268 · Top Players Tennis

• Chris Evert and Ivan Lendl in…TOP PLAYERS TENNIS!
• NES Longplay
• Introductions
  • The only tennis game where you can play Chris Evert, Ivan Lendl, BOY, and GIRL. We’ll get into the character creation in a minute. I just think that’s a funny screen to start the game on. Pick your character and Ivan Lendl or a child
• Gameplay
  • 7 different types of match setups, all just changing between singles, doubles, computer and player options. Access to Hard, Clay and Grass courts. That said, pretty cool you can do 2v2 doubles with the NES four score
  • Character Creation
    • RPG stats in MY tennis game? You begin with 20 points and gain more by winning matches

• Controls, I don’t think we’ve ever seen this many complications before
• A+D-Pad
• Up: Top Spin
• Down: Slice
• Left/Right: Side Spin
• A+B
• Jump
• Miracle Speed
• A+B+D-Pad
• Up: Miracle Return
• Down: Miracle Lob
• Left/Right: Miracle Spiral
• UpLeft/UpRight: Miracle Split
• Miracle Return: returns a ball without you even hitting it
• Miracle Lob: a lob so high it disappears and re-appears out of nowhere
• Miracle Spiral: like the name it will literally spiral through the air, making it hard to hit
• Miracle Split: multiball!
• Miracle Speed: so fast you'll never be able to hit it!
  • Miracle Shots
    • You first need to build up miracle points in order to make any miracle shot.
  • World Tour
    • The entire game revolves around going to these championships, competing in the brackets, and trying to win a grand slam. Along the way you keep building your stats until you successfully win!
    • During these winning ceremonies you can press B to get different animations, like the kangaroo celebrating with you in Melbourne.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
• EGL
• Next week - Top Players' Tennis
• NEStalgia Byte - Chaos World

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

00:00 Chris Everett and Ivan Lendl in Top Players Tennis!

00:19 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. And this is the only tennis game where you can play as Chris Everett, Ivan Lendl, boy and girl.

00:41 And that's not a reference to the fact that they are, at one point in their lives, they were a boy and a girl. This is actual character creation on the main menu screen that you can choose to be either Chris Everett or girl.

01:24 Okay.

01:56 I'm a man. Oh, I, but I've been pretty low, low, low fidelity, eight bit graphics. I can't. That's funny. Uh, Ivan, uh, was the like world number one for a record, like 270 weeks straight, uh, through the, uh, late eighties, early nineties. So, yes, before Federer's time, but, and, and Federer, Nadal and Djokovic would all wind up, uh, surpassing that, uh, that amount of weeks at world number one. And actually, I don't know if that's true for Nadal because he always has to compete with Federer and Djokovic kind of crazy that Federer and Djokovic could both have like amazing world number one streaks when they played around the same time.

02:40 Anyway, the point being, yes, Ivan was a, uh, amazing tennis player back in that, during that time period. I'm not sure he'd be considered, you know, like still one of the goats in, uh, in modern tennis or whatever. Like, obviously he's not playing anymore, but I mean like in the history of tennis, I don't know if you'd consider him up there with even like, you know, other top tennis players from other eras. Where's McEnroe fit in? That's what I was going to say. I feel like McEnroe is probably more regarded than Ivan, even though Ivan had more weeks at number one. Okay. Yeah. Although he had a 21 and 15 record against McEnroe, so maybe I just don't know much Ivan.

03:19 But John McEnroe liked to talk, so that's why you know more about him. Yeah, he was an actor and stuff, or at least did a lot of cameos pretending to be an actor. There you go. So tennis. Tennis. They've given you seven different types of match setups, all just changing between singles, doubles, computer, and player options. Reminds me again of that whole like Sesame Street video game where they're trying to make it seem like you got a bunch of different modes. But really, it's just how you want to play tennis, right? Like, technically, these are all things that we should be configuring, not treating as separate modes.

03:52 Other than the different match setups, you have access to the hard, clay, and grass courts, which is great because those are all the types of tennis courts. But more impressively, you also have access to all of the World Cup tennis matches. So you get to go between the US Open, the Australian Open, Wimbledon, the French Open. So, you know, pretty good. And that's where this character creation thing comes into, Sean, because yes, you could just play as Chris or Ivan and go through the different tournaments and try to get the Grand Slam. Or you could build your own character with RPG stats in my tennis game. I could never.

04:34 But you begin with 20 points, put them out across strength, speed, agility, stamina, skill, ball spin, focus, and miracle. We'll get into the whole miracle thing in a minute.

04:48 I'm glad finally a game didn't leave out miracle. Yeah. Why doesn't Fallout have a miracle stat, Sean? It's called luck. There you go. You actually, you know what? You're 100% right. And I would even argue that some of the, what miracle really translates to here in this game are miracle shots. And that's more like the other part of Fallout, which is like when you get those traits, right? Why are we talking about Fallout right now? Because that's what top player tennis is. Top player tennis is Fallout, but instead everything is clay. Everything is clay. Instead of everything is nuclear disaster, everything is just clay.

05:29 All right. I buy it. Anyway. No. The point being that obviously with the character creator, if you're just choosing boy, which feels weird again, just why wouldn't you just pick man instead? Right? Like it could have been Chris Everett, Ivan Lendl, man and woman.

05:43 But they didn't go that route. So anyway, you pick boy. I think the idea is that you're putting stats into it. You're starting out as a boy, but you'll become a man as you put all your stats in. Well, then they should make it this way. You eventually change to become a man. It should be boy and then in parentheses man and then girl and then in parentheses woman. Just so that no one gets confused that you don't eventually grow up. Or maybe you just are a kid because they assume that only kids play video games. So they were like, yeah, like it'd be weird for this eight year old boy to buy top players tennis and play as a man. It would. You're right. But then you get to because Ivan's a man.

06:23 Are we supposed to believe these are some chibi versions of Ivan and Chris? No, the different like the sizes of the body parts are all wrong. Like this is not chibi. The cool thing, of course, about the character creation, other than the fact that you get to kind of choose what you want to invest your points in, is that when you play through the various tournaments, like Joe was saying, going from boy to man, you will gain points from the matches that you've won and you'll be able to put those points and improve your abilities.

06:59 You would never, unless you're very, very good at this game, you would never be able to win the Grand Slam without playing a lot of this game and boosting your stats. It's kind of designed in a way where you're not supposed to just win every single tournament the first time around. You're supposed to play through the circuit a few times, get these stats up, and then eventually achieve the, you know, the dream of being in the World Cup. I keep saying World Cup. You do keep saying that. It's Grand Slam. But maybe these tennis players want to be soccer players. Could be. Maybe it should have been, it should have been, instead of boy and girl, it should have been soccer player and hockey player. I get that reference from Rock and Ball.

07:44 How does this game sort of compare to tennis that we played earlier? I played that game so long ago and couldn't be bothered to boot it back up that I kind of forgot a lot of the differences. Well, I think that the first thing that stands out in my mind is, well, first off, you don't play as boy or girl and you start out with some stats already in your character. Where you notice the speed and the weight of your character.

08:15 It's almost like you're playing, I mean, I guess it probably is realistic, but in the video game of the small screen, it almost feels like you're playing on ice. Yeah, that's what I was going to describe. It feels like the 8-bit joystick version of mouse acceleration. Where the longer you kind of hold a direction, the faster you go, but it ramps up so quickly that it's kind of hard to modulate. And I know that that's because you're going to have to do a lot of really fast movements from one side of the court to the other. But it ends up becoming almost unmanageable, at least for me.

08:55 Yeah, I mean, I would say that I think at least for speed, I don't know about the other stats, but at least for speed, it's not a matter of like put more points into speed. And anything that requires speed will become easier. You maybe are more capable, like your character is more capable, but it's still a challenge to manage that speed. Like it's like a different type of challenge. Like if you're really good at this game, I'm sure you could just be like all over the court, like flying around and stuff. But yeah, for me as well, like it was a little bit of a challenge to like time it right so I would get to the ball in time without overshooting it. Because letting go of the D-pad doesn't just stop on a dime.

09:35 Yeah, I think they got this wrong because even in modern tennis games, tennis as an actual sport is a very fast, like the ball comes at those players faster than we can imagine because we're watching it on TV. So we have that like hindsight ability in front of us, whereas they don't have that.

09:55 And, you know, they're constantly sprinting from one end of the net to the other. Trying to do that in a video game, even in modern tennis video games, they don't do that because it doesn't work. If you actually had, it'd be like, it'd be the equivalent of if MLB The Show made it as hard to hit a baseball as it really is to hit from a major league baseball player. You don't want to 1-1 that experience so closely when you're trying to simulate something. And so, yeah, you kind of have to sacrifice the speed of the actual sport a little bit.

10:26 But I think there's a reason why in modern tennis games, it's so much easier to get a handle on like where the ball is going to be and getting there in time. And it's more about like, OK, well, now how do you respond to that hit, right? Like now based on where you are, based on where the other where the opponent is, based on where the ball is, where are you going to take your next shot? And this way there's kind of this volley back and forth. Not that the game was so difficult that I had like a hard time keeping a volley, but it just felt like it was certainly that these matches were going fast and not in my direction because of just the one of you said that it's like you're on ice. But yeah, like the slippery nature of the controls.

11:08 Yeah. Like I spent a significant portion of December playing Mario tennis because I was trapped in a blizzard and couldn't leave the house. So I actually kind of have a little bit of PTSD from it. But that sort of like I had never played the N64 Mario tennis before that. And it just sort of became this perfect game to me in terms of how it handles and what kind of control you have over the ball. And it had a good amount of like it had a reasonable window where you could still hit a ball and within like the range of the character.

11:53 And so that was more my comparison. I know that that's unfair to this game because it's like it's seven years older than it. And so much weaker hardware. But it seemed to like aside from just the movement and the on ice and the weird rubber banding feeling that you get with it,

12:18 where you are when you hit the ball and where the ball needs to be in order to be in reach. Like it seemed so hard to gauge for me that one example is any time that I was within like three feet of the of the net, I feel like any whatever timing that I had to hit that ball, wherever the ball was vertically, I would just hit the net. And I don't know what that was about, but there's there's just not enough information in this game to make me realize, why am I just hitting the net over and over that? Does that make any sense?

12:58 Yeah, I felt kind of the same way at times, too, where it's like, is it my timing? Is it my, you know, like the the length of how long I'm pressing a like it was I'm sure. I don't know. I would guess that that information is there and somehow there is like an answer to it. And it's not just like, nah, we decided that you're going to fault on this every time, no matter what, like at this moment, because of like RNG, I'm sure there's something but it wasn't clear. And maybe it's in the manual and I missed it, but I didn't notice anything.

13:29 The controls, there's also a lot of them. I don't think we've ever seen this many complications before between just hitting the ball and then different ways of hitting the ball and then even just the miracle buttons on top of that. So you have A plus the D pad to do like different types of hits on the ball, such as the top spin,

13:50 the slice, the side spin. You have A plus B together, which some games have used in the past, but to do to do a jump and then A plus B plus the D pad direction of your choosing to do these miracle shots, which is just, it's insane to me that all of this, including like, apparently, I didn't, I never pulled this off, but apparently even like up and to the left, which I don't think is possible on a D pad, right? Like on an NES D pad, I don't think you can. No, you can do two inputs.

14:23 Okay. I just didn't think that it could read like A plus B plus up plus left. And wow, that's a, you know, imagine doing that. Imagine pulling off the miracle return. That's what you need. And no, no, the miracle split. And that's when you're saying that you mean like sort of leaping to the side with your racket extended and volleying the ball back, right? Yes. Yeah. So the miracle shots, just to make it clear, is like first you have to build up miracle points in order to make any miracle shot. And then once you have your, your meter filled, then you can use your miracle shot to do like the miracle split, which will make the tennis into a multi ball, which is fun, right? No, I watch tennis. I know what all this is. Yeah, of course.

15:07 Everybody always does the miracle split or the, um, the miracle speed, which is, uh, that you hit the ball so fast that the opponent can never return it. Uh, and that's true. Like no matter how fast, uh, no matter how good the opponent player is that they basically cannot return a miracle speed at, these are kind of like cheat codes, but not really that different from other versions of Mario tennis, right? Like it's, it takes this like silliness factor into it, which I think is fine. Even in a game that is, that has access to the, uh, the U S open and Wimbledon and stuff like that, because it is a video game at the end of the day. I just wish it wasn't so hard to do these things.

15:45 Uh, first I have to figure out how to play tennis, uh, you know, the way they want me to. And then eventually I guess I would be able to start pulling off these miracle things because to use a plus B plus the D pad direction of your choosing implies that you're already in the spot that you want to be to do that. Uh, to, to return the ball that way. I have a hard enough time getting around the net and making sure that I'm ready for even just a regular shot, let alone a, uh, a miracle shot. Yeah. A lot of these required, at least for me, maybe, maybe once you get used to it, it's better, but a lot of these seem to require like a lot of very fast, like thinking and like dexterity work.

16:26 That's so, that's too quick for me to like figure out what to do. Like spinning the ball sounds really easy in the manual. I couldn't get it to work almost ever. It, I feel like that's similar to what you're talking about where like in this case, you supposedly you, well, the second after you, like the instant after you press A, you press the direction you want it to spin.

16:47 I just found that I would just move in that direction and the ball never spun. I don't know if I just am getting something wrong or if you guys noticed anything like that. Well, you're not going to notice the spin until it makes contact with something. So, um, it might be also that the, that the opponent is just not letting the ball hit the ground. But I, I believe you because I also was having trouble having any like actual direct feedback with where the ball went. Basically, we're all just saying that we're all really bad at this game.

17:21 Yeah. I mean, I'm watching YouTube videos and they're, they're putting spin on the ball and it's, and it's very apparent. Forget that whether like one of us is bad at the game, right? For all three of us to be bad at the game means that at some point, right? I mean, we played a lot of NES games now. Some, something is wrong here that the other tennis games didn't have going wrong for them. So something about, maybe it's like the way that you barely see your racket, uh, when you're not swinging or something like something about like just the positioning of the character

17:53 on this just feels weird. I feel like in most tennis games, and I keep using more recent examples because that's where I played tennis, but in more recent games that the racket is almost, it has like a little bit of a magnet to it. You know, like the, the racket finds its way to the ball. Whereas in this game, you have to find your way to the ball. I think that's still happening to an extent, but it's just not as like, it's hard to interpret.

18:24 Whereas like with Mario tennis and I guess other more recent games that Mike knows about, um, it will be a magnet to the ball and you can also kind of see how it's doing that. Whereas there just aren't enough frames in the animation for these characters to really understand what's going on and how you're interacting with the tennis ball.

18:48 Yeah. There were definitely plenty of times where, I mean, it went both ways for me. Like sometimes I would, I would be running for the ball and I'd be like, okay, no way. I did not get that. Like I'm not, I whiffed by a mile, but then the game is like, nah, you got it. It doesn't look like I got it. Like I clearly, my racket did not make contact with the ball. Because there's also that, that, uh, there's a split second of delay, uh, between when you input and when the ball starts to like equal an opposite reaction. Like when it starts to actually react to your hit, there's a very split second. I don't know if you guys noticed it. That's also, it also makes it kind of hard to realize what you did.

19:30 Yeah. Now that you're mentioning it, I'm kind of noticing it too. And I think it's because Sean, uh, you were asking for other examples, like, uh, the top spin games, uh, which they no longer make. I don't even know if they really make tennis games anymore, but, um, the top spin series, which was more like this, right? You would go, uh, through the circuit and obviously they had more than just four championships to go through. You couldn't be girl or boy though.

19:55 You, uh, I don't think you could make your own character. I can't remember now if I was able to make my own character in top spin, but you definitely had a lot of characters to choose from. So more than. Yeah. Well, actually, could you say more than, because technically you want to get, uh, you know, real about it. The character creation screen boy and girl represent an infinite possibility because you get those 20 points to disperse across all these categories. You could make infinite. You are God in this game. When it comes to, uh, tennis, you get to make the tennis children.

20:27 Anyway, to make, to get back to my point, uh, even those games that take themselves like more seriously and are like, yeah, with real tennis players and all this, they have like an arcadey feel to them. Um, and I feel like this is even missing that a little bit. It's just, yeah, it's like, in its most basic sense, it is just return the ball one end to the other. And you could bring that back to pong. This is definitely more pong than rock and ball was.

20:52 But, um, you know, I don't know. This just, this feels a lot, uh, less fun than those two paddles in pong hitting that little pixel back and forth. Cause at least then it was almost like a more sure thing about what, what I was, you know, like here, the racket, it just feels weird. It always felt, I never got over that. It felt weird. Yeah. For me, I think what it is with pong, it's easier for me to interpret what I just did and how it affected the game here that's there. But sometimes I am like a little like, wait a minute. So how, why did I hit it that way? Like what, what control do I have over like certain elements, you know? And I'm, again, I'm sure it's there, but I think it's just not very apparent.

21:40 And so the main mode is that world tour where, uh, the game revolves around going to these championships, competing in the brackets, trying to win a grand slam. But as I mentioned, along the way you are, if you choose the character creator, um, you're, you're improving the stats based on your wins and stuff. So I think it is worth highlighting that these categories of strength, speed, agility, stamina skill, which is, uh, the angle, uh, that you can hit the ball ball spin, which increases the spin, uh, focus, which is energy for skill and ball spin, uh, that I'm not sure if I'm, I wasn't sure if that was like building towards miracle or something.

22:19 And then lastly, the miracle shots, uh, what one for each use these categories, you can really like choose to buff them out how you like, or you could just balance yourself too. And I think that you do have to give them some credit for not just being like, um, you know, like, Oh, you create your character. And then you just, you know, you just say like, Oh, I'm the, I hit the ball hard or, Oh, this guy has great speed. Like you could actually develop your character. That feels better than most other options in these kinds of sports games where like the character is more like their gimmick. You know, we saw that in a lot of golf games.

22:57 I think this has all of the systems and this is all the systems and, uh, game mechanics for a good tennis game. I think where it's losing us is just like in the balance of it all. It's, it seems that some stuff is miscalibrated and some knobs need to be tweaked, uh, for this to feel, I mean, maybe this is the perfect tennis game for the, the expert, but for us just sort of walking in after coming from top gun and rock and ball before that, we're not, uh, we're not calibrated for it. You know, Sean, that's an interesting point. I never thought about calibrating my video game experiences.

23:44 I do it all the time. I'm, I'm always calibrating. Uh, I'm always, uh, trying to think of an end of a joke. Right. Well, I guess what I was getting at to reel you back in here is, um, if you play, uh, Bass, Black Bass, right? Uh, then like, what do you, what do you go for next? Right. Like, do you just completely switch genres or do you say like, I kind of want to like see what other fishing games have to offer? Are you taking, talking about like me and my, uh, and how I play games, uh, for leisure?

24:18 Yes. Because you were mentioning, you know, that we just came off of top gun, the second mission and I can't think of a more different game, even though top is in the title and top players tennis. I guess just to clarify what, what I mean by, uh, calibrating it's, it's more so like this, this game has all the tools, uh, to make a coherent tennis game. It's just that we are not, uh, we're used to different baseline rules. Like what we're used to Mario tennis. So that's, that's what I meant there. But to answer your question, I think like, if I'm into something, I usually,

24:56 we'll try and find stuff like it before I get to a point of like, and now for something completely different. Like I remember, uh, just, you know, last week I got back into the Hades kick and I'm like, so what's something like Hades? And then I unfortunately found out that there is nothing like Hades. So I just played more Hades. I had a weird moment like that, uh, last year where I was playing like Katamari Damacy and then Mosquito Man.

25:26 And, and, and, and I was just looking for like, yeah, I want like games like that. Like what, what is that genre of just like, you know, you could just say weird, right? But like, no, I want games that, yeah, I want, but I want games that like they shouldn't exist. That's really more of what I'm looking for. Right? Like these kinds of games where it's like the, the proposal is so ridiculous and the controls are so unlike any other video game you played. And I just couldn't figure out how to continue to scratch that itch. Did you end up finding anything?

25:53 Um, yeah, you know, I did actually wind up, uh, it led me to, I forget who it is on, um, on YouTube. Uh, I think action button, uh, his reviews are like six hours long or whatever, but he did a review of, uh, Tokimeki Memorial, which was just another thing where it was like, this shouldn't exist. It's a, it's a dating simulator on the super Nintendo, um, only in Japan.

26:18 So, uh, you know, they, it was never really like translated or whatever. And I think he had the Sega CD version or, or another version that was like more polished and stuff, but just watching him play through that game, uh, was like satisfying enough for me. But then I was like, Oh, what else you got? And he just has like all of these other, um, he had another one that was just like, I'd never heard of this game before, but it's like, you're a little kid.

26:43 Uh, and it's like, you went away for the summer with your family on this island and it's like, it's, it's kind of like a simulator, but you're also just doing stuff on the island. I was like, yeah, what are these games? What do we call these games?

26:57 Does that, uh, does that dating sim that's also just like a tax preparer also fall into this bracket? Which one's that? I don't know the name of it, but just look up, uh, us tax preparation dating sim. And, uh, it, it exists apparently. Is that the one that's made by the same people that made, um, I'm on observation duty where you have to watch like security cameras and it becomes a horror game. Like I heard about like a tax preparation game where it like turns into a horror game somehow. Oh, I don't know about that. But it's all like text on screen. Uh, I think it, it's not that. I'm so down for both those games though. Uh, Sean's game is tax heaven 3000.

27:43 Joe's is, what was that? It's a funny title, Joe. Well, the, the, the, the one that I've played is I'm on observation. I'm on observation. They made another game. I think actually the other game that might've, it might've actually been stock markets, not tax. Same thing though. Sometimes I end up playing the stock market when I'm trying to do my tax. Absolutely. Some people play the stock market and then have a hard time doing their taxes. Hey. So to get back on topic with tennis, um, what do you say we stop this, uh, volley and instead do the, uh, the ace. Go for the smash. Yeah, let's go for the, let's go for the smash and get the ace out of the way. And that is the essential games list.

28:24 All right. Here's the deal. Top players, tennis. If I can't feel like I'm one of the top players while playing top players, tennis, then buddy, you got to rename your video game. And if I don't feel like it belongs on the essential games list, then buddy, you're not on the essential games list.

28:45 Sean. Well, I really liked these like higher concept central games list votes. Like maybe I should start thinking more about how to, how to formulate a vote so that it like has like a rhyme scheme and stuff or, or at least alliteration. Uh, anyway, I didn't play enough of this game.

29:05 Really? I didn't know about the character creator, but I did know about the base mechanics when you're in an actual test match. Cause like, if it's a sports game and it's not one where like the, the, the twist is that you're also managing like a, an athlete or something like, when it's just about tennis, I think I got a pretty good handle on it. And the fact that I didn't get a good handle on the game, uh, kind of tells me that this is going to be just another sports game. Uh, and while I do give it credit for being a bit more well designed, at least superficially

29:51 than prior, like the, than the other tennis game that we played, it just doesn't have it. And it just doesn't feel all that fun to me. So not essential. Joe. Yeah. It's tough for me to sort of like get my head around. Is this a good or bad NES tennis game? Like it, you know, I played it and it played like I expected. There were some, you know, like there was some, uh, learning curve things with the motion and everything. Um, I guess similarly, I'm not like enough into tennis to be like, oh yes, this is a great tennis game. I think that just, I have to boil this down to like more of my overall opinion that like

30:32 tennis on the NES is not particularly exciting to me. So like, yeah, there's some cool extra things in this. There's also some things that did wrong, but I think just overall, it's just that uphill battle of like, you got to really wow me as a sports game, uh, on, on the NES and this didn't. So I'm going to say no.

30:50 Also, I want to just, I want to just a little aside mention the manual. Very interesting, uh, description of the menu where there's like a, there's like a family tree chart of like which button will take you to which menu with like arrows, like subverting other menu screens showing like, you can go from this menu screen straight to this menu screen, or you can take this other route and go to these other menus. It's just like a weird way of like over explaining their menu in my opinion. Check it out. Essential manual. And that's rare. We have never given that out. Although you could argue we gave it to scoon by default. That's true. Yeah.

31:30 All right. Well, next week we have a twin cobra. Um, I don't know what episode number that is, but it's the story of a mom who gives birth to two cobras and they've got to fight through the desert as brothers.

31:47 Wait, is this real? It sounds wrong. Yeah. Cobra brothers. And they got to fight through the desert because there's a lot of bad cobras out there. Can we just skip this one, Mike, and just go to the next one? What if it's, uh, what if it's not about cobras and instead it's the more, you know, practical thing and it's just a twin cobra is like a helicopter. Are you happy now? Oh, another goddamn helicopter. Didn't you, see, now you wish it was going back to my genre of undefinable games. You wish it was. This is a story about two cobras born at the same time. This is a story about two cobras.