204 · Bad Dudes

• The Forces of Good Have Never Been SO Bad
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • This game is like MANY movies and yet no one has made a Bad Dudes movie with The Rock and Vin Diesel
• Overview
  • Story - The Dudes are tasked with rescuing President Bush from ninja kidnappers
  • You play as one of the Bad Dudes in this Beat Em Up game. Stroll through the 6 levels and take on the boss at the end of each stage to successfully rescue the President.
• Gameplay
  • Blade and Striker
    • 2 player won’t let you play as them together
    • swap the usual A = Jump and B = Attack layout
  • flat 2D field with upper and lower portions
  • Are jump kicks still supreme?
  • Few power ups
  • Karnov shows up as the first boss!
  • The variety within the six levels
• Cheats
  • 63 lives
  • 1 hit KO on normal enemies - At the title screen, on controller 2, press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right A, B. Then press Start on controller 1
    • Sounds like cheating, but that’s how the arcade version went down!
  • Hidden Cheat Code to unlock Sound Test on the ending screen
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Bad Dudes, Dragon Ninja, Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja
    • Japanese Version has little intermission screens with the upcoming bosses taunting you after stage 2
  • Two Crude - Arcade/Genesis 1990
    • Stop the terrorist organization "Big Valley". Their objective is to retake control of a ruined New York City from Big Valley after a nuclear explosion the group caused.
  • Failed Bad Dudes 2 Kickstarter in 2012
    • $5,418 pledged of $80,000 goal
• EGL
  • Surprised at how much of an “arcade” game it is versus like a port power-up
• Next week - THE Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle

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

00:00 Bad dudes, the forces of good have never been so bad.

00:20 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Bad. And I'm Joe.

00:33 Guys, are you bad enough dudes to record a podcast? I'm Bad. Sean is. Sean is. Yes. You know, obviously it's Bad Dudes. Obviously that's like one of the biggest memes to ever come out of the NES. But realistically, forget the memes, forget the jokes, forget the whole like president's been kidnapped for a minute. This game is like so many movies and yet no no movie maker has ever made a bad dudes movie, you know, with like the rock and Vin Diesel teaming up to do the bad dudes. Like we need that. Right. We need that movie. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that this was based on some like some unknown movie that like kind of got buried by all the other similar movies.

01:16 I'd say that this is this was turned into a movie with like Olympus has fallen. Oh, OK. I like that. So even though it's not bad dudes, the idea. Yeah. Yeah. He's a he is a bad dude, though. Right. And this is a Data East game. And in a lot of ways, Data East does make like B level movies, but for video games, you know, like the plots aren't really all that there. They're just they're just there to to hold the gameplay together in some kind of glue format. And it mostly follows like whatever Arnold Schwarzenegger was doing at the time. They just do it again. So in a way, this is like a video game movie. I really love that. Like in some kind of glue format. I don't really know what it means, but I feel it. I feel that it's true.

02:06 They're like they're barely story. Yeah. That'll be a next trivia question. Mike, did you ever say in some glue format? I'm writing it down. You know, what's funny is, is like, I guess, you know, Sean, even if you didn't know what I meant, it's Data East doesn't have the best reputation for it. No, no, they don't. So, you know, we're going to give bad dudes a fair shot here.

02:29 And the only way to really do that is to forget about the, you know, the historical memes and the reception of the game itself and what people talk about today and just jump into the game with no, you know, with no prior knowledge of it. So if you're just joining us and you're playing as the bad dudes, Blade and Striker, you would need to know that the dudes have been tasked with rescuing the president who, depending on, you know, which game, if you're in the arcade, it's Ronald Reagan. If you're in the NES, I think it's Bush.

03:05 It kind of looks like him, right? They never say Bush. Pretty much Bush. Yeah. But he hasn't just been kidnapped by Russia. He hasn't been kidnapped by aliens. These are ninjas. And I'm not sure why, like, the ninjas are an organization now. Like, I'm not sure when they rose to prominence and, like, we all of a sudden had a ninja terrorism watch. But they've done it. They have kidnapped the president. And only Blade and Striker can rescue him by going through six beat-em-up levels.

03:36 And, you know, you just wipe your way through the enemies. Unlike most beat-em-ups, though, the stage doesn't scroll after you beat all the enemies on the screen. You can constantly keep moving forward, which is an interesting twist on the beat-em-up genre here. Makes it almost like a platformer. To back you up a little bit about, like, the premise of the game, about, you know, the ninja problem, if all we had to go by, if some future archaeologists were to dig up games in the 80s, games in the 90s, I feel like there would be an idea that ninjas as terrorists or ninjas as a crime problem was a real problem. Because it seems to be really only an 80s thing.

04:24 Well, were you alive in 1989? Not yet. Maybe there were a lot of ninjas. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. And the fact that they're the antagonist of what seems to be a lot of video game media of the time, like, maybe that is the case. Yeah. Well, also, to talk about the sort of the plot here, the fact that the president or these ninjas have a helicopter waiting to take the president away. Am I missing something? Why aren't they just taking the president away?

04:57 What are they waiting for? Like, a ninja? Does it just take, like, a long time to get that thing in the air? Like a really old helicopter? You gotta, like, start it up like a lawnmower?

05:08 Yeah, I'm still stuck on the idea that the ninjas could successfully do something like kidnapping the president. You know, something that's never been done. But these are the ninjas. I mean, even in the manual, the way that it describes the story to you, the president kidnapped. But the really bad news is that the dragon ninja is responsible. It's like, the bad news isn't that the president has been kidnapped. It's that the dragon ninja has resurfaced. Yeah, if it was Iran, if it was Russia, like, no biggie. We'll get him back. Oh, yeah. But it's the ninjas. Well, yeah, because that dragon ninja, he's such a jerk. You don't want to give him that satisfaction of knowing he kidnapped the president. You know, that's the real deal.

05:49 It's emasculating. Yeah, right, right. And also, they say in the manual, you know, once he gets the helicopters up in the air, you'll never see the president again. They're not killing him or anything. They're just getting him up in the air. It's like, well, he's up in the air now. All those memories that we could have had. The helicopter is heading right to the sun. Yeah, it just keeps going up.

06:10 All right. Sorry, I just wanted to riff on the plot a little bit. No, it's true. It's funny. It's also not, like, expanded upon beyond that. Like, we got a lot out of the beginning of the game. Like, the idea that the president had been kidnapped, and we really stretched that idea. But now, like, for the rest of the game, there's not, like, story clues to, like, what's happening or that your whole, like, adventure could possibly take place in America. Like, I don't know. A lot of these locations and stuff, it's like one minute you're on a train, and then you're in, like, a jungle.

06:43 Like, I don't know. Maybe that's not my America, but that's what they're thinking it is. That's not my America. Yeah. And, you know, to comment on that, and not to bring us back to this one paragraph of the manual, but the manual does say you have to navigate your way through the city. So, like, there's just a lot of trains and forests. Well, maybe this is Central Park. That's what I was going to say, yeah. Absolutely. I stand corrected. But then again, why wouldn't you be in D.C.?

07:07 Well, obviously he was here to visit the U.N. Oh, that's great. You know, if the Dragon Ninja can successfully kidnap the president, he can probably then get the rest of, you know, the world politic leaders. World politic leaders, yes. There you go. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, they all have different titles, so I wasn't going to say the other presidents.

07:30 So it's six levels, all in the beat-em-up style of games. As I was saying, it's not something where you have to take out all the enemies and then the screen scrolls forward. This is something where you can constantly move forward. So you don't necessarily have to take down every enemy. It's probably advised because they'll follow you.

07:46 But, you know, the only thing that really changes from level to level is the environment and, you know, how many enemies they'll sick on you. But before we talk about, you know, just the levels and stuff like that, the characters you play as, the bad dudes, Blade and Striker, you pretty much can only play as Blade. Striker is just for two-player, I think. And even two-player won't let you play as them together, which I think is a mistake.

08:16 The game probably, not even just from, like, you know, forget about it. It would be easier if you were both playing the game, you know, with, like, a friend or something at the same time. You could take down the ninjas together. It's also just called bad dudes and you never get to see them in action together. And I think that's a mistake. Controlling Blade and Striker, though, guys, what did you think about these characters? I thought, like, they felt pretty responsive. I do have a question for you guys. It does tie in to the controls, but this is more about the genre of it.

08:49 We call this a beat-em-up. Like, it's called a beat-em-up in, like, I guess, general parlance. But, like, when I think of beat-em-ups, I think of, like, what you were describing before, Mike. Like, you get a handful of enemies that you have to dispatch before you can move forward. Usually, these enemies take several hits to get rid of. Yes, it's melee.

09:16 But this, I would almost describe more as just, like, a melee side-scroller than I would a beat-em-up. Like, is there any other actual difference between the two? Well, I'm just thinking about it like this, you know. The entirety of the game, the sole objective is just to keep attacking the enemies in front of you. There are no collectibles. There is no, you know, the points don't do anything other than keep a high score.

09:42 So, you know, even platforming. Yes, this is an unusual choice for this game as well, where it's a flat 2D field, but it has an upper and lower section to it, so you can constantly switch behind that. But that's not puzzle-like. It's either just, do I want to be on the top with all these enemies, or do I want to go down and escape from them, but then enemies will appear down here. So I'd say for the most part, I'd still put it in that beat-em-up genre, just because the whole, like, idea of just beating up everything in front of you, like, that's the only thing you have to do is just keep using your fists and your feet at all times. Sometimes it, um, I'm not sure if it could be anything else. I buy that.

10:23 And I think that, um, there are other games that I've always considered beat-em-ups, like the TMNT games, other than the one we played, but all the other 2D TMNT games, where you are, yeah, you stop on the screen, you have to beat all the enemies, but then, like, as you're walking, you're walking for a while and fighting people, and the screen's not stopping. And I think there's a lot of other beat-em-ups that kind of, like, do both. Yeah. And it's a little harder to, to, to notice, because it doesn't happen as often, but it does happen in this game sometimes, where, maybe it's not where the screen's scrolling, but the screen will scroll down sometimes after you, well, in later levels,

10:56 after you beat up all the enemies. And then, like, once in a while, these, like, pseudo-bosses show up, and you have to, you have to face them before the screen scrolls. So it's like, I don't know, it's like a fuzzy line of where to, where to draw it. But yeah, I'd also say, like, this just felt very beat-em-up to me.

11:12 Okay. There's also, you know, there's the two train levels that do kind of make it more Yeah. in the beat-em-up world, just because, you know, You don't control it. Right. It's an auto-scroller, so it's not quite the same. You don't have to defeat everybody, but more enemies will just continue to come, and you'll just continue to get whacked if you choose to ignore everybody. Gotta get whacked. The ninjas, you know, and they're, they're doing the mafia now.

11:36 Yeah, yeah. Well, if it's the mafia, it's fine, but if it's the ninjas, that's the worst news. Everybody, yeah, I mean, the government's done that before. They've worked with the mafia. Yeah. But they never worked with ninjas on record. But to go back to your original question about how, how the game controls. Yes, blade and strikers specifically.

11:55 All right. Well, it can only speak to the one that it defaults to. There's no difference. Okay. Um, I, I think like the, his movement looks a little funny. Like the, his sprites for walking are just like, he's, he's trying to walk intentionally macho, which I guess is, which I guess is cool. Um, but like when you, when you're inputting for, for jumps or for, uh, attacks, like it's, it's responsive. I never really understood like what I was doing differently to make him punch or kick or in whatever sequence, um, I did find out pretty late. It actually took till my second playthrough to, to do like a long press, like power punch. I didn't know that that was a thing. Um, for the, for the first several, for the first like hour that I played.

12:46 Um, and then, uh, the whole like jump kicks, uh, were pretty, um, satisfying to pull off. This is also, I didn't really read the manual for this one, so I'm sure they're all described, but, um, uh, all in all it, it didn't feel frustrating to play.

13:04 Yeah. I think that he feels, uh, like he has very heavy steps, like you said, but it does like the, so I, you know, before I played it, I watched some footage of it. I was just like looking at what this game was and I was like, wow, this is going to be one of those games that really feels like, like it drags to, to move. And it actually doesn't feel that bad. It does feel like intentionally they want him to feel like this big, big, like, yeah, like heavier guy who like isn't nimble and quick like other characters. So that felt intentional.

13:35 Um, I'll say that I, I think sometimes with the jumping, I mean, I guess by the way he moves, that feels fine. But by the way, the jumping input works was frustrating to me quite a bit where just to give you like the quick, the quick idea of it.

13:51 You, if you press B, you jump, but if you press B and up, you'll jump up a really high. And that's really what you need to use to jump over attacks or to jump from like one level to another. And I'd say that that worked for me like 50% of the time, like, like you just got to get it exactly at the same moment or else you'll just do a regular jump. And that was contributed to a lot of my health loss is that I was trying to jump over something and, or I was trying to jump up to the next level and I missed it and then I got hit. Now, Joe, you mentioned that it's B to jump.

14:21 Did you guys notice that that is a swap from what we are used to? Like I, I did not, to be honest, like I just, I, I read the inputs, right? Like as I, as I'm playing the game, I just say, okay, this button does that, that button does that. And then like for my game, that's just how it is. Like, I don't think about it from one game to another. Whenever I go back, you know, and I play games across all different consoles, just, you know, you just relearn the controls when you go back to the game or if you've played it enough, you just know them. This one, you know, it's a, they, they make a point to call it out in, um, in most websites that, you know, every other game has A to jump and B to attack and this has switched them.

14:59 To be honest, it didn't, it wasn't jarring to me at all, but, uh, now noticing that I wonder why, uh, they went against what every other game was doing now that they've pointed it out. Yeah, that is weird. I also didn't notice, um, mostly because, uh, if it were a, uh, if this were a game on like the PlayStation or the Xbox or something with several, with several more buttons, it might have been more of like a, huh, I wonder why they didn't go with like the, the general practice. But since it's just the two buttons, uh, it took me a second and, uh, it felt normal from there. To bring up a familiar game, uh, Final Fantasy VII has that problem, right? Where like... Well, that's most Japanese games.

15:42 Right, right. Where they're switched and it's, and it's, you know, it's, it's a problem for like a minute and then you just get used to it. Exactly. And then once you switch it to like, where we're talking about circle being confirmed and X being, uh, back or no, um, cancel, um, and then it, it being switched between a lot of Japanese and American titles. Uh, but then if I play Final Fantasy VII and like remap the controls to X being confirmed, it just feels wrong.

16:14 You guys covered it pretty well, all the different kinds of attacks they can do, but I think that's a lot for two buttons. I was surprised that they even have for the, um, the jump kick, it's just a normal flying kick or it, it has to do with timing. I'm not quite sure what the timing is. Maybe it's just being fast between jumping and then the attack button. Maybe that makes it land better, but you can do a spinning jump kick without having to like fiddle with the D-pad at all.

16:40 It's just based on your timing. And I thought that was another nice touch too, to have all these different kinds of attacks where I found the attacks lacking was where the hitbox was in this game. Um, not that it's impossible by any means, but it took me a lot of learning to remember that I need to be close to these guys. And I found myself through my first couple of playthroughs, always getting these like

17:03 dreamlike punches, you know, where you're like, you're, you feel like you're touching their face, but you're not touching their face. And so therefore nothing happens, but they hit you. I was surprised that that happened to me a lot, uh, throughout this game.

17:14 It's something that you just learn, uh, that you have to be close to the enemies. I didn't find that to be ideal because obviously the closer you get to the enemies, the more likely they are to attack you as well. So if you have a storm of, you know, five or six ninjas on you, it's going to be, it's going to be tough to, uh, deal with all of them at once in close range. So I did find myself gradually losing health throughout these levels because of that decision. But I wasn't sure if that hitbox also was something you guys know.

17:42 Um, when it, when it came to fighting on fighting enemies that were on the same level as me, uh, I don't think I ran into it as much as you did. It did still happen, but where I think the, the biggest, uh, disparity, uh, was cause there's a whole like subgroup of enemies that they just attack you from above. They'll jump and then they'll try and land on you with like a sword pointing down. Uh, unless you're right below them, uh, your upward attack, I felt like missed half the time. And then I would take damage from that and then they jump up again and I'd have to try again. Uh, so in that specific instance, I felt like hitboxes were a little wonky, but in general, I, I guess I just ended up being close enough, enough times.

18:31 It's funny because I feel like we all, all three of us noticed like totally different things that, that we liked and that bothered us because I didn't, I didn't notice. I do now that you mentioned it, Mike, I didn't notice the, the, the hitboxes being weird, but now that you mentioned it, yes, they, they were. Um, and then as far as the, uh, the jumping, the, the enemies that would jump down, I just had to use a different strategy on them where I would just step to the side and like duck and hit them as they land.

18:56 So like they didn't bother me, but what bothered me was the fact that, yeah, there's all this like, there's all this variety of attacks and punching and spin kicks. I never felt any need to use any of that. My, all I did was take a nunchuck once I had them and just bop everyone in the face once. Like that was just, I felt like the easiest way to do anything. So it's like, yeah, there's all this other stuff, but like none of it really worked for me that much or it would usually lead to me losing more health.

19:22 And I'm not saying it was necessarily easy, but it was the easiest to just, to just use the nunchuck. And that was like a little uninteresting to me sometimes enemies coming from all directions coming everywhere. And it was just hit this one, hit that one, hit this one, hit that one. Like even some of the bosses, there's, there's that boss that multiplies himself to a bunch of people. And like, that should be like cool and interesting and hard. And it's really not that hard. You just give them a couple of one by one.

19:46 Yeah. Like literally they like line up. You just hit them as they come. As long as you just hit them before they get too close to you. They're not going to hurt you. And then you fight the boss. Like, I don't know. I noticed that a lot in this game where at first I was like, oh, okay, this is, this is fun. It controls nicely.

20:02 And after a while I was like, okay, am I just, I'm just doing the same thing over and over again with like no variety. And like, yes, there's variety in the game, but I didn't have any incentive to do it. And the power-ups that you're talking about, you know, the nunchucks and the sword and, and I think otherwise it's just a clock and an energy can, right? Yeah. Those power-ups, it's a different style for beat-em-ups than what we've seen with like Double Dragon, a game that we put on the essential games list.

20:28 Double Dragon made it so that there were environmental weapons that you could pick up, but also that enemies could pick up and you could use those to attack. And I don't remember if they broke or not or whatever, but they didn't last for long or anything like that. And in this game instead, power-ups are just, they're not environmental, they're dropped. And you still have to do the action of picking them up or whatever, but then they stay with you until you die, correct? Yes. Yeah.

20:56 So it's a different, it's a different decision. And it's like twofold for me. One, I'm not sure if that was the right choice. I think a lot of fun, especially in later beat-em-ups or in arcade beat-em-ups are the environmental stuff. This game is kind of bare, even on the platforming. When you think about, you know, the fact that they made it so this way there's a top and a bottom level at all times, they didn't do anything cool about that really.

21:23 I never found myself in a situation where I was like, oh, I could trick a bunch of enemies by doing this. You know, the only thing I could think of is in the train stages, sometimes if you go to the bottom, you're on the track now and you're dead. You know, like that was only like the only example I could think of, you know, something different for the two platforms.

21:41 Otherwise, it was just a reason to dodge enemies, which could be enough for some people, but it wasn't enough for me. And also the only two power-ups doesn't feel like it's taking full advantage of what the bad dudes could do. I mean, these guys have a fist that they could turn into like a fire punch and zap it at people. But then meanwhile, there's no power-up cooler than that. It's just nunchucks.

22:04 Yeah, I don't know. I think there are a lot of instances like that where like they just didn't fully take advantage of stuff they had in there. But like the train thing that you mentioned, I thought was a really cool thing that we hadn't seen because you land on the bottom and you kind of move towards the right of the screen because the train's going to the left like you're on the ground and the platform is moving above you. But like, that's really it. You just shouldn't be down there.

22:24 Like I thought it was like, oh, maybe there's incentive to be down there and it's a little harder. It's like, nah, just don't go down there. Yeah, they could have done something really annoying where like in a train level, you have to be down to the bottom platform, which would just be like the side of the train because now you're going through a tunnel and like anybody on the top half gets like killed,

22:42 you know? Yeah, yeah. So you have to be dodging for that reason. I would have liked to have seen some more stuff like that. It doesn't have to be restricted to the auto-scrolling stages. I'm just surprised that there wasn't even, you know, not puzzles, but there just wasn't any kind of platforming use for that. You know, it's like they just had that idea, but they didn't really have like a good reason to implement it or they didn't come up with like, I don't know, any game mechanics that really complement it.

23:19 What about the variety of the enemies or even just the variety of the levels? We've been talking a lot about the difference between the auto-scrolling and regular stages, but is this a game where once you've played the first level, you've experienced the game or does the game progress and evolve in other ways other than just difficulty?

23:39 Um, I'd say that there is some different variety of like the kinds of enemies that you fight. Like when you get to the later levels, you've got like what Joe was saying earlier, like those sub-boss guys that they're just big and they're not, they're not like special in any way, but they do take more hits. Uh, you've got some enemies that are kind of like bosses that are now just mobs, like you, like the guys that turn, that turn into like several versions of them.

24:17 There's not a lot of variety, um, that, that like, that evolves. A lot of it is the same kind of variety from the first level, but I'd say that like, uh, between different stage, uh, stage construction and, uh, the addition of these few different kinds of enemies, there is some variety, but yeah, the first level, you're kind of, you're kind of get the most out of it. You're seeing what this game kind of has to offer.

24:47 Yeah. As far as the, yeah, as far as that variety, I think that like some of the stuff that it offers are with the one, you know, the one we talked about where the guy jumps up with a sword and comes down. You have to think about that in a different way. Then there are these like putty looking things from a power rangers that, that throw, throw throwing stars at you. You know, you have to think about those in a different way because you've got to like jump their, their attack.

25:09 And then there are a bunch of other ones that also do different things, but like, I don't really remember too much of what they all do because my solution to all of them are another just bop in the face with the, with the nunchucks. Like, like I see that they, that they do different things. They, they have different weapons. They shoot different things. There's, you know, one of them ducks. So you have to duck and then bop them in the face with your nunchucks. So it's like, oh, that's a little different. But for the most part, like, I think a lot of the variety ends up falling into this like

25:38 same method of defeating them. Um, other than those few little things where like there's a guy who's not on fire who you have to jump over. Yeah. But like, I forgot about that. Yeah. That's really random too. It's like the only person like that in the game. Well, that's the guy from a teenage mutant Ninja turtles fire. Right. He left the foot clan and now he's joined the dragon Ninja clan. Yeah. He left the history of all the comics too. Right. Yeah, absolutely.

26:05 I guess my point here that, you know, and I'm not trying to like beat up specifically on, um, bad dudes here. There are other video games that have this problem too, specifically for the NES that we played. There's a, there's a certain point with these games as opposed to, you know, now we have these story driven games on, um, you know, on PS5 and Xbox one, but we've been having them for a long time.

26:29 Story driven games have this promise of like, okay, well, even if you are doing the same thing over and over again, it's like now it's like reading a book. It's like, okay, but you get the next chapter of the tale. You get a reason to move forward. These NES games don't always have that. And this one specifically does not where there's, there's not really a sense of, of progress or, uh, you know, your skill increasing.

26:52 There is a point where you could become someone like Joe, who is, you know, an awesome bad dude, a guy who can clearly take down anybody with his nunchucks, but it just becomes a very repetitive thing that like, you know, God forbid you lose those nunchucks. You're probably also going to lose your interest in the game too, because now it's just a matter of either picking them up again or surviving, uh, to get to the end. Dude, not enough is changing.

27:19 Yeah. Um, in a lot of these games where you actually feel like, you know, oh dude, but wait till you get to level six, you know, like that it's never going, no one's going to say that about bad dudes. Nothing changes, uh, within it. Whereas, you know, most of our essential games, uh, things like Mega Man, you play like a whole first part of a game and then it's like, okay, thank you for playing like the base game. Now here's the actual game where you take everything you've learned and, uh, go through, you know, the gauntlet with refighting all the bosses and fighting new bosses and, uh, solving more interesting puzzles and platforms.

27:56 This game, like, like a lot of games, but also like a lot of arcade games just continues to offer you the same thing where your only objective is just, can you survive to the finish? Yeah. I think like one thing that, uh, games like this and, and even the arcade versions of them, uh, would use as sort of like, uh, uh, a reason to keep going is, uh, like the, the settings, like the level actual, like the backgrounds of, of this stuff, like where you're fighting. Um, and this is a pretty good looking game in terms of its sprites and its backgrounds. Uh, the only problem is that the most like interesting places that you, that you actually play bad dudes are like pretty front loaded.

28:42 Um, in the, at near the end of the game, you're fighting in a sewer, a cave and in some like really generic looking military complex and like all the cool stuff, like the streets of New York and, uh, uh, on the highway, uh, like all that's pretty early. And I know that that's a pretty like weak reason, um, to say like, Oh, I'll just keep playing because I, I like the, the, the window dressing and a lot of stuff, but I still think it's, it could be a reason to keep playing.

29:14 Uh, but yeah, that other than that, nothing else, nothing else is really evolving here. I think that the window dressing is, is at least a factor, right? Right. Yeah. And that coupled with the fact that, that the gameplay just doesn't, doesn't get any different really. In fact, I think in some cases, I'm sure we'll talk about this later, but in some cases I think the gameplay gets a little easier. I think some of the early boss battles are harder than some of the later boss battles. Weird, weird stuff, but granted I didn't finish the game, so maybe it gets harder again, but, but yeah, I think that like all those things together make it feel like you're going to lose interest after a bit.

29:55 Well, since you brought it up, Joe, I think now would be a great time to talk about those boss fights. Um, they are the noticeable difference in, in your enemies, right? It's not just more ninjas coming at you in giant waves. Instead, now you finally have the big bad at the end of the level, which, um, you know, we're not strangers to by any means, but we're not strangers to the very first boss in this game. Karnoff.

30:17 Yeah. Uh, the guy, the guy from who got his own game, uh, a while back, obviously also a data East game surprised to see him here. He looks a little bit different, but, um, he was, he, he was an interesting boss. If only just because his jump had this weird thing where I felt like I couldn't avoid it unless I was on a separate platform. Like him jumping over you is an attack.

30:41 Yeah. He's actually who I was referring to, who, who was much harder. It seemed like then all the later bosses, right? I couldn't tell when he was damaging me. I didn't know it was Karnoff. I didn't know that I was facing the mascot of the NES, Karnoff, but it turns out, uh, it turns out he, he tricked me.

30:58 Yeah. I think, uh, the most mechanically interesting boss that, um, I fought in this game was the one in the, like the, the forest level where it's like this big gray, like bionic man is what it sort of looks like. And he does like a, uh, a somersault kick. Um, but it has a ledge and the lower level, um, that you sort of have to use to avoid his attacks. Uh, it's not that it was all that hard because his pattern is pretty easy to, uh, to see. And like, there's a lot of telegraphing and not a lot of variety, but at least I did have to make use of both levels in order to defeat him and not get killed. Um, uh, the, the other ones were just sort of like flat land for the most part, I think. And just try not to get hit.

31:50 Yeah. I think particularly the second boss, the guy who's got that like grabber or whatever it is, is like a weird magnet thing. Uh, he's literally just, just hit him over and over again. Like he almost hit him, hit him, hit him, hit him. If he gets too close, back up and then keep hitting him. Like it was, it was so, such a difference to me because I had a lot of trouble on Karnov. And then the next battle I was like, this can't be it.

32:12 You know, and even, you know, the one that I liked the most, I thought was interesting was the guy who multiplies himself into a bunch of other ninjas. You got to beat all them before you can attack that guy again. Really cool. Just not like super hard. Definitely more difficult than the, um, than the second boss, but like still it could have been, I don't know.

32:30 They, they needed to spread those guys out a little bit because the other thing about this game is you can hit, you can hit as many people at once if they're all standing right on top of each other. So if you just get them right away, you can kill like four of them at once, like with one hit. Yeah. The mistake with the multiplying guy, uh, besides that one that you just mentioned, Joe, is that once you defeat all of his like clones or shadows or whatever you want to call them,

32:52 he's a really easy target, uh, in, in a way that no other enemy in this game is dependent no matter like how many times you have to hit them or whatever. For some reason, when you hit him, he like has a knockback thing where like you can hit him a few more times and he practically is defenseless. So you can take off some of his health before he winds up, you know, doing the animation to bring himself more clones.

33:17 I'm not sure what was going on there. I would have liked a more interesting fight with him one-on-one after you take on, uh, clearly just the sponges that, that he created. Like if that was just part one of the battle was just taking down the, the, you know, the seven clones of him and then his actual fight is a little more interesting. I was also surprised just to see that he was, you know, not something that was going to be like where the clones can, can move around or shift or teleport in some way. Uh, they really didn't, they really just showed you everything that fight had to offer right, right off the bat. But they do that with almost every single boss battle in this game too.

33:52 There's never, uh, there's never too many moves or, uh, or too little telegraphing that you won't know how to take down these bosses. And there's just so much space in each boss fight that if you really do need to just kind of back away and take a look at the, the boss fight, the computers aren't smart enough to like charge at you and not give you that moment of breath.

34:14 Yeah. And, and, you know, just to not to spend too much time on, on this multiplying boss, but like one thing I was thinking would have made it a little more interesting, kind of like what you were saying is if once you beat all of the, all of the clones, if just the main boss jumped around and moved around really fast or something. So you knew you had to keep hitting him to prevent him to, from going back into his multiplying move, but he makes it hard for you to keep up with him.

34:39 Like that doesn't seem, you know, that's just one suggestion. I could have done a number of other things, but that's just like the kind of thing I was thinking of where I was like, that would be, that would make me have to think about this a little more or like be on the edge of my seat. Like, can I stop him from multiplying?

34:52 Otherwise it's just, it almost feels like, yeah, you hit him. Like you said, it's got that knockback and there's just like a time limit. And once you, once that time runs out, he'll just multiply again, no matter what. And until that time runs out, you can just hit him no matter what. So it feels like there's really, it's like a no brainer. Just hit him, hit him, hit him, multiplies, hit all those guys. He comes back up, hit him, hit him, hit him until he multiplies again. You just do that. You just rinse and repeat until you beat him. Even the final boss of the game, the dragon ninja on the helicopter, which is fitting because obviously if they get away on that helicopter, you're never going to see the president again.

35:22 But you know, he doesn't have like amazing martial arts moves that would make someone cower in fear. Like for the most part, you could just, you know, if you have lives for it, just trade blows back and forth until you, until you take down all of his health. And you know, presumably that would be the only time in a video game that you would want to do something like that anyway. Right. It's the final boss fight. All lives don't matter. Yeah. There are two cheat codes for this game that I feel like I need to bring up.

36:19 One, because it's just a weird arbitrary number and I was hoping maybe we could either figure it out or just laugh it off. But one of the cheat codes that you could put in on the title screen, you have to use the second controller. So you have to be like one of those rich kids who has a second controller. But presumably a lot of these NESs, you know, you bought for your whole family anyway. So maybe you do have a second controller. It's a code that gives you 63 lives. I'm just not sure why 63. Like why not 99 at that point, right? Well, okay.

36:51 I mean, it fits with the like binary number thing of like, you know, 256, 128, 64, I guess zero counts as having no lives. That sort of makes sense to me in a computer. Oh, like if you have their zeroth life. Your zeroth life is game over.

37:12 Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. The other cheat code is very similar to the Konami code. It's up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, and then start on controller one. So did you get that? You do all the inputs on controller two and then just start on controller one. There's no confirmation or anything like that. It just takes you into the game. You have to do this on the title screen. So it just starts giving you the, are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president? And then you start the game and nothing looks any different. However, now you're such a bad enough dude that almost every single enemy in the game outside of bosses is a one hit KO. Aren't most of them anyway?

37:55 Right. So here's my, here's my point to this. Okay. I would say that like, you know, okay, the game's already not terribly hard. If you, if you figure out things like the hit box and how to properly play your character.

38:06 So this just sounds like cheating, right? It just sounds like some kind of code where everything gets, everybody just gets killed in one hit or whatever. But that's actually a, it's not that the cheat shouldn't be described as a one hit KO. It should be described as arcade mode because that is how you are in the arcade. In the arcade, you are such a bad dude that every single character dies with one hit just by your fist. Like that's how strong you are except for the bosses. So I guess it's, it's, you know, it's nice that they included this, but why not just make that how the game is to begin with?

38:42 Huh? Yeah. That's weird. Especially because you'd think in the arcade that they, it would be harder and they would want to make, you know, like the arcade, they want you to lose your lives. So it's weird that they, that they made it a little more difficult than the NES game. A little more difficult. I do want to play the arcade game just to see if it feels like similarly one note, um, because that is a good point. Um, but also this game wasn't particularly hard anyway with, with the added, uh, edit. The added health of the enemies. So I wonder what makes the arcade suck quarters.

39:18 Well, Sean, I'm glad you asked. I did play the arcade version of bad dudes in preparation for this, and I'd like to play more arcade versions as we continue to go along on nostalgia.

39:28 So there, there are two major changes, but the first one, and the reason why I think they gave enemies a little extra health, like some enemies might take two punches instead of one is because the NES limits how many enemies you can put on the screen. And let me tell you, the arcade version does not care. There are tons of enemies filling this screen at all times. Okay, but big deal, right? Just like the NES version, just deal with them where you can and move on your merry way. Wrong. The arcade version is a traditional beat-em-up and will not let you leave any moment of the screen until you defeat all the enemies on screen. I see. And then gently progresses you along.

40:06 Huh. Okay, so it's just a quantity thing. It's a quantity thing, and it's also interesting that they, you know, the very thing we were talking about in the very beginning of this episode, the difference between this beat-em-up and games, you know, that we're more familiar with in the genre, is they just didn't do it in the NES one, but it was a feature in the arcade one to move little by little. Yeah. In the sequels and spinoff section, I just wanted to call out first, before we talk about the only sequel, this game has a couple different names.

40:53 There's Bad Dudes, there's Dragon Ninja, and then there's Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja. So, Bad Dudes is the game that we played, but the arcade game is called Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja. But in Japan, the game is called Dragon Ninja, which would make you think that you're playing as the bad guys who take down bad dudes, especially if the arcade game is called Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja. It makes it sound like you could take a side.

41:21 Like Marvel vs. Capcom. Right, right. Like, who would you rather play as? Would you rather be Blade and Striker or the Dragon Ninja? I think I like the name Bad Dudes better than the other two options. Yeah, I think so too. It's simple. And it's hardcore.

41:40 Right, yeah. The Japanese version does have one other difference though, and of course when I say Japanese version I'm referring to the Famicom. In between levels, there are little like intermission screens with the upcoming boss of the next stage taunting you. Oh. So there is like a little bit of an extra story beat. I don't know what they say. Obviously it's in Japanese, but I'd like it to at least reference that the president is, you know, okay, we've landed the helicopter. Like, we'll be taking off any minute now. Right. He's getting in. Yeah. Do they still say after each time you defeat a boss, do they still say that I'm indeed bad?

42:28 You know, I don't know. I'm sure they do. I'm not sure if they probably do just say I'm bad. I doubt they would like say the Japanese equivalent. But the I'm bad, since you mentioned it, that's a really cool thing. But it's even better in the arcade. The sound is so much better. Oh, I can imagine. It sounds like a real man. Better than I'm bad. I don't know how it could be better than the beautiful musical audio quality of the NES I'm bad voice file.

42:57 I like Sean's impression of it. Sean, you might have a career. I'm a great 8-bit vocode impressionist. Absolutely. The sequel game for Bad Dudes called Too Crude, but T-W-O referring to the two bad dudes. The Too Crude came out in the arcade and the Sega Genesis in 1990. You must stop the terrorist organization Big Valley. Their objective is to retake control of a ruined New York City after a nuclear explosion from the terrorist group Big Valley.

43:37 This doesn't seem like it's actually like a plot wise is not a sequel, right? It's just like another thing that happened in this world. It's another thing that happened in this world. Thank you for making that inference. Or maybe it's like the alternate. If you failed as bad dudes, then a nuclear war would happen and then this would happen. Like the Too Crude.

44:03 But the fact that you have completed and beat bad dudes, that averts the events of Too Crude. I would think that Metal Wolf Chaos, that Xbox game that just got remade. You know what I'm talking about, right, Sean? The President is a mech. Yeah. Yes. I would think that this is the same world as bad dudes. That game is loosely connected after the President's mishaps with the Dragon Ninja. And then if you were hoping for more bad dudes, I have only bad news for you.

44:35 The Bad Dudes 2 Kickstarter back in 2012 failed. Only $5,418 were pledged. Are you serious? Their goal was $80,000. You think that with all this misguided nostalgia, it would be able to at least crack like $20,000? That's crazy. It's 2012, so I just imagine it's just too early. I think throw this thing, throw the same exact pitch back on the table, right, in 2022, and you're good. Yeah. Or even this like 2015. It's 10-year anniversary of the failure. All right. We only have one thing left to do on this episode, and that is a little thing we call the Essential Games List.

45:21 Sean, why don't we pick, for no reason at all, you first? Okay. Yeah, Bad Dudes, I think mechanically, it's sound. Like, there's nothing. Like, we have our complaints, but I think if you took these characters, this premise, these controls, and you just sort of beefed up what the enemies could do, and maybe made it a little bit longer, this would be, I'd say, a candidate for the Essential Games List. But because everything is, it seems kind of half-baked in terms of how the combat actually goes,

46:12 I can't put it on, but the whole, like, style and how 80s it is, like, I really dig the feel of this game, but it just seems too simple. So, no. All right. Well said. I'll just jump in here because it's a similar thought. I'm just surprised at, you know, I probably wouldn't have been surprised in 1986, 87, 88, but we're starting to see a new trend with our NES games that is really bumping the quality of the games, and I'm surprised at how much of just an arcade game this is.

46:48 It's not a port power-up where, like, they take the arcade version, but now since it's coming to home consoles, here's all these extra features, or here's this new thing. I really feel like even though I don't usually play two-player mode, something like being able to play as Blade and Striker simultaneously would have been, like, a bigger sell for a game called Bad Dudes, or, you know, even being able to switch between them. Like, they tag in and tag out, and you have to manage their health or something.

47:17 That could have been an interesting, unique idea that the arcade version wouldn't have been able to pull off. However, instead, we just get the arcade game watered down, and I can confidently say that because I did play the arcade game, and I thought that was pretty fun. I'm not saying it's, like, one of the better arcade games, but I had a good time with that one. I didn't have as much of a good time with the NES one afterwards because I just realized I was missing most of what I enjoyed

47:41 after going back to the arcade version. So this is one of those games that, like, probably gets too bad of a rap just because it was, like, considered really silly with its plot and everything, and then people, like, start playing the game because of that and realize, like, oh, wait a minute, I don't like older games. So it has, like, this additional rap as, like, a bad game that it doesn't deserve,

48:03 but it really is just a game where it's, like, this was at, you know, your local pizzeria or your local arcade or whatever, and now you wanted to just own it rather than continue to spend quarters, and you saw it at, you know, your local video game store, and you were like, cool, now I can play this in my living room. So you bought it for that reason. I don't think this is a game that necessarily holds up for any other reason, so I can't put it on the list for that. Joe? So because of its reputation, I had... The name of this game sounded familiar to me, but that was it. I really didn't know that, you know, that it was, you know, known for being this...

48:40 This criticized game or anything like that. I actually thought, silly name aside, because I recognized that it must have been something that was popular in a good way. Which maybe at one point it was, I don't know. But, um... So I kind of went into this without any of that bias, and I did...

49:00 We did say at the beginning, you know, how this controls relatively nicely. I will say that I still think that, even though it's a different genre, if you think of something like Kung Fu,

49:10 I still think that, all the way back then, still feels a little, like, I don't know, more precise in the way you control. Not that this was bad, but I just, I think it was not, like... It was not up to, like, the standard that we're getting more and more used to now with the games that we really like. So that's one thing. And you've heard all my other complaints, you know, about this. Because I think that it did try some cool things. It was interesting.

49:37 And I think that maybe in 1989, this game is passable. Not more than passable, but I think it's passable. I don't think it's passable now, honestly. I don't think I would consider this to play it today. There you go. You've heard it here, folks. Three no's. But, you know, you also get to make your own call on your own Essential Games list. Which I hope people are doing. I hope as you guys play along with us, you're making your own little notes list. And if you want, you can share them with us at NostalgiaCast on Twitter.

50:09 And who knows? Maybe we'll throw it up on the website of other people's recommendations for games. I'm not promising anything. But I am promising that the website is back. www.nostalgiacast.com Almost flubbed it, but saved it. Sean, what can they find on NostalgiaCast.com? Um, there's buttons, there's text, there's links. Um, there's probably like a copyright symbol at the bottom.

50:35 Uh, lots of fun stuff. All, all that, all that, all the goodies you usually find on Hyperlink. Yeah, if you like clicking buttons, this is the website for you. Yeah, HTML. It's perfect. Yep. So hot. And, uh, you know, Joe, if people wanted to take it to the next level with their fandom, if they wanted to support us directly, okay, what do we have for them? We have what I like to call a Patreon. What's, what is that? And that's it. That's the end of my sentence. No, no, no. You guys are, yeah, yeah.

51:04 This is so great. It's Patreon.com slash Nostalgia. We have, uh, our very own podcast on there, Nostalgia Bites. B-Y-T-E. Little bite-sized episodes for you where we explore the Famicom library. We just explored Nuts and Milk and we're going to do Devil World pretty soon. So you guys are excited for that, right? I mean, Nuts and Milk was, you know, my favorite bowl of cereal. Ha! And, and what's, what's the better follow-up to Nuts and Milk than Devil World? I mean, what else would it be? Right. Like, they go hand in hand.

51:37 Yes. Yeah. Like Nuts and Milk. People actually commented and told us that. Yep. Anyway, if you just want to listen to regular Nostalgia, don't forget that we have all the back episodes if you ever just want to go back and listen to any of them. But if you want next week's episode early, you can't have it. Nobody can. They only post on Fridays. And next week, we are doing, emphasis, the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. It's not Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. It's not Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle where he has ownership of the castle. It is the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle.

52:08 I can't wait. Me neither. I, I might have played this game before if it's exactly the same as the Game Boy game. So, you know, tune in to find out. Oh, it better be the same as the Game Boy game because I have the same feelings. I played Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle 2 on the Game Boy and that was a wonderful game. I've never played these. I don't know. We'll find out. All right. We'll find out. A BAD.