236 · To The Earth

• Be the skateboarding champion of the world
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • The Zapper lives, but it actually hasn’t been too long since its last appearance. This is the THIRD zapper game for 1989
  • Nintendo is still publishing these Zapper games, but they aren’t developed by them. This one was made by Cirque Verte…WHO?!
    • This is the only game they ever made. Was this a pop up org by Nintendo of America
• Overview
  • Destroy incoming enemy spacecraft, bombs, missiles, and asteroids without destroying friendly vessels.
    • Missile Command with Friendly Fire
• Story
  • "It's 2050. The Ragossians have invaded the earth with a dastardly bacteriological weapon! The human race is facing the danger of extinction. You are on a special mission to bring the antibacterial agent from the Neptune-Terrestrial Allied Force base, 'Triton', to the Earth. You must break through the invaders' cordon. Time is limited! The fate of the earth is in your hands. Save it!"
• Gameplay
  • very quick enemy ships and asteroids, the game is considered to be one of the most challenging NES Zapper games
  • The shield of the player's spacecraft constantly goes down with each missed shot at an enemy.
  • Players can use a powerful bomb to destroy everything on screen, shoot a comet power-up that grants temporary protection from a limited number of hits, and a shield-repairing item dropped off by a friendly spacecraft. Game bosses are fought at the end of each level as the player moves through the Solar System.
  • Could there be a Zapper SHMUP
  • Nester from Nintendo Power shows up at the end of the game
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • To no ones surprise. None! Do you think there’s a bias towards games released earlier in a consoles life getting more “franchise” behavior because they were first, sold longer, sold better, etc.
• EGL
• Next week - All Pro Basketball
• NEStalgia Byte - The Portopia Serial Murder Case (fan translation)

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

00:00 To the Earth, use your zapper light gun to blast deadly UFOs hurling meteors and angry aliens on a cosmic battlefield.

00:25 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. Joe. Guys, the zapper lives, but it actually hasn't been too long since its last appearance. Just, it's been a while on the actual podcast. You see, we play a game a week, but that doesn't represent a month. So this is actually the third zapper game for 1989. It's still alive and well. We just haven't thought about it in a minute. What was our most recent zapper game? Why would you ask me a question I'm not prepared for?

01:02 You're not prepared for everything at all. I'm sure I could pull it up real fast. What do you think the most recent zapper game was? I mean, it wasn't Freedom Force. It was after that, right? It was long after that. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking it was Operation Wolf. No, it was Shooting Range. Shooting Range. Shooting Range was after Operation Wolf? Yeah, Shooting Range was June of 89. And if you recall, Shooting Range was more of like a mini game selection.

01:27 Yes, I have very clear memories of this. I definitely know. You commit to memory every zapper game. It definitely was very different than all the other zapper games we played. This is the one where like you'd have the target, but like it was a target over the person's head you had to hit, right? Yes. Yeah, I remember. Oh, okay. Yeah.

01:50 I have vague recollections of that. Great. So, I mean, look, Nintendo's still publishing these zapper games, but they aren't developed by them. They're just saying like, yeah, you make them and we'll keep supporting them and we'll keep promoting the zapper and Nintendo Power and your game will sell. Thank you for taking the time to make games for our accessories. This one was made by Cerca Verte. Who? I like it. Who is Cerca Verte? I looked into this. This is the only game they ever made.

02:23 Whoa. Was this like a pop-up company that Nintendo of America like made this way in case it flopped, they wouldn't be responsible for it? It sounds like a company that like usually makes fragrances and they just wanted to try their hand at video games. Maybe this is the game based on one of their fragrances. Yeah. The To The Earth collection.

02:45 I guess I'm just, you know, I'm really surprised that, you know, obviously to me, this is pretty like, you know, Nintendo of America not committing to making another zapper game. I don't know if this actually came out in Japan. So maybe, maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. And then it would be a flaw in my Nintendo of America plan. It just seems like for a company to only make one game and for it to be published by Nintendo, that's a little too much of a coincidence, right? That would be like Sean making a game today and like it winding up on a Nintendo Direct.

03:17 All right. Well, let's just, okay, that's insulting. Like, it's not crazy that I'd make a game, Mike. I noticed that you didn't say, you didn't say it would be like Joe making a game being on a Nintendo Direct. Well, Joe, Joe's made a Pokemon game, right?

03:31 Sort of. Yeah. And you made another NES game too. An NES-like game. Yes. If you want to call them games, they're, they're things that you can interact with. They work. Technically, only Sam has ever made an actual game that could run on the NES. That's true. Which was for our NES Game Jam, which we have an episode for, and I think all those games are still playable. So if you go to the episode, it'll have a link to the games. So that's fun. All of these are of the same quality as to the Earth, and could have been released by Circaverte.

04:09 Look, it's 2050, and the Rogozians have invaded the Earth with a dastardly bacteriological weapon. The human race is facing the danger of extinction. And it's up to really like, it seems like it's you in a spaceship, but somehow that's just you with a gun. Like maybe, maybe you're like holding the gun outside of the cockpit and shooting. I thought about this a lot. You're, I think you're shooting through the, the windshield of sorts of the, of the spaceship. You're just standing there.

04:40 There's no, there's no seat or like controls or anything. You're just shooting out the front window. I like to think of this as their, it's not, not like a cyberpunk thing or, or a steampunk thing. But in the world of this game, we have sort of reverted back to World War I era, aeronautic fight, fighting. Where, yeah, you just have like a laser pistol that you shoot from your cockpit. And I've, I've never seen that before. That's fascinating. In like World War I, I mean, the, the, I assume that like the planes had guns attached to them. Not that like they were holding a pistol in front of them and shooting. No, in, in World War I, they were holding pistols and shooting at each other. Really? Yeah. Gotta go back to history class.

05:31 It's the same thing as like being on a horse, except for now you're on a plane. Yeah, I guess. Interesting. I'd like to see a, a horse mounted to a gun. Who would win that battle? Guy with a horse and a gun or guy with a plane and a gun? Probably the plane. It's a level playing field in my opinion. Yeah, it's exact. It's past versus future. The most even contest.

05:52 Yeah. I, I bring this up about the, you know, you with the zapper thing, because every other zapper game we played was clearly built around the idea that what you were controlling was this handgun, right? Like whether it was, uh, shooting ducks or, um, training to be in the FBI or just, uh, you know, taking down a terrorist organization. It was always centered around like a guy holding a gun. And this time it's very clearly like you're also on autopilot in a ship and you're focusing more on the shooting part of the, of the game.

06:28 You know, maybe it's like, maybe you can justify it. Like, you know, when you see like a side fight thing where it's like you wear a glove and whatever you do with that glove, it controls like the robot's arm. It's like that. Maybe like this gun is controlling the ship's gun. So it's just an easy way for you to know where you're aiming the ship's gun.

06:45 It's just as ambiguous as like gun smoke or gun dot smoke where you make the guy jump by shooting him in the feet. I mean, we've seen something silly. That was, um, gumshoe. Same goddamn thing. Gun smoke was almost an essential game. Yeah, well, sorry, gumshoe where you shoot at a guy's feet, the gumshoe, and, uh, that makes him jump, but it's also how you shoot other things. We've seen this before. It's just a little- That was just a reference to Goodfellas though. You're playing as Joe Pesci shooting at that guy's feet to make him dance. Just all, all the time. Right, spider. That was actually spider in gumshoe. Just older. Well, maybe this is spider in space. I like, that should have been the title. Yeah, they should have made that clear.

07:39 So to the earth, uh, you know, it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a It has a- you're in the cockpit view and these other UFOs they describe them as, but they're really just like other spaceships of different colors, come flying at you. Um, pretty much like first they look very far away, but because of their speed they quickly approach you and it tries to do this 3D effect of them zooming by you. Uh, the goal of the game is to destroy these incoming enemy spacecraft, um, or missiles,

08:08 or asteroids, without, um, without taking enough damage that your own ship would die, uh, or explode because the ship doesn't have a life. Only you do. Remember that. Uh, so it's kind of like, in a way this game is set up like a first person missile command with also some friendly fire attached to it.

08:29 Yeah, there's like one time every few minutes where there can be friendly fire. Uh, uh, there's like a sort of health restock that happens every few minutes. Yeah, it's not exactly clear on your first playthrough that like, hey, this is an ally, don't shoot it until you shoot it and you lose like 80% of your health. I don't know, it retaliates or something.

08:53 Yeah, but that, that's, that's a, that's sort of an exception to the moment to moment gameplay, which is just a, uh, it's just another like sort of shmup, not shmup, like a first person, like almost top gunny, um, where stuff just flies at you and your accuracy will also have an effect on your energy slash health. So if you're really bad, you're gonna, you're gonna, uh, you're gonna lose health faster and you only get, um, energy back by shooting down enemy planes slash UFO slash spaceships.

09:33 Yeah, but you mentioned it being, you, you said shmup and I, and I actually kind of think that that is like how it feels. Like maybe it's not, I mean, wouldn't really be classified as a shmup, but it feels very much like a first person, this person shmup to me compared to like, oh, there's zapper games just because of how much is coming at you at all times. And you get little power ups and you get little like, uh, yeah, you get little, um, health pickups and stuff like that. And it just feels like sort of intensity of a shmup. I mean, I guess the, the difference being that you're not, um, you are not in danger of running into obstacles other than like things that are being shot at you.

10:11 Yeah. You're not controlling your movement. You're just controlling whether you, uh, you, you hit the things you want to hit or if you can blow up the missiles before they hit you.

10:24 And in other zapper games, we've usually shot at either dummy targets that sometimes are completely stationary or, um, move around the screen or you shoot it like other people. What's it like shooting at a spaceship, right? Like those, those things go a little faster. Um, and especially with the technique of how the game was designed from this cockpit view, as I mentioned, they start off very small and then kind of get larger, but also zoom faster across the screen.

10:52 Is it comparable, uh, you know, to saying shooting the ducks and duck hunt, or is it a completely different kind of zapper experience? I think that it compares to duck hunt only in like the most basic level, but, but what you're talking about, the speed of these things or like the, the, the feeling of motion, like

11:13 it's getting closer to you because suddenly it feels faster is what sets it apart significantly for me where it really feels like, I mean, it is the most fast paced zapper game we played. I think by far where like everything is not just with the speed that the things are that the, uh, obstacles or ships are coming at you, but with how many things are on the screen at one time, I'm actually was not aware that the zapper or that the NES zapper combination could like handle all that at one time.

11:44 But, uh, I don't remember other games having like this many obstacles on the screen at any given moment moving so fast. So it like really feels like the training wheels are off here. It's like, it's like almost as hard as you would imagine it would be to, to be one ship taking on like a hundred ships.

12:02 Yeah, I agree with that. I think there is something a little bit lost though, in the fact that you don't control your ship that it is just kind of on this autopilot that seems to just be forward facing against every single enemy alien ship. And maybe it'd be a little better if you could, you know, also choose to dodge some of these things or not be in their trajectory. Obviously for an NES game, that'd be a little too technical, but it does wind up being one particular problem I have with this game in terms of how it works with the amount of things on screen. It actually is a very, like if you watch a video of it, it's a very smooth and satisfying experience. I can't say the same while I'm the person that's doing the shooting.

12:41 It winds up becoming a thing that, I don't know, maybe my eyes are getting worse with age or something. But by the time I recognize these guys, I have a problem tracking them. I'm kind of shooting where I saw them rather than where they are. And with the amount of things that show up on screen, especially in later stages, where it's not just, you know, one ship flies by from the left and then another one on the right,

13:04 things kind of do come at you in a almost like rhythm fashion where you need to get into a groove with your shooting in order to not get hit by every other thing that comes your way. It winds up a little too much for me. I was probably flailing around a little too much, being trigger happy, just hoping I would hit something rather than having any actual skill. Again, maybe that's a me problem and my eyes and just how I was tracking the enemies a little too fast for my liking. Well, that's, that brings me to like a more technical question.

13:38 Um, so what Joe was saying about how this sort of pushing the limit of how, uh, how fast a zapper game can be and, and the troubles that you were having with it, like, I, I didn't know that the zapper camera like thing could even resolve some of the, um, the sizes of the hit boxes, uh, at, at the distance that you would play at. Like sometimes like you can hit a ship that is just way out in the distance and it's just a little speck. Like when you, when you see that flash and you see the hit boxes that the, uh, peripheral actual sees, uh, to, uh, market as a, as a hit or not, I didn't even know that I could see stuff like that.

14:29 Like, Joe, did you have, um, did you notice that it was actually a hit or not? Actually, like you were accurately hitting these things at those far distances or did it feel like, Oh, I think I kind of hit that, but it didn't really, didn't really work. No, I absolutely noticed that I hit it at a far distance. In fact, I think that when, when it's at the far distance is the best time, at least in my opinion, to hit it because you have, cause it's moving slower. But like the, as far as it being that tiny little hit box, I mean, it makes it obviously

15:00 like literally a little more difficult to aim at it because you have to aim at a smaller spot. But I never felt like the gun wasn't picking it up. Like I felt like if I missed, I missed. Um, and, and like, I, I really want to talk about that, like just how accurate it is, but I think it'll just turn into me praising the technology of the light gun again, which I've done in like every other light gun game. But just, I'll just say simply, it stands up here. Like even with this stuff, the fast paced stuff, I mean, it's definitely like really difficult because it's, because it's difficult, like inherently, like the gameplay is difficult.

15:34 And it never to me felt like the difficulty came from technical limitations of the, of the gun or it not being able to pick up, um, pick up, uh, the, the small targets. The only thing I'll say is that like when it's literally the spec way, way in the back, I'm talking for like one second when it first appears, even like a second later when it's like the second size it can be when it's like that one tiny little spec, I noticed it doesn't even give it a, a white hit box. So I think that's just telling you where it's about to come from. And then once, but it's like significantly like tiny when you can still hit it.

16:11 So like it, it always felt like it gave me like one second to kind of like line up the shot. And then like, once I, once it got just like, I mean, I, I almost don't even want to say that. Cause I wanted, I want to make it clear that like, this is still, we're still talking about a spec and you can hit it. But when it first appears, it doesn't even like show, it doesn't even register.

16:28 Yeah. It's just crazy that I just, I think in all the other games that we've played, like you can very clearly delineate, like maybe it, they're all, they all make sense that they would be seen by this peripheral. And then this is the first time I was like, Oh wow. It can actually see that. I want to go back and play the clay discs of duck hunt. Cause I know, I don't remember if they ever got that small, but I know when they got in the distance, sometimes you had to be like, Oh my God, I got to get it before it disappears. And sometimes you can hit it when it was pretty small.

16:59 Sean, you also bring up a good point about the technology, uh, for my complaint, because it's not a, this is not a technological complaint about the speed where it's so fast that the zapper can't register it and it becomes unfair or something. This is a, uh, a speed complaint from a player skill thing. Theoretically, every ship and missile that comes across the screen can be taken care of before you ever have to take damage. It's not unfair in that regard. I just think personally, the speed at which the enemies are coming was too fast for me, the player to handle. Oh, I also agree about that. Um, I, I didn't have the reaction time for a lot of this. And, um, I guess those are just two separate aspects.

18:04 Joe, you mentioned about, uh, if you destroy an allied ship, it takes off a good chunk of your health. They, the way they distributed health in this game is that you have a hundred points and each kind of thing, whether it's destroying something or getting hit by it, either plus or minus is this health. I appreciated this system, but it is very, um, you know, the allied ship thing is where the game kind of gets out of proportion. And I get that they don't show up often, but destroying an allied ship basically takes off nine tenths of your health bar, almost assuring destruction.

18:41 Whereas also receiving an energy pickup from an allied ship gives you back half your, uh, your points. So everything else is just small little increments of like plus five, minus five, plus two, minus two. Uh, and then there's just like this allied ship thing, which again, isn't something that's necessarily clear without reading the manual or, you know, playing the game a few times.

19:04 You know, you could, you could be punished pretty hard for something like that. Otherwise I thought that the game actually for, for someone who wasn't very good at it, it gave me a lot of time to play with it before I game overed. You know, it wasn't like, uh, you know, you let three ships go by and now you're dead. Yeah. I think the fact that whenever you hit a ship, you gain health back helps like the longevity

19:26 of your play through to an extent, uh, you know, I'm on the fence. This is, this is more just an, an opinion of my like personal taste and not a criticism, but like I'm on the fence about the idea that, uh, when you, when you shoot, when you fire and miss, you lose some health. Like, I, I understand that it's probably there. So you don't just like totally rapid fire and just, you know, like spray and pray and just hit whatever you can.

19:50 But it feels like this game is just hard enough without that. Like, so like there'd be times where, I mean, I'm, when I'm playing, I'm not trying to like do the spray and pray thing, but I, but, and I'm pretty like, um, scriptive with like what I'm aiming at, what I'm shooting at. But, but once in a while I'm, I'm just overwhelmed and I am just like, Oh my God, like I got to hit this and I'm, and I'm just trying to aim and, and, and stop, you know, stop missiles from hitting me. And that is what ends up killing me. Not even from getting hit with the missiles, but from missing my shots at the missiles.

20:22 Again, that's just maybe me being a little bit of a baby about how hard this is, but like I could have done without that personally. Yeah. I think to, to Mike's point about the, uh, the friendly fire causing almost certain death. I think that, that it happens infrequently enough. And the first time you do it is going to be, uh, a memorable enough moment that you're probably not going to do it again if, if you're paying attention. So I don't think that there's too much of an issue there. Uh, when it comes to the, uh, tiny death by a thousand cuts of missed shots, I also don't have too big of a problem with it because all you really have to do is hit an enemy like

21:04 once for every four or five missed shots. And you should be at like net zero in terms of energy, uh, gain or loss. Um, so I think they're, they're relatively, they're relatively generous with that. The only thing that I wish they did differently is I don't think you get any energy back if you're just blowing up, um, a missile. I think that that just sort of keeps you at zero. And the fact that there are very long stretches where the only thing that you can really focus on if you're at the level of me and Mike, um, it will just be missiles.

21:41 So if you, then, then it becomes like, uh, uh, a tight where, uh, sorry, a high wire act of just like, Oh, I just need to survive this. I can't let anything through because I'm not, I'm not gaining any energy back. It's, uh, it becomes, uh, a much more stressful situation. Yeah. And that's what I was talking about specifically when I said that, like, it gets crazy when you start to have to spray and pray. Cause I agree in the normal, when you're just fighting the ships.

22:09 Yeah. You just, you normally can hit more ships than you miss. But when, when it comes to those missiles, first of all, they're moving a lot faster. Second of all, because they don't replenish your health, you almost don't have time to stop and say, Hey, I got to hit a couple of ships to get some health let back. Cause as soon as you do that, you're going to get hit by like five missiles because like, it's just, there's no break, uh, in those.

22:29 And, and yeah, sorry. I did, I did gloss over, uh, what you were saying, Mike, about the, uh, friendly fire. But I do think also it's like meant to be there as like, uh, as like a quick, like, Hey, you shouldn't have done that. But I almost think it's not even like a pay attention. Cause it doesn't like, once you know, one time you're never going to get surprised by the friendly ship. It's like everything's off the screen and this giant ship, like slowly enters the frame. Like, you know, it's your ship. It's never like trying to trick you except for the first time when it doesn't tell you what that ship is.

22:58 Yeah. I'd say the friendly fire was more of a talking point, you know, like something I wanted to mention. And the actual point system was, you know, like what I was getting into because the levels aren't, uh, randomized, you know, uh, every time it's the same order of ships appearing in the same exact fashion. And so I feel like they could have done a little more play testing and balancing based on, you know, to Sean's point, there's some sections where you're just getting missiles. Uh, with that in mind, they should have maybe balanced these points out a little more. Uh, Sean was actually being a little generous with the amount of missed shots to destroy enemy ships recovery.

23:34 Technically you can only miss two shots for every enemy ship that you take down to net even, which I don't think is enough. Especially considering that getting hit by a rock, uh, which probably won't happen or one of the missiles will reduce by five points. So there's a lot more negative points being scored than ever like gaining points because again, the allied ship thing doesn't happen often enough, though it is a heavy reward of plus 50. The enemy ship part is where most of the rewards come from. However, there are sections where you're not, uh, experiencing enemy ship power up pickups.

24:10 Well, then I guess the, I guess the, um, target accuracy is then 33%. All you have to do is shoot better than 33% and you should be fine. I think that that's reasonable.

24:23 Oh yeah. I think it's reasonable in a game, you know, like duck hunt or, uh, operation wolf or, you know, some of the other zapper games we played. Uh, maybe I just really suck at this game. Uh, I, I was, I was not shooting as high as 33%. Yeah. It will. It also, it gives you an accuracy like rating at the end of each level. And I don't know exactly how it, how it registers that because I usually hovered around like 55 to 60, maybe I'll say 50 to 60% accurate.

24:51 And, uh, all right. So I'll tell you this before Sean, you said that if you're at the level of you or Mike, I would like to put myself in that level as well, because I'm not good at this game. But like, I think I'm, I think I'm decent at this game. I think I'm at least average at this game, but this game is just really hard. Like I only got past the first level to, to Uranus, Uranus, Uranus, whatever you want to say. Uranus. I only got it passed at one time without cheating.

25:17 So to see more stuff, I did eventually, uh, step really close to the, to the screen and just start shooting like with my gun, like literally touching the, the CRT screen. Um, just to just cause I was, it's so hard still. I mean, I can get past the first level fine, but the second level still very hard, but, um, I don't remember why I was getting at that.

25:38 Uh, how it was calculating your accuracy. Oh yeah. When I did that on the first level, I hit almost everything. I missed like two shots and it still gave me 60% accuracy. But while I was cheating, but like I was, I was like nothing got by while I was cheating in the first level. Uh, and it wasn't until the second level that it started still letting things by. Um, so I don't know how it's measuring the accuracy, but, but yeah, I only got past the first level legitimately without cheating one time. I, I don't have an explanation for that. So I'm just going to go with, it doesn't know how to count. Yeah. Unless there's some weird, like, uh, I don't know. It's like waiting things differently or something.

26:16 Yeah. It does feel like the answer here is just to remove the missed shot penalty and that you should just either have like a limited ammo supply, which in my opinion is worse. I'm just saying like another option or just remove that and have it be more about even letting enemy ships get by will reduce your health too. Because theoretically like that also increases the danger of earth, right? Like you shouldn't be letting anything get by you.

26:41 However, I don't know the missed shot penalty thing and the points in general is a pretty interesting, uh, like hit point system in a zapper game. And so maybe I just want them to balance it a little better than they did. Yeah. I mean, I, I'll say that personally, I think that they could remove it and not add another form of damage other than getting hit. And this is hard enough. I mean, like without it, you're still going to get hit a lot by those missiles and it's still going to be really difficult to regain that health once things start coming at you fast. Like, I think it's not even making this game like a much easier game. It's just making it like a tiny bit easier, but still really difficult.

27:47 And there are some power-ups. Joe, you kind of teased these earlier. There is a bomb to destroy everything on screen. There is a comet power-up that grants temporary protection from hits of all kind. And a shield, which it's dropped off by one of the allies, and that's what gives you the health bonus.

28:13 Any thoughts here? Was that enough in terms of variety? You know, three is usually not too much, but in a Zapper game, it's nice to have any kind of thing other than just shooting targets on a screen. So welcome surprise for me, but still, I would have liked to have seen maybe more, you know, like if you shoot now, you have a bigger hitbox or something, something that's probably impossible with the technology. Yeah, I don't really know what they could have done because every input is discrete. Like you can't have, like if it were in a shmup, like a rapid fire, all you had to do was like hold the button down because the screen would just be flickering over and over and it just wouldn't work. So I think with what they have, it's fine.

29:01 I don't know what else they could have done. Yeah, I'm not sure. I mean, I know that Freedom Force had some other things like a grenade you could throw or something. I mean, this has the bomb.

29:13 I'm not sure what else they could have done either. Like I think it was cool to have the power-up. You have to hold the controller. Yeah, honestly, like that would be, that would be the only other way to do it or like, yeah, I don't know, join a player two joins with the controller and he can, he can dodge with the ship or something. I don't know. But my, not issue, but just like a thing that I noticed with the, with the power-ups. I mean, yeah, there's just the, the one offensive power-up, which is that little bomb in the corner.

29:42 Not really sure what causes it to show up. Is it like the more targets you hit, you might get it or does it just show up randomly? Like, it's weird because it feels like the better you're doing, the more likely you are to get it, but you can't like stockpile them.

29:57 Like, I kind of wish I could have, like, like maybe not more variety of power-ups, but like the ability to have multiple of the same power-up. Like, I kind of wish I could have been saving those bombs for the times I needed it, but if I have one, I'm just not going to get another one. So then once I use it, I don't know if I have to like shoot the same amount of ships again to get it back. But like, it would be nice to be able to have like a little arsenal of, even if it's all the same power-up. So I can be like, okay, this is a really tough part. I'm going to use like two of my power-ups here. And Joe, before we recorded, you were showing your NES slash Zapper setup for To The Earth, because you went out and bought a copy, which is really cool.

30:35 And when I was watching you play, it became kind of like a rhythm game in some sorts where I was watching you play and I was seeing like what you were able to destroy and what kind of got past you.

30:48 And it's easier to be the watcher, right? And like comment on like, oh, you should do this or you should do that, right? Like it always is easier to do that than play the game yourself. But I noticed that you could, you yourself could get into a groove where you were kind of like noticing what was coming at you, what you were taking care of, and also what you had to go to next. And you have to be really fast with the trigger. This is not a game where like you shoot something and then wait for the next thing to show up. This is a game where you constantly have to be pulling that trigger.

31:19 I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about how it was with a Zapper, but I feel like that's worth discussing. Yeah, I mean, I think just that like, yeah, you're calling it like a rhythm element to it, or just like that like constant stream of like these patterns of enemies that's happening so quickly is what really does set it apart from the other Zapper games, where it's like, you still have to be just as accurate as the other Zapper games. You got to look down those sites that we learned way back in Duck Hunt are like really like essential to hitting your mark.

31:51 But you have to be like, I think the biggest challenge for me was keeping that lined up in my sites when I had to keep moving all over the screen so quickly. Like that's what I think would trip me up the most is like once I would like lose the rhythm and like suddenly like unalign my site for like a second, getting back and I would miss like a ton in a row.

32:14 Because I'm because it's like getting back to that like perfect aim while all this stuff's coming at you is not is not easy, especially like I think that the parts that like really, really get me are when the ships are coming all at once all dropping missiles on you because the missiles move even faster than the ships. And they start their life like on the screen closer to you where it's like the ships you see them in a distance as a spec and you're like, okay, that's coming next that's coming next. But the missiles they just appear out of the ships. So like if you if you start missing a couple ships suddenly all these missiles are coming at you too and then you're you're overwhelmed pretty quickly.

32:52 And and like I in pretty much I mean, I'm assuming I'm not I don't know how far you guys got at all. But like like I said, I really only played level one and a little bit of level two. So like to Jupiter or to to Uranus and then to Saturn and that that was already like getting I mean, Saturn was definitely harder and watching videos of it later. I mean, it gets only faster. So I can't even imagine how you could keep that rhythm. I mean, it's definitely possible, but like this is the kind of game that like you need to be you need to be a kid in the 80s and this is your only game and you need to play it a lot to get like really good at it and to get quick enough.

33:35 It's a it's a calibration thing, right? Where to keep the rhythm game example going up. If you're playing DDR, if you like mess up on a particular move, you can't just then like get the very next step in either. You have to like relook at the screen, coordinate your feet again. It's kind of like that with the the zapper where if you miss one or miss the line of sight, you have to pause for a second and take a look around and figure out how to get back in. Yeah, when you put it like that, actually, that that even makes the rhythm game analogy even clearer for me. Like, yeah, that's exactly what it's what it feels like with the with the actual hardware.

34:16 But Joe, I don't think getting far enough in the game matters other than the boss fights. For the most part, the game shows you what what you're going to be doing through each stage by revealing almost all the enemies except for the various bosses. And we haven't even mentioned that there are boss fights in this game. I think that's another like, you know, neat touch for a zapper game. The boss fights that I the I think the first one is the three circles, right?

34:47 Yeah. That you spin around and whatever. But then after that, it becomes like a serpent and an atom and a big ship. Those things are cool boss fights. I only saw the circles. So not, you know, not really that cool of a boss fight. But what did you think of these boss fights? I mean, I thought that the the again, I only actually fought against the circles as well. And I thought it was very, you know, accurate and and and interesting to have a boss fight in it. But I really I only experienced the other bosses through YouTube videos. But it does look like it would be really cool to fight the serpent. I mean, just imagine that it's like you have all these targets. You got to kind of take it out as it's coming at you and going away from you.

35:35 I think that they look clever. I can't speak to what they actually feel like to play against. The other thing, too, and not that these guys are any significantly bigger than the than the regular ships or anything, though they they are bigger. They move pretty fast, too. It just it feels like, you know, on some on some scale, having just the one enemy that you deal with that, granted, is only a little bit bigger and he still moves really fast. Yes, these boss fights might be considered a welcome break from the otherwise rapid enemies crossing your screen. Right now you're just dealing with one enemy one on one.

36:18 Yeah, I'd say so, at least for the first boss. It's like a little bit of a relief. You're like, OK, all I have to do is beat this guy and then I'm moving on. And to have a little bit of a larger target is nice, too, although I believe for most of them, there's you can't just hit them anywhere. You have to aim for a specific part. I think with the serpent, it's the head and with the atom, it's the center.

36:39 I don't know where it is with the ship, but I don't know. I don't think anybody ever needs to to go that far into the game anyway. Yeah, but it's kind of funny because it's like so many games have this mechanic where it's like a hit the glowing weak spot of the boss. And that's kind of perfect for a zapper game. It's weird that like we don't this is the first example of boss fights in a zapper game. Now that I think about it, this works really well.

37:08 And although none of us got to the ending, Joe, you might have caught this on your YouTube watch at the very end of the game. None other than Nestor from Nintendo Power shows up to congratulate you. Although he's not like he's not referencing Nintendo Power, but it is Nestor spelled exactly the same way. And since this game was published by Nintendo, we can assume in this game, he takes on the role of president of the Terrestrial Federation. But I don't know. I kind of like stuff like that. At that point, maybe if you're going to make a reference, just put in like Mario though, right? Or something like, like just make it an actual Nintendo character and not this like guy who show this kid who shows up in your comic strips in Nintendo Power.

37:51 But cool. Nonetheless, I just appreciate that. I don't I don't know what year it's supposed to be in this game. But you've got this somewhat I guess it's like a futuristic dome based society. And then you've you've just got the space shuttle in the background. Yeah, I didn't I didn't get that, but I dig it. I mean, maybe it's like this great it's like a piece of history. It's like a museum where you have like dinosaurs in the background. There's just like the ancient space shuttle in the background. It is the tallest structure.

38:23 Also, I thought it was funny that because I didn't connect Nestor to the to the comic character who I'm very only tiny, like only very barely aware of. So when I went like this thing, this letter came up, it was like your courage and effort saved the earth. This whole letter from the president of the terrorist trial federation, Nestor the Magnificent. I was like, was this established? Like, like you're saying this like I know who Nestor the Magnificent is. Like, was this was this in the manual or? That's funny. Yeah, the reference was kind of lost on you. Now I get it.

38:59 On the sequels and spinoff side, none again. Are we starting to think that maybe there's a bias towards games released earlier in a console's life getting more franchise behavior because they were they were first. They sold longer, sold better, just had more time to get like a fan base around them. And now we're just kind of lost in this boring middle where they're already competing with the other 230 something NES games that are already out there.

39:28 And if they don't sell like hotcakes right away, they're just kind of dead in the water and there's never a reason to revive them. Is that is that the thinking? I mean, I know economically for a company like sequels and spinoffs are healthy, but I kind of appreciate that there's that we're getting into a bit more of a bunch of one offs that you don't need to just they didn't need to keep churning out more.

39:56 So that's just my opinion. I don't I don't think it's a bad thing that we're we're not seeing as many sequelized works. All right. Well, we still have one last thing we've got to do. And, you know, who knows what happens in this segment? This is the one segment that I in my document, I always leave blank because it's not scripted. The rest of the show is but not this part. It is the essential games list.

40:22 Sean, your vote for to the earth. I appreciate that to the earth of it. It sets itself apart from a lot of the other zapper games. I I keep asking myself every time one comes up on the show like, oh, there's why are they still making these? Like I thought this was just another thing that was part of the early NES catalog. And now there's really no reason because there's only so many different ways that you can arrange shooting stuff on a screen, at least in terms of like just that one interaction.

40:56 But the fact that they kind of made this a hardcore mode is cool. And I I like the I like the the setting and everything surrounding it. But it's just so hard to play. And the fact that it is just that hardcore mode and doesn't really have too much personality tells me that for me, at least, it's not on the essential games list. Joe. So I I played this game over the weekend. I started playing it with a couple of friends of mine, friends of the show, John and Eric. I feel the need to do that now because I always do that for Mark also.

41:34 So we were we were all playing it. We were having having a good time. And it like I can't pretend it's not fun. It's just really, really hard, which doesn't necessarily like equal bad. Um, and I and I'll say that, like, I do find myself like in the days since, like once we take a break from whatever I'm doing, because I'm just like kind of itching to go to go try try again.

42:00 And that's how I'm getting like a little better, a little better. Now, granted, we're talking we're talking a few days worth of me practicing and getting better and better. And I've only one time beat the first level of the game.

42:10 So I think that this is a really, really good game for like a specific breed of gamer that really wants like a like a difficult challenge to sink their teeth into. And I think it I think it does do better in like in like a time, like I mentioned earlier, when when everybody just has a couple of video games to play. And like, this is the this is the fun, like thing that they go do with their friends like frequently, and then you get better in it. And it like this difficulty lends itself to like a long time of like practicing, like, you know, some taking significant pride and how far you can get in the game.

42:51 And I'm going to say that like, I, this is one of those games that I am on the fence about. It's not like a this is not just like just another zapper game, like you said, Sean, where it like feels like the same as a lot of other things we've gotten.

43:04 And I considered for a while voting it essential. Ultimately, I steered clear of it because one, I do think it is a little bit niche for someone who really wants like this level of challenge. Um, but two, it's that that lack of that lack of personality that you mentioned, which on one hand, I do think that this has a lot of personality with like, it's cool, some cool ship designs and some cool, like, a decent story and decent, like, cut scenes sort of too.

43:40 Um, so in that sense, there's, there's good personality, but it's, I guess for me, it's like, not quite enough to it. It's a, it's a kind of a short game, which that's probably why it's so hard also to kind of make it artificially long. Cause you only go to, you, you only go to, I think like four planets and you skip over Mars for some reason. Like, it feels like they were just, there's not quite enough to the game. And I just feel like it doesn't, um, it doesn't necessarily fit now in 2022.

44:10 So I'm kind of reluctantly rambling here, but explaining why I'm not voting it essential. But it's one of those ones I was on the fence about, but I landed on no. All right. So two no's it can't go on the essential games list. And I am also going to vote no here.

44:26 It is, it is a different kind of zapper game, which is really cool. It's fun to see that whether this company is just Nintendo with a mask on or whatever, it's fun to see that people are still trying to come up with creative ways to make zapper games and not just target practice style games that can just continue to be rehashed under different themes. Uh, like, oh, this one's a Western, this one you're training to become a cop. It's like, no, this actually took you to the sci-fi element of everything and brought us to space and had a little bit of a shmup-like quality to it. All that stuff is unique and different.

45:00 That stuff isn't criteria for the essential games list. I never just think about like, oh, well, this game should go on because it's offering something no other NES game is. There has to be a, uh, a level of polish and quality to these games. Cause remember, we're promoting them as something that are still worth playing in 2022. 2022. And I think if you're us and, uh, you know, you know, even if you're just Joe and you bought a copy of the game and you're doing it for the podcast and you're playing with your friends, that can be a very enjoyable experience.

45:30 But it's something you sought out because of the podcast. It's not something I would just recommend, like, people who are checking out the NES library to go ahead and, like, oh, don't forget to check out To The Earth cause it's very unique and you've never seen a Zapper game like it. Uh, cause you're also forgetting to tell them that it's really, really hard.

45:47 Um, it takes a lot of, uh, you know, fast reflexes and it doesn't offer much variety between the stages. I think those things are huge caveats besides it being unique. So that's my vote for no. That doesn't mean that, um, you know, it doesn't have a shot later. We have the best of 1989 coming up, uh, very soon. We're in the December of 1989.

46:10 And, uh, for those of you who are just recently listening to Nostalgia, you should know that at the end of every year, uh, a season of an, of a show, if you will, every season we do a best of for that year where we look at every game that came out, uh, for the year, this year being 1989, and decide, like, what were the themes? What did we like? What didn't we like? What are we hoping for? But also, we look at the Essential Games list as a whole and think about,

46:37 should these games be on there? Should other games be added to them? Why is this game here but this game isn't? It's a good conversation and it's coming up soon, so I thought it was worth talking about. But not too soon. We still have games like All Pro Basketball next week, um, Archon or Archon, whatever that is, uh, the following week, and then still some heavy hitters, The Battle of Olympus, Dig Dug 2,

47:00 uh, Wizards and Warriors 2, Shadowgate, uh, you know, to keep up the movie theme, Robocop. All these episodes are still coming up and they're coming up soon. So don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. And maybe check out our Patreon, patreon.com slash nostalgia. There you can get access to our Discord. Sean, what are people talking about on the Discord?

47:21 Uh, they're, they're talking about their, their personal lives. Uh, they're talking about, uh, credit card numbers and lots of weird personal details. You don't, you don't have to do that, but that seems to be one of the main topics of conversation is swapping social security numbers. Joe, what else are they talking about? They're talking about the NES. They're talking about the Essential Games list. They talk about the games that we're coming up playing. A lot of them seem to be playing these games alongside us. It's always interesting to get their opinions on that. It's a fun time on that Discord.

47:56 So you get the Discord, you get, uh, another show, Nostalgia Bites, where we play through some Famicom stuff, although not in chronological order. And, you know, if you're just don't, uh, have the, uh, time or, uh, you know, want to talk to us in that kind of capacity, you can always just support us on Twitter, at NostalgiaCast, visit our website, NostalgiaCast.com, or just hit the stop button on the podcast and I'll stop plugging things. It's that simple.

48:40 It's that simple.