NES box art for The Guardian Legend, the cover of NEStalgia episode 176

176 · The Guardian Legend

▶ Game info

VerdictEssential

GenreAdventure

ReleasedApril 1989

SeasonSeason 5

DeveloperCompile

PublisherBrøderbund

Ranked #9 in our Top 10 NES Games of 1989 →

June 25, 2021 · 1 hr 15 min · transcript available

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In the far future, Earth is a peaceful place with very few worries. To ensure it stays that way, a top secret project was authorized: the creation of the guardian suit. It's a suit of flight armor that allows the guardian to survive any environment. It's a good thing too, because a giant space station is spotted on a collision course with Earth.

SHOW NOTES

The Guardian Legend Longplay

Compile Shmups

Zanac episode

JENOVA

Guardic

Super Star Force

Sigma Star Saga

Our verdict: Essential

The title had us guessing sword and sorcery or an RPG. It turned out to be a shmup fused to a top-down, Zelda-and-Metroid style adventure, made by Compile and published by Broderbund. You play the Guardian, a robot woman who turns into a fighter ship, trying to stop an alien planet from reaching Earth.

What makes it essential

Two games, both real. The labyrinth "areas" are the bulk of the game, and the shmup "corridors" are how you travel between them. Other NES genre mashups felt half-baked next to this. Even a player who normally hates shmups looked forward to the corridors, like collecting little shmup levels as progress markers.
One arsenal, two modes. Twelve sub weapons, each upgradeable, work in both the overworld and the ship. They have different jobs: a ring that circles you and soaks up bullets, a beam sword, a Y-shaped spread that lets you dodge while still hitting a boss. You don't need any of them to progress, so two players can end up with different builds.
A story you uncover. A lost log from a previous Guardian ("I'm dead, but here's what to do"), and the shmup stretches fit the plot as travel between areas. The text is clear enough to follow, which is not a given on the NES.
Bosses and mobs with personality. The boss pixel art is beautiful and none feel like filler. One early spider just keeps multiplying until you flee.
Care in the margins. The manual's how-to-play section is three short paragraphs and says everything. Beat the game and you get a short password, TGL, that unlocks Corridor Rush, a shmup-only mode where weapons are earned by score.

What drags

A brutal opening. The first shmup corridor ends with a boss covered in dozens of opening eyes, the hardest boss we faced. Joe nearly quit before discovering the rest of the game, and we'd have eased players in.
Samey halls. Long labyrinths with similar tiles and few landmarks. Without the X/Y coordinates on the map we'd have been lost.
Gray block busywork. Shooting every block to find a power-up or a hole was the most repetitive part, and the areas only get bigger.
Sheer length. We didn't finish it, and Joe found out afterward he was only about halfway. Without its password system it would have been dead on arrival.

Beyond the game

It's a sequel to the 1986 MSX shmup Gardik, and the Japanese box art looks like a nightmare version of Jenova. Commercials sold it on Zelda, which spoils the surprise. For more, we pointed to Super Star Force on the Famicom and Sigma Star Saga on Game Boy Advance.

The bottom line

Essential. Everyone voted yes, and Joe said his wish to see it on the list only grew the more he played. The nitpicks are real and so is the length, but it's like nothing else on the system and we were glad we played it. Skip it and you've missed a game worth playing.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

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

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The Guardian Legend. Long ago, in a distant galaxy, an alien race sent a huge world, Naju, hurtling towards Earth, loaded with a cargo of mysterious lifeforms.

NOSTALGIA And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Joe, the back of the box starts with long ago in a distant galaxy. That's kind of Star Wars, right? Like... Doesn't ring any bells. Doesn't ring any bells at all. But yeah, I mean, I guess they're just, you know, they're going with the tropes. You know, that's a good way to get your space opera fans. The one example of space opera with galaxies long ago. Not anymore.

And also, you know, the Guardian Legend, right? I don't think immediately of like, a shmup, that's for sure. I definitely don't think I'm about to play a shmup. But I also wouldn't expect an adventure game. The Guardian Legend, to me, sounds like an RPG. Sean, what kind of game did you think we were going to play?

Yeah, I didn't have any real prediction for what the genre was going to be. But setting, I was way off. When I heard Guardian Legend, I thought this was going to be sort of like a sword and sorcery sort of thing and not so much a sci-fi thing. As I said, it does sort of like, give me the vibe of like, that's why I said space opera. I mean, partially because of Star Wars, but also like, gives me that vibe of like a, like a sword and sorcery thing that was set in a futuristic setting. So I get it. Maybe it's just the title that does that for me. The title just confuses me, like, you know, just syntactically, if that's a word.

I think we were talking about this in the sort of, you know, rump of the last episode. I don't really get what a better, I think like the Legend of the Guardian would make more sense. But that's just me. Legend of the Guardian sounds good. But I would argue that the Guardian Legend is just fine. Because, you know, that would be like, that's more of like the title, you know, the Guardian Legend is what people refer to that legend as.

Any biters? I would say, I think it's kind of, yeah, it's like, it adds to a little bit of a mystery to it. It's not, it's not quite in the way that like the, the layman vernacular would say it. Am I a layman to you? Yes. Oh, okay.

Well, we've talked a lot about the title, and we've talked a lot about what this game could or maybe sounds like it is based on just the title alone. But it was kind of surprising to find out that this is an action adventure shmup game, where you control a humanoid robot who can also transform into a spaceship. And is obviously known as the Guardian, that's her name. And in a quest to destroy a large alien infested world, which I think we refer to in the back of the box as Najoo, which could be Naboo.

Again, just more Star Wars stuff. However, since this game is 89 and Naboo was 2001 or something, I think, you know, George Lucas probably watched a lot of the Guardian Legend as he was preparing for his prequel films. Oh yeah, I think I saw that in one of the behind the scenes. He watched it. The behind the scenes, yeah. Yeah, he watched it, he didn't play it. His big brother was playing it, and he had to watch. Right, right, exactly. Everybody remembers Steve Lucas. 45, 50 year olds.

So, action shmup, adventure shmup, action adventure shmup, whatever you want to call it. You know, have we seen something like this before on the NES, where like two genres get merged into one game?

Yeah. The closest thing we saw was like Blaster Master was kind of like this, right? Where you get in your vehicle, you get your vehicle combat. I guess it's not really necessarily like a different, it doesn't change from like a scrolling shmup into like something else, but it definitely, it changed the context of each battle. Yeah, definitely different modes of play. Anyway, I think this is one of the most, like there's a bigger disparity between the genres that we've seen in prior implementations of this.

Yeah, I don't think we've had a shmup with, maybe we have. I feel like we had to have, right? What? A shmup with another kind of game tacked on? No, I feel like every shmup we've played so far on the system has been a shmup with maybe some sort of like, you know, experience system attached to it. You know, I think we've had a couple of games that I wouldn't primarily consider shmups that suddenly had like shmup elements, like the reverse. Like what was, I think like Golgol 13 had like the helicopter shmup, which is like a little mini game that you do every couple of levels.

And I think there was like one other like that where it's like, oh, now you're on the shmup part and now you're back in your regular part. Like the shmup was like an aside. Yeah. Whereas this, it almost feels like 50-50. Yeah, we've definitely played games that have like genre combinations, but they're a lot more like half-baked, I'd say. Yeah. And so the shmup side is very familiar to developer of this game Compile because they're known for making some of the best shmups of all time.

And so I think, you know, there's the shmup part of this game, and we'll break these all down later, but there's the shmup part of this game that is very much like how we've been playing these and how we experienced them. But the action-adventure side chose more of a Legend of Zelda and Metroid-style approach where it is that, you know, top-down dungeon interface from Legend of Zelda. But I also say Metroid because you can choose to skip objects, to wait for later to collect certain things. You can go back. You can skip certain areas.

So it was interesting to see a game where the, you know, like, it's 50-50 between the shmup and the Zelda part, but the Zelda part is definitely the more consequential part of it because that really depends on what you do in terms of power-ups and upgrades and exploration. And the shmup side is more like the minigame explanation of how you travel between the different areas on the planet.

Yeah, I'd say the time you spend in this Zelda-like sort of setting is much higher than the amount of time you're playing the shmup. Yeah, but I'll say that, you know, for a group of, well, I can't speak for you guys, obviously, but none of us really love shmups, am I right, normally? I'm a pretty big fan. Okay, maybe I'm projecting.

Okay, so we got, like, the Goldilocks thing. I hate shmups, but I was actually found myself, like, looking forward to the shmup sections, and I think that they found, like, a perfect balance for it. Like, it was really, it felt like I was collecting shmup levels. Like, it felt like I was, like, that's my goal. Like, I had to get to the next shmup part, but getting there was really fun and finding it. And I found it, and I'm like, oh, here we go, another shmup, which is, like, not what I've ever wanted before. The bite-sized shmup, which is the perfect size shmup.

Yeah, exactly. It's like another little thing, like, oh, if I get this, it just gives you a really good sense of progress. So I think that that, this is, for me, like, the perfect amount of shmup.

Is shmup sounding weird to anyone else? We're saying it enough times now. But I would say, Joe, I agree with you, but also, like, it's really cool how all of this, whether, you know, depending on which genre of the game you're playing or which part of the game you're in, it's all explained very coherently in the story, you know?

The idea that, like, you know, you start in the shmup form and you're kind of entering the planet and, you know, you're hitting area zero. You know, that's smart and everything like that, but that's just, like, you know, okay, that's expected. Like, that's just the start of the game or whatever. But then to have, like, the lore explained to you while you're playing and then, like, the exploration aspect, like, things slowly get revealed to you.

But then also where the shmup part comes in again to get you from area zero to one to two is a really neat way of, like, telling that in the story of how you're getting between the areas. And I don't think we've really seen too many games that care about mixing story and gameplay. You know, I think, not to its fault, but, like, Ninja Gaiden was one of those things where, like, story was only ever delivered in cutscenes after you finished levels. And that's fine, but it's cool to see it done while you're playing the game.

Yeah, and that said, I mean, most of the story is still, like, text on a screen, which is still sort of impressive to me. Because, like, I'd say 90% of the games on this platform leave the story to exist within the contents of the manual.

So I'm still happy about that. But I do also agree that I really appreciated this game's use of, like, sort of contextual or, like, interactive storytelling, where the actual things that you're doing within the game make sense to the game world, which is, like, another line that hasn't really been crossed too much in the games that we've played. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Like, instead of you having to, instead of it feeling like every once in a while the game tells you a little more of the story, it's like you're organically uncovering what's happening. You're discovering it for yourself as you go. So it feels more like you're actually on this adventure rather than, like, your hand being held.

Yeah. Environmental storytelling. That's sort of what I meant. Yeah. For sure. And I think, you know, the difference is, of course, is just most video games, you know, especially back then, were just broken up in, like, level formats, right? Like, I think Metroid and probably Zelda 2 were the only ones where it was, like, continuous gameplay from beginning to end, where, you know, like, you were just exploring the world and constantly unlocking new things.

And this fits kind of nice with those games. And we're going to bring them up a lot because there's just a lot of parallels to them. I just found it surprising that I've never heard of the Guardian Legend before. Like, I'm not trying to hype the game up or anything, but when you say Legend of Zelda and Metroid, and then talk about other games in that category, you know, the fact that we're talking about the Guardian Legend, it's kind of surprising, right? Yeah. This, yeah, the fact that I still didn't know what sort of world this game took place in sort of speaks to that.

And, like, it's so, it's still such an early game that you'd think that it would still be talked about, even if they thought it was bad, like, as, like, an early attempt of future exploratory games.

So let's talk about that top-down exploration mode when you're the one that's going to be talked about. In the humanoid form first, because that is the bulk of the game.

We describe this as Zelda-like, you know, when you're in the dungeons, you know, you have your grid and you move between squares to uncover new parts of the area. It's all nonlinear, though. And it's represented, your space in the layout of the labyrinth is, like, in X and Y. So you're in, like, X8, Y9, and you move accordingly to find new stuff. What did we think of just, like, the exploration as a whole as you're going through this? Should it have been more guided? Was it fun to explore? Was it helpful that there was a map of some sort, like a mini-map? Did that help? Joe, we'll start with you.

Yeah, I think it—I really appreciate this kind of gameplay, if it's done right, where there's a lot of, like, you uncover things that you can't access yet, and you have to figure out how and then come back to it. And it—now, admittedly, I didn't beat this game. I actually, after watching some videos afterwards, like, realized this is a really long game. So I definitely have a lot more to go. But, like, I was getting to a point where I was starting to know my way around different sections of the planet, you know.

And I think that was because it organically makes me remember, like, oh, okay, there's this—what do you call them? Like, a doorway or a gateway or whatever here that I don't have unlocked. Later on, I unlock moon doors. And then I'm like, oh, there was a moon door back there. And you figure that out. And I think that that was, like, a good way to get you to, like, enjoy the exploration. Because, you know, you're going through, you're fighting all these enemies on the screens and stuff, and it would be easy for it to all just kind of blur together. But it gives you reason to contextualize where you are in the world.

Yeah, I like the—I like what they did with this. I think the one thing that I had a problem with was how—if it's going to be a game this big, and if it's going to be a labyrinth, I need a little bit more set dressing, I think. Like, because a game this big, a game this long, the majority of your game time is going to be sort of on—like, in these same hallways with the same, like, sort of color scheme. I don't know if it bothered you guys as much as it bothered me. And I do know that there are other, like, sort of tile sets later in the game when you get into different areas. But I did think that the environments felt a little samey.

For sure. The environments definitely have that problem, you know, where if you didn't have the X and Y markings on the map, I would be very lost at times because I'd be unsure if, like, I was just heading around in a circle or what have you. But also, like, there's another problem with everything looking the samey in the sense of if you have to explore— you know, if you're the kind of gamer that I am, and you have to explore everything anyway just to make sure you don't miss any particular things. I mean, it's not like these are—it's not like there's secrets to uncover. It's just that, like, make sure you visit every place to find all the different power-ups that you could find before you move on to the next area.

When you play like that, you know, it doesn't really help to make it, you know, have a lot of backtracking and have a lot of, like, oh, I'm not quite sure if I'd been here before. Like, it would have been helpful if the mini-map maybe had, like, a way that you could eventually unlock, like, where the power-ups are or if you collected that power-up so you know, like, okay, I shouldn't head back that way. It's definitely—I'm not asking for it to hold my hand or anything like that. I wouldn't want it to tell me which order and where to go for things.

But, you know, for me, the exploration was missed a little because instead I was just kind of making sure that I hit every single X, Y coordinate. Yeah, and when there isn't, like, anything special about any one tile aside from, like, this is where this key is or this is where this pickup is, it's not as fun to navigate.

Like, if there were some, like, cool—like, if this tile was the one with the, I don't know, the, like, ruined building in it or if there were just more—if there were just more unique landmarks, I think I could have gotten behind it a bit more. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, Natu, and I think that, like, even with the obstacles, there are always those, like, tile cover things. Like, where in Zelda you have, like, a tree and you have, you know, a rock and things like that or there's just, like, nothing like that there.

Although I will say to the idea of having—making it a little more clear where the power-ups are, I mean, I'm not sure, but I imagine that the intent wasn't for people to play the way that a lot of people like us play now today where it's, like, we've got to get everything, got to unlock everything.

Because I do sort of like the idea that it's, like, if we're not playing like that and we're just playing and seeing what we end up with and, like, going where we need to go and whatever power-ups we find along the way we get, it's kind of cool that, like, I can compare my character to your character and we can have, like, totally different power sets. And I think that's kind of, like, neat. It makes it a little more, like, personalized to, like, your journey.

Now, the only problem there, Joe, is that the shmup stages, which we aren't going to talk about right now, you know, they're pretty darn hard, especially later on, and you can use the power-ups that you collect in the humanoid form as your shmup form. So I would argue that you want a lot of those power-ups to help you during the shmup stages. So you kind of do want to make sure you collect a lot of that stuff because if you're like me and didn't collect some of those things, you're going to have a really hard time getting through the shmup stages.

Do you necessarily think that you need all of them? Like, I feel like for the shmup stages I did, I usually would find one that works really well for that stage. Yeah, you're right. But, like, I wouldn't switch between them too much. So, like, and then maybe that would also give me a reason to be like, I'm not ready for this yet. I got to go find some stuff, you know, like explore. But, yeah, then it wouldn't hurt to, I guess, have, like, a map to some of it or something like that.

What you mentioned with the weapons working in both gameplay elements is what I think this game really made this something new was not only do you have this really cool animation of your space girl turning into a freaking fighter jet, but then all of those weapons that you're using on the overworld also have an equivalent in the shmup game space.

I thought that that was just really neat and really, and really polishy. You know what I mean? For sure. Yeah. I thought it was a really nice touch too. You know, we didn't talk about the combat when you're the humanoid form, which thankfully is not a melee weapon like Link's sword. It's actually a gun that you shoot off. And for some reason, I couldn't tell or not, but, like, it looks like it has really good rapid fire even from the start. Like, I think it gets more rapid, but it shoots pretty constantly if you hold it down.

And I appreciated that. But also just the idea that, like, when you're dealing with enemies on screen, it's a little different than how you dealt with them in Zelda because now you take on everything from a distance. You don't really want to be close to these spawning enemies.

And so, you know, we were talking about, like, you know, okay, I've been here before, and it's a chore to find that out and then get out of it. But it's really not because backtracking and getting from tile to tile is actually pretty easy in this game because you can run through tiles before everything spawns, or you can shoot at things and take care of them from a distance. I appreciated the combat in this Zelda-like clone aspect of it because of the projectile versus melee weapon.

Yeah. And I think they made it so that you could skip any fight, you could skip any encounter, but the economy of the game only works if you do fight some of these, and sometimes they will just straight up get in your way. So I think that they had a good balance of how much combat you could or could not actually enter. So, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, yeah. And also, I mean, am I crazy here? Do you level up based on your score?

Maybe. I leveled up and my health went up a few times randomly, and I assumed it was always like, well, I was killing things. So I just assumed it's like, oh, the more things you kill, the more you level up. So, like, that incentivized me again to attack and not just run through everything, you know? But it also never felt like I needed to go grind. Maybe it will later in the game, but so far it hasn't felt like that.

Yeah, it never felt like a grind, that's for sure. And also because there's these power chips that you have to collect as well that, you know, basically that's the power chips power up your power ups, if that makes sense. But you have like 50 of these to start, and then once you run out, you can't use your, we'll call them sub weapons, so we keep saying power chips, power ups. These sub weapons can't be used once you don't have any more power chips, but you also use your power chips to buy upgrades in the shops that you find in these areas, which is a little weird that these, this like alien planet that is hurtling towards the earth also has shops on it that you can buy sub weapons to take down the said planet. But whatever.

So, you know, when you do that with the power chips, it's cool that they're, they're a currency, and they also are used to fire your sub weapons. But I couldn't help feel like it was a little easy to manage the spend versus fire, because the normal combat weapon that you have is pretty darn good against most of the,

the top down combat parts of the game. Even the sub bosses that you find when they like lock you into that current tile, you know, like an alarm goes off, and then all of a sudden you're locked in, and you have to fight the sub boss. Even that sub boss can be taken down with just your usual weapon, so you don't have to use sub weapons that often. And when you do, it either doesn't cost a lot of power chips, or you can probably find power chips in a nearby tile pretty easily. I never found, I never felt like I was running out of this cache.

Yeah, well, I actually felt like, um, I used the sub weapons quite a bit, like probably most of the time. Or I was like using both, hitting both A and B at the same time. Not because I felt like my last, what's that? You just like using that lightsaber.

The two-sided one? There's a, yeah, I think, well, first it's just, first it's just like a beam sword, right? Like it's just, yeah. Yeah, and then I don't even think I had that one. I had like a double-sided beam sword. I think that's the upgrade, yeah. Oh, okay, I must have not even used it while it was normal and upgraded it or something. The reason that I was using these sub weapons a lot was not necessarily because I thought my blaster wasn't good enough, but because it helped me to not die a lot. It helped me kill things quick enough that they wouldn't hit me first.

So like it was fun to kind of see like, oh, okay, there's a crowd of people. I'm going to use the, there's like the one that circles around you and that'll take out, it's like good for crowd control. And then there's other than just more powerful versions of your blaster. And there's one that'll just go in a straight line and kill everything on that path. And like there's a lot of reasons to switch up. So like I ended up using them actually most of the time.

Yeah, I did appreciate that they actually seem to have like a utility. They're not just like for fun. Like there's been a lot of games that they have power-ups, but there's either like one that's obviously the most efficient and there's no reason to use the others. So yeah, I like that these sort of had different use cases. I think the one that I found to be the most useful in like the overworld bosses,

or at least the few that I actually played, was one that was sort of like it send out waves behind you at 45 degree angles. Like the icon is like a Y. So that made it much easier for you to actually like move more evasively while still landing some blows on the boss. So I think that was a good example of like these weapons aren't just bigger blaster.

Yeah, yeah. Way more thought put into them than I think we're used to so far for the most part. And there's 12 of them, which is a large amount. But then as Sean mentioned, they upgrade. So there's actually, I think, technically 36 then by that, because I think that you can each upgrade three times or something like that. Don't quote me on exactly 36, but like that's a ton of variations in, you know,

and forget about just like a Zelda-like game, but in a shmup. Usually in a shmup, I think the most we ever saw was like 12, and we were like kind of amazed by that, right? Like I forget which game had that. Maybe it was like Zanuck or something. But that's pretty cool that like there's so many combinations here. And as Joe mentioned, you can compare builds with other people because, you know, he was talking about how he went right to the double-bladed sword. But, you know, some people like, you know, need certain kind of weapons earlier, but you don't need any of the weapons to actually like progress, right?

Like you could theoretically just collect the necessary amount of power chips for the upgrades to get the keys that would let you go to the next, the shmup levels are described as corridors, and the Zelda-like stages are described as areas. So you could just keep going between area and corridor, just doing the necessary stuff without using any of it. Yeah, it all comes down to like personal play style. And your regular gun actually also upgrades too. And I think when you start to use a sub-weapon, it actually downgrades.

So that's also sort of adding to the balance. But, yeah, even your regular pea shooter can turn into a giant like wave gun sort of thing. Yeah, the whole thing gives me like, it's going to sound funny, but it gives me like real Ratchet and Clank vibes. It's just like find the next cool weapon, upgrade it, and you get your whole arsenal, you know, figured out. You're exploring this world. There's flying levels. I mean, I don't know why. It's just giving me Ratchet and Clank vibes. And Ratchet and Clank is one of your best ofs, right? I'm a big Ratchet and Clank guy, yes.

The Ratchet and Clank caucus. In the Zelda games, you get those old men who give you – sorry, Zelda 1. In Zelda 2, there's some wise people though in the town that give you clues as well. But those old men would give you – Dirty old men give you – Yeah, they would give you the clues and those would be like hints that were very vague or were just very straightforward. In this game, you get hints in a similar way where the – either the shopkeepers or places that you find have these story beats or they have how to get to the next corridor.

What were we thinking about these? Were they straightforward enough or did it require some actual like, huh, I wonder what they meant by that? I think a little bit of both. I mean, there were some times where I was like, oh, that's perfectly straightforward. I think somewhere towards the beginning, there's something that says like, you'll need a special weapon to get through the barrier or something like that to get through the wall. And I was playing for a little bit and I got to the next area and there was a dead end.

And then I kept playing and I got back to that first thing and I was like, oh, I'm supposed to use the grenades to get through that. Went all the way back through, used the grenades and just didn't do anything. And I was like, okay, maybe it wasn't as obvious as I thought. But it was a little bit of a head scratcher. I was like, okay, what is this asking me to do? But it was nice to – I think it was like a good balance. What did you end up having to do? I don't know what that was telling me to do, actually.

I moved on and I didn't end up figuring out what barrier they were talking about. So I haven't done it yet. All right. But at least the game wasn't talking to you in like riddles, right? Like it wasn't anything so cryptic or a terrible translation that you couldn't figure out what to do next. But, you know, we also have the luxury of guides. And I totally went on Strategy Wiki for portions of this just to see where certain power-ups were located and stuff. And there's no shame in that. Yeah. And, you know, the game itself used –

it had a good use of the characters it was allowed where it was able to still make complete sentences, which I think is a big problem we have in other things. It's like, oh, there's only five characters? We can only make three words here? They'll get it. They'll know what we're talking about. Nobody has any clue what it's trying to say. So this one was refreshing. It's much better than Simon's Quest in that regard.

Right, right. And the overall objective of these humanoid stages is that you have to make sure that you deactivate these 10 safety devices – or, sorry, activate. You don't want to deactivate them. You want to activate the 10 safety devices that are in each of the areas. And, you know, doing that will stop the planet on its course to Earth. Well, it's a self-destruct. Yeah, I think you are deactivating the safety devices so you can self-destruct the planet. It's actually very unsafe.

Yeah, yeah. But doesn't the game word it like you have to activate safety devices? So do they mean that they're safety devices for the player? I guess safety is a relative term, you know? Yeah, yeah. I thought it was like the evil planet, which I don't think we've described yet. Like, you're on a planet that is traveling towards Earth. Like, an evil planet is traveling towards Earth to destroy Earth. It wasn't always evil, but over time it just got more evil. No, it's become evil, yes. And that planet has safety devices to prevent it from self-destructing. And you need to deactivate it so you can self-destruct it. I believe. Could be wrong.

Okay, that makes more sense to me. If you're going to get into the plot, though, we might as well talk about that shocking reveal when you first become humanoid and it has the person who previously tried to do all this and it was like, I failed, but here's what you have to do. You know, like, if you're reading this, I'm dead, but here's what you need to do. And I like to think that that is, like, previous versions of the Guardian

that tried to pull this off. Like, your other, when you get game overs, that's like, you go back and that's you. You're just a clone. Yeah, exactly. Like, now, you know, like the next, you know, similar to, like, Nier Automata where, like, you know, the next version of 2B. Yeah, which, no, I don't think that's a huge spoiler. I'm spoiled. But overall, you know, the plot, as wacky as that sounds, I was into it, you know? Giant planet hurtling towards another planet. That sounds intense. Yeah, I liked the format of, like, the lost log. Like, I'm, yeah, the whole I'm dead, but you can do this. I dug that in terms of, like, a form of storytelling. Yeah, oh, me too.

But let's get back to those self-detonation devices for a second because that's, you know, if that's your objective, right, and that's what you want to make sure you do, you know, to do that and just to explore in general, one part that we haven't really talked about is that other than enemies and tiles,

inside of each of those, you know, like, tile areas that you go to, there are these, like, gray blocks that you have to shoot at, and a lot of them are just nothing at all. But occasionally, like, you know, you'll shoot at one and it'll either reveal a power-up or reveal a hole to another part of the area or reveal something else, you know? Like, it's just, it's planted by the game. Like, it's designed to be in those specific spots. It's not random or anything. Even the power chips, they're perfectly placed where they need to be.

But I couldn't help but feel like a lot of that got, that was, like, the most repetitive part of the game. I didn't care about, like, fighting enemies over and over again or anything like that. I cared more about, like, the fact that I just have to go into these rooms and shoot these gray blocks that most of them don't even really mean anything and it just felt like I was just clearing off a stage. It didn't scratch my satisfying itch. You know, we talk about sometimes clearing something is very satisfying. This was just very tedious. Yeah, I felt like, yeah, that was definitely, like,

it felt like, oh, you just kill the enemies as an aside to the real point of the game, which is, like, the more boring thing, just shooting these blocks. But I also felt usually, unless I just missed a bunch of things, I felt that usually you can tell, like, okay, that one that's way over to the side in, like, a slightly different shade is clearly my objective.

Whereas, like, the stuff that's under, like, the main little blocks was always like, oh, if you explore, you might find a cool bonus or something. Oh, absolutely. Like, there's no, you know, if it was just that the gray blocks were only for the power-ups or for the holes, then they might as well just not be there at all, right? It might as well just be, this is where the power-up is and you see it.

But I get that. I just can't help feel like, you know, we briefly talked about the length of the game, and the areas are pretty big. They only get bigger. The game only gets longer as it goes on, and I just wonder, like, you know. The game gets longer. No, I just like the idea of that. Right, no, no, you're right. I know what you mean, too, but it is funny. The areas get bigger.

So, you know, like, usually. The nightmare. The nightmare grows. The idea of, like, you know, so you take the first area, for instance, right? And that takes a good amount of time to finish, but that's the quickest area to finish. So it's only getting longer from there, and I just wonder if there was, like, a smoother gameplay loop, not to get through these things faster, but just to make exploration more exciting and less, like, kill the enemies, shoot all the gray blocks, find out if you got anything good, on to the next tile.

Yeah. Yeah, there is a lot of repetition in this game. I think that I'm not trying to get to final ideas here with it, but I do think that, like, the moment-to-moment gameplay is interesting enough to handle that kind of repetition. But, yeah, this is definitely a game that needs its password system because I can't play this kind of game for that long of a sitting because of, like, those reasons. Yeah, definitely. If it didn't have, like, some way to save your progress, I think that this would be a big mistake. It sounds like I'm threatening them, but I just mean it would be a bad call on their part.

Joe, I know you didn't beat the game, but it sounds like you got pretty far. In terms of length, were you starting to feel its length, or did you think, like, well, because there's a password system and everything, I don't mind, you know, how long the game is because I'm enjoying the experience? The latter, definitely. I mean, I'm still looking forward to going back to it. Like I said, I actually didn't realize how not far I was. I thought I had gotten decently far, but I'm still, like, halfway through the game, if that, based on these YouTube videos. But, you know, I'm excited to keep going back to it, but only because I'm able to take breaks and pick it back up, you know?

But it feels like, you know, something that you want to put a lot of time into, and it doesn't, maybe later in the game, I mean, I can see it possibly starting to get, like, repetitive and more boring, but, like, right now I'm just, like, I'm still excited to see, like, okay, what's the next, what's the next thing, what's the next ability I unlock, and what's the next shmup level going to look like, and what's the next boss going to look like? And, yeah, even though the environments get a little samey, so far that hasn't hurt me too much. Yeah, I will say that while the environmental design

leaves a little bit to be desired, I think the enemy and boss designs make up for it pretty good. Like, these bosses are, in some cases, very badass, and in some cases just, like, really creative looking.

So I give them props on that. Yeah, the bosses are very intimidating, too. You know, like, even though they can't really do too much in terms of, like, what their designs might make you think they can do, the designs alone are really something to, you know, to strike fear into the player of, like, I got to take down that, you know? Like, we don't usually have that in NES games.

No. I think, you know, it's like when you see Bowser, right? You're like, all right, I just got to, like, run under this guy when he jumps. Like, it's, and, you know, it could be tough sometimes. Like, you don't always get it right, but it's different when you see the size of some of these bosses and, you know, the palette, too. Like, the designs and the pixel art of them is really beautiful. So not that it had, like, the best boss fights ever or anything, but they were standouts.

Yeah, and it was, like, there was consistency. Like, there wasn't just, like, oh, there's a couple that are really cool, but the rest are kind of dog shit. Like, no, like, they all feel like they still have some value to them.

And even some of the, like, just random mobs have some really cool designs to them. Like, in the first area, you'll see these spider sort of things. There'll only be, like, one spider. And then if you just let it live long enough, it's going to turn to eight spiders. And if you let that live long enough, like, that group live, it'll turn to, like, 18. And then you've got to, like, leave because you're crying because there's too many spiders. And I think that had to be close to home. But just stuff like that where different mobs have different ways that they act, too.

There's enough games that we've played where mobs are mobs and maybe one takes more hits than the other, but they act exactly the same. So I appreciated that. Yeah, definitely refreshing to see, like, the level of thought put to, like, enemy placement and design and stuff. Yeah. so let's let's get into now when you're um you know when your robot girl turns into her ship form and you're in the corridors that you know this is the shmup part of the game you know the i don't want to like start off just saying negative things about it but the first thing i noticed and this is why i'm bringing it up first is that it just it felt like everything was happening like so fast

uh you know like maybe the screen real estate was like a little more limited because of the size of the sprites or maybe it's because they didn't like hide the amount of projectiles you can shoot and the amount of projectiles enemies can shoot like this feels like way more than we're used to in our nes shmups it actually did at times feel like a bullet hell um an early one at least so i just felt like everything was happening so fast at a pace that even for you know like top-notch games like gradius and life force like we did not feel this level of urgency in some parts of the of the ship

form like i i don't want to make it seem like the whole shmup is just like you always got to be perfect or something like that no even how the game even how the game starts off you know like how the game starts off it's all happening to you very quickly uh and it's almost like a relief to like get the break and go into the humanoid form after you take care of the corridor i i agree that the the they're definitely very high energy very difficult very dense um i think that there's a few

things that sort of contribute to this um one is just sort of like there isn't as much screen real estate because you've got this entire uh heads-up display below and i feel like a lot of most shmups don't really have that much of the screen taken up by numbers um and i think the others are sort of like they're it's on purpose like there's more going on because you have a health bar and you don't

need to you don't need to be perfect or like you can take more than one or two hit like two or three hits if you have like a shield in a in some of the other shmups that we've been playing so you can tank some hits and the game is like like it's more difficult because of that but i think it would have been kind of silly to sort of scale that difficulty to a game that lets you take like 20 hits at a time

um i think that would be kind of boring no you're you're absolutely right sean uh the fact that there is a life meter and that it's replenishing too like yeah yeah they're very generous with that too yes if that wasn't the case in a bullet hell we'd we'd be screwed here absolutely yeah i also will say that i think that especially in the first level i i had the same feeling like wow why is this so rapid pace but some of that i think was a little bit of an illusion for me just because the background so fast but the enemies that come at you i feel like if you were to isolate them from the background it's not that much crazier than another schmuck faster but they're like there's fewer of them

so i i thought that like the beginning of the first level was was decently balanced as far as challenge but i will say that once i got towards the end of that first level like just before the boss battle and the boss battle itself where there are these things opening up from the ground and they're all shooting at you that took me forever like if i didn't have to play this for the podcast i would have been done with the game there i'm like i'm not into this this is too hard of a schmup

but like lucky like i didn't even know that there was more of the game i just thought it was all gonna be schmup so like when i finally beat that part i was i was um very surprised pleasantly surprised at like how much more game there was um but like that part almost like almost stopped me completely yeah there's got to be a reason why they made that so challenging like i'm not i'm not

saying it was the hardest thing in the whole game or anything obviously not but like if that's the first thing you do as a player right it would be like if in legend of zelda before you get the sword you have to take on a bunch of enemies without any weapon right it's like you don't start a game like that like you don't make it the hardest thing possible so i thought it was a little strange and i

agree joe it did take several tries to get through it because of you know just how many things are firing at you but then it's even more odd when you get to the um you know the the next corridor and it's the i think that's like the underwater one with the fish and stuff like that is that ringing a bell yeah yeah yep that's like yeah but no and like you know that actually starts off pretty slow like you these fish come down try to take care of them before they hit the bottom of the screen

because then they'll start swimming back at you you have time to make your decisions eventually you don't have time anymore but like it kind of eased you into things more whereas i don't feel like i i didn't feel eased into the game and maybe maybe that's a story thing like they're just trying to like start on a really intense note so that you feel the urgency of your mission and everything like that but it did it did feel off yeah yeah i think that like i appreciate what they were trying to do with it i i do i do think especially if your your whole game is this bet is this balancing between

the shmup levels and these top down levels uh you probably want to get your player there even if you want even if you you have like a frantic opening where it's crazy and stuff like that you probably don't want that first boss to be so tough that like some people might not even get to the next part before they write this up as a shmup not that like everybody else hates shmups other than me but

um but yeah you might you might want to like i feel like you might want to get that point across a little earlier so people kind of know what they're getting into and i will also say i do think that i mean i i faced maybe four or five i think five of those shmup bosses maybe four of them i can't remember but i i think that that first boss in the shmup thing was the hardest boss i fought so far i mean some of them definitely got pretty challenging but that first one is just like

i there's just there's like nowhere to hide oh it's just the uh this is the one with the eyes that keep opening and got blown yeah yeah there's literally like there's like 17 of them like it's not like oh you gotta hit these four spots it does get easier as you like as you fight the fight because there's less things firing at you but it's kind of it's that reverse difficulty curve there right i found that for those eye things it did help and this is just in general for this game with you know the amount of bullets and everything it helped to kind of like be at the bottom center and then when like when projectiles start to overwhelm you kind of like hug a corner and make like a

make like a circle so this way you go around all the projectiles so that they kind of go off into that corner that you were hanging out in and you come back to your uh bottom center again i i use that trick a lot and it seemed to work well it doesn't work well all the time and there are certain times where you know you just have to understand that you're going to lose a little bit of life because you need to take down some of these enemies so that you're not constantly being hit by bullets yeah right

we kind of talked about the power-ups being you know like having two uses uh both in the humanoid form and then the ship form but i feel like it's worth talking about the power-ups again now that you're in shmup form and just how much that helps these levels because i feel like you know not even just for the boss fights or whatever but for when there's a lot of enemies

going on screen in particular there's that one sub weapon you have where it's just like a big ball uh maybe it's a ball of fire or something that goes around you in a circle that was like a pretty pivotal a pretty pivotal um sub weapon for me because it was acting as like a sponge for most of the bullets yeah i know that that provided my little security blanket a lot of the time i did end up using the one that you can kind of shoot out um i don't know if that was a different weapon or like

an upgraded version of that weapon because it's sort of it's the same projectile but instead of it always circling you you just sort of like send that out um it's spirals right yeah sort of spirals away from you um but no i i like those just because you know i i i find in like a uh in a shmup that area of effect stuff is sort of what gets me going so yeah that was really helpful the other one that i used a

lot actually was was actually just the the first well i don't know i think it's the first one you're intended to get i guess you don't have to necessarily but it's um it's just like a larger like ball that you fire forward um that's what it is on the first yeah okay i just know it's the first one in the like slots um but that's what it is on the uh overworld that you know it fires in front of you

uh just like a more powerful regular blaster but on the um in the shmup levels your main blaster only fires forward like in a regular shmup but depending on which direction you're going this weapon that i'm talking about will will fire in that direction so it's really helpful on some of the bosses that like shoot out some like smaller enemies at you and they're coming at from the sides so i would just be hitting a and b at the same time always shooting forward at the boss and like switching left to

right to kill anything that's coming at me from left or right um and like i'm not even sure that's how they intended it but it just gives you that level of options of like ways to use these things that sounds like it was designed to do that yeah yeah but i but i mean i guess i wasn't i wasn't sure if it was designed to like be because then even when i was not shooting things on the side i would just continue hitting both of them and firing them both forward so i was just like double damaging the enemy i mean it probably was also designed to do that but um just gives you a lot of different ways to

to think about how to use your weapons if you manage to beat the game which uh sean will check in on you were you able to no okay no me neither no worries so none of us managed to do it however if you do beat the game you uh you know you get the ending and everything like that and then they uh give you a password just the letters t g l which i think is really funny because the passwords are actually like pretty darn long uh in the regular game so the fact that you could have just known this like three legend yeah yeah and like had you have just put that password in if you put that password in on the on the main screen you don't have to like it doesn't have to detect that you've beaten the

game or not you unlock a corridor rush mode essentially like or just a version of the game with just the shmup parts of it that's cool and what's interesting is is that the obvious thing there is like wait a minute uh the power-ups like i won't ever be able to collect any of them because of right no you get them based on your score in each level so like depending on your on your score and uh you know as you defeat each corridor you unlock certain power-ups so you want to score a you know a ton of points to get the best stuff uh so that you can then use those in later uh you know in later levels and it it's just a really smart idea yeah yeah of like a whole different way to play the game again without having to do all of the area exploration

and not experiencing 70 of the game yeah but yeah i mean that is a really good like indicator of how much care they put into this game because they could have also like you know just given you all the power-ups at the beginning or just made them like pickups but they like they like designed a different way of doing it like just for this special mode yeah just for this like extra extra mode and i think that that kind of like attention to detail is apparent like throughout the game yeah they're

they're 100 um i think on the ball here in terms of understanding a lot about game design that just a lot of you know other developers just don't do when we when we complain about their games you know i think even though we had things to complain about here in the guardian legend we could appreciate a lot of the thought that went into the game itself and it's it's surprising to see stuff like that

you know in 1989 regardless of who's making it joe you mentioned that you did not know about the other you know the zelda like component of the game until you beat the shmup thing i would argue that like they definitely didn't intend for that because they sold the game based on like they had commercials that were like if you like zelda 1 and zelda 2 you'll love the guardian legend which just sounds bizarre that they would have a commercial saying you love these other games that we didn't make so buy our game

but um you know like they sold it like that but the back of the box has it too and the manual has it so i gotta imagine like at the very least like the idea was in people's heads but i kind of wish it wasn't i kind of wish like in a reverse marketing strategy they only sold it as a shmup or we only told people it was a shmup you know like i feel like nobody gets to experience the guardian legend like how you did where all of a sudden it's like whoa there's a whole nother game mind blow yeah yeah i think that yeah that's like the that's like the tricky like line to walk i always think about that with movies and and games stuff if there's like a really cool like twist that that is revealed like early in

the movie like it's really cool to have your audience experience that but also it's like well you want to sell it too though you want people to want to go see the movie or you want people to want to play the game so like maybe if they didn't advertise for it a lot more people like me wouldn't have picked it up and now we have trailers that just tell the entire spark yeah so here's where we are 30 years later yeah we need trailers with title cards that just say you won't believe the twist but not reveal it they just they just say that anyway uh on to development here before we before we get

into like development history have you guys seen like the box art for this game i have okay it's kind of it's kind of bland right just the just like somebody's brow looking over a desolate wasteland yes um then there's like two others there's the japanese one so there's okay there's the european one which is like you know it's the cool like space girl and she's looking at the planet it's it's definitely more interesting than the american version because at least like your characters on it we get to kind of see what that sprite looks like all painted out but yeah the japanese one is some like lovecraftian like hr geiger inspired like like nightmare of a of a space girl where okay

but sean sean isn't that isn't that jenova it's yeah okay i was trying to figure out what that reminded me of that it's jenova you're right except she's still got her head oh it's just so weird like i wouldn't have expected that like how with how colorful this game is like the to see this very like forlorn uh like sad like messed up nightmare of a woman yeah like cords coming out of her head and everything and she doesn't look like she's happy to be there but um i just thought that was really that that was really interesting well you'll be pleased to know that was in my show notes okay

you know i have an extra thought too before we move on please uh this is like a little bit of a weird aside but i just appreciate that in this game i think this is the manual where it says how to play i think it's the most concise but most descriptive and like explanatory uh like couple of paragraphs on how to play that we've seen it's literally just three small short little paragraphs and it just like after reading i'm like okay i know exactly what i have to do for the whole game

like i didn't obviously didn't read it before i uh started playing or else i would know what the game was all about but it's like i i i think that a lot of our uh manual writers could take a leaf out of this book and like simplify things and make sure you you understand exactly what's going to happen here it is a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of like the really cringy manuals that we've been reading that that just assume that you don't know how to hold a controller it's been five years now or five yeah so i think i think we could figure it out yeah and they also go get into like greater

detail and stuff later and they get into the lore stuff but it's just like there's just that one section how to play and it just tells you everything you need to know in in 20 seconds yeah there there's also a beautiful picture of the planet in the manual that like explains like it you know it has like the it carves into it a little bit to show you like the interior and stuff and it explains like you have a cut out yeah like labyrinth that yeah the dungeon the labyrinth but also it shows like the you know the exhaust where you know like how it's able to to travel at rapid speed towards earth like you can

see it's like a little rocket ship as well star killer base vibes it also kind of looks like one of those things you'd have in like your your like earth science book that teaches you about like the layers of the earth there's the mantle and the inner yeah the inner core and the outer core yeah but the the picture to the to the left of that on page three it's just it's got like the lore on it and it's got this like it's just like a beautiful haunting artwork you know of like of what this planet must look like on its surface i don't know i i like it i like the aesthetic that it all sets up it's very aesthetic

so to move on to development uh we mentioned this was made by uh compile the uh legendary shmup developers they made zanuck uh on the nes which we've just talked about today and they also uh last time i think when we talked about zanuck we talked about uh puyo puyo which none of you guys care about but that's another thing that compile made and uh you know they're still making puyo puyo games all right never mind anyway it was also it was published by broderbund and we haven't seen those

guys since 1987 do you remember broderbund isn't that right at bungling bay that is right on bungling bay that is spelunker that is load runner and unfortunately deadly towers oof big oh yeah you're right i remember that name on there so there's just something about them as a publisher that like they i feel like they really take a chance on developers you know who make interesting games and stuff like that because

i i think like you know load runner was an indie dev uh pretty much made by himself and same thing with radon bungling bay was made by um uh william wright who wound up making sim city and all that so like that that's really cool that like they they go for developers i think compile is just like another one that they were like yeah like they're making great games over in japan like of course we

want to bring this over to the states so i think that's really cool yeah yeah i think they've got like a little bit of like a boom or bust sort of like risk reward situation going on oh for sure it's like yeah william wright it's funny i hear it hear the full name yeah did i get that right though like i was no yeah it's will it's will right it's just uh it's i've never heard him called william wright

sir william wright if you sir william wright and he will be right uh the sequels and spinoff section here um not much not much to say but apparently this is a sequel to a 1986 msx game known as gardik and i think you can tell sean based on the japanese box art that the game is called the legend of gardik yeah you know and so this was just gardik uh was the first game

i'm pretty sure don't quote me on i'm pretty sure gardik is just a shmup it doesn't have the uh action adventure element to it so this was a pretty ambitious sequel of like well we made a great shmup what if we also created a whole like other game inside of it so i think that's a cool idea and it's probably if you liked the guardian legend a lot it's probably worth it to try and like see what gardik

did that they thought like oh we could improve this yeah i'm trying to find uh it seems to be so wrapped up with the uh okay here's some stuff yeah i'll have to check this out for sure now there were no other sequels for this game even though it itself is a sequel there's nothing after that compile never touched the game again but on i have it on good authority that if you're looking for something as specific in genre as this a game where you are in one element a shmup and then another element uh basically like a top-down game uh top-down adventure game then may i recommend super star force for the famicom so it's another you know it's like in the same thing it never came over to the states but

famicom is close enough so if you're looking for like another game to scratch that itch super star force you guys will remember we played star force yeah uh so you know we never got the super version and whenever i hear super in front of a game other than super mario brothers i always assume it's going to be a super famicom or super nes game right like you never think like oh that's on the nes but it says super yeah yeah i have the same the same thing even after you said famicom and then you said uh uh super star force i was like oh yeah super super nintendo i was like wait no it's not

you said and if you're looking for something a little more advanced may i recommend sigma star saga on the game boy advance which also is a very similar guardian legend inspired game fun so maybe maybe maybe who knows maybe one day we'll play super star force when we journey over to the famicom side of things and when we get to the game boy advance games in uh 3040 we will uh play sigma star saga i can't wait i know what you can't wait for really though sean and that don't don't assume is whether or not the guardian legend will be on our essential games list and we determine that on a little thing we like to call the essential games list

sean please okay i'll stop no please please give us your vote oh um okay guardian legend uh i was very pleasantly surprised by this game uh again one of those that i i'm surprised i'd never heard of uh i i really like all the cool mashup stuff they got the the the number one thing for me was this like this huge arsenal that can be used in two different um two different like settings whether it's the the shmup or the action adventure uh i think it's got a really cool and finally coherent

sort of story even though it's still a little silly uh a lot of the issues that i have with it are are easy to ignore because the core gameplay loop still holds up and you don't need to play this game from beginning to end and and you're in fact discouraged from doing so um because it is a very long game uh but i have to say that this is so unique and so well executed aside from some uh some nitpicks

that i'm gonna put this on the essential games list all right that is one vote for it joe if you vote yes then it is on the essential games list if you vote no then it still has a chance uh thanks to me so uh i will actually go first joe okay okay so then what you said is not true right uh and it was a whole waste of everybody's time go so mike wants to be the the guy that's fine he never gets to be he never gets to do it uh okay so i like how you say i want to be the guy as if you think that you

can predict how i'm about to vote i have a feeling huh interesting all right well here's the scoop on the guardian legend in terms of like you know we play these games a little bit further out than the day that we record them right we're not playing them the morning of we've been playing them for a while so oh yeah totally never done that when i played the guardian legend for the first time i was i was really uh enamored by the uniqueness of the game like like sean said you know it's it's

very interesting how there's nothing else like this and so you gotta like consider that immediately like wow there's there hasn't been anything like this yet and if there has it hasn't been like this you know so like even if something mixes genres this is like really mixing genres to the point where you're basically getting two games in one at the end of the day so i like that about it but i

can't help but feel like throughout the entire time that we've been having the podcast that the game doesn't really play as smoothly as we're describing all the things that we praised deserve praise and all the things that we nitpicked are totally things that i think a lot of people who've played the game would agree with those nitpicks you know there's something about like if this game didn't have a password system or it really should have a battery like it should have been able to save

if it didn't have that i feel like this game would be dead on arrival just because not even just because of its length but just because of what it's asking you to do and how much of it it's asking you to do and the repetitive nature of it but the fact that you can like say all right i did this area today i'll come back tomorrow is nice and has a bit of a more modern feel to it than a lot of nes games we

play even if they have passwords like something about the way this game breaks up the difference between area and corridors felt nice and i guess what i'm trying to say is is like as i continued to play the game i kept flip-flopping do i want do i want this to be on the essential games list or not are the nitpicks like enough you know it's kind of weird to to discredit a game based on nitpicks right we should have some overall negative concern to take it off and before we recorded the episode

i figured out what i was going to do and so i'm going to do what my heart tells me and i'm going to put it on the essential games list because at the end of the day i feel like this got enough of the shmup aspect right and the action adventure aspect like if it's if it's 90 a great game in both of those different genres then this is absolutely a must play for anybody i'm not sold that like everyone is going to love this game and i'm sure some people are turned off by either the length or

the difficulty or the repetitiveness of it but you know if you're going through the nes catalog and you skip this one then you've actually missed something you've you've actually missed a game you don't go yeah that is worth playing so uh for for that reason it's on the essential games list and i'm sorry to steal the thunder joe but you can still vote and still make a meaningful impact so what will yeah yeah i'll give my my worthless vote now um is this what you feel like all the time i feel bad now i'm like well this has got this i got no power yes that is exactly what it is

um but anyway i i will say that when i was when i was a kid and i and i would and i had just a few nes games and i would think about all the the giant library of nes games out there and even just before we started this podcast when i wanted to go to like back to nes games i was always looking for like oh like i can just pick up any random nes game and it's a good chance it's going to be like something i never heard of but this like crazy cool adventure that i like i can just get super absorbed into like like a book you know it's like oh i could pick up a good book and there's a good

chance i'll be very interested in that story um and since we started this podcast it turns out that there's not a lot of games that like nobody's ever heard of that like are like wow this blows me away but once in a while there's there's an exception and this really is one of those exceptions like this feels like what i always wanted like when you just pick a random game because when i when i went into this you know i was just like okay like another you know we got a whole slew of games that

nobody's ever heard of kind of kind of all close together so like oh it's gonna be a while before we play a good game again and i think this is like the second or third time in that slew that i've been proven wrong um and i will say that for me my desire to put this on the essential games list has only grew the more i played this game so like when it when i started it was almost at zero and then like as i started like getting power-ups and learning new things like i was just more and

more hyped about this game and i really this is a because then there was a period of time where i was like okay this is good but it's not as great as like some of the other games you have on there but like i'd almost match it up with some some things like blaster master and stuff maybe not quite that much but like i think that this is a this is a game you shouldn't miss so i will definitely uh make it a uh unanimous vote and and throw this on the essential games list all right very exciting three

yays and uh we'll be sure to get sam's opinion uh the next time he's able to make it onto the show however i think that big takeaway that all three of us kind of said here is like you'd be missing something if you didn't play this one and i definitely felt like you know if after having played it if i you know this sounds crazy but if i never if i missed this one right if as we continue this chronological exploration it it feels strange if eventually like we completed all the games and then you found out that you like oh there's still some good ones out there like this is what it's all about this is why we play them in order and everything like that and give each of them a fair shot

because you never know when you're going to come across something like this and i'm not going to pretend like you know you guys who listen to the show and know all the nes games and grew up with them that like the guardian legend is some hidden gem you guys might think it's obvious right i'm talking we're i think we're all three of us are talking about like if you've never really been familiar with the nes you hear about games like super mario brothers 3 and legend of zelda and kirby's adventure you don't hear about the guardian legend let's be honest and so i think it's time

that like a lot more people got that spotlight uh on a game like this and just also saw what else was out there like hey i think i'm actually gonna go check out super star force and sigma star saga now just because it's weird to think that there's this whole other type of of game out there that i've never played before and now there's two other ones i can check out any other thoughts guys uh yeah i just wanted to sort of follow up with what you said and sort of address the audience and saying like it's cool that you guys are here now and that you guys have played these games before but this podcast is really designed to be listened to 20 years from now for like you know the gen z crowd when

they're like in their 40s or something uh so that they can discover things you know like we're really talking to them yeah i mean the whole intention of the podcast is really actually to eventually make it available only offline in a time capsule in with cassette tapes that we will bury and not allow anybody access to until 2300 um when the lions have taken over the world and then this way the lions can figure out what the good nes games are like what are the best nes games in the in the uh like from a mindset of like the the mid 2020s you know the early 2020s yeah and also according to you know what you

said before mike that that that means that this time capsule will be opened back up a thousand hundreds of years before we start playing game boy advance games that's true that's true we will actually uh as an anniversary for when we start reviewing um game boy advance games we will hold a 700th anniversary time capsule spectacular when we get to the game boy advance games yeah that'll be great it'll be us and the lions yeah just that's all they they only spared the three of us yeah i mean that's totally what happened at the end of well i red 13's not a lion right uh he's like a he's like

a cat dog thing he's not a cat dog he's a cat dog that's what they based the nickelodeon hit show off i'd say i don't know he's he's got feline and canine characteristics i i actually don't know yeah i'd give him like yeah some kind of like yeah you're right he's like wolf he's like a wolf tiger yeah a wiger yeah that's what they call them exactly yeah oh well i just couldn't help but feel like you know it'll be me you joe and red 13 uh 500 years 500 years from now what happened to sam oh well he couldn't make it to the episode oh yeah anyway there's gonna be plenty more episodes of this show

don't you worry next week legacy of the wizard uh a couple episodes back i predicted that that was going to be a game uh uh where we hear the story of the only wizard that ever exists because it's the legacy of the wizard now that was a bad joke and uh most of my jokes are bad so sean tell us one funny joke before we go and make it related to our twitter okay uh what do you call um a young professional uh that has stopped doing work and instead records his thoughts on uh on old nes games on the internet i don't know what at michael esposito film uh at twitter.com

slash nostalgia cast close enough it's at nostalgia cast is the twitter we post there all the time people uh tweeted us and we are very prompt to respond back so it's amazing guys how how quickly we can respond to you so why don't you respond back faster we have been we have been described as uh just being very on time if nothing else yes uh promptness is what we're known for in every single review that we have every positive review of the podcast always mentions how prompt we are even the negative ones they mentioned that we're prompt i'm michael esposito you can find me at esposito film on twitter and i'll talk to you soon so so