the level until you do something. Usually it's collecting like a certain number of hearts or whatever. But you wake them up. So, even that, you think about, okay, where do I want to be when I wake them up so I can get to the pearl before they get to me?

And that sounds really simple. But sometimes it's actually like pretty complex like, because not to get like way into the nitty gritty, but like sometimes there are tiles you can only go over in one direction. So, once you cross this way, you can't go back. And you got to think about how can I loop around and be far enough away from these skulls? And how can I get them somewhere where they're not going to catch me? It's a lot to think about. Even the action-y parts are puzzly.

Yeah. There's this like micro-planning moments where you have your main plan of what you're going to do and then how you're going to accomplish each part of that too. It's like a puzzle within a puzzle.

This conversation sort of reminds me specifically when you're talking about the how you don't like the skulls are reacting to you. Like you control when the skulls do their thing. And it reminded me of a video I watched by Mark Brown of the Game Maker's Toolkit. And I think it's sort of like one of the defining characteristics of a puzzle game. And it's that you have perfect information. Like you may need to like experiment a little bit to understand the mechanics of a certain thing.

But when you look at the screen, it might take you some time to fully comprehend everything that's going on. But all you need to know is what's on the screen. And I guess that's just me describing what a puzzle game is. But this does it very well. And there's no weird like cheap things that kind of mess with that.

I don't know if you guys agree or if I'm just sort of rambling right now. But I just really like that. Well, I have one complaint. I have one complaint about the game that, you know, I'm not sure how they would solve this to be honest. Because I wouldn't want more items littered on the screen or anything or more treasure chests. But it is a little strange in a game where you're, you know, you have limited resources with, you know, the amount of eggs you can shoot.

And the power-ups you get. But they are like locked behind certain hearts that you collect that you wouldn't have that information beforehand. You know, like you see how many eggs you have available at the, you know, after like a certain thing. And sometimes you collect hearts and they don't do anything.

And then other times they'll give you two additional eggs. That is true. You're right. Like per puzzle. Or like you'll collect one and it's like, cool, now you've unlocked the ladder. And it's like, but I wouldn't have known that I was going to get that ladder before I collected that heart. And this isn't like the kind of game where you need to know everything. But it did feel strange that that information isn't communicated to you.

Considering that you have to kind of try to solve the puzzle from the beginning without that information available to you. I agree. Like I will, it does, like if it's a level that has power-ups, like it does tell you that that power-up will happen. Like it's just sort of like not activated yet. But it doesn't tell you like how many hearts you need to activate that. So I do agree with you there.

Yeah, it does. See, and I'm of mixed feelings on that too. Because I did kind of like that. I think though that that brings to attention a flaw in the fact that you have lives. I didn't mind the idea of like you learn and like you might be like, oh, okay. Oh, on my third one, I get this. I'm going to start over and try it this way now. But because you have lives, that makes it like a little unfair that you're going to have to waste a life just because you didn't know.

But also there is some indication. It's still not perfect. But you know, when you're about to get a power-up, all the hearts on the screen sort of change colors or they start flickering a little bit. Yeah. So then you know, okay, if I'm going to get this power-up now, I want to get this heart. Because like sometimes, it's hard to even explain without an example. But like sometimes you want to make sure you only get the power-up on the right heart. Because you might, if you, you might lock yourself out of some option if you get the wrong heart. And that's the one that gives you the power-up.

So if that makes any sense, it's really hard to explain without an example. No, I get what you're saying, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so I kind of like liked in concept the idea of like stuff that you wouldn't know until you did it.

But yeah, in practice, sometimes it is kind of, it is a little unfair to the player. Well, I agree with that, Joe. I actually, I forgot about the blinking thing. So that is an interesting way to communicate it and solves my note because I wouldn't want, you know, you don't want the ladder. Ladder on the, on the screen itself. And then you have to collect that as well because that's, I don't know. Like that's, it's making the screen messier, but it also like kind of gives away an obvious placement for the ladder. Mm-hmm. And I keep saying ladder, but you can use it as like a bridge or whatever. It's not really to climb. You can't climb anything in these games. It's a pre-built bridge that looks like a ladder. There you go. Exactly.

There you go.

Not to, not to harp on this feel-good thing. I don't know why I'm bringing it up again, but like aesthetically, like this is, this is a fun game to like, to look at and play. And I think that that's also worth something, right? Like a lot of times we just play games that, you know, they're NES games, so they're kind of old and they don't look great or they, um, or they're outdated, you know, something

about this game, you know, I could see it on a phone today and not, and not think twice about it. But yeah, he's got this cute little waddle when he walks around and when you pick up items, it plays, this is something I noticed, the little jingle that plays when you unlock a special item is very similar to the jingle that plays when Kirby gets an extra life in the Kirby games. And it's made by HAL Laboratories.

And I looked up to see if the composer is the same and it's not. So what I'm guessing is they kind of really liked this sound and used it to make Kirby sounds afterwards.

And Kirby is probably the most like, you know, wholesome character that Nintendo has right now. So, but like Lolo, you know, I mean, it's great that you mentioned HAL there because like Lolo also has, you know, a bunch of other games and stuff too. Lolo was like their first version of Kirby, right? Like he's almost like the prototype of Kirby. You know, he doesn't transform or anything like that, but he doesn't have, you know, like the way he looks is almost like a Kirby-like figure, right? Just some hands, some feet, otherwise just a giant circle. Shaped like a friend. There you go.

Also, nitpicky thing, now that I'm thinking about it, because I'd love to tear this game to shreds and just dunk on it. The treasure chest. Kind of weird that you can walk over it, right? Yeah, that was weird to learn. You can't walk over many things in this game and now all of a sudden like the treasure chest, you can just step right on. That's a deal breaker for me. I think any enjoyment that I had from this game before is lost. Yeah, just video games in general, honestly. Yeah, I'm done.

Life. The first time that you had to walk on the chest to complete the puzzle, that one took me so long to figure out how to do it. Because you weren't thinking to walk over the chest. Yeah, because I didn't think that was an option. Right. That's funny. And see, like I think the game probably knew that too. The game probably was aware of that. Was the teaching moment.

You know, if this game was like a Pac-Man puzzle game, right? Where Lolo was Pac-Man and everything just had like, you know, it was the ghosts of Blinky Inky and stuff like that. And instead of the hearts, it was power pellets that you collect and stuff. You know, is that a good idea? Should I pitch that to Namco?

No. I think you should just because they apparently think it's a bad idea. Well, I mean, I think that that kind of, it brings up the urgency again. And something that I like about this game is that there's no urgency to complete anything unless you got the monsters starting to chase you. But it was all like that. Or are you saying just re-skin it as Pac-Man?

Re-skin it. Oh, like just... Hell yeah. Do it. Go for it. Well, to what you were saying though, Sam, about there like not being an urgency, what I like about, if you were to take away those moving characters, those moving enemies that like chase you, you could play this game. This could be a board game. I mean, you could play this game and like, okay, this tile has this rule, this tile has that rule. As long as you follow the rules, it's just as interesting of a puzzle.

Honestly, the more I'm thinking about, the more moving elements there are that I'm forgetting about. Yeah, you have to roll to die to see if the pink guys shoot you in time. Yeah, yeah. That's the one, right? The pink guys are the ones that you can still get out of the way of their shots. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But you can do a little redesign, make an actual physical board game, go backwards a little bit. For sure. All right, so there's 50 levels in this game, which we found out, you know, the way, the correct way to say that, according to Google, is 10 floors of five.

That makes sense. For 50 rooms. Makes sense to me. I don't know. I don't like it. I don't like 10. I would not describe my house like that. I wouldn't say my house has three floors of four. Would you say that you have six or half a dozen? Right. I wouldn't say I have a half dozen rooms. How many Super Mario levels are there?

Well, yeah, there's, that's funny. I'm going to say there are eight by four. Yeah. There you go. No, I would never say that, though. But you could say there's eight worlds of four. I would say there's 32 levels. All right, whatever. Well, yeah. I would say there's... If the question is strictly there, you're just giving more information if you say there's eight worlds of four. But yeah, 32 levels is more natural.

After you do these 50 levels, which, you know, I guess like towards the end they add lava as like a component. Love lava. Yeah, but it never like, you know, like I said, the enemies don't ever like start becoming more aggressive or anything like that. It's just pure puzzle gameplay. If you make it to all 50 levels, though, you finally reach King Egger, who's the guy who took Princess Lala from Lolo at the, you know, the beginning with the very cute cut scene where they're like extending arms out to each other. But you don't fight the evil King Egger. I don't know if that's a problem or not. It seems kind of cheap that you would just solve 50 puzzles and then the like ending of the game would reveal itself in a cut scene.

Like it feels like they could have made a special puzzle room dedicated to him. Yeah. Like I don't know. Like, yeah, some some kind of way you have to like he's always moving, but you have to trap him. Yeah, that would work. It's not. But they didn't do it. They didn't. Do you feel robbed? Like did anybody beat this game and was like, what the hell was that? I actually wasn't able to beat this game. Um, I, I got pretty far, but I wasn't, um, there's still some content for me to get through.

Yeah. I got, I got to like floor seven or something. Uh, I do plan on beating it, but it's time consuming. I mean, you, you, cause you got to really think about each puzzle, but I do want to try and try and jump back in and beat it. Um, but yeah, to your, to your question, uh, I think it would be cool. It would definitely be a plus if there was like a, like a cool final boss puzzle. But, um, but I'm not like, I'm not super upset that it's not there. I'm still just loving the puzzles. It is weird, uh, story wise that he's just like, well, you solved the puzzles, so you win. Right. Like all you had to do was just like walk up to his door and he would, he's just like, ah, son of a, yeah.

I think that's funny. It's like a swipe or no swiping situation. Right. You know, like up, he said it. So, yeah, you know, maybe he just respects, he respects the intelligence, you know, he's I was looking for like things about the development of adventure of Lolo. Cause it seems like something that should have some information on it was made by Hal and everything. But all I could find was this article from the Washington post called fanning the flames of Nintendo fever.

And it was just about like Nintendo in general at that time. And like how, you know, people were worried, like kids are only playing video games. Their minds are going to be destroyed and everything like that. And in the article, like a Nintendo representative commented that Nintendo was trying to stretch kids imaginations with the adventures of Lolo. It's weird that he would signal out adventures of Lolo and not like super Mario brothers, a game that would also like, I think stretch kids imaginations, but maybe not in a learning fashion. No, that's just jumping on guys heads, you know, I'd say Zelda. Yeah. Zelda. Sure. Right. Like it just seems weird to call out Lolo, right? Like name drop them like that.

He got paid. Like you guys didn't even know who Lolo was, right? Like you had no idea. I'd never heard of this game. I knew it from that video from that Nirvana, the band, the show. So I'll have to link it again. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I actually had heard of this game before and I knew that this was one that a lot of people held dear and it was kind of an adventure puzzle game.

But and so that's what I knew about it, which I feel like it's a decent amount going into it. Yeah. And I, you know, that was pretty much like my experience as a kid was like, I would say just as much as you knew, you know, I'm like, yeah, it's a puzzle game. I never really thought about it afterwards. I was never like, oh, I hope Lolo comes to Smash Brothers or anything like that.

What I didn't know is that the Adventures of Lolo is actually a combination of games from the Famicom Eggerland series. And when I say combination of games, I mean, they, they already had like two or three Eggerland games on the Famicom and they combined like some levels from here and some levels from there and polished it up and everything to create the Adventures of Lolo. It's not just like, you know, Eggerland is the Japanese series and Adventures of Lolo is what they call it in America. They actually like made a new game based off of like two older games. And I think that's probably not a common situation in video games where you're like, oh, well, we're going to just take two games that we made beforehand and make them one game.

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting way to go about it. And we will get the Adventures of Lolo two and three. They are coming. Look forward to them. I'm not sure if they had any twists because I never had those. I think those are a little more expensive than Adventure of Lolo. So I probably didn't get that when I got my NES. Well, we're the ones that set the prices on these games. So if you want, you can just make it a little cheaper. Yeah. I'm like, actually they printed 5 million copies of Adventures of Lolo two and three. So you should just not buy those.

Lolo and Lala will continue to make appearances in Hal's other series. As Sam mentioned, Kirby, they do appear from time to time. I think even once they appeared as enemies, like bosses, which is strange.

But I don't know if you, if that rings a bell for you now, Sam, if you've played those early Kirby games. But Lolo and Lala are totally in those games. I played the, the remake of the first one on Game Boy Advance. But. Oh, okay. Yeah. So maybe I just missed it. Right. I think we'll link it in the show notes to their exact appearance because I can't remember off the top of my head either. And then the Eggerland series, remember that Japanese one? That continued for a while, all the way to a game called Eggerland for Windows 95.

And get ready for this, Joe. Eggerland for Windows 95 allows players to create their own Eggerland maps with a level creation program known as Construct Mode. So if you were having fun with Wrecking Crew way back in 85, you're going to love 1995 with Eggerland for Windows 95. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Although I think it might just like bring to light how much work goes into a puzzle game.

Because I feel like if I were trying to make a puzzle, you know, in this style, it would take me a long time to make some good ones. So I think we've run the course on what we can say about The Adventures of Lolo, except for one little thing. There's one other thing we can say about The Adventures of Lolo. And that is whether it is an essential game or not on a little thing we like to call the Essential Games List.

Sam, take me through your vote. All right. I think that this game is super charming. It has a very clear concept and like a very clear principle. And it sticks to that the entire time.

And each part of it is really polished also. There's nothing that feels like an afterthought, which sometimes we see in games like this that have kind of not the same layout, but the same design on every floor. There's nothing that feels like just, all right, we'll just phone it in for this part of this level or anything. It all feels very intentional. If you want to play like a retro puzzle game, I feel like this is a perfect game to do it. And so for that, I see no reason why this shouldn't be an essential game. That is one vote for The Adventures of Lolo. Sean, your vote.

Yeah, this was a huge surprise for me. I had never heard of this. I wasn't looking forward to this, but I really, really enjoyed this game. So without saying much more, I guess I'm just going to say that I also vote this game essential. Now that's really close to putting it on the Essential Games List. Joe, what are you going to do about it? All right. I love puzzle games in the first place. I didn't know this was a puzzle game going into it.

But I think that really every level in this game feels like a satisfying puzzle, which so far isn't really something I think we've had yet on the NES. I think we've had games where even like Wrecking Crew, some of the puzzles were satisfying, but not all of them. And I think because of that and because of the combination of what's already been said, I think this is the first like really good puzzle game on the NES. Wrecking Crew is one of my personal favorites, but I think that this one actually like nails all of the positives down and gets it right.

And I'm excited to go back to it. So, yeah, I'm with you guys. I'm going to vote at Essential. All right. And with that, it's on the Essential Games List. I have no power over the situation, but I will add that for me, when I'm playing these NES games, it's very noticeable how early in the game dev cycle like we are in terms of video games that I play. Because, like, you know, I play video games from all generations. So, when I play a video game today, I expect something a lot different than when we go back and play these NES games.

Like, I'm able to suspend, you know, no different than when you watch an old film, right? Like a silent film or something like that. You have to be able to say, like, well, that's how it was back then and watch it with that in mind. And I have no problems doing that. But with a lot of these NES games, you run into a problem where they just didn't think it all the way through. They just kind of, like, created code for enemies to spawn in certain places. And they, you know, there's a difficulty spike that is just unreasonable or something happens that, you know, with the controls that, like, the character controls awkwardly.

This has a lot of, like, things going for it because it's a puzzle game, right? So, they had to think of these puzzles in a certain way and work backwards from that. So, it's tough to say, like, you know, oh, you know, like, those action games from the NES, like, they kind of stink because they weren't thinking about, like, where enemy placement should be and how the character should move in all situations. And it's much easier to do that in a puzzle game.

But it's worth noting that this game feels incredibly polished and, like, the game, you know, the developers actually took the time to go through each level and solve it backwards and make an entertaining game that doesn't have, like, one solution. That everybody must solve it the same exact way. There are plenty of ways to get stuck, but it's not like you have to play it a certain way and that, like, you just read a wiki when you get stuck or something like that. Like, you can totally figure these puzzles out.

And so, I think that's what's going to put it on the Essential Games list for me is that it just feels like it's a step beyond most games we play on the NES right now. You know, who knows where we'll net out, if other developers will catch up or not. But I would say that Hal really did something incredible here because, well, the gameplay loop might fall stale after 50 levels of the same thing over and over again. You really have to appreciate the amount of, you know, thought they put into the levels and the overall, like, appearance and control of the game. So, absolutely, for me, it's an essential game.

Hell yeah. That's four for four. It happens pretty often these days. We don't meet up beforehand to discuss these things, if anybody's wondering. I know that there's a spread in Las Vegas for whether the current episodes of Nostalgia will be essential or not. And for that reason, we are always investigated by the SEC to make sure that we are not – why would this stop? Why would they be investigating us? We also get calls from OSHA a lot for some reason. I'm not really sure why.

Yeah, but – I'm not wearing a helmet, so. I say that it happens pretty often that we all vote essential, but that's not necessarily true because Joe and Sam voted essential for Marble Madness and me and Sean turned it down. And Joe turned down Tecmo Bowl, but we stopped him anyway. And I voted Jairus essential and you guys are, like, still laughing. Well, let's not forget about Zelda 2. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Did that come out? It still hurts. It came out? Yeah, you don't even remember it.

You repressed the memory of your biggest mistake. Well, I'll tell you, there's a game coming out for the NES every Friday. No, not brand new games, but episodes of Nostalgia. And next week we have Omegon, which has probably the craziest box art for an NES game we've seen thus far. Don't worry. We'll definitely talk about it on the episode. But if you want to get a sneak peek, just go look at the Omegon box art on Google or something if you know about Google. And I think, like, that's just crazy.

I don't know what kind of game we're going to get there, but I'm excited to play it. I'm excited to play all these games, good and bad. The games don't have to be essential. I've had a great time playing, you know, Star Soldier. I don't know. That's just, like, the first thing that came to my head. But, like, I had a good time playing that game. It didn't get on the essential games list. But, like, that's the fun of going back and discovering these old games. And that's why we hope you guys play along with us.

You, the listeners, should absolutely, you know, see these games. And if you want to see which games are coming up next, don't wait until the previous episode releases and then you have only one week to play them. On our Twitter, at NostalgiaCast, I have a pinned post that says the next four games that are coming. That's right. You can play up to four weeks in advance and you're going to need it for some of these RPGs. I know we got Dragon Warrior coming up. We've got Mega Man 2. We've got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We've got a game called Mystery Quest. That sounds like a mystery to me.

All right. That's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me at Esposito Film on Twitter. Remember, you can always find Nostalgia at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. And why don't you tweet at us and let us know if you think Adventures of Lolo is an essential game or not. We'll see you next time.