217 · Fester's Quest

• It’s just a kidnapping. Of an Entire City. By an Alien UFO. Will Fester sit still for this?
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • They seem to be aware of the lunacy in this game
  • The Addams Family
  • I thought Scrooge was weird last week, but this is truly strange
• We need to talk about the experience that is the start of this game
• Overview
  • In this Run N’ Gun Adventure game, the entire city has been abducted by UFO’s now as Uncle Fester you must traverse through the neighborhood to try to track down the aliens UFO.
• Gameplay
  • Feeble Fester
    • A gun that isn’t too powerful (later on a whip)
      • The North American release has a bug that makes Fester's bullets collide with walls and objects, making it more difficult to hit enemies compared to the European release
    • Only two bars of health
    • Slow walking
  • It doesn’t bode well when a game’s primary strategy at the beginning of the game is grinding to the point where your character can fight the starting enemies.
    • Imagine if Dragon Warrior started and the slimes were incredibly powerful and you were lucky to make it out of each encounter.
    • Just make Fester stronger or the enemies weaker. If I think the game is unbalanced 2 minutes into it, I’m not having a good time
      • THE LET’S PLAY I was watching even had the guy die in the first few minutes.
  • Figuring out where to go and what to do
    • at the beginning of the game, you simply walk back and forth while killing enemies to build up a stockade of items and such. This allows you to get a good weapon early on, as well as providing you with the necessary funds and items for future usage. The games' enemies get more and more difficult, so it's not as easy to take them down as the game progresses.
    • It’s not too complicated, but I do question the HOA society that the Addams family participates in. The layout of the neighborhood is very strange and the Adams family kids seem to be living in all separate houses? Also the shadows of the houses look like pitfalls.
  • 3D mode of play akin to a dungeon crawl. Five of these buildings each house an enormous Alien Boss character, which upon defeat will supply Fester with a puzzle piece and a picture of the alien's UFO
    • These boss fights are very horrific. The little Uncle Fester going up against these demons. It reminds me of Super Mario RPG’s secret boss being this Final Fantasy style god and Mario is just jumping on his head.
  • Along the way, Fester encounters other members of the Addams Family in seven houses (plus the Addams mansion via a secret path through the trees behind the mansion): Thing (three times), Wednesday, Gomez, Morticia, Grandmama, and Pugsley, all of whom help him by giving him different weapons and items. Use of one particular item, the Noose, will summon Lurch to destroy all enemies on the screen.
  • These are the people who made Blaster Master (Sunsoft)
• Dying
  • You get one life, and infinite continues, yet the continue feature is essentially useless, because it starts you all the way back at the beginning of the game, even if you died at the final boss. To make matters worse, whereas defeating any boss will replenish your stock of consumable items, the bosses that you've already beaten before don't respawn when you continue, and so you don't get any of your item uses refilled from them. Thus, if you've already defeated all of the bosses except for the last one, then you're actually at a disadvantage when continuing, unless you're able to walk all the way back to pretty much just before the final area of the game without being hit and/or consuming any of your items.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Addam’s Family - 1992 Platformer game based on the movie. Came out on SNES and Genesis
  • The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt - Will come to the NES in 1993. Based on the second animated series.
  • Addams Family Values is a 1995 SNES/Genesis Action RPG based on the film of the same name
  • The New Addams Family Series is an adventure video game released for Nintendo's Game Boy Color in 2001 based on the TV series of the same name
    • control both Pugsley and Wednesday Addams, and must navigate the house, collecting items, solving puzzles and conversing with other members of the family.
• EGL
• NEStalgia Byte - Dig Dug
• Next week - Hollywood Squares

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

00:00 Fester's Quest. It's just a kidnapping of an entire city by an alien UFO. Will Fester sit still for this? 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. You know, going by the back of the box, they seem to be aware of the lunacy that is Fester's Quest. I mean, I was expecting lunacy from Adam's family, but this is just not the kind of lunacy that I expected.

00:55 It's just that the back of the box to me just doesn't... I don't get it. Does Uncle Fester sit still a lot? Or like, what is the sit still thing? Am I missing something really obvious?

01:06 I actually don't know too much about Adam's family. Like, I mean, I imagine I watched some of it as a kid, but I don't know any of the deep lore. Me neither. I'd love to find out that he's a character that's like, you know, usually in a wheelchair. And then in this game, he finally gets up out of the wheelchair and walks everywhere. But I don't think that's true. I don't know what the sit still line is for. But the rest of it kind of makes sense because that, you know, it's just a kidnapping, right?

01:34 Of an entire city by aliens. Like, all right, cool. Like, I think they're aware of what they've set out to do. And, you know, if nothing else, the experience of the start of this game where the story is communicated to you, you don't have to read the back of the box of the manual. They actually have, before you ever press start, cut scenes that show all this to you. So that, for me, was enough of a selling point that I was like, all right, I'm ready for weird.

02:02 Yeah. And again, I just, I think it's a missed opportunity to make it, like, alien invasion weird because the whole series is sort of based off of this macabre, like, just sort of Victorian horror thing. But sure, I'm ready for weird. Yeah. And, you know, we thought Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck was weird last week.

02:28 You know, now getting a whole game where you can only ever play as one particular member of the Addams Family and choosing it to be Uncle Fester as just the very first Addams Family video game ever made just feels like a bizarre decision. I could understand if they're, like, planning a Addams Family video game universe where you'll be able to play, like, each one has their own game and this is just the first in the line with Fester's Quest. But this is pretty much it as far as where Addams Family games go. That factoid actually surprises me because usually there's some obscure Atari 2600 game that's happened before these.

03:10 So, wow. I'm amazed we're actually finally seeing the first of something. Yeah. My question for you guys, which it sounds like you guys also are not, like, big Addams Family fans. So maybe you won't know the answer either. But, like, is Uncle Fester, like, normally, like, some badass, like, gunslinging, like, character? Like, it's just... I don't know. From not knowing anything about the Addams Family, my guess is this does not represent Uncle Fester in the way most people see him in the show. I could be totally wrong there.

03:43 Is his gun usually depicted as, like, a megaphone? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's... It's like a weird horn-looking thing. It's not really, like, a revolver. I mean, it's like a cartoon blasted-back rifle thing. It's like an alien gun. Oh, okay. I wasn't thinking alien gun. I was just thinking, like, maybe a 1700s gun. Something. Yeah, like one of those, like... I was thinking, like, a bugle.

04:08 He's just got a trumpet. Well, you could start at a lot of different places when you want to talk about this game. I did want to just mention that on top of the whole, like, cinematic experience of the cutscene at the top of when the game starts, there is something really strange about the sudden juxtaposition right after that with the Fester's Quest title screen looking like something that one of the children of the developers at Sunsoft had just decided to make.

04:36 It's all crazy colors. It's not really, like, a, you know, a design. It's not themed. Yeah, it's not themed for a pinata or something, like a party, you know? Here we have the Addams Family music. Yeah, we have the Addams Family music playing, though, and I guess that lets you know that at least they got the intellectual property rights to make this game. No, they just bought Fester. But, see, I'm going to just get this theory out of the way right now. Were we pretty certain this was created as some other game and then they just slapped Addams Family skin on it?

05:13 Oh, I mean, that's... That was my thought the whole time. It almost seems more than likely, but... Yeah. Because it seems like it was going for this, like, very, like, badass kind of... Even, like, the music in the regular game just does not sound like it's trying to, you know, invoke Addams Family. No, you're probably right. Right. I kind of agree with this baseless assessment.

05:37 Yeah, well, good. That's most of my assessments are baseless anyways, so I'm glad I could get something out of it. And I don't know if, Mike, if you know this, but they did something similar with Doki Doki Panic, because that's what Super Mario Bros. 2 is. I've heard that urban legend once or twice in my life, but thank you for confirming that they did do that. No problem. I'd like to just keep you up on that.

05:56 Yeah. Now, here's the thing about Fester's Quest, though. I don't see anything that says that this is a Doki Doki Panic situation. And keep in mind, Sunsoft made, you know, Blaster Master, which is a, you know, a game that... It sounds like it's weird that I'm bringing that up, but, like, a lot of the portions of Fester's Quest,

06:15 like, certainly not the 3D aspects, but, like, this top-down thing is very similar to Blaster Master's format of when you get out of the, you know, the vehicle and then start going in the top-down levels. I feel like this is similar to that in some regards. So they basically just had an engine and probably acquired a license and said, eh, well, we already know what we can do, so let's just make that, but with the Addams Family. Now, how do we do that?

06:40 Yeah, that would make sense, too. So Fester's Quest is a run-and-gun adventure game. Adventure being kind of nice to the whole idea of, you know, the quest that you go on here. But basically, as I mentioned, the entire city has been abducted by aliens, and now only Uncle Fester can traverse through the neighborhood,

07:01 try to track down basically the monsters that have somehow found their way onto the land to reveal pieces to the puzzle that will get him to the alien's UFO ship, and he'll be able to take them down and free the entire city. That sounds pretty epic in scale. I'm sure we all know after playing this game for a little bit that you're mostly being reduced to exploring the neighborhood, exploring the sewers, and exploring the buildings, which is, like, the 3D aspect of this.

07:32 Rather than talk about what you do in this game, I want to start with Fester himself here. You know, this is the character you're going to be playing as throughout the entirety of the game. He's this balding old man, not something I feel like kids would feel. You know, it's, like, cool to be Donatello or Leonardo. It's not cool to be Uncle Fester. So what does it feel like to control Uncle Fester here? Feeble Fester, if you will. I mean, he controls relatively normally, for the most part, if he hasn't been licked by an enemy, in which case he feels like a personification of frustration. But in general, if you have not been licked, if Fester has not been licked,

08:18 he feels normal enough. He's slow, but, like, it's tight. Yeah, I agree. As far as, like, literally the controls of, like, how he moves and the inputs, it's perfectly fine. It doesn't mean that there aren't other problems with the way the game, the way that your inputs interact with the environment and stuff, but as far as actual walking, it feels great. Yeah, when you shoot, when you press the shoot button, he shoots. Yeah. In a straight line at first. Yeah. Which is important. Which is intuitive. Yeah, it's intuitive.

08:53 So I called him Feeblefester because I don't know how you guys felt, but the version of him that we start the game off with, right, the base character, if this was an RPG, he would be, like, level negative seven.

09:08 He's so powerless at the beginning of this game compared to the enemies around him. The very first enemy in the game, the Goomba of this game, if you will, is something that takes, like, seven hits to kill. And for me, I'm just wondering, why even start the game on that kind of scale? You know, it doesn't bode well when a game's primary strategy at the very beginning is grinding enemies senselessly to collect all the power-ups that you possibly can to be strong enough to then make it through the rest of the game. When the start of the game is grinding, it's like, imagine if Dragon Warrior started and the slimes that you fight right outside the city

09:48 are incredibly tough encounters where it's like, every single time, it's like, oh, you just made that out by the skin of your teeth. You gotta go back to the city and heal now and then go back out there and fight another one for just two experience points. That's kind of what it felt like for me at the beginning of Fester's Quest here. Well, it doesn't just stop there. It's like, and we've had games that start off like really rough but then after a while you start to get used to it or the problem starts to subside because you've grown into, you've grown into some power yourself.

10:19 But no, this entire game has enemies that will always just take forever for one reason or another. Yeah, and it gave me, especially that happening with that first enemy, I don't know if the Goomba of this game that you're talking about, Mike, is that weird, like, that weird, like, spiky ball thing that just literally doesn't move.

10:38 But that, first of all, should not be anything. It's not an enemy. It doesn't attack you. You just have to shoot it to get power-ups a bunch of times. But then second of all, you run into shortly thereafter one tiny enemy that moves a little bit. And because it moves and you take 40 hits to kill it,

10:57 it gives me the immediate first impression of, like, the first impression of this game is the grind that usually comes much later in a game, like, this tediousness. Like, it starts off, in my opinion, on the wrong foot. Yeah, I feel like just make Fester stronger or the enemies weaker, right? You don't have to make Fester this ultimate powerful thing if you want to build up, you know, the idea that over time your gun will get stronger and you'll acquire this whip. And don't worry about the light bulbs. Like, they'll be things that you find rather than just hopefully they randomly spawn from the enemies that you kill.

11:30 Instead, they could have just made the enemies just weaker altogether at the start of this game. You know, I'm not saying that they should have been one-hit kills, but it is absurd how much it takes, especially when you have to start this game grinding for hoping that you get keys or hoping that you get light bulbs so that you can progress throughout this game. I was even just watching a Let's Play of this game, and funny enough, Let's Plays, for those of you that don't know, I feel like they are framed perfect a lot of the times. Like, there are somebody who's just putting the inputs in and getting the game to go through. It's not somebody's, like,

12:04 actual playthrough of those games. You never really see anybody die in a long play. I mean, it depends, but yeah, I know what you mean. Most of the time, it's a perfect run. Right, in those World of Long Plays videos, you know, obviously, like, if it's a person with a personality, you know, they'll,

12:21 you know what I mean? You know, it's like the World of Long Plays ones are just the actual raw gameplay footage, and it feels like they're programmed to do exactly what you'd have to do to show the full game from beginning to end. This one had, like, an extra little slice of comedy at the start where the Fester goes out there and immediately dies. Like, they make a point to show you that, like, this game can end very quickly if you're not paying attention, and then they show you the full run without Fester ever taking another hit in the game, and I thought that was a very cheeky of World of Long Plays to go and do that.

12:54 Start the game with the game over. And yeah, that was sort of my experience. I died pretty quickly, and then, because I usually, because I do have the ability to do turbo, but usually I won't do it, but then I read in the manual that they're like, you might want to use your turbo controller, and now I think that this game was designed around the use of one,

13:19 because, like, otherwise, like, I did just die immediately because my fingers were getting numb from the amount of just, like, over and over tapping the A button to, or the B button, I don't remember what button I was pressing, to shoot. But so, like, you do need that, or you will have some trouble, more trouble than you normally would.

13:41 Yeah, and it's totally a valid strategy, by the way, if you do want to beat this game, to just grind it out in the very first part of the neighborhood. The things that the enemies drop don't become any different later on, so theoretically, you could walk out before you ever go into another building, you could have the most powerful gun, you could have 30 light bulbs and all that, like, everything's gonna, you know, everything could be available to you right from the beginning of the game, now you just have to figure out where to go and what to do.

14:12 I feel like it's kind of obvious based on the path that they developed for the neighborhood. I'm not, I question the HOA society that the Addams family participates in because the layout of the neighborhood is very strange and it does lead in like a sort of maze that pushes you in the directions that the game wants you to go in, but for the most part, figuring out what to do and where to go wasn't really like a, I don't know, it didn't feel like an adventure.

14:40 That was kind of what I was saying earlier when I was describing this as a running gun adventure game. The adventure part I certainly get on, you know, because you're going on a quest, but it's mostly just laid out in front of you. There aren't really like any, I mean, it feels relatively open. Like the roads are wide. There are like, not alternate pathways, but there are many dead ends that could make it feel more open. So I get that. It wasn't obvious to me.

15:06 Huh. Okay. I guess I didn't feel like, I'm not saying like, oh, you didn't get it. I guess what I mean is like, it's not a, it's not the open style game that we're used to where like every house, right, is like, oh, well, which one do I want to go into? Like, which one do I want to get information from? It's like, you're going in the path and it's like, all right, this is the house that's in front of me. So I have the key, I'll use it and then I'll talk to Wednesday or, you know, somebody else from the Addams family because apparently they live in other people's houses now. They don't, they don't live at the Addams family residence. They, they've moved to everybody else's houses, but there's no, there's no actual like,

15:45 you know, layout of the neighborhood that makes it all that interesting. You're, you're connected by sewers that you get it, that you go into and then they just transport you to new areas of the same neighborhood. It's not like something unlocks later. I mean, I guess also just in terms of level design, if it was just a regular,

16:07 regularly designed roadway where there, you could just go to anyone's house by walking down the street, it would be a little, a little boring, maybe. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that the, the layout is, this is all about the, you know, the game design and, you know, the reason why cities based on real cities and video games are never actually laid out like the real cities, except for like in Spider-Man. But, but, yeah, I mean, I, I see, I get what you're saying. Like, it's not like what we're, it's not like an RPG kind of thing that we're used to where it was something like, even with something like

16:43 Vaxanadu, where, you know, it's not like quite that open in that sense, but it didn't feel to me like, like it was totally on rails either, you know, it felt like, you know, it felt like there was some, some decent exploration to do. And I think in that exploration, I will say, I think that the presentation of this game aesthetically is, is really, really good too. So that kind of made it a little more palatable to, to kind of explore around. Yeah, I agree.

17:10 So then let's talk about maybe, you know, what we thought, not necessarily what a strategy guide would want you to do, but just figuring out like the lay of the land and what you guys wanted to do to beat the game and such. Not that we had to beat the game. What, what was the first steps that you did? Did you grind at the beginning to try to get more powerful? Did you, did you not know how to get in the buildings because you need keys for those? Did you go into the sewer in the dark? Let's hear about it. I, I did, um,

17:38 basically all those things. Uh, well, not, I did not do the grinding because I did not know I had to grind. Uh, I knew that there were things that were dropped and I could collect them, but grinding is probably the last thing ever on my mind in any game. Uh, so I, I would never choose to do that. Um, but, uh, yes, I did walk through the sewer in the dark because I did not know how to use items. I didn't realize that, like, you kind of just select something in the sub menu and then you use a button in the actual, like, overworld to use it until I got to,

18:14 um, the first, like, 3D maze building. And I think I got, like, a bug because the first time I tried to do that, I used the key and it, like, threw me to the start screen. Whoa. And, like, was I not supposed to do that? Was I, did I, like, did I think that I pressed the reset button?

18:37 And that, that did not, that did not make me feel good. Um, but then, like, you know, what I did, maybe I did something differently or I, uh, or, or the game did not bug out and I actually was able to get into it. But, yes, I walked through the, the sewer in the dark and just sort of, like, shot at shadows, which was very difficult because I had a gun that shot in loop-de-loops that apparently, if you run into a wall, it stops. I'm sure we'll get into that later. Um, it was, it was bizarre, uh, to say the least.

19:09 Yeah, I, I did a lot of the same things too. I mean, I kind of just explored at first just to see what was going on and, and once I figured out, like, how the grinding worked, I did grind a little bit and I'll say the, the act of grinding itself in this game is not as bad as a lot of other games just because it's, it's just, so many of these enemies drop these, these pickups and you, you pick up one item and you're like, you're basically, you've, you've basically leveled up. You know, your, your gun is, has leveled up. Your whip has leveled up.

19:38 Um, so it's not like, it doesn't take a ton of grinding. I'll say that I don't really, I don't really understand necessarily the logic of which weapons, like, the order of which the weapons go. Like, supposedly this one's better than that one, but sometimes they're like,

19:55 sometimes it almost feels like a disadvantage to get the next weapon. the patterns. Yeah, yeah, because what it is is like, like, they, they get more powerful. It seems like each, each shot gets more powerful, but yeah, they, they shoot and they fire in different patterns and in some of those patterns,

20:08 you, they, it means that you can't aim directly in front of you because like the, the thing goes in like a squiggle and it'll go right around what you're shooting at and you gotta like, it's, it's like counterintuitive in that sense, so like, that's weird. But yeah, grinding was a big thing that I started doing, trying to gather a bunch of weapons and then really, like I, I'll admit, like I never really had like an overall goal,

20:27 like this is what I have to do next. It was always just like, wander. Oh, I got this key, I'll, I'll try this thing, now I can go in here and I have a light bulb, so let's see what's over here and I just kept going. you know, I found a couple of, I found one thing of extra health, like, you know, I got some, I got some items from different members of the Addams family and stuff, but I was, I'll admit that I was a little aimless on my, on my personal quest.

20:52 description there, Sean, because that, that is the game and it's like most pure when you don't know how, um, formulaic it is of just like, get the keys that hopefully the enemies drop whenever you see a house, use the key to unlock to get an Addams family member to give you some important item that you'll need later or, or not necessarily too important, but just helpful items.

21:15 And then, you know, go to the sewer and that just takes you to the next area. If you are like, you playing this game with a strategy guide, I could find that, like, reducing the amount of time that you actually do wind up playing the game because of it just revealing stuff to you. I do feel like, at the very least,

21:33 Fester is on a quest, which is better than what Castle Quest was proposing. No castle went on a quest in that game. Fester does feel like he is on a mission. Why he was chosen for it, I don't know. Why the rest of the Addams family can't participate, but can give him items. Maybe they're watching everybody else's house while the aliens are running them up. Oh, they're house-sitting. Yeah, they're house-sitting for everybody who's been kidnapped, I thought they were very antisocial, but I guess, like, it all makes sense. Yeah, and I guess, like, you know, at the end of the day, does it matter who you're playing as when it doesn't feel, like, unique to that character either? Like, this gun thing doesn't feel exclusive

22:15 to Uncle Fester. I don't know if that's true or not, but it just doesn't feel, like, I'm really playing his uncle, Fester, you know? Like, if you gave Wednesday the gun, it'd be the same thing, right, to me? Going back to the gun thing for a minute, because I know there's two things we want to talk about. Gun level 1 all the way up to gun level 8, it is a little confusing, Joe, that they just, like,

22:40 choose different kinds of attack powers that, or sprays, rather, that aren't particularly helpful, but you can tell that they're doing more damage, then you have to change to that, and it is kind of revealing that the final gun level 8 is just a straight line, so it feels like they kind of revealed that they knew that that was the best thing to do, just to have a gun that shoots in a straight line, like, if the final form was some kind of, you know, three-way spray,

23:07 then maybe it'd be like, oh, this is great, and also covers a lot of advantages, but it doesn't do that here. However, both of you have mentioned something that is a big problem with the game, and that is because whether you're in the neighborhood or in the sewers, you're going to want to use your gun, and you're going to be in somewhat, most of the time, tight corners, and any wall in this game immediately stops your bullets from progressing any further from where they are, and so if you're, you know, running into a hedge or you're running, you know, up against these sewer walls, when you shoot these curved weapons,

23:46 these ones that purposefully rotate and such, it makes them so much less powerful because they, they arc in a way that immediately just disintegrates them that it's not helpful to the player at all and makes you want just only the weapons that shoot in a straight line. Yeah, it's, it's a cardinal sin and the fact that like 80% of the time that you try to shoot a gun, depending on what level your gun is at, you cannot use it. It, it, it's, it's beyond the pale. Yeah. And to, to really paint the picture for anyone who hasn't played the game,

24:22 you know, imagine having a gun that fires out and it fires at like an S formation over and over, you know, just wiggles that way towards, you know, towards its destination. But now imagine you're walking parallel to a wall. So you just, you fire the gun and your bullet just immediately goes diagonally directly into the wall that's next to you. That's what happens for like half of this game. Anytime you're, you're in a hallway, which is like half of the game or like near a, a wall, and there's something in front of you, you almost, you can't hit it until it gets between you and that wall basically because you, you just fire in the weirdest,

24:59 most unorthodox, unhelpful direction. It's like the, it's like the actual rifle part of your gun is curved like in a cartoon and only shoots to the side of you. It's, it's a mess. Yeah. And like, that's not the only, you know, like that goes away if you get more power-ups, but like the other ones, well, I don't think any of them are as bad as that. They're also sometimes not like the best. Yeah. And oddly enough, in my, you know,

25:27 just short research for this game, it turns out that the whole, like when you shoot, it, you know, hits a wall and then it just like, that's it. That's the end of the bullet. That's not true for the European release of this game. And that's just a bug in the North American version of this game. Now we are playing every game released in North America. So this is absolutely true for us, but it's weird to think that, you know, I'm not saying it makes the whole game so much better or anything, right? But it's weird to think that, you know, just across the pond, these guys wouldn't understand what we were talking about right now

26:02 with the bullets because they wouldn't have ever experienced that because they would have fixed the bug in it, in the other market. You know, it's like, why not just, how do you miss something like that? Something so large like that if it was unintended?

26:17 Yeah. And then to not like realize during play testing that this is happening and that maybe this wasn't intended. Like it makes me feel like it was intended and then they were just like, we're going to put them into these little tiny areas just so that they're going to get really angry at the game and that that was intentional. And then like, oh, wow, people didn't really like the way that our guns flew into the wall immediately. So I guess we should change that.

26:44 Yeah. Well, you know, and it flying into the wall, I don't think was the only thing that made it feel like it was an accident though, because the other, it seems like the point of this of this particular shot is to like cover more ground. So it's like, oh, there's a whole cluster of enemies coming at you so you can like, you might hit a bunch of them or whatever. But it all, the bullet also stops when it hits one enemy.

27:07 So even if you do hit one enemy, it's, you still would have been better off with just a straight shot because the whole point of a, in any other game, the whole point of a, a firearm that, that spreads out like that, I mean, is, well, I guess one is that maybe you just don't have to be as accurate, but two, that you can hit more things at once. And this doesn't, this still prevents you from doing that. So the top down portion of the game is where you go through the neighborhood and the sewers, but there is a 3D, you know, maze, dungeon crawl style

28:05 aspect to this game as well, where you don't see fester. It's a first person kind of view. It's very similar to other first person views that we've seen on the NES where they're not able to give too much detail. They're really just able to show us the walls. And I feel like maybe in this one they added like some kind of ceiling light fixtures, even though they're not lit up or anything. There's like these little like circle things above and I always thought like, why aren't those turned on? Or are they? And that's why we can see, I don't know, forget it.

28:35 The, the point is that in this, you know, in this navigation of just looking at walls and the only difference really being some walls are completely gray, some walls are like gray and another color below them to add like some definition or leading lines to them. how did that aspect of discovery go down for you guys? Are those, are those short enough that it didn't become too big of an issue? Is this just the kind of thing that you just try to brute force your way through so that you just like find the door at the other end? I like that both of your

29:09 example answers here, neither of them were positive. Just like, is this either something that like you hate or that you just sort of dealt with? And it's true because like the, in any situation where there's a 3D part to the game, like in the NES games that we played so far, it, it's, it's not great. Like the, I think the only thing that, um, in, in these games is selling it to people is that it's a, it's a novelty. And, and now that we sort of know what, what can be done even with a little bit more detail, um, like it, it's just like, why not have anything to do in these other than to navigate the maze, um,

29:53 without any of that, it, it just becomes more tedious. Uh, if there were, if there were enemies to do stuff with and, and the, maybe the, the combat wasn't quite as shoot into the wall as it is in the top down, I could sort of justify them being here, but because like, there's literally no detail on any of the walls, just some stuff, some different colors to tell you, like, uh, you're looking straight at the wall. Yes, that's correct. Um,

30:22 it, it just sort of took up time and that's all I saw this as. Yeah. I, I mean, I agree that when we see this in a game, it's generally not great on the NES. Um, I'll say that as far as, I, I think as, as far as other games that we've seen do this, this did a better job of like, not making me like,

30:44 immediately lose my bearings. I don't know if it's because it, it populates much faster than other games. I mean, I know we had one game, I can't remember what it was, where we had like a compass and that was very helpful. In this game, there is no compass, but I never felt like I got like super like, oh, okay, everything looks the same. So I have no idea where I am. Um, that didn't happen to me, which is weird because it is true that everything looks the same.

31:06 It felt like, and I, I, maybe I'm misremembering the other games, but it felt like each screen populated much faster. And the problem that I was having is that the, the walls are all bright white. And in order for the next screen to populate, populate, it has to blink to black and then back to white real quick, which just leads me, I mean, I don't know if it bothered anyone else, but it was just, it's just the whole time you're playing through these prices, just flashing lights in your face. Like, like it's like seizure inducing.

31:34 Yeah. And that's also part of like, they're actually doing the opposite of what I need because I did get kind of lost in these. It's doing the opposite of what I would need to make it not that like instead of flashing to black and then back to the new direction that you're facing, this just needs one little interstitial frame where it shows like a 45 degree angle of like when you're turning. So it needs that so that I can at least like still have a point of reference to where I was five seconds ago.

32:06 And none of these games have that yet, like all these 3D ones. Um, so until they figure that out, maybe it's not possible. I don't know. But until they figure that out, I'm going to hate every single one of these. Yeah. And I don't know if I can't remember again, I just obviously can't remember any other ones clearly enough, but I don't know if it's like a technical limitation, but, but does it have to cut to black

32:29 before it goes to the next screen in these? Like, can't it just go to the next screen? Well, that was my question, Joe. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's probably a rendering issue, you know, where you have to, um, figure, you know, like, that isn't an easy thing for them to program, obviously, if it's like this bare bones that we're getting, you know, if we're getting like super stylized top-down stuff, and then all of a sudden it's like,

32:50 I hope you like walls, like, that's the best we can give you right here, you know, like, hope you can understand what we're going for. I do wonder about that, but we've, we have never had, if it was like faster to react or whatever, but we've never had a game that showed any kind of turning, or any kind of like, here's where you were, you know, like, context for where you were previously, you have to keep the context in mind based on the buttons you pressed on the D-pad, and I know that sounds strange, right, it's like, well, that's what it's supposed to do, right, Mike? It's like, I don't know, cameras are supposed to be a little better to helping the brain fill in the pieces, and that's what I'm missing, and that's what helps with getting

33:32 lost in here, is that it's not like how you would explore a maze, that's the problem with all these early dungeon crawlers, is that it's not how we think of our eyes in real life, so when it doesn't work that way, it's like the game makes it so much stranger to traverse, it feels very foreign. That's a great, that's another great phrase, I already forgot what the words were, but it was like, that's why I say them so fast. It's not how we make our eyes. It's not what we expect our eyes to feel like.

34:06 I usually close my eyes during each step, and then I open my eyes real quick just to see where I am, and then I close them again for the next step. To avoid motion. little snapshots. Have I got a video game for you? Yeah. I also like in the manual that it has in the how to play section, the first thing they want you to know is that there's three types of views for the top-down levels, and they won't show you one of them, which I think is funny. They'll list them out, but then it's just like, I know they didn't mean it like this, but the way that it's put is just there is also a 3D hallway view. It feels like

34:44 they're revealing that as some kind of secret or little thing that they've built into the game, but it winds up becoming one of the most annoying parts of the game. So it's like, maybe explain a little more. How do we act in a 3D hallway, assuming I've never seen one before, Sunsoft? Like, maybe, you know, if this is brand new technology that's pretty cool and is simulating 3D, there should be like a half a page in the manual for that kind of thing. I mean, yeah. I guess we've seen it enough times that, and no, it's only been a handful of times, but it's not entirely new, so maybe they were just like, you get it, you live in 3D, you've gone down hallways, this is what it's like. But, yeah, I don't know.

35:58 Yeah, well, on that note, I guess I'm glad that they didn't make it any more complicated than just walking through these halls to find what I can only describe as just some of the most horrific bosses I've ever seen on the NES, and we've seen some colorful stuff, but these guys, they're pretty scary-looking bosses for a game that otherwise has, like, cute, cartoony enemies and characters that we know and love.

36:24 These bosses definitely never appeared in the Addams Family TV show. Some of them look like they're straight from hell, like they came from doom, which I make that reference, obviously, because of the 3D hallways, but to then switch to, like, this completely black screen where it's just you and the devil, and you have to just shoot them from a distance. Don't even try getting up close to them, but you have to, like, shoot at them in,

36:51 I guess you could say it's, like, a shmup at that point, right? Like, you're dodging their attacks and you're shooting yours. Yeah, it even looks like you're in space because you're just on a black background. They get rid of any context to where you are, which is, on one hand, kind of, like, lackluster, but on the other hand, actually kind of, like, feels kind of epic. I don't know if I was just filling that in, but.

37:18 these enemy, these boss designs are so detailed. I think maybe they did that just because of that, like, the bosses are, they have so much going on with animation and stuff that they did, they should, they couldn't have a background or they'd be, like, flickering or something.

37:36 But I also do think that it adds to it in terms of a, like, thematic way, like, the, like, at the end of Final Fantasy 7 where it's just you and Sephiroth on a black background and it's sort of like, I know it's not exactly what they were going for, but it kind of feels that way. Yeah, yeah, which, like, you know, I stand by that this game is aesthetically very nicely designed. Outside of the hallways. Outside of the, yes, outside of the 3D hallways, thank you. You know, I'm just thinking about one boss in particular, and I know we're calling them bosses, but they are, like, they are bosses for all of the Yeah, they're bosses. The, um,

38:14 the, like, worm, it has, like, a worm-like head, it has one eye, it's, it's wearing, like, a jumpsuit or a tracksuit, it's a riddle, and it has a, and it has a gun pointed directly at you, like, just always, always pointed at you. Something about that creature, which I guess is, like, half chicken, half worm the chicken one, worm or something, yeah, I don't know, that thing is very spooky. This is just, like, a funny, weird thing in this, in this game, though, when you consider Uncle Fester. It reminds me of Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo,

38:49 how, like, that whole game, aesthetically, everything fits, everything works, it's this cute, like, claymation style approach to the design, but there's a secret boss that can only be described as, like, a Final Fantasy style god-like character, and then you have Mario just jumping on his head, you know, like, as how he deals damage, and it's, like, kind of the same thing with Fester here, like, I don't know, these guys belong in Contra, not in Uncle Fester's quest. No, that was the standout for me as well, was the hunched over chicken gun wielder, I think that that,

39:26 that's gonna be, like, a timeless enemy design for me, and I probably will never play this game again, so. Yeah, there's another one that is, like, this dinosaur one, I think it's after the chicken thing, and he's got, like, a long, he's got, like, a long neck, but, like, no head, like, his neck just, like, culminates in an eyeball, and, like, oh, yeah, it's, like, very, yeah, like, they put a lot of interesting and unsettling design into this, just, surprising, but I think that one stood out to me even more so than the chicken.

39:55 They didn't need the UFO thing to, to have these enemy designs in there, like, it's, again, it's already, like, sort of a comedy horror series, and, speaking of that, like, there's really not much comedy in this game, aside from the idea of buying hot dogs, uh, during an alien invasion, and maybe the, uh, the noose, uh, the, the noose item, like, uh, before destroying all the enemies on the screen, like, that guy just shows up and just says, you rang, and,

40:29 this is no, it's not very Adam's family in either way, I, I'm getting off topic here, but. No, you're actually on topic, because I think, the next thing I was gonna talk about anyway, was meeting the rest of the family, it, it's true, that, meeting the family is, like, the relief point in this game, where you almost have to, like, center yourself and realize, like, oh yeah, this is an Adam's family game,

40:46 like, that's what I'm doing here, like, uh, I'm not, I'm not trying to take down demons from hell, I'm not trying to, uh, you know, I am trying to rescue, uh, the entire city from a bunch of aliens, but, nevertheless, it's nice to meet the rest of the Adam's family, but they're just included in such an uninteresting way, that I feel like there, there could have been a lot more to their inclusion,

41:08 not, we don't need cut scenes, we don't need, um, we don't need them to become, like, playable characters as well or anything, but their inclusion in, like, either, after a boss fight or something, like, revealing, like, a clue on what to do next, obviously, like, the game's not complicated enough to require clues or something, but if they made it that way, it could have been, I feel like the only way of seeing them, by entering the house, and, like, just being, uh, it's, it's like a piece of paper that tells you what they've given you, and, and then you're just on your merry way again, they, they could have done a little more than that, because this is an Adam's family game, even if it's just supposed to be about Fester,

41:44 and, I, I don't feel like there's enough branding here, other than the theme song, uh, from the show, and the fact that they included the other characters in the game. Yeah, well, those other characters, you know, and going to those houses and giving those items, are, that's exactly, those are the exact moments where I was like, oh, this was,

42:02 this might not have been intended to be an Adam's family game, like, that's what made me think that, because it feels so shoehorned in, I mean, it's not even, like, the same style, like you said, it's just this, it's just this image of them comes up full screen, just this, like, image of, like, this giant pixel art of that character comes up, and says, like, they don't even have dialogue, it just says, this person gave you this,

42:22 it just feels like they were like, oh, yeah, this is somewhere we can make it Adam's family related, you don't remember that episode, you don't remember that episode of, of Adam's family, where Wednesday gives somebody vice grips, yeah, is, is there a narrator in Adam's family that just narrates what everybody does, and we just see images of them,

42:43 Wednesday's vice grips, what do the vice grips do again, they like make you, they make you fast again, after you get, I think it's like a permanent status, when you get stung by a, by, by like a, a bug enemy, or get licked by the frog people, that you are just, half, half speed, and it makes the game, again, unplayable, so what's the implication there, like, that the vice grip, like, do you, I don't know what that means, like, yeah, I don't understand,

43:15 have the, the, the next time I get a bug bite, I will, yeah, apply a vice grip to my finger, or whatever, and see what happens, yeah, like, I wanted to say, like, the bug makes your muscles tense up, and the vice grip wouldn't loosen them, it would make them even tighter, so like, I don't know, trying to come up with some story, to, to bail, the Adam's family, Fester's quest, out of this pickle, they've gotten themselves into,

43:38 well, they also just ran out of characters, in general, and wind up using, thing, three times, uh, you went into, the thing, so thing is the hand, right, yes, now, who's the long haired dude, like, the, the thing that's just hair, oh, I thought that was thing, yeah, maybe that is thing, I always thought thing was the hand, I mean, maybe it is, and I think it seems to be, by the way that the game, just describes it, but I always thought that, the hair thing was the thing,

44:06 uh, that's cousin it, oh, cousin it, all right, yeah, people are probably shouting at the podcast, right now, like, you idiot, he has an IQ of 320, so surely he would have remembered himself, and is often attired in bowler hat, and round sunglasses, absolutely, I, I didn't make a grammatical mistake, Wikipedia did, it says, often attired in bowler hat, should be a bowler hat,

44:32 it's not a Mike-ism, that's a Wikipedia-ism, who wrote the Wikipedia page though, that was Mike- I did, yeah, okay, you know, I don't like to go backwards in segments, but there was a thought I had, regarding those 3D mazes, and why they had to do, the black flash, that might have, maybe giving them just the benefit of the doubt here, and, uh, saying like, oh, maybe it isn't a rendering thing, but it was the only way, because of the way that they themselves, designed the game, it was the only way to portray, movement, in the straight line sections, not necessarily in the turns, but in, the set, in the moments where you're going down hallways, because, all of the wall, is exactly the same,

45:14 that, that would be the only way, to show that you had, moved forward, is to, okay, yeah, tell me why I'm wrong. I mean, not why you're wrong, they may have thought that, but in, in five seconds, I can think of a, uh, of a fix for that, and that is just like, you know, those little lights, that are on the ceiling, just have those alternate, problem solved, but, right, I think, I think you're right, that maybe that's what they were doing. Yeah, but you came up with a better solution, while I was telling you the problem. You should have worked on sun salt. You're right, I should have.

46:07 So, you're probably gonna die, at some point in this game, or in life, uh, I feel like everybody just needs to hear that. Yeah. But in, in Fester's Quest, you only get one life, but you have infinite continues. Yet, the continue feature, works in a very strange way, where, even if you do make it all the way to the UFO ship, if you die there, when you go to continue, you start back at the beginning of the game. And, I, it's like, oh, wait a minute, I lost all my progress? No, you didn't lose all your progress,

46:42 but, when you were, you know, on your way throughout, throughout this quest, whenever you beat a boss, that was how you replenished all of your consumable items, and, you know, like, whatever else, right? Like, at the end, they would boost your health again, and what have you. So, that, those bosses are gone now. that was the way to, to kind of, like, you know, restore some, some sense of, like, you know, health and all that throughout the game.

47:08 Here, now you just have to try to run through the gauntlet again, of making it all the way back to the UFO ship, without dying and being transported back to the beginning, yet again. So, you are at, like, a disadvantage, depending on where you die in this game, and how far along you die into this game. Is this a roguelike? In a weird, weird sense, still no.

47:38 If they would have included the bosses back. No, I know. Which would be weird. Also, it's not randomized. Right, right, you know, it's like, but it would be funny, if, like, the bosses also came back to life, because then you do have to wonder, well, what progress did I make?

47:52 If they put me back at the beginning of the game, you've got a really nice whip now, yeah. I just thought that was a weird choice for dying. They could have at least remembered, what part of the sewers you had most recently come out of, or which house you had exited, right? You haven't, you haven't shut off the console, right? Because once you do that, then you do lose all progress. I would say so. So, it knows some, it knows something about what you've done, and where you've been, so why is the respawn point the very beginning? For challenge, Mike.

48:21 Or they could have just included a password system, right? And a password system that was mediocre at best, too. It didn't even have to, like, remember how many keys you have, and everything, although that would probably lead to, no, it wouldn't lead to any kind of soft locking, because nothing is missable. So, they could have easily designed a password system for this, and they chose not to do that either. So, really,

48:41 Fester's Quest is a, you know, a game best played with save states, but really, if you were playing back then, it's a one sitting game. I suppose so, yeah. I guess, like, one, one other, like, bright spot in this game is, uh, is the soundtrack. Uh, there, there isn't really too many tracks, but the ones that do exist are, are pretty, are pretty jamming, I would say. And, and Joe, maybe, maybe I'm crazy, but, for some reason, like, the, the song that plays most of the time, like, on the overworld, it reminded me very much of, like, the flashback sequence battle music,

49:30 uh, like, when you're playing as, like, Laguna in Final Fantasy VIII. And I know that might sound crazy. Yes, I hear it. I'm listening to it right now. The Man with the Machine Gun by Nobuo Urimatsu. Exactly. I hear it. And, and that just also speaks to how this does not feel like, like, it has anything to do with Adam's Family. It's just a really upbeat,

49:51 awesome battle track. Um, but, yeah, music's pretty good. Yeah, I liked the music a lot. It was, like you said, it was jamming. It felt, it felt intense and, and, and exciting. And do you know what it made me think every time I heard a new track? What? It made me think that this game was not originally intended to be an Adam's Family game. Exactly. Which might not be true, but I just want, I just, I just want to know because I, it, it just, nothing about it, uh, reminds me of The Adam's Family, a show that I never watched.

50:26 I don't know why I'm dying on this hill. I have no idea. No, I agree. Nothing else about it.

50:32 A show that you never watched is a funny point though, because we also, no, but we never participated in DuckTales, but like, it leaks into your life in little ways and you have expectations. We did think it was weird that you played as Scrooge McDuck instead of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, but we didn't like refute it at the end of the day. We're like, oh, that's fine. He's a character in the show. Like we knew enough, you know, here with The Adam's Family, I'm so angry that Fester's the character. I just, I,

50:57 it's the marketing side of me that that's really upset. I, the fact that they chose Fester as the most relatable thing to their age, six to 11 demographic that they were hitting on the NES at that time. And this is a 1989 and Adam's Family's what? Like the sixties? Oh yeah. I don't even care.

51:13 Yeah. I don't understand that either. The movie isn't like it, you know, maybe it was like announced that they were going to make one, but that's not till 1991. I think maybe this triggered the movie. Maybe they were trying to capitalize on the success of Fester's quest on the NES. It sold so well. Yeah. On the sequels and spinoff side, we have a few games here to talk about. First is Adam's Family. They got the memo. They said, no more Fester. Let's make the whole family have their own game. And it is a 1992 platformer on the Super Nintendo and the Genesis that is based on the 1991 movie. So all the characters look like the updated version of the Adam's Family that most people are probably familiar with and not the original TV show.

52:12 After that, though, we get back to the NES. Can you believe that? Finally, a sequels and spinoffs that has a game on a Super Nintendo. And then they're like, well, you know what though? That one's too advanced. We can't make that one on the NES, but let's make the next one. The Adam's Family Puglies Scavenger Hunt. Now, see, you could see why they said that that's great for the NES, because it's a game where you just play as presumably based on the title, one character from the Adam's Family. They couldn't handle having all of the family at once on the NES. So, at least it's age appropriate.

52:45 Right. We will play that game in 1993, which has already happened, but when we get to 1993 on the show, we will play the Adam's Family Puglies Scavenger Hunt. And it is not based on the movie. It is not based on the original TV show. It's based on the second animated series. Oh, okay. Which has also already happened. Yeah, all of it's all happened. Whoa. Huh.

53:14 Adam's Family Values is a 1995 Super Nintendo Genesis action RPG based on the film of the same name, the sequel to Adam's Family, Adam's Family Values. How do you say that? Adam's Family Values? I'd say Adam's Family Values. Yeah. I like that. But you kind of want to just say Adam's Family, colon, values. No, no, because the play, the play on the title, the play on the words is the fact that you say it that way. Oh, yeah, no, of course, but I'm saying like, you also, you know, your brain wants to say the Adam's Family. No, your brain. The Adam's Family, like, you know, you don't say like, the Adam's Family Values. Yeah, but you, that's just your brain. Okay, great. It's just me. In fact, if it wasn't me, write it on Twitter.

54:01 The new Adam's Family series is an adventure video game released for the Game Boy Color in 2001 based on the TV series. How many TV series did they make in the 90s about the Adam's Family? So, uh, the new Adam's Family series apparently was the TV series as well. So then they said that's a, that's a Game Boy game if I've ever seen one. So it came on the Game Boy Color. You control both Pugsley and Wednesday and navigate the house, collect items, solve puzzles.

54:32 Sounds like I'm reading the back of a box and not really anything informative to anybody. So, uh, sorry about that. But just, I'm amazed that in the sequels and spin-offs section, which takes place entirely in the 90s, I've managed to list four different series of the Adam's Family after this game was made based on only something from the 60s. So Fester's Quest really brought, uh, the Adam's Family back to life long before the movie ever did. I want to say that that's just a, uh, a coinkydink, uh, and that the movie, the movie really did do it. The movie was so good that it brought about a second Adam's Family renaissance of the 90s that somehow we all, missed, even though we're, we are otherwise pretty good with 90s culture.

55:15 Um, but, I mean, it's just another thing that I'm, we'll never truly understand. You know what would really put Adam's Family back on the map? An expanded universe? An open world game? No, making it an essential game on the Essential Games list.

55:38 All right, Sean, the fate of the Adam's Family cinematic universe is on your shoulders. Uh, yeah, there's, maybe, maybe my opinion of this game would be forever altered by, uh, a patch, like the NES patch, uh, to make it so that projectiles don't collide with walls, but I don't think that's going to be enough. Um, I think, uh, there's, there's too much weird stuff going on here, um, that tell me that this is, again, more just an oddity, uh, with really good music.

56:18 Because, aside from that, the game is not essential. I, I mean, I keep talking, I kept talking about the presentation. I think that it's, it does a very good job, but, uh, like the sprite work and the, just the art in general is great. And it looks, it looks advanced and the music is great. And I think really a lot about this game is essential, except for the fact that it's no fun at all.

56:43 Like, like, like everything else is like, when I first looked at this game, I was like, I bet this is, I bet I'm going to love this game. Like, this looks awesome. It's not awesome. It, I, I really kind of don't like it at all, which is just, I guess the, to, it goes to show you don't judge a book by, it's cover. It's not essential.

57:00 Um, I would say that even, I mean, definitely, even if they fixed the projectiles hitting the walls, I would not vote this essential because I think there's just too many other things that are just lackluster or, or even just not fun. And even if they fixed, Oh, okay. Thank you. I didn't know you were over. Now, you know, now I do know. I'm also done. Okay. Oh, Sean, you're done. Yeah, I'm done. Okay. I thought I was interrupting you. This is my interrupting voice.

57:31 even if they fixed the gun bug for the North American release, even if they remove the whole 3d maze thing that is never interesting in these games, even if they, you know, even if Joe's right, and this isn't an Adams family game, right? If I remove all Adams family IP from it,

57:49 that would actually make the game even less good to be honest. So, you know, at this point, I guess what I'm trying to say is that you can fix all those things. And I'd still not be convinced that this belongs on the essential games list for, for so many reasons. And we talked about them on the show, but I think this isn't also like, this isn't one of those like worst NES games of all time either, which is a list that I've seen Fester's quest on, but I've also seen games like Friday the 13th on there. And I thought that game was pretty cool too. Like it turns out the actual worst games on the NES are just really boring games that nobody speaks about. Like we, we played them and we can't even remember them anymore.

58:26 Fester's quest, not necessarily a game. I'm going to be like telling people like, Oh, well, thank goodness you didn't play Fester's quest. Like it's, it's fine. If you played it, no harm, no foul, right? You probably, you probably, there's probably a lot of kids who had nostalgia for this. Uh, you know, as we're recording this episode now saying like, Hey, I, this was the game I owned.

58:46 I played the shit out of this all the time because it was really long and I was always dying and I couldn't finish it in one sitting. And I didn't understand why I was playing his uncle Fester. So there's always a reason for these things and what have you. But at the end of the day, it's not going to go on the essential games list for, uh, for obvious reasons that we've all mentioned.

59:03 Now, if you do want to play essential games, you should know that Sunsoft did make Master Blaster, which is an essential game. Blaster Master. Math Blaster is a game on the computers, but I know I didn't say that either. I did say Master Blaster, which, uh, was the original name for Master Chief. They wanted to call him Master Blaster. Uh, and the micro, Bill Gates said, no,

59:26 Mr. Microsoft. I'm riffing, and I can do that all day long because I have to. That's what you do when you're a podcast host. And, uh, yeah, I'm riffing because I have to. They have, they have me, they make me say all this stuff. Things that you don't want me to say, they make me say them, such as, a lot of our content is locked behind our Patreon. They're making me say that. I don't want to do it that way, but they're making me say it. So I want you guys to know.

59:54 give us money. Right. If you want the, if you want access to those sweet additional episodes of Nostalgia, known as Nostalgia Bites, where we play the Famicom library, you'll, might be intrigued to know, the next game we're going to play is a game called Dig Dug. That's right. The arcade game. Now you're checking your notes right now. You're like, I'm sure that Dig Dug was an NES game. It wasn't. Never came out on the NES.

1:00:16 So we have to play it. And the only way we know how, which is on the Famicom with some Japanese, but don't worry. You don't need to know any Japanese. We don't need to know any Japanese. The Nostalgia Bites, the hook of the whole show is that you don't need to know any Japanese to play these Japanese games. A little strange, a little weird.

1:00:32 Japanese, Japanese. I'm saying it all left and right. I like sushi. That's not the point. We're going to keep recording episodes with or without Nostalgia Bites next week. Hollywood Squares. No, we're not going to be on it. We're going to be playing the NES game version of Hollywood Squares, where who knows? We'll do something fun. We did something fun for Jeopardy. We didn't do anything fun for Wheel of Fortune. So we kind of owe it up to ourselves and you guys to do something fun for Hollywood Squares. No one made me say that. That's really suspicious, actually, now that you had to clarify. Oh, Joe, I'm done, by the way. Okay. I'm going home. Bye. Thank you.