259 · Infiltrator

• Good Luck McGibbits - The fate of the world is in your hands
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • As the manual states this is a TOP, TOP, TOP, TOP SECRET MISSION
  • Johnny "Jimbo Baby" McGibbits
    • We made fun of Clash at Demonhead’s Engine of Destruction but this takes the cake
• Overview
  • Infiltrator is divided into six missions: three helicopter flying missions, and three ground-based missions. Infiltrate enemy bases and take down their leader.
• Gameplay
  • Learning to Fly the Helicopter
    • WARNING LIGHTS
• Oil temperature will rise rapidly when in whisper
• mode or when using the turbo engines. Excessive oil heat will trigger the
• warning light and eventually result in permanent engine damage.
  • GAUGES
    • Battery Gauge - Once you exceed 400 KPH (normal) or 800 KPH (turbo),this gauge will begin moving to the right as the battery slowly heats up. Excessive heat will trigger the battery warning light and eventually cause engine damage.
    • The ADF (Automatic Direction Finder)
      • You have to set the ADF and then follow it. This isn’t auto pilot
    • Radio
      • The espionage portion. ID other aircrafts to determine friend/foe and perhaps trick foes.
  • Thinking about the game they are offering here, Did it need to be this immersive?
  • ID Codes are broken on replays. No way to know at first and then no way not to know in the future. There’s only like 12 ID codes.
  • Helicopter Missions
    • the goal is to take off in the helicopter, program the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) to set the correct course, maneuver the helicopter to the landing area while hailing nearby planes to determine if they are friend or foe and engaging in firefights if the player responds incorrectly, and finally land the helicopter safely without detection through use of whisper mode. Their helicopter is equipped with missiles, guns, chaffs, flares, Radio Communications, a Status terminal, a Turbo engine and a whisper mode.
  • Ground Missions
    • The player has access to five different items in their inventory. The papers are used to trick the enemy into thinking that they are part of the mad leader's forces. If the guards get suspicious the player must use their gas canister or gas grenades to knock them out. The mine detector is used to discover buried mines while walking about. Finally, the explosives are used in the final ground mission to destroy the mad leader's base.
    • The player's goal in each mission is to find a security card hidden in a cabinet in one of several multi-room buildings. Once located, the card will open up the locked security doors protecting the goal for each mission. In the second mission, the player must find the four chemical containers and take them to the lab for analysis to determine which is the nerve gas neutralizer, and then find the vat of nerve gas to neutralize it. In the fourth mission, the player must find and rescue Dr. Phineas Gump, a scientist who has been captured by the mad leader. The player must feed him the invisibility pill to make their escape. In the sixth mission, the player must find all seven of the mad leader's missile control rooms and plant explosives in them, then escape before the 10-minute timer (which lasts for 20 minutes of actual time) counts down to zero.
    • After completing the ground mission, the player must return to the helicopter and fly back to home base. The return flight is much shorter with fewer enemy planes than the missions to get to the enemy base. Once the player completes a mission, they are given a four letter passcode, so that they can return to the same mission during subsequent plays.
    • time limit
  • I understand the time limit from an espionage standpoint, I don’t understand the lack of clues and briefing that would be required to do this right. The game wants you to learn from your past playthroughs, but that’s simulating a SPY with the ability to hit a reset button, not some Solid Snake type character
• Computer Gaming World awarded Infiltrator II zero stars and described it as "Even worse than the original".
• The game was novelized by Peter Lerangis, as part of the Worlds of Power series published by Scholastic Books
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Infiltrator was followed by a sequel, Infiltrator II: The Next Day
  • Because the original was never released on the NES, the sequel was released as "Infiltrator" on that platform.
• EGL
• Next week - The Magic of Scheherazade
• NEStalgia Byte - Bio Miracle

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

00:00 Infiltrator! Good luck, McGibbets! The fate of the world is in your hands!

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. Let it be known, as the manual states, that this is a top, top, top, top secret mission. Okay, this is not just a top secret mission. This is something that only Johnny Jimbo Baby McGibbets can handle. And if you haven't heard of him, that's because that's how good of a secret it is. Right. Nobody knows top spy Johnny Jimbo Baby. And also the last name McGibbets is kind of funny, too. So it's just all funny all around. We made fun of Clash of Demon Head's Engine of Destruction title. But I think Jimbo Baby is the idea of, like, somebody who could be, like, a 007 is just, you know, right on the nose, too.

01:13 For, you know, it's up there in terms of worst titles I've ever heard. Yeah, this game, back to front, you can tell that it is just, like, one guy's very specific humor. And in this case, it's, like, someone very lame. I'm not saying that as, like, an insult. Like, you can still be cool and have incredibly lame humor, but the entire, like, instruction manual, like, all this plot framing stuff, it's, like, it's not dad jokes. But it's just, like, really, really cringy goofball stuff. Yeah, it feels like it's, like, Dr. Seuss writing, like, a military infiltration story.

02:00 And then, like, the game itself isn't quite, like, there. It's kind of, like, the game is played pretty straight. It's just all this other stuff. Right. Right. And even his idea of, like, what a evil villain would look like, you know, this green guy who wears, like, a, you know, a cape or has a hood over his head. Like, what is that? That's, like, a cartoon character of a villain that doesn't feel like it exists in this world that he's created, which, and keep in mind what kind of game we're playing here. We're basically playing, for the most part, a helicopter combat flight simulator with some loose ground missions where you have to infiltrate bases on top of that.

02:41 Most people will maybe never make it out of the helicopter stuff, and that's why they let you skip to the ground mission if you're not so lucky. But, I don't know, like, that whole, like, plot of Johnny, Jimbo Baby, McGibbeth, and, you know, you've got to infiltrate these bases, and it's not taking itself seriously. It's actually kind of funny, but it just doesn't feel like it's matching well with the rest of the gameplay world.

03:05 No, it's pretty, yeah, there's definitely two worlds here. There's the, again, like, with how goofball the story and framing stuff are, like, not only is he this, like, weird green guy in a mask, very classically cartoon villain in how he's illustrated, but it's also implying that he is the leader of a nation, like, a sovereign nation that has this kind of, like,

03:42 like, oh, I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids, but it's specifically McGibbeth's that always, like, foils his international plans. And then you go on to having to figure out the heading and the radio frequency to get your GPS synced, and you have to take into account wind, and it's, there's so, such weird juxtapositions between the game and everything else. Yeah, because it really feels like, with that opening, that you're gonna go into some kind of Metal Gear Solid world, right?

04:23 Or not Metal Gear Solid, but Metal Gear, like we played on the NES, like, that kind of world, where you're just running around, going inside of bases, collecting information, and trying to take down the, I think his name is just Mad Leader. I don't think they even gave him an official name or anything. Yeah, he's just Mad Leader. Yeah, so, you're right, Sean, it is a little strange that when you finally do boot up the game, it does give you the option to start with the helicopter mission or go right to the ground mission, but the helicopter mission is the implied first thing to do.

04:50 So, if you start there, you see an incredibly detailed helicopter HUD that you then have to, like, you know, you could start, you could do what I did. I started the helicopter, saw that, you know, the engine was running and everything, and everything was going up, and then I immediately crashed my helicopter, because I just didn't even bother to look at the controls yet, and turns out, you know, I just wasn't using the eel correctly, and I steered this thing straight into the ground without even taking it off, which is funny. I'm glad that it lets you do that, but that also told me what kind of game I was gonna be playing.

05:23 So, then I went back to the manual, and I think now I can fly a helicopter in real life. Yeah. It was a very, I had the same kind of, that same kind of feeling in the beginning. It was very much like that air, like that side-scrolling, like, World War II plane game, I forgot the name of it, where you have to take off, and you think when you're, when you start playing this game, then like, okay, I'll just press the button to go, and then it'll take off for me, and then you'll go right off the airstrip, and crash into the field right in front of you. It was a pretty early game, if you remember it, but it's very much like that.

06:04 Yeah, I, you know, I always try to play the game for a couple minutes before looking at the manual, at least, but this one, I was just like, I took like one look at the cockpit, and I was like, I don't think there's gonna be much of a chance. I couldn't even get to the point where I crashed, because I never would have guessed that before you can do anything, you need to start the engine using the start button.

06:28 So, like, definitely, like, not, like, intuitive up to this point based on, like, the control schemes we're used to. I definitely needed the manual to do anything right off the get-go. Joe, that's because the start button is usually what you use to pause a game, and then unpause it, so I guess they were just thinking, no, this is the start button is start your engines. Exactly, yeah. It makes a lot more sense than, uh, than it, than it seems like it does, but, uh, just because, uh, we're conditioned to not think of the pause button as, the start button as a, uh, something that, like, interacts with the game. Yeah, it's kind of outsider art in that way. Like, what do you mean? It's the start button.

07:10 Yeah. And even if you so much as figure out starting, you know, and these things are not hard once you look at the manual and actually learn the controls, like, even if you start the helicopter and then start takeoff appropriately once you've reached a certain amount of, um, rotations per minute and everything and get up in there, and then you're moving around and you're making sure, you know, you can kind of figure out, like, am I diving? Am I climbing?

07:33 Am I just going straight? How do I turn? Like, you can figure out that stuff. It still doesn't mean you're going to find any success in this game because there are so many, basically everything that it looks like can be pushed or can be, uh, like, played around with on this helicopter actually can be. And you should be doing it because you're going to have to be doing stuff like that because you'll have to monitor your fuel.

07:58 You'll have to, as Sean mentioned, put in the GPS coordinates on your radio to make sure that you actually have the, uh, location of the man leader's base appropriately targeted. So this way, uh, you can follow that GPS and go where, uh, it wants you to because otherwise you'll just be flying around for no good reason. And then you have to also measure, like, you know, am I at an appropriate altitude or are any of my emergency lights blinking?

08:27 Uh, how's my battery gauge? It's like, I get it, but this isn't the game for that, right? Like, it's amazing that they, that there's even anything else in this game other than just learning how to fly a helicopter in an empty grassland. Like, it's incredible that there are also on top of that enemies and an entire ground mission filled with all different other kinds of objectives and gameplay.

08:49 Yeah. The, the main thing that you're, aside from the breathing and sweating and like all those like automatic, uh, like bodily functions is the, um, the simile I'm going to use here.

09:07 Um, all those things like flying the helicopter and making sure you don't crash and you're actually going to a place. Like the main thing that you're doing in this half of the game is like playing, is like saying hello to people and playing a guessing game as to whether they're your friend or foe. Like you're going to be going back to your radio, which sidebar, the only place where not everything means something, uh, like in your cockpit is the radio where you only really need to look at the top, like fifth of the screen. And everything is just, everything else is just blinking lights to make it look complex. Um, and you have to say like, Oh, Hey helicopter, who are you? And then the helicopter will be like, Oh, my name's buzz.

09:54 Uh, what's your name? And then you'll have to be, okay. Do I tell them that I'm, that I'm an infiltrator or do I pretend to be one of the evil empire? And then depending on how you respond, it'll, uh, it'll either start a battle because you picked wrong. Uh, and that, that plane, or sorry, that helicopter was actually, uh, somebody that's working for the evil guy when you thought he was working for the resistance or however you want to phrase it. Um, or it'll just be like, all right, good to meet you. See you later. And then, then the fight starts. So there's like three different aspects just to this mode that you're always going to be struggling to stay afloat, just flying the helicopter.

10:40 Yeah. And, and Mike, I think to your point, when you said like, this isn't the game we've had, we've had other games that have this simulating, like first person flying some sort of vehicle, whether it's a plane or a spaceship or whatever. Um, that I think I've said in those that I could see a state of mind I could be in where I suddenly I get very invested in, in learning this and like kind of getting good at this, um, at this simulation.

11:07 But for this there, it feels like it's, it added the, the simulation thing for the sake of being thorough, but it doesn't compliment the gameplay. I mean, the, the fact that, like you said, you have to, you have to type in the, the, what is the exact, not coordinates, but whatever the number is on your, on your GPS, if you will, whatever the heck this is. Um, and all you really are doing is going into one of these sub menus, finding the number, going out of the sub menu and putting the number in.

11:37 It's like that, that doesn't, this doesn't translate to any sort of interesting or fun gameplay. It's just like a thing that you shouldn't forget to do, which I can understand that in something that is more of a simulation, but this feels like it is supposed to be more of like an adventure. You're, you're, you're on a stealth mission. That just feels like this extra bit that's, that doesn't fit here.

11:59 I mean, I kind of like the idea of something that tries to represent every aspect of whatever the game is about. Like in, uh, like in Gran Turismo, it's not just about racing. It's about tuning your car and like getting licenses for something. And I don't know when some other games you'll like, Oh, getting, uh, uh, getting sponsors and then whatever else. Like, I, I kind of liked that. And like, if it, it's sort of like the, the, the version of that for a eight bit stealth game, um, which I don't think is a bad idea on paper. The problem here is that this is very much a, a, a simulation to the T made by somebody that doesn't understand anything.

12:54 Uh, which I think is cool in its own way, but it very much comes across like, Oh yeah. This three digit number is a, is just a GPS for any, you could put in a three digit number. You could go anywhere and you will know this from some other screen on your, on your laptop, in your helicopter. Like none of it makes sense, but all the details are there. Yeah. I mean, it's like you're calibrating it in some way or whatever. Like what my issue with it is, it's not like you can get it wrong. It's not like you can, you can screw it up or, or not be able to find the number. The number is just there in the menu. You just got to plug it in every time, which just makes me feel like, well, why isn't it just there already?

13:33 Yeah. Right. Sean, I don't disagree actually with what you were saying with Gran Turismo and, um, you know, like NBA 2K games or something that like, you know, they include like some extra flair into them. But you got to remember in Gran Turismo, even if you go to like the driving school to get your different driver's licenses and you have to pass the tests and then you have to, you know, buy some weird car and tune it up. And, you know, you don't think about that kind of stuff when you're playing a more like, you know, cruising USA or something. But now it's like, well, what do I want fifth gear to be? Like you have to set that stuff in Gran Turismo for it to really work, but it's always about driving.

14:09 Yes. This game is like if No Man's Sky also took the like, you know, spaceship exploration part and made it so that you had to like read up on like how they traveled to the moon and like how those spaceships like actually work and how to, you know, like. Yeah. That makes it more a parallel to like something closer to elite dangerous.

14:32 Right. Yeah. Simulating things that don't exist. Which, yeah, that's a better, that's a better analogy. Yeah. And I guess what I mean is, is just that No Man's Sky understood the assignment for the spaceship portion. Like there's that game lets you do so many things. You can, that's what the whole game's about, but it understood where not to add unnecessary features.

14:51 And I feel like the problem that this one has is if it was just about flying an helicopter and sneaking past enemies in order to get to the base, you might be able to get away with that. But because it mostly relies on the part that you were talking about where you're just using the radio to ID other aircrafts as soon as you possibly can in order to avoid combat. That the ID codes is not only a weird gameplay experience because it's the one thing that doesn't have to do with flying the actual helicopter. You're in a static screen when you're in the radio portion. It's not like the helicopter is still moving or anything.

15:28 You just see an aircraft. You immediately ask for an ID before because if you don't ask for the ID, then they will ask you for an ID, in which case you'll have to guess. But if you ask them first, this is where the game kind of gets broken because first, there's no way to know. Like the first time you play this game, there's no way to know without cheating whether somebody is good or bad. But then on all future versions of this game that you ever play ever again, there's only like 12 ID codes.

15:56 So as long as you can remember the six on the good and the six on the bad, you'll never struggle again with having to do any kind of helicopter combat, which is like half of the complicated features of this mode. And it just basically becomes a helicopter flying simulator where you're just waving, pretending to be the good and the bad guy, depending on who shows up, and then sneaking your way into the ground. Well, the one thing that they did say in the manual, and I don't know if I ever came across this because I was never perfect at IDing these guys, is that there will be some that always attack you because they've got helicopter madness or something. No matter how you respond, they've just been in that helicopter for too long.

16:45 So there's always a chance that you'll get... It's not a submarine. How long can you be in a helicopter? No, I don't know. That they've been infiltrators for too long. I don't know what the actual explanation is. It's like we've been in the air for too long. We haven't found the ground.

17:00 Judging even by the fuel in these helicopters, it's not very long because the fuel runs out pretty fast. And if the fuel doesn't kill you, the battery will because the battery is the, in this version of the game again, is the fun killer because you're not allowed to go too fast or else your battery is going to start to overheat. And then your warning lights are going to turn on. And great. You know, it's fun that everything in the helicopter is interactive and everything, but don't stop me from having a good time.

17:27 Yeah. Go ahead, Joe. I was going to say, I think that that's, that all of this simulate-y, the simulate-heavy focus is what stopped me from having a good time with other things that could have been a little more fun, like combat. I think they had some kind of cool stuff we haven't seen before, like, like firing flares to, to, to, like, distract heat-seeking missiles. And there are, like, a couple different, like, methods of, well, there's a couple, there's, like, two methods of firing, there's two methods of evading or, or deflecting different types of fire. Yeah. But it's just, it's just, it's still on this HUD on the screen where you have to, like, cycle through the buttons on your, on your, like, cockpit.

18:16 And then select it and then fire whatever the thing is in the split second that you see something shooting at you. I mean, it's almost, you almost just have to preemptively know what you're going to do next and be ready for it. But, like, you can't, I mean, I guess you could react in time, but it doesn't feel like, like, an actual game. It feels like, like, oh my god, what are my instructions again? I have to do really fast to, to get to this point in the combat. So I feel like even, it, like, stepped on its own toes of trying to be these two different things. Yeah, this is not the game for everything that they put in the game. Like, you have chaff, you have flares, you have torpedoes or whatever, you have just a regular gun.

18:59 But you're not going to be able to cycle through eight different options, four of which are the weapons. The other four are sort of auxiliary things, like the radio, like making your helicopter inexplicably quiet. Turbo, like, you're not going to be able to have an engaging, like, dogfight when everything is so clunky like that. So it was, like, fun exercise for him to give him goofy names and add more character to the manual. But whenever I got into a fight, it was just, all right, I got to use the machine gun. That's the only one that I can get to actually, like, hit the guy.

19:42 Yeah, yeah. And to further, like, emphasize the clunkiness of all of this is that you have, on your cockpit, you have, on the left side, you have all your, like, weapons and defenses. On the right side, you have all your other, like, interfaces.

19:57 There's four of each. They're not even, like, in a row. And you have to scroll through them. So it gets confusing already when you're, like, scrolling down, down, down. Now you're on the right side, and you've got to think, like, okay, if I go back up, will I end up on the bottom of the options on the right side or on the top? I mean, it sounds simple enough, but, like, in the moment, it gets kind of confusing. And you're using start and select to scroll up and down. It's just all around. It's, like, very, it throws you off. Right, and I thought start would stop my engine.

20:27 But that's just a one-time function. Exactly, yeah. All right, so say that you manage to get to the secret base of the Mad Leader, which isn't, like, the main hideout. There's several. That's, like, the gameplay loop. First, you fly the helicopter, program the coordinates using the automatic direction finder. And then when you get there, you have a ground mission. And in these ground missions, it is more like Metal Gear on the NES, that kind of layout. Not exactly a top-down, but you get the idea. You're walking around a compound. You have to sneak your way around and then get inside the buildings, one of the buildings, hopefully the correct building,

21:12 and find a security key card that will then let you gain access to a specific thing for each level. So, you know, in one mission, it's collecting chemical containers. And in the, like, final mission, it's about exploding his missiles in the missile control rooms that are spread out throughout the thing. The problem with this one, and I hate to get negative right away, but the problem is that there is a timer and there is no, there's no clues.

21:41 There's no, um, there's no briefing. There's no way to know, really, where to go. You just go into the first building and hope that the security guard is, the security card is somewhere inside there after you explore every room. If it's not there, you gotta go to the next building. If it's not there, you gotta go to the other building. All the while, there are items that you have at your disposal in case you have to deal with any enemies.

22:08 The papers being the easiest of the tricks, somehow you have papers that identify you as one of the bad guys. And for most people, uh, most enemies in the game, they're going to say, stop, show me your papers. You show them the papers and they go, these look in order, carry on. And you just continue to do that. And hopefully, um, you're sneaky enough so that if you're going through a cabinet, they aren't looking in your direction. They notice that you're going through a cabinet. But that's the majority of the game is once again, very similar to the IDing of aircrafts. It's about showing the papers and just convincing the people that you are who you say you are because of a piece of paper, not anything you've actually done in the game.

22:50 Yeah. And with the papers, if it truly is most of the time, uh, that they'll just be like, all right, you're good to go. So it's gotta be like 55% because I thought that it was like a coin flip anytime that I was, I was near a guy. I shouldn't the papers. Yeah. He'd say you're good to go, but also it seemed just as likely for him to be like, these are, this is completely an outrage. And then you'd have to quickly go into the menu and switch to sleeping gas and knock them out, uh, to carry on your way.

23:26 And then that, that, that just adds into it. You can be in the same room, have just shown your papers. And he's like, yep, these look good. And then if you just like stay close to them for too long, you'd be like, Hey, you show me your papers. Like they, they're all goldfish. And, uh, and it's very strange. Like, I don't know what their view cones are like, but you'll either be standing right next to them and they don't see you or you'd be like across the room and they'll see you and vice versa. And always with this, like, I just talked to you. You need me to do this again. And if, cause if you try to ignore them, uh, they'll start a, uh, uh, an area wide alert and you have to go and find the like alarm off. I don't, I think that's a part of it.

24:13 And then you're pretty much done. Now, one thing that I think that these, uh, sequences are trying to get you to do is to memorize where everything is. Like, yeah, on the first one, you're probably not going to get everywhere in that 10 minutes, but you've done some, uh, research by failing and you get like five attempts, I think before it kind of games over. Now, thankfully, if you're on level one, that's just the same as it continue. But, uh, I'm sure if you get the level three, it's not, it's like you have to use your password.

24:46 So it's still like tedious and monotonous. I kind of get where the design was coming from, but it's kind of, it's still kind of goofy. Yeah. I also felt that it was 50, 50 for when you show the papers. And I was, I mean, I was experimenting with a lot of different methods to see what causes them to believe you or not. And I mean, there was a period of time where I was convinced that like for some people you have to hold the, the A button and other people you just need to press it once.

25:19 I don't remember why exactly, uh, I got onto that, like that thought process, but like it felt for a while I was very convinced. And then suddenly it just like flipped on its head and it wasn't working the way I thought it was anymore. So I don't know. I still like feel like there is some, uh, method or some like science behind it, but I couldn't figure it out.

25:41 And then I just found that I started using, well, at least when I'm inside the building, started using sleeping gas instead of papers, which was much more effective. And I mean, presumably you run out of it eventually, but I never did. So the gameplay for me at this point just became, once I got into the building, just became going from room to room, putting everybody to sleep, searching things to almost no consequences, I guess, other than time running out.

26:07 I think you do have limited charges. You just get a bunch of them. Yeah. I could see the like bar going down on the sleeping gas, but it, I never was dangerously close to running out. So, and Joe, keep in mind that, you know, if you do get caught anyway, that's your solution is using the sleeping gas. So you were just one step ahead, you know, it's kind of like using a, um, a silencer pistol in hit man, right? Like just, well, they were probably going to see me anyway.

26:34 Might as well take them out. Right. Well, that, that prevents you from getting the, uh, uh, the, the best score because you're not supposed to kill non targets, but that's besides the point. Uh, what, what I think could have made papers better and more engaging, um, is, and this is assuming that it is random and there isn't actually a method to it.

26:58 Uh, otherwise I guess I just don't know how to use them. Um, what I think could have been interesting is like, yeah, you've got these forged documents. Like if you, if those documents work in some places and in some places they don't like, like force some reasoning behind it. So that's actually a tool and not just a coin flip. Um, like I, I know in, uh, in these levels, there are places where you can get a different soldier's uniform, which is weird because it now makes you stick out like a sore thrum instead of like wearing the same gear as everybody else. But it like, it makes it harder for them to spot you from a distance, I guess.

27:38 But that one, like when that happened and I don't know if this is just highly improbable, but it seemed like when I was wearing that the papers didn't work at all. So obviously there's something going into it. Um, but if you had to like, I don't know, adjust the papers and like, like cross out something and add something else, I don't know, just to make it more engaging and not just this thing that you like default to all the time.

28:07 Uh, that could have been fun, but at the end of the day, you're just, you're searching dressers 80% of the time. Yeah. And I just want to say that, I, I mean, like I said, I thought that there was some method to like maybe holding down the, the button at some points. I don't know if that's true, but I'll say that if I am right on that, that's really stupid.

28:29 For a game that's like supposed, that's like trying to like simulate so much, what would that be simulating? Like some people respond better, like some people need to like really read it and other people like might catch it, catch what's wrong with it. So you got to pull it away really fast. I don't know. Like you're holding it longer in front of their face or something. I don't know. Like it just feels like no matter what, like little thing might change it. If there is something like, why would that be the case anyway? Pulling it away too fast is, uh, is just suspicious. Yeah. Yeah. But then other people holding it there for too long. It's like, okay, I get it. I'm going to shoot you.

29:02 A guide suggests that it is completely random. And to further prove how random it is, it's not even consistent for the same guard. If you're in the room long enough, if the same guard interrogates you more than once, they might buy the papers twice in a row. Or they might say, Hey, wait a minute. Like now upon further inspection, they don't say that obviously, but like, that's, I guess like the story beat. But if the guard, if the guard is just completely random, even like Sean was saying, like, is there goldfish, right?

29:29 Like they can't even remember that they've already asked you for the papers. If you stay in the room long enough, then yeah, it seems kind of pointless, especially because if they determine that the papers are out of order, it's not like you can do anything other than just put them to sleep, which you have about like a second or so to do before the alarm goes off. And you don't want the alarm going off.

29:48 So unfortunately, you know, that's like, that's the crux of the, of the game, no matter which ground mission you're in. The objective changes based on like what you do once you find the security card. I think in like, in one level, you have to rescue a doctor and feed him an invisibility pill, you know, like crazy shit, right? Like again, just more things that like not very realistic helicopter flight simulator game. But anyway, you know, it's like, it's always about using the papers and then if the papers go wrong, using a grenade or sorry, the sleeping gas or the, I guess the gas grenades also contain sleeping gas. Yeah, it's just long range or short range.

30:27 Okay, got it. Yeah. So you're just putting people to sleep, not harming them at all because the explosives, which you don't have any in the first two missions are really only used for when you need to actually explode the various missile control rooms. So what are we doing here, folks? You know, I can understand the, the randomness of things and the time limit of things, maybe from like an espionage standpoint of like, you know, the experience is never the same or like, you know, but you're also crunched for time. I don't understand the lack of clues and briefing that would be required to do this correctly.

31:02 You know, some kind of deduction for this expert spy who goes by the name of Jimbo Baby, which is again, like not a name that you would give yourself, not necessarily a name that like a spy would go by. But here we are anyway, Jimbo Baby has decided that the only way to defeat these missions is to be a spy with the ability to hit a reset button.

31:24 Because that's essentially what you have to be doing is that like you learn from your past playthroughs and you travel through time and you go back to the part where now you realize that with 10 minutes again, I can do it right this time. You're not some type of, you know, we've been saying Solid Snake or Hitman, like you're not that kind of spy. You're just a spy with the trick to, you know, replay missions. Which is just a default like thing about video games. Right, right. Anybody can do that.

31:56 Also, we didn't talk about like one other element that like is, I guess it's almost barely worth mentioning because it really is insignificant anyways, but there's the mind detector. It's like a whole like section of the game before you get into the building where you're in a minefield. Oh, I... And it seems like it could be interesting. Yeah, I, um, I know that, sorry, the... No, that's fine. The minefield is something that I didn't even notice until like my third or fourth attempt in this walking path because I just kept going straight down and there's only mines in like one screen, I feel like. Yeah, that's my, that's what I mean. It's like, I think it is just the one screen.

32:35 And the mine detector, all you just need to do is hold A while holding the mine detector and then you can't get hit by mines. They'll just appear when you, when you walk over them. So it's almost, it's not like there's a challenge or the, you just got to remember like when I'm in this spot, hold the mine detector or else I'll probably blow up. So it's like, I don't know. It's just like, it's not really gameplay. It's just like, don't forget to equip the mine detector in this one spot of the game. Like this, the, the, the menu of your items has five items. One of them is the mine detector, which you use for like a split second. It just feels so unbalanced.

33:11 Yeah. And one of them is the explosives that you don't even use in the first level. Yeah. So infiltrator on the NES is actually infiltrator to the next day, which is a funny subtitle for a game. I like that as if like, you know, he did this crazy mission in the first game and now the very next day, he's got another crazy mission with the mad leader. But because the original was never released on the NES, they use the sequel, which is interesting, right? But to use the sequel and then just call it infiltrator, you know, that's some Final Fantasy bullshit that we were talking about in the Genghis Khan episode too, Sean.

33:46 It's just funny how many times these things happen, but then other times some games will just jump right to using the sequel and just being like, yeah, the original was only in like arcades or on computers. Like you just, you just play the sequel. It's fine. You don't need to know. But this time, at least I feel like this is appropriate. Call it the first game because it is the first game to probably most audiences. And then who cares about what happened in the first one or the previous day? This is all about what's happening in this game. Computer Gaming World awarded this game when it first released on computers, zero stars and described it as even worse than the original.

34:22 Well, from what I was seeing, like it's almost identical. So I really wonder what they, what they did to make it worse. Well, because originally it was on a computer, right? No, no. Well, you know, both were on a computer. The second one would have too. Yes. Oh, yeah, yeah. Before the, before it switched over. So you're not even talking about the review is not talking about the NES version. It was just talking about the second one.

34:45 Yeah. It's very hard to tell the difference. I don't know, to be honest, like what, what the differences are. I didn't, I didn't have any of the compute, like I wasn't going to try to boot up on an Apple II or an Atari 8. I think they were called Atari 8. They're 8-bit Atari systems. I didn't have anything like that. Oh, no, it's Atari 400, I think. See, they always gave weird numbers to these Atari systems. Yeah. Because you had the Atari 2600, which was a home console, but then the Atari 400 is a computer. And it's like, is the 400 like that many times less powerful than the console?

35:25 I never thought too hard about it. Right. And this was one of the games that got a Worlds of Power novelization through Scholastic Books. So, unlike the baseball game that we just had recently, what was that game? Bases Loaded 2, the second season. Unlike that, which had no lore whatsoever, at least this time they had plenty to work with. Oh, yeah. With Jimbo Baby.

35:55 So, yeah, I guess like if there's one Worlds of Power book I'd be interested in reading, it's the expanded version of what I read in this manual. Yeah, if for no other reason than, like, I forgot the developer of this, even though it's on the first screen. He seemed to be really into whatever he wrote.

36:15 Are you talking about Chris Gray Enterprises? Yes, Chris Gray and his brother who did some art, I guess. And sometimes that works. Sometimes all you need, we've seen it, is you just need a guy or two guys working on a game and doing impressive stuff. I don't see it here. I don't see the impressive stuff. Yeah, it does actually, though, make me feel a little more guilty for ripping this game apart. Just be like, oh, I know the guy's name. He's right there on the screen, the poor guy.

36:45 It's okay. He's not listening. Well, if he is listening, he has to listen to our final judgments, as if our minds weren't made up already, in our final segment, the Essential Games List.

36:59 I think I have been very cruel to Infiltrator, the helicopter simulator, in this episode. Because, to be honest, if we're thinking about any kind of flight simulation on a console like this, it's pretty impressive that they're doing all of these, I guess, I'm not a technical wizard or anything, but I guess, like, geometrical calculations and stuff like that, or at least, like, keeping track of enough things to make it feel plausible.

37:29 Obviously, there's some helicopter simulator out today that blows this thing out of the water. But it's pretty complicated for what it is. And I feel like, to design all that, and then just make it one element of the game, when they could have done so much more with that idea,

37:45 this almost feels like, you know, if Pilotwings was also just, you know, the Super Nintendo launch game. If that was like, yeah, you know, you can learn how to fly all these different things, or play all these fun minigames, but it's also incredibly complicated to do any of that. Like, no, they, you know, they're not trying to teach you how to fly something with a D-pad, and two buttons, but here, they are.

38:08 And I feel like that soured me, but when I think about the actual gameplay of the dogfighting, or the lack thereof, if you can crack the ID codes, or the espionage of the ground missions, or the lack thereof, if you just happen to show your papers to the guy, there's just a lot of, like, non-game happening in this video game. There's just a lot of, like, passing the time in these timed missions to do absolutely nothing because you might not even be in the correct building.

38:38 How can I put this on the Essential Games list? It's a no for me. Sean? Yeah, I also feel like we've been much louder about the bad than we have been about the good, because, yes, I will second that this is still an impressive game, especially by a single person. Like, this Chris Gray, I feel like is cut from the same cloth as Will Wright, who we played a game earlier in the podcast called Radon Bungling Bay. It's still one of my, like, my favorite weird experiences. It also centered around flying a helicopter around. Um, and they both seem to have ideas that are way beyond the game they're capable of making.

39:33 Like, Infiltrator tries to be so big and do so much and give you the full spy experience, written by a guy that doesn't know how spies work. Um, in the same way that Will Wright tried to make the everything game with Spore and kind of failed miserably, even though it's still kind of cute and fun in some ways. It, this game has a lot of character, and I will always remember playing this game just by how weirdly executed it was. Um, but it was also kind of poorly executed. So, yeah, not on the Essential Games list. Joe? Yeah, I'll keep it, I'll keep it short, but I do think this is definitely a case of too many ideas and not enough, like, direction and polish.

40:22 Uh, yeah, I mean, it's impressive if one guy did this. Like, but it does not translate to a fun game. Um, so I'm, Chris, I'm really sorry, but, uh, I will not be putting this on my Essential Games list. Oh, okay, I, I was totally lost there for a minute, but yes, I know who Chris is now. Uh, Chris Gray. Not our producer, Chris. Not Chris, producer. Yeah, or just some guy who, um, you know, like, told Joe, like, hey, my name's Chris, and if you don't put this on the Essential Games list, then you were like, oh, you don't have to tell me your name every time you talk to me. Yeah. Yeah, we've been friends forever, Chris Gray.

40:59 Next week, another shot at the Essential Games list for a game known as Kings of the Beach, um, which I can only imagine is some kind of, uh, sandcastle building simulator, um, or, or lack thereof, maybe. But no, it's a volleyball game. We're going to have a great time. We love sports games. Joe, say we love sports games. I can't. Okay, Sean, I know you can do it. Right. We love sports games. Great, and that'll be in the trailer for, uh, this season's of Nostalgia, so that's great. We got that, uh, what else do we want to get in the trailer? Um, you know, we got 400, 400 something more games to go. That's exciting. Uh, yeah, we're almost at, actually, around 400 number, which is nice. Um, won't you feel better once we have, like, 399 left?

41:47 Uh. That's less than 400. It is less than 400, but I don't think that should be a benchmark, you know? Well, what if, we don't know, what if they, what if they make more? Like, they might, we're not sure they're done making NES games. You joke. So we're going to have to, like, catch up with them.

42:04 You're right, Joe. Yeah, but those aren't official, you know? They won't be official. No, but what if Nintendo is, like, actually, here you go? All right, then we're going to change the intro to this show to be, uh, like, just add in the first run of every NES game. Oh, right, yeah. Because we refuse to do even one more over the 673? No, that's when my contract ends. Yeah, that's true. My indentured contract. Uh, that's it. That I signed while I was drunk with Mike. Yeah, I, I always get people to sign contracts while they're drunk. I think that's the best time to get a contract signed. I don't think that's the best time to get a contract signed. Thank you.