247 · Short Order / Eggsplode

• Two Games for Family Fun!
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • Two games in 1
    • A bargain?
    • 56 in 1
    • Now we can fit every NES game on an NES cartridge
• Power Pad
  • 2 Power Pad games, no Bandai involvement, this is all Nintendo and actually TOSE
• Short Order
  • The handheld game Simon meets Overcooked
    • You work in a restaurant, animals order food, and you must prepare exactly what they ordered in the order of ingredients
    • In order to add the ingredient the animal wants, you'll have to step on its corresponding numbered circle on the Power Pad.
    • The highest number your burger can go to is 99.
    • On the GAMEFAQ page, the writer who took the time to write a guide goes on to write this in the TIPS section for Short Order
      • TIPS: If you can't play this game, I can't help you. Have fun.
• Eggsplode
  • A fox is putting bombs under hens to blow them up. Carefully walk across the board to the hen with the bomb, without stepping on the eggs the other hens have laid
    • But it should be that you’re always stepping on chickens right?
• This was the final game(s) released for the Power Pad
  • Some famicom ones we missed:
    • Jogging Race - Jogging and Hiking game.
    • Meiro Daisakusen - Explore a 3D maze using the power pad
    • 2 Power Pad games based on the Japanese Television series game show Takeshi's Castle. Takeshi is a COUNT and owner of the castle, setting up physical challenges to try to get to him. Think Legends of the Hidden Temple
    • Come come Kyonshi: Baby Kyonshi's Great Ladder Adventure - based on a TV show about a young Kyonshi - better known as the Jiang Shi Chinese hopping vampire outside of Japan. The player, as the Kyonshi, must complete various mini-game challenges in order to help it reach its parents. After the player completes one sections, a ladder randomly determines the next mini-game.
• EGL
• Next week - RoboCop
• NEStalgia Byte - Star Luster
• A - Timer
• This indicated the amount of time you have remaining to catch up with the enemy terrorist before they escape beyond your reach. If the timer hits zero, and you have not made it to the end, KITT will no longer accelerate, although he will coast to a stop. On occasion, you can reach the boss by merely coasting to the end if you were traveling fast enough when the timer stopped. However if you roll to a stop before then, you will lose one life. Look for (T)ime tiles to gain 30 seconds of extra time.
• B - Score
• As you drive across the country, your score increases for every little distance you travel. Your score also increases for every enemy that you successfully defeat. Every time you score a multiple of 10,000 points, you also receive an extra life.
• C - Shield
• KITT's ability to survive enemy attacks and collisions is dependent on his shields. Every time he is hit by a vehicle or a weapon, his shield degrades. If his shield is every completely destroyed, you will lose one life. Watch for (R)ecovery tiles on the road to restore KITT's shield.
• D - Voice modulation
• In this show, this indicator would rise and fall along with KITT's voice whenever he spoke. However, he doesn't speak in the game, so this indicator is more for show. It does start to flash more when you are close to running out of time.
• E - Speedometer and Tachometer
• KITT is a fully automatic car (in more ways than just the traditional sense) so the tachometer is really just for show. But the Speedometer tells you KITT's current speed on the road. Keep it high on straightaways, but watch it when you take sharp turns. If Kitt is over 130 mph, he will start sliding off the road.
• F - Fuel gauge
• This shows how much fuel KITT has remaining. If you ever run out of gas during your trip, KITT will begin to coast until his speed reaches zero, at which point you will lose one life. Fuel is slowly used up throughout your trip, and normally you have enough to make it to the end of each stage. However, using Turbo Boost burns a large amount of fuel. If you Turbo Boost frequently, you will not be able to make it to the end of a stage without collecting (G)as tiles to refuel KITT.
• G - Radar
• As you drive along the highways of North America, you will encounter automobiles in three different lanes. KITT's advanced radar system allows you to track the appearance of other vehicles long before you can identify whether they are friend or foe.
• H - Distance meter
• This meter is as important is it is completely unassuming. It shows you how far KITT has left to drive before he catches up with the terrorist that you are trying to chase down. A red square indicates your position along a blue dashed line. It travels to the right as you drive. Once the red square reaches the far left side, you will locate the terrorists and engage them in battle.
• I - Weapons indicator
• The lower-right section of the dashboard indicates which weapons system is engaged. There are three possibilities, in order from weakest to strongest: Machine Guns, Missile Launcher, and Laser Beams. KITT has unlimited Machine Gun ammo. However, he can only hold a maximum of 99 missiles or lasers. When either of these is engaged, the amount of ammo remaining is also displayed. In addition to adding missiles and lasers before each stage, watch for (M)issiles and (L)aser tiles to add to KITT's supply.

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

00:00 Short Order and Eggsplode, two games for family fun.

00:20 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. Today, two games in one. Is that a bargain?

00:40 In theory. Definitively, yes. Well, when the cost is nothing, when you, you know, as some people do, emulate these games, when the cost is nothing, does it care? Do you feel the extra value when theoretically you're paying nothing? Well, I like to, I like to put myself into other people's shoes. Um, so, you know, like if I were, if I were a child or teenager or adult or elderly person or I hadn't been born yet and I might have been thinking about, uh, I've been thinking about playing a game on a peripheral. Uh, I like to think that like, I would have had to pay good money to buy that game. So, I still think maybe it's a bargain? Yeah. I mean, I guess it depends on the, uh, the length and, and content within the game. It depends.

01:34 Yeah. Not that that's related to what we're talking about in any way. Just, just a thought. Two games in one is like the start of the idea though, where eventually we got to like 56 in one and 128 in one. Now we can fit every NES game on an NES cartridge. Uh, granted it has like a micro SD card or something, but that's where, you know, technology has evolved and Nintendo was kind of there on the ground floor being like, well, we could start by with two.

02:00 Yeah. I like to think that this is the, this was like the Genesis of micro SD cards in general. After this game, people were like, you know what we could do? Or the Genesis of like, yeah, those 156 games in one that are mostly just solitaire. Or the Genesis of Sega Genesis.

02:17 Ooh, sorry. Or the end of power pad games, because this is the last of it. All right. Oh, thank God. Yeah. There's no more coming. Sorry to break it to you. This is a two power pad games in one, but no Bandai involvement, which might sound weird, but you have to remember that Bandai made the power pad first as the family fun fitness thing. And then Nintendo was like, oh, we could totally sell that to Americans. So they brought it over to America as the power pad. I don't know. Power pad definitely sounds like it's not appealing to families. It's appealing to gamers, right? Sean. That's right. I mean, gamers were already kind of coming into their own as a demographic and people in the late eighties. Yes. And so this is all Nintendo only.

03:08 Not really. They say they developed it. They say they published it, but really this is one of those secret toast or to say, we always go back and forth on which one is which, that ghost company that makes the games, but then doesn't take any of the credit for them. This is them once again. Oh, wow. They're so selfless.

03:28 And I don't want to get into the power pad and like a retrospective on all of that or anything just yet. I'd like to focus on these games because Joe, I think what you were trying to say is the, the bargain factor of two games in one might be determined by the length of the game. So like when you buy the mass effect trilogy remastered, you're getting like over 100 hours of content, maybe in just one of those games, depending on the kind of player you are, but also definitely at the very least 100 hours across those three games.

04:02 Uh, do you think you could stretch short order and explode to 100 hours worth of content? I mean, technically, yes, I suppose it could, but, but I should be clear that I don't, I guess I, I shouldn't say that the length is, is exclusively what's important. I mean, the depth also long doesn't equal good, but if you, but if you do buy like two in one, a two in one package and it's just like a very simple, uh, very simple mechanic

04:30 kind of one trick pony for each game, that's where I feel like you might get ripped off. But you know, I think you can, I think you can make this last at least as long as the mass effect trilogy. Yeah. There's definitely the potential for that, but, uh, you, you might be diagnosed with something at the end of it. And I guess even though it sounds like there's not a lot to these games, we're going to break them down and we're going to talk about them starting with, uh, the first game in the, uh, naming scheme, which is short order.

05:01 The short order is the handheld game, Simon, but now, uh, and this is gonna make it sound exciting, but it's kind of like Simon meets overcooked where, uh, you're getting orders from various animals, which is weird in itself because animals ordering food always strikes me as strange because we haven't changed the ingredients themselves. So they're ordering, uh, their other kind to eat.

05:23 And, uh, you know, they say like, Oh, I want a burger with this, then this, then that, which is not how you order. No restaurant. Right? Like Sean, you never say like, I want bun, patty, cheese, lettuce, tomato, bun. Like you don't order like that at the restaurant, right? Or at McDonald's. Well, I'll like when I, whenever I want more of one thing, I won't say like, and to patties, I will say patty, patty.

05:50 Um, so that's, that's totally on brand for me. But like, if it goes like, I just want lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, then that's just a triple lettuce. Like you don't have to say just, you know, you don't need to be that on brand. See the way that I do it just to make sure that there's no confusion between me and the person preparing it. Uh, I will say, okay, let's start with this. Can you understand bun, burger, bun? Okay. Well, what about bun, burger, lettuce, bun? Okay. What about bun, burger, tomato, but I build my way up to the all, to all 40 layers of, uh, of my burger. Is it only those four ingredients though? Like you don't, right. You don't want to get wild with like jalapenos or mustard.

06:32 Yeah. And these are all features of the game that we are talking about too, because you work as the chef at this fast food restaurant, the animals come in, they order the food and you must prepare exactly what they ordered in the order of ingredients. But to Joe's point, it is not ordered is, uh, exactly how they wanted at first. These people like a lot of ingredients and they don't trust you to get them all in the correct order in one shot. So they gradually add another ingredient to the burger that they like as you, um, as you complete the correct order the first time. So that's where the Simon part comes in because the order itself doesn't change. It's not a new pig coming in and ordering a new burger.

07:14 The same pig is now saying, okay, you remember everything else build everything again in the same order. But now I also want this and what it comes down to is making a game that's very similar to Simon, where you're just memorizing the pattern complete with the sounds to go with it. So some people are visual learners. Other people are auditory learners. This game covers both of you because it has, uh, both sounds and visuals for this. My question is what makes this like only possible on the power pad? So the way that they set it up is like, you got to jump on the one and two buttons on your power pad to make a beef patty. And then you have to jump on the three and four for cheese, right?

07:56 What part of jumping on the ingredients lends itself to making burgers at a restaurant? Like it feels like they could have just made this with an NES controller, right? Oh yeah. I mean, on one hand, they definitely did not do anything to contextualize this in some way that would make it logical that you're using your feet.

08:18 Or I feel like other power pad games have done that. Um, but then on the other hand, on the, or the flip side of that to the, like the kind of the same problem is that it seems like the whole point of the, of the game or the whole challenge is the memorization of it. I mean, it is exactly Simon with burger ingredients instead of colors, but, but that, that is kind of no challenges added by you jumping. There's nothing about speed or coordination or dexterity. The only challenge I can imagine being added if you're playing on a real power pad is how good the inputs, uh, recognize what you're trying to do, which is like an art, an artificial or like a unintentional challenge.

09:03 So like, I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing to have this on the power pad versus the controller. It probably just makes it a little more interesting to something that's a pretty one note, uh, overall, but it does not, it does not use the power pad for like what it could do best. If that makes sense. Yeah. And I just want to make two clarifications. So first of all, it is not a pig that's coming to order the burger. It's, it's like a, it's a mouse. I'm pretty sure it's a mouse. It depends on what level you're playing on Sean. All right. Well, I could only be bothered to play level one, which is a mouse. And, uh, that's a 10 story burger. Um, there you go. They're measuring it in stories. Yeah. I don't, I don't know.

09:51 Well, that just, all right. I, I, I'm sorry that I came at you. Uh, but I would also say that whoever you are, whoever you're playing as is not a chef. Uh, you're a short order cook. Uh, because I feel like any chef that, uh, that hears this podcast and says like, oh, they're comparing my job to just the person that stacks burgers. I think they would be very upset with us. So I just wanted to say that.

10:18 Um, great clarification. Yeah. Thank you. But it sounds like now you're ragging on short order cooks. Well, you know, I mean, they have a tough day. They got to do that all day long. You know, it's like, I like a factory job. I'm well aware of the plate. They have to memorize 30 plus stories of burger every, for every order.

10:37 You know, what am I saying about factory workers now? Yeah. What are you saying about our working men and women? What am I saying about workers? You're just a fat cat podcaster. You know what I'm saying? That's all I do. Uh, anyway, sorry. Uh, when it comes to why this is a power pad game, like, yeah, we, that, that doesn't make any sense. Like the, this doesn't really make too much sense, but I could, I could explain like a, an idea that would make it make sense.

11:05 If you'd like me to go for it. I would love it. All right. So, I mean, obviously maybe it's just the fact that it looks like a DDR thing. And whenever I think of stepping on stuff to play a video game, I'm thinking of DDR. So, it's going to be a dance club burger shop. And not only is it Simon Says, but it's also rhythm based. So, you have to like jump between the, the, the, the ingredients like in a beat. And then like you get, every time you complete a burger, you get a cool little like, you know, dance number from the, from the animals, whether they are pigs or mice. Uh, and, and that I think would actually make more sense as a power pad game instead of just literally Simon.

11:54 Well, Sean, I don't, you know, that was a good explanation and I appreciate the effort that you went into way more than Hendo decided to bother with. But I was also just, as I was thinking about what you were explaining, you don't even have, forget about the dancing and stuff like that. What if the ingredients are just spread out around the kitchen? And that's why you have to kind of like hop around. Like maybe you're a rabbit. Uh, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah. You're like hopping from station burger patty to station cheese to station tomato to station lettuce. I don't know. Maybe they, I don't know why they couldn't just keep the tomato and lettuce together, but keep them separated. You know, that's what they say in the song, at least.

12:31 Okay. No, I agree that that makes a lot more sense. And it requires, uh, less contrivances than my idea. Sean, you mentioned that some of the burgers can go up to 10 stories. They can go a lot higher than that too. And you knew that I know. Yeah. Go to 99. Can go to 99 story burger. Uh, what, what, uh, is more ridiculous. The idea that you could remember the 99 combinations or watching somebody, uh, eat the burger that you are making. Well, I, I distinctly remember a super NES game. Uh, it was Scooby do something or other. And there was a bonus level where you had to, uh, I think Scooby is pulling stuff out of a fridge and you have to catch them on like, uh, on like a, an incredibly, uh, you know,

13:19 ridiculously tall sandwich. So whenever I think of that, like just a really tall sandwich, I think of that game. So I have a precedent for ridiculously tall sandwiches. I don't have a precedent for a Simon game that lasts 99 steps. That's ridiculous. I would go the other way. I would say that memorizing the 99 steps is pretty ridiculous, but I can't, I can, I can fathom it a lot more than I can fathom somebody eating a 99, a 99 story, even if the story is just a layer of burger or whatever, uh, hamburger.

13:53 It's funny because most of these power pad games were like exercise related. And I feel like you could get a really good workout if you could, cause you're using your mental power as well as your physical power to both remember, let's say you even got to like the thirties, right? You're remembering 32 jumps in order.

14:14 And then you're doing the 32 jumps after you just successfully completed 31, 30, 29, you know, like you're really doing a lot of jumping over the course of what you thought was just like a, a light commitment, you know, to Joe's point, doesn't have to be a very long game, but if you can get to 99, it's going to be a pretty long time before you, you finish this. And in some regards that is, uh, that is the only workout I can think of that teaches you at, uh, or stresses your brain just as much as it stresses your body.

14:43 That's a, that's a good point. Uh, and is this a, is this a good time for me to explain how I played this game? Cause I, I feel I got a mental and physical workout, but this is if you guys are okay with me just taking away any and all validity to anything I say for the rest of the episode. Oh, go ahead, man.

15:00 All right, good. Uh, well I could not get any sort of emulator to work and emulate a power pad, even with a keyboard or anything. I obviously don't have a power pad cause we've never been able to track one down. So it's kind of silly. It's kind of ridiculous. It was oddly effective, but I understand they did not actually play this game. But what I did is I have, I have a quilted weighted blanket that has like sort of a grid on it and I folded it. So there were, so there were three rows of four squares of the grid and I stood on it.

15:31 Uh, and I watched a YouTube video of somebody else playing these games and I just jumped on the corresponding, uh, spot of the grid as they did. And yes, I couldn't tell if I was failing or if I was missing. I mean, there were definitely, I mean, we'll get to this when we can talk about explode. There were definitely times where I was not keeping up or I was failing, but of course the video plays on. So I have like that level of understanding of how hard this game is. But like, if I ever would have just missed an input by accidentally stepping in the wrong spot, I wouldn't know it.

16:02 Uh, but going back to, uh, to this game to, um, short order, I felt that I got pretty much got the experience without needing the feedback of the game. Like I would, I would watch. Go ahead. Yeah. You were the little brother with the disconnected controller. Yes. Hopping around in my apartment on a blanket.

16:25 Uh, you know, I made sure to draw the shades beforehand, but, uh, but I did, uh, in this game, I felt that like, I didn't, I got the workout. I got the mental workout. I didn't need the feedback of the game in the way that it's meant to be. All I had to do was, you know, I watched the pig jump around. I don't know if it was the guy who was playing on this YouTube video or if the game like makes you wait a long time, but he waited quite a long time after the pig jump before he would do his inputs. So I would use that time to see what I remembered. And then when he did his input, I would check to make sure I got it right.

16:59 So it was just kind of like me playing this game manually. I feel like you're really getting something off your chest here. Like you, you wouldn't have able to live with yourself if you like continued in this conversation pretending that you actually played the game. I need to know from anyone who like, if what, what element I'm missing, if there's an element I'm missing, it's like, no, this is what you missed out on. Joe, you sound like you've become Rob from stack up.

17:25 You have replaced Rob in this role where like, it technically doesn't matter what actually happens with the robot and his little discs. But for you, it technically doesn't matter where you jump in the power pad. You held yourself to an honor system. Exactly. Yeah. When, and when I, when I got to a point where I hit the wrong thing, finally, I was like, oh, you know, I'll see where it goes next. But I know I lost. You are an honorable man. Thank you.

17:51 That sounds kind of crazy, but you have to keep in mind that you're doing this for a podcast. I did do something similar in the past for, without a podcast in high school, when Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s got like leaked online. A guy uploaded all of the charts on YouTube and I played along on my guitar, testing my ability to like, oh, but I can't wait till this game comes out. Like I, I want to play them now.

18:18 And it was set up with like AI is this way. Everything was always 100% it or whatever. But I was doing it with my, uh, plastic guitar and just convincing myself like, yeah, I had those notes. Like, yeah, when I get this game, I'll be fine. Yeah. Did you get the game? And was it where you're like, oh wow. Yeah. I totally didn't, you know, get the muscle memory down. Or was it like, wow, that helped.

18:40 Yeah. Got the game and I felt like I played it already. I didn't last long with Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s. It didn't have the same ability as the, uh, Guitar Hero two and three, uh, you know, the main titles, if you will. Those ones I played a long, long time. I feel like with Rocks the 80s, because I played it on YouTube for a while. It was like, when I got the game, I was trying to remind myself, why did I buy this? I was playing it on YouTube.

19:01 Now, were you playing this on YouTube with your friends from lunch? I remember at a previous episode, you mentioned you'd go home on lunch to play, to play, uh, Rock Band. Yes, that's true. Guitar Hero three. Uh, I lived near my school and they let us, uh, go out on your own for lunch. And I did do that. I, uh. But no, my question is, did you bring your friends over and say, hey, check out this new YouTube game I'm playing?

19:23 No, no. At that point, this is, this is, uh, information nobody needs. But at that point, I was in ninth grade and they sent us to a separate high school for just ninth graders, which was nowhere near my house. So not possible. A separate high school just for lunch. Yeah. They bussed us to a lunchroom cafeteria at a different school.

19:42 Not true. All right. So the highest number that you can go to is 99. And there's really not much more we can say to this game. Uh, other than that whole like Simon memorization stuff on the game FAQ page for this, which believe it or not, a writer took time to write a guide for short order and explode in the short order section. He takes the time to write in the tip section tips. If you can't play this game, I can't help you. Like there's just nothing. Like if you don't understand what the instruction manual is telling you, nobody can help you with this game. It's just about how much can you memorize and can you jump from, uh, two sets of buttons to another set of buttons.

20:25 It seems like kind of defensive, uh, specifically for like, he's choosing to write this manual. And I, I don't recall in any other like FAQ, like a, a preemptive, like I did my best. Yeah. He's not talking about any like mnemonic devices you can come up with to remember orders or like, you know, tips on like, Oh, we'll listen to the sounds and that'll help. Like, you know, I think that stuff should have been in the game.

20:54 Like you guys. And you know what? I have a tip right now. I, while I was jumping around on my blanket, I did find myself whistling the tone because each ingredient has a different tone. And that helps me to remember like if I whistled the tune as I went, I remembered like, Oh, this was next. I can't not just visualize this now. I was just hopping on a blanket in my apartment in front of the computer whistling. You're crazy.

21:34 But that's really it for short order right there. They tried to pretend like there's a lot of modes by giving you like, when you get to the first off the menu, the main menu has like press nine to go to short order and press 10 to go to explode. Uh, Oh yeah. Yeah. But that too. But I'm talking about like the actual like main main menu of this two in one. Oh yeah. Then when you get in there, yeah, it has the like, you know, press one and two for this

22:00 mode, press three and four for this mode. And like, they're trying to make it seem like, wow, there's so many different modes inside short order. Like it's a, it's games with inside of a game inside of a two in one game cartridge. Like Nintendo, what a value, but nothing's really changing. Right. Like I can't, I can't say any, right. But like, why not just play on the, on the one that goes to 99?

22:22 Well, because I, isn't it that you don't get the, uh, the wind state of you actually serving your ridiculous sandwich until you hit that number, you know? So if you want like an easy 10 story burger, you play the easiest 10 story burger. And if you want to see yourself hand off 30 layers of food, you need to play the 30 story burger. Who's going to be the first one to go to McDonald's and order a 10 story burger? Can't in the fashion that they ordered in this game. Okay. That probably hasn't happened, but I'm sure someone's done. And just give me all the layers moving on to egg explode.

23:06 Uh, you know, again, keeping up with the animal theme, but in a little bit of a different context in this one, foxes are putting bombs under hens to blow them up as one does. You have to hop across the board to the hens with the bombs. And I guess by you're jumping on the bombs by putting them out or something. And then simultaneously other hens may or may not lay eggs and those eggs, well, you don't want to step on them. You might think they're bombs, but they're not. Uh, cause if you step on those eggs, then that's like, you know, uh, not, not good. Right. That's like the fail state of the game. Either. Either the bombs blow up, right. Either the bombs blow up or yeah, you step on the eggs or whatever.

23:53 But shouldn't it be that you're always stepping on chickens? Like the chickens are representing the grid and you're hopping, I guess on one foot because this isn't the same as the short order game where like one and two are the same area. One is one hen. Two is another hen. Three is another hen. Four is another hen. You are stepping on these. And if you step on a hen who doesn't have a bomb or an egg, nothing happens. But theoretically you should be hurting that hen, right? You stepped on it.

24:24 Well, when I was playing this originally, like I, at first was thinking like, oh, this would make a lot more sense as like a, a gun game. Uh, and then I thought about it for another split second. I'm like, oh, that would make even less sense because if you shoot a bomb, you know, in the movies, it blows up. So then you would just be killing chickens. Uh, so I don't really know how this concept, it makes sense in any context aside from like, you're actually like punching the bomb out from under them and then it just explodes elsewhere. I mean, can you just be stepping on the fuse?

25:06 Oh, yeah. That's just right next to the hens? Yeah, it makes a lot more sense. Although you do see the bomb get crushed. There needs to be a scissors accessory. Um, so you could just like snip those fuses. The NES scissors ever. Yeah. And that's the game, right? Like you're just, you're just stepping on the bombs as they appear. And yeah, they get faster. The foxes get more devious, I guess. Like they kind of run from left to right. And it's not like if they pass a hen's eyes that they're going to lay a bomb underneath it.

25:41 Sometimes they might walk across the entire screen and not lay a single bomb. Other times they might lay down three bombs. The bombs diffuse. Uh, sorry. The bombs go off faster depending on their color. But mostly you're just stepping on bombs while carefully not stepping on chickens. Unless it's their eggs. In which case you're definitely going to step on those. Because the intent of the game at least is thinking that in that scenario you thought it was a bomb. So you crushed it as hard as you could. Just like you do with bombs. Like you jump on bombs to stop them.

26:16 No, no, no. Again, like you're, you have scissor feet. That's, that's what Joe came up with. So that's what we're going to go with. Scissor feet. Okay. I was kind of just rejecting that whole idea. I didn't mention that the NES Scissor Zapper is a shoe accessory that you wear.

26:32 Yes. But, you know, aside from the, from the like difficulty to grasp what's exactly happening in the context of this world, this game is whack-a-mole. Oh yeah, it's just whack-a-mole. That is what, you know, that's, that's what you should cling to, to understand this game. If you're just listening to us describe right now, like this is whack-a-mole with context that doesn't really make sense.

26:55 And then this is where like the actual, like, it makes sense that this at least was a power pad game. Because the only thing that's fun about whack-a-mole is that tactile whacking of moles. And while it's not a peripheral, it's not a scissors peripheral, but it's also not a, a mallet peripheral. Um, I guess the next best thing would be to step on things. So, at least this makes sense to be something that you're physically doing.

27:24 Yeah. And it does like, in later levels, even in the imaginary version of the game that I played, give you quite a workout as, as time goes on. Like, it gets fast. And like, I find myself, what? Oh, what was there any, um, like, musical thing you were doing? Were you whistling anything while you were playing this game? No, there was no whistling to help me here. This was just all just focusing on the screen and, and, and kicking around on this blanket. But, uh, but, but I did find that like, there was, what was it? It was to the earth. I think, uh, after I kind of talked about my experience, Mike, you kind of summed it up as like, there was, there's this like rhythm element that if you get out of rhythm,

28:07 suddenly you're like screwed up for a while. And I definitely felt that here, even though the game was not obviously giving me the feedback that I failed. I could just, I would just suddenly go, you know, much later in the rounds when they're moving really, really fast. I would suddenly go like 10 seconds where I'm just hitting nothing. And I definitely would have lost the actual game because I stepped out of rhythm for like a second. And I'm like, oh, how do I get back? Like it couldn't catch up. So this seems like it does get difficult.

28:31 And if you do well at it, it does give you a workout. I would say even try playing this game with a keyboard. If you're emulating it on a computer, uh, because there's so many buttons that represent the power pad. And because this one isn't like grouping together, a lot of power pad games, if you try to emulate them are kind of weird because you have to put your fingers down on, uh, say buttons one and two are mapped to R and T. You have to press down R and T at the same exact time.

28:57 The power pad won't understand if you're just pressing one of them. But in this game, if you're mapping all the power pad buttons across the 10 keys that you have, it kind of becomes, especially with how fast the foxes laid down bombs, it kind of becomes like a hacker typer game where you start going really fast. And you're hunting and pecking and you're looking for the right, uh, thing.

29:17 And then you think you have the right button, but it's like, Oh, actually, because the keyboards aren't perfectly aligned in a grid, like how the power pad is, you might've been one button off. And now you have to quickly race to the other button. And, uh, you know, in one side, I love that we finally got some power pad games that aren't exercise focused and still managed to just by the nature of the power pad incorporate exercise. But we got like actual genuine NES games, but they could have also just worked without a power pad, right? Uh, unfortunately you do need a power pad to play these games. There is no controller only option.

29:51 I'm just, I'm conflicted on whether this is, you know, whether it's great that we didn't see a lot more like this, that were held back by the power pad, but could have been maybe more interesting games. If they gave you a controller or if we should have seen more games like this and less like the, uh, you know, uh, everybody go to aerobics class. Okay. Everybody go to camp. Okay. Everybody run on the track. Like, you know, we saw a lot of those.

30:16 I think also neither can be true because I think between, between the athletic, not athletic, the fitness type games. And this, I think that there, there's a lot more ground that could have been covered. Like we kept talking about rhythm games and, or maybe I just kept talking about rhythm games, but like, that's something that I would have thought would at least be an inkling in someone's eye, uh, for an idea of a power pad game. We didn't really see it. Like, I guess you could call it a rhythm game.

30:50 If you're like trying to jump over an imaginary log or if you need to get into a particular groove to get up to speed in a running simulator. But it was, it was never like musical based. And I, I know that like, we're used to things that have a lot more like horsepower than an NES, but I think the NES could have handled something. So I think that the peripherals potential was never seen. Well, that brings me into the next point of this was the final game released for the power pad, but we missed some Famicom ones. You know, we do that whole nostalgia bites on our Patreon, but we're not going to probably play them for the nostalgia bites episodes.

31:36 I got this blanket. I still have this blanket. It's not serving any purpose now. The blanket is now just a power pad. You'll never, you'll never use it for warmth again. No, no. Now I thought, I thought it would just be fun if I ran down the list of the Famicom games and then maybe you guys could decide, oh, you know that one actually we should try for bites. Okay. Let's hear them.

31:59 Jogging race. No. Which is a jogging and hiking game. Depends on the level of, uh, you know, effort that they went to for the hiking. Yeah. What makes it hiking? Is it just like the scenery? Yeah. Like, do you, are you walking through a forest and there's some nice pixel art and stuff like that? Probably not. But I think about those fishing games that sometimes just kind of become like a mood of their own. Like sometimes you want to get up at four o'clock in the morning, get on the boat and go fishing. And other times you want to get up at four o'clock in the morning and just boot up your, you know, super bass fishing on Super Nintendo and listen to that, uh, you know, Japanese jazz. Yes. Yes, I have those warnings. That city pop music? Yeah.

32:46 I think that maybe for the, for the hiking, if they had, if they like had, they encouraged people to like fold the power pad onto their stairs. So the back layer is on the first step, the second layer is on the second step, something like that. I feel like that would lead to a lot of deaths. Yes. Probably. Yeah. And make sure you just fold it onto the top of your stairs, not the bottom four steps, the top four steps. Wow. That sounds even more dangerous. Yeah. That's Nintendo's legal people keeping us safe.

33:14 Sean's one of them. That's me. All right. Then we have Miro Daisakuzin, which is, uh, basically you explore a 3D maze using the power pad. Sounds like a hard pass for me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think 3D mazes and power pads are two things that like have rarely worked out for us on the internet. Separately, you know, like now they want to put them together. Yeah. Uh, then there were two power pad games based on the Japanese television game show Takeshi's Castle. Oh, yeah. Do you guys know about Takeshi's Castle? I, I vaguely, is that, is that the one that they make fun of in that one show on Spike?

33:50 Uh, possibly. This is the one where, uh, the host Takeshi is the, he's the count of his own castle. And you, as the contestants on the game show, he sets up physical challenges within the castle that you have to try to, uh, complete them to get closer to, you know, his, his lair.

34:10 And it's a lot like, um, the, I guess the American equivalent, the one I can think of off the top of my head is Legends of the Hidden Temple. You know, when, like, after they do all the mini games and the trivia stuff, then they actually, like, the two people that won get to go through the temple and try to, like, avoid the temple guards and construct the, uh, silver monkey and all that. And that's Takeshi's Castle, but that's the entire episode.

34:31 Okay, yeah, so I just did a real quick lookup, and there is a show that ran on Spike TV called MXC Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, which just took footage from Takeshi's Castle and just dubbed, uh, conversations and re-contextualized everything. Uh, uh, none of the stuff was ever said. It was just completely. Oh, they did, uh, they did a Power Rangers.

34:55 Yeah, basically, yeah, but it was funny, I guess. Joe, would you play it? Why not? I'd give it a try. It sounds, it sounds quirky, it doesn't sound like it would necessarily be good, but it sounds quirky enough that I'm, like, interested. Yeah, like any game show game, I'm kind of, I'm kind of vaguely interested.

35:12 It does sound like something that sounds way more fun than it is, though. Like, the ad in the toy book would have sold me on the game, and then I would have got it and been very disappointed. Then we have, oh, this is the last one, sorry. Last game, Come, Come, Kiyonoshi, Baby Kiyonoshi's Great Ladder Adventure. Ooh, ladders. Yep, based on a TV show about a young Kiyonoshi, which is, uh, a, uh, I'm, oh my god, I didn't really look at these notes. This is a, this is a Chinese hopping vampire baby. Apparently that's, like, a thing. Okay. Like, all those things at once. It must be Chinese, must be a vampire, must be a baby, and also hops.

35:54 Are you playing, like, 20 questions with me right now? Nope, nope, that's what it is. Okay. And the player is one of those hopping Chinese vampire babies and must complete various minigame challenges in order to help it reach its parents. After the player completes one of the sections, a ladder randomly determines the next minigame. So this isn't about climbing ladders, it's not about hopping over ladders. Ladders just determine the next minigame that you'll play. Three stooges, but with ladders and a dance band. Let's do it. Let's do, let's do one other thing, Sean.

36:28 Okay. Let's do the Essential Games list. Wait, I did want to talk about one more thing. Oh, go ahead. We're not going to do the Essential Games list then today. This is, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just, because we've talked about how, like, you know, like, Nintendo didn't put, or, you know, the developers didn't put, like, too much love into these games. But I will say somebody here clearly cared about this game just based on the menu screen.

36:53 Why the menu screen? Well, because there's animations and stuff, yeah. Yeah, it's, there's, like, some, there's somebody who, like, wanted to make this, like, not just a generic game. It starts out with, no, no, it starts out with Short Order on the screen. Like, Short Order, first start. And I remember thinking, like, oh, I thought this was, like, a double game. Like, where's the other game that's supposed to be in this?

37:14 Then the character, the fox from Eggsplode comes out and bombs the menu screen of Short Order, like, off to the right. And then, like, he's like, all right, yeah, bring it in. You see him, like, doing his, like, thing. And they, the, I don't know if it's the, whatever that other dog that's, that's also in Eggsplode. So it's just, like, pulling it in to the, even though I think they're enemies in the game, to the fox's orders.

37:38 Then the new menu screen, the Eggsplode menu screen comes out. It's like, no, no, this is the game. And then that stays up for a little bit. And then the pig comes up and jumps on it, just like he does in the game, and jumps up, jumps it to the bottom of the screen. And then does the same thing with the mouse. And be like, oh, yeah, bring it in, bring in our thing. And then they kind of, like, look a little slyly at the camera, like, yeah, yeah, we did that. And I'll say that when I booted this up, I was charmed. When I booted it up, when I booted up this YouTube video.

38:09 Oh, right, because you play it on a blanket. Yes. Although I did originally boot up, like, an emulated version and then realized I couldn't play it. So I just watched the menu screen for a while. And now we're back to the Essential Games list. Is that my cue, Mike? It's not. Everything is funky today. Everything's all out of whack ever since Joe decided to have his own ideas and, I guess, show. But, Sean. All right, Sean, you go ahead. Okay, okay. I'm the host now.

38:48 Okay, I will say that I disagree with Joe in that somebody cared more about this game than anyone other than you, Joe. Like, you cared about this game more than anyone, even the developers. The fact that you made a... No, you didn't make a fool of yourself. I'm sorry. That you went to such lengths. Such lengths to experience this. And then, apparently, spent a good 10-15 minutes just chuckling at the intro menu. I gotta say that I'm impressed. I'm gonna be a no on the essentialness of this game because, again, it is just Simon and whack-a-mole. But I had a lot of fun hearing your stories.

39:43 All right, well, I'll say that I hope that nobody took my enthusiasm for the menu screen as any indication that there would be a universe where I would vote this onto the essential games list.

39:57 So, also, though, sorry, I wasn't prompted. I'm just totally stepping on the host's role. Oh, you're the host. Mike, you can go now. I'm stepping on my own blanket. Oh, right, right, right, yeah. Which you did all day long, apparently. Yeah, exactly. All right, thank you for letting me know I could go. Sean, Joe, Sam, Steve. Hmm. Short order. Egg explode. The slash between them.

40:28 That's the title. And my vote is that they are not essential. They're not... Not fun. I enjoyed the concepts, despite criticizing them inside the episode. It's a, you know, it's like the right amount of cartoony meets 80s video game meets weird peripheral. But, you know, there's really not enough there to even... I'm extending this episode just by talking about it any further. We've covered it at length, and so it should be obvious. That said, power pad games, where this falls in, I don't know. This is pretty high up there, right? For me, it beats those, like, running simulator games, personally. Yeah, absolutely. Next week, what are we playing?

41:18 Host? Host. I have no idea. I didn't know I would have to know these things. That's okay. I'm teasing. I give it back. We are playing submarine simulator game Silent Service. Now, you two are acting like, you know, hmm, what's that? What if I told you it was a video game designed by all three of ours, hero, Sid Meier? Oh, okay. This is a Sid Meier game. We're going to have a good time, boys. Yeah. What's it called? Silent Runnings. Oh, Silent Service.

41:53 Oh, Submarine Simulator was not part of the title. No, that's what it is. Okay. It's a submarine simulator. A cyber simulating, cyber submarine simulator's Silent Service. And if that's not enough for you, don't forget about our Patreon feed for just $5 a month to get access to Nostalgia Bites. But we're playing, around the same time as Silent Service, Boko Suko Wars.

42:21 And we're just going to keep just saying that name and expecting everybody to know what we're talking about. Because that's the whole idea of this podcast, folks. We do not play these games in advance. We don't jump ahead. Not, you know, basically, I am doomed to play the previous 247 games. I can't jump ahead. I can't ever play Super Mario Bros. 3 until that episode. So, thankfully, that's coming up, too. We've got a lot of great games coming up. A Boy and His Blob, Willow, Genghis Khan, Clash of Demon Head, River City Ransom.

42:54 Oh, I know that one. Yeah, you guys should be prepared. You didn't know Super Mario Bros. 3? I never heard of it. Okay, very good. Very good. All right, that's the episode. Don't forget that if you want Joe to be the host, tweet at Joe. Joe, where can they find you? I'm at Joe. At Joe on Twitter. Yep, there you go. At Joe at Twitter.com. Or me, at Esposito Film, which you can tweet me and let me know if you want me to remain the host. And that's how we'll decide this. One tweet is all it will take. So, somebody send it out there. Be good, kids. Be good, kids.