279 · Astyanax

• Return to the age of Myths and Magic, Demons and Dragons
• NES Longplay
• Manual
• That’s the name of the hero
  • Astyanax is a 16-year-old student from Greenview High School who has been having a recurring dream in which a young woman is calling out for his name. One day, while on his way to class, Astyanax is suddenly transported into another dimension
• Gameplay
  • Power Gauge
    • The striking power of your weapon
  • The sprite work and the resulting slow down
  • You better want to fight ALL of these monsters
    • And they are sponges
  • Enemy placement in the way of platforms
  • Pretty cool bosses compared to the common enemies
• Power Claw - Pick this up to increase your striking power. You
• power bar increases by 4 units. You only get one increase per
• level
• Mini-Axe - This alters your weapon. It changes from axe, to swift spear,
• to mighty sword
• Red Potion - Pick this up to restore 3 life points
• Blue Potion - Pick this up to restore all of your life points
• Wings - This increases your dexterity (the speed at which you swing your
• weapon)
• Cutie - Only appears when you are low on magic. She will either restore
• your magic points, or change your weapon
• Astyanax Doll - Gives you a 1-up
• <<<<>>>>
• Bind - Freezes all enemies in their tracks for a few seconds. It also
• works on bosses.
• With Axe: 5 MP
• With Spear: 3 MP
• With Sword: 6 MP
• Blast - Shoots a fireball spread in all directions, destroying enemies.
• With Axe: 6 MP
• With Spear: 4 MP
• With Sword: 10 MP
• Bolt - Strikes all enemies down with a flash of lightning.
• With Axe: 10 MP
• With Spear: 5 MP
• With Sword: 20 MP
• <<<<>>>>
• Invincibility - At the Astyanax title screen, hit Up four times,
• then Down, Left, Right, and Up on Controller 1. If you did
• this right, Astyanax can not take any physical damage. He can
• still be affected by the enemies' magic spells, though...
• Stage Select - At the Astyanax title screen, hit Up, Down, Left,
• Right, and B four times on controller 1. If you did this right,
• you'll see a stage select screen that lets you start at any
• level after the first one. He will also start out with a sword at
• full power.
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • The Lord of King in Japan
  • They dropped the “the” for the NES in arcades it was The Astyanax
• EGL
• Next week - Baseball Simulator 1.000
• NEStalgia Byte - Downtown Special: It's Kunio-kun's Period Drama, Gather Everyone!

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

00:00 Askin Axe, return to the age of myths and magic, demons and dragons.

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. Astianax. Or Astanax. Or Astranax. Or Ask Ya Next. Question. But I don't have a question actually. I have more of a statement here. That should have been for the Essential Games list segment. Yeah. Well, we can still do it because creativity is dead anyway. So we'll just throw that in there at some point.

00:58 Astianax. You would think that that's like the world, right? That this game takes place in or something. Or the sword maybe that the guy controls, but he actually has an axe. But Astianax is the name of the hero. It's the name of the 16-year-old boy from Greenview High School who gets transported to this other world. So does that mean that his name was always Astianax? Like even on Earth? I mean, it seems like it. It seems like that's what they are calling. He recognizes that name immediately. Yeah. It's like, oh, yeah. I got like a Greek name. Like that's the one reference to the names. Like, yeah, my name's like some Greek shit.

01:41 And it just makes you wonder, like, did they just have the name? And they're like, we have to shoehorn the name in? Because it doesn't mean anything else. Like, why wasn't it just like Gary's World? Yeah, but yeah, this game doesn't really like seem to revolve around Greek mythology or anything any other way. Astianax is, yeah, he's a 16-year-old student from Earth, presumably. I mean, they don't say Earth out loud, I think. No, that's Greenview Venus.

02:11 Right, right, right. Greenview High School. And he's been having a recurring dream in which a young woman is calling out his name. Astianax, Astianax. And maybe that's why he is the Chosen One. Like, he was actually supposed to be born in this other realm. And he got somehow wound up on Earth. And they're like, all right, bring him over.

02:30 One day, while on his way to class, Astianax is suddenly transported to another dimension where he meets this fairy creature who tells him, like, yep, you gotta save the princess. And don't worry, because here, you're a human who has special powers. And then the game just begins. Well, you skipped a couple things. Sure, I skipped a couple things. But I guess what I'm saying is, like, this is all shoehorned into then, like, the regular game, right? Do we really need this whole concept of boy from Earth? Earth is now a little bit different because he also got transported for seemingly no reason other than being the Chosen One into this other realm?

03:13 Yeah, I mean, on one hand, you could just say, like, why not just start in this other realm and just be a hero of the other realm? I guess it seems like they were trying to go for, like, this relatability to their, like, audience. Where it's like, oh, you could be just like Astianax. You're a sophomore or freshman in high school or whatever it is.

03:31 So it's, like, just weird to have this cutscene where he's just, like, in regular clothes at a desk. And then, like, the rest of the game, he's, like, in armor. It's like a regular Joe kind of guy. Like, in high school, boy meets a fairy. A fairy tricks boy into sacrificing his life for someone he doesn't know. A fairy feels bad and kills herself. Boy, rescue princess. A princess invite boy to party. Boy, not happy. Boy, want, go home. And then boy meet girl.

04:13 That's exactly, yeah, it's like that, you know, it's like Boy Meets World. It is. Just the slightly, slightly few extra steps. But, but, but, Mike, you don't like that the story exists at all. Well, would you be surprised if I told you that the arcade version didn't have any of this? I wouldn't, but I, I'm also, like, just surprised as to, you know, like, after every level, you get a little bit of this ridiculous, dumb story, and I'm here for it.

04:40 Yeah, I kind of like it, too. I mean, it's, it's, it's not a good story, but it, like, it keeps me invested. Like, oh, I want to kill that purple skeleton guy. Yeah, the purple skeleton guy is kind of the worst. Yeah, it sucks. But, you know, like, just to get into a little nitty gritty of the story here, you know what also sort of sucks is this fairy. Cutie. Kind of like, like you alluded to, Cutie is her name.

05:02 She, she summons you here. You end up in this other world, and she's like, yeah, you're the chosen one, and you have to save the world. And he's like, oh, I don't want to do it. And she's like, oh, sorry, like, that's the only way to get back to your world. I didn't, like, you're stuck here now. And then she, she's like, well, you know, actually, you have no choice.

05:17 So it's just like, wow, that's a shitty thing to do. And then it turns out that you have to die. So she knew this all along. She's kind of the worst. It is weird, though, that the game chose that route, right? Of, like, the player character being the kind of person who would be like, nah, I don't want to. Send me back to high school. Well, the reluctant hero. It's just like the most literal interpretation of a reluctant hero. He basically says, I'm reluctant to be the hero.

05:43 I'm just thinking back to, back to Sean's point of, like, you know, putting it, or sorry, this was your point, Joe, of putting it in the viewer's lens, right? Of, like, oh, that boy's just like me, and he got transported to this magical world, and I'm controlling him. It's, like, weird to, you bought the game. Like, you want to go on the adventure, and your character is like, nah, don't want to do it. I mean, we've talked about this concept before, like, in a lot of Japanese games. Like, they give you the option to say no to the adventure. And I guess it's more, I'm more relieved that they just didn't do that. Like, if they gave you a text box, and if you could have said no, even after they've already made you reluctant,

06:22 I'm just glad. That sort of sounds redundant, you know? So we've got a side-scrolling action game here, where the Ashton Axe character has an axe or a sword for a, it looks like a sword with, like, some extra spikes on it. I'm sure there's a fancy word for that.

06:40 But that's his weapon of choice. And the interesting thing about how they deal with this, rather than how we've seen it in other action side-scrollers, is that there is a power gauge. And that power gauge is something that every time you swing, it goes back to the minimum level of the gauge. And then as you wait to swing again, it slowly increases. It does have a maximum, so you can't just sit there for 20 minutes charging up the ultimate shot. But that power gauge, which does fill up pretty quickly, encourages you not for, like, rapid swings of the sword, because you have to, it's the striking power of your weapon. What did we think of the power gauge? I sort of liked it.

07:24 So I was playing with a friend of mine, and at first we were both kind of like, oh, this is stupid. And I think that he might have continued to have that opinion the whole time we played. I started, it started to grow on me. It really started to give me, like, the feeling of, like, oh, I have the choice between, it's a very organic way of giving you the choice between a power attack and a speed attack. I thought it was interesting, like, the, it almost feels like a very rudimentary version of, like, a FromSoft, like, stamina gauge. Like, you know, there's stamina management in those games. If you run out of stamina, you just can't act.

07:59 But it's not so much that in this game. It's more so if you just spam, you're going to do very little damage. So it's sort of, I'm sure there's some, if you ran the numbers, there is a trade-off that if you do wait a full second, like, there is more damage than you could have done in the hits you could have made in that second otherwise. So I'm sure there's something going on there that makes being more patient a better idea. But once you get up to a certain level,

08:33 like, thankfully, you're never punished. Like, you get these upgrades that give you a larger power gauge, and that just makes your full-powered shot more powerful. But then it takes five seconds to fill the whole thing. So you're never really punished by getting stronger. Because if it was just, like, a percentage thing, that would actually be a net negative. So I think it's, like, it's not a perfectly implemented system because at a certain point it becomes,

09:10 it's just not feasible to use it correctly. But it's still a fun idea. At least it's a unique idea. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a unique idea because, like, it feels like they wanted it to have more strategy, like, that you should treat these individual combats with the enemies as, you know, like one-on-one sword duels where you don't just want to spam your attack button at the enemy and take damage while you're giving damage. Like, you want to build up your power meter, choose to strike, make sure that when you strike you actually hit because, well, you were, you know, you were delaying your attack otherwise. So you want to make sure that you land it. But it doesn't, the game that they built doesn't really, like,

09:56 encourage that idea too much because a lot of times, you know, specifically in the stages, like, you better want to fight all of these monsters because these monsters will stay on the screen as long as you'll carry them. Like, yes, they can sometimes fall into pits or, you know, if you walk far enough away, you might think that they're gone, but they're not. They'll, they'll stay with you and they'll kind of cause this slowdown in the game too.

10:24 But, but, you know, it's not one of those games where you just, like, choose your fights. It's like, you better want to fight every single enemy and so therefore, you don't really have the luxury of like, oh, I'll just wait around for my, my sword to fully charge up. But, granted, again, it doesn't matter. They didn't make the sword charging something like, you have to wait for the sword to be fully charged in order to attack. Now, that would suck. That would be a really bad game and discourage combat.

10:52 Instead, it's just that the amount of damage your sword does is based on that power meter. Yeah, and to be clear too, to anyone who hasn't, who hasn't played it, we're not talking like, we're not talking like 10 seconds to power up. I mean, it takes longer, the higher you want the power to get, but it powers up, you know, I would say within a second, it powers up to almost, to max for most of the time, unless you're like really powerful, then maybe like a second and a half. I think it gets to a point where it is like five seconds to refill the whole thing.

11:24 I feel like it was, I mean, maybe like two seconds. I don't know, five seconds feels like that's like a, that would be to me. I guess maybe also, it depends on how many enemies are on the screen, because everything, you get the frame drops. Yeah. And the power meter is worth something, because since it determines how powerful your strike is, even the early enemies in this game, some of the first skeletons you fight, I wouldn't describe them as sponges, but it is surprising that they take, you know, if you're swinging rapidly, they take quite a number of hits to take down. And that's surprising for like a first level enemy in a game.

12:02 Yeah. I think that that's kind of like what you learn early on. I mean, you sort of touched on this earlier. Like the game doesn't, doesn't really like encourage like, Hey, either be a fast warrior or a strong warrior. Like it's clearly better to use the, the, the strong attacks. I think you learn that early, learn that you got to get into the rhythm to, of like using strong attacks. Cause yeah, it'll be like those skeletons that take like, take like 12 hits to kill a skeleton or like two full power hits. Well, there's also, I mean, it's definitely better to be a power hitter when you're surrounded by enemies. But if you've only got one or two on the screen,

12:37 uh, you're kind of balancing whether you want to like just stun lock and, and do it that way. Kind of protect yourself with the, with the enemy being stunned. Um, so there's, there's, there's two different ways to go about it. Yeah, I guess I shouldn't say there are reasons definitely to use the, the fast attack.

13:03 Graphically the game, uh, you know, I don't know the way to describe this from a video game developer standpoint, but it's, they're all larger sprites too. Uh, I'm impressed by the sprite work overall. Uh, it does along with the amount of enemies that can be on screen. It does also cause some slowdown as a result, but it never felt like,

13:21 you know, the sprites at, because they're larger, like that, they were sacrificing the color palette as a result. I noticed sometimes in, in games like that, where there are incredibly large sprites, you know, you're only allowed like a certain amount of, um, of colors on the screen. And we, we never really saw that here. The backgrounds are very well detailed on top of the character sprites and the platforms and everything. So from level to level, like, you know, I enjoyed, um, this game from a design point of view. Yeah. And then between each level, you've got these pretty well painted, um, sort of cut scenes that have, it's like, uh, a quarter of the screen size is like your letter box. And, uh,

14:08 the, each one is unique. Um, you actually, you get the same, you get the same angle, angles once in a while, but they are ostensibly, uh, unique screenshots pretty much of this story taking place. So there's always something interesting to look at in this game. Yeah. Overall, definitely like a very pretty game. I mean, it's just aesthetically pleasing if that's the right word to use. Cause some of it's obviously meant to be like a little unsettling and stuff, but it, it feels like there was a lot of, um, I don't know, effort. And like, it feels like a finished design. You know, each level feels unique. And there, they keep adding new enemies that are like, not just reskins of old enemies. Like they're always throwing new things at you.

14:55 It's, it's, it looks nice. Yeah. I'm not going to say this elegantly, but like in a world that is filled with evil, they did a great job with the color palette to not make it so bright and cheery that you're like, what's the problem? But also that like these caves and enemies that you're fighting are like appealing to look at and everything. Like it has a nice vibrant color scheme across the whole thing without being like super Mario brothers charm. Yeah, I totally, I noticed a lot of times with games that are trying to be like super detailed, the detail just like kind of turns into like messiness or like, you know, like, like this, this is very detailed, but still like everything is clean.

15:37 Other than the sword or axe is the default. There's the magic spells, which have their own meter as well, although that only depletes and then you pick up potions to like refill it. The magic meter can, you can learn different spells along the way. And actually depending on what weapon you use, it also affects like the amount of points that are, are depleted by the magic spell. I didn't notice that. Yeah, it's very weird, but like if,

16:10 uh, so the one where you have the fireball that goes in all different directions with the axe, it's, uh, six points, but with the sword, it's 10 points. And I guess they're trying to trade off like, well, the sword is, you know, way, you know, way stronger as a physical attack and you can use that whenever you want. So, uh, therefore we have to make, the fireballs more costly. And I think that's a really cool trade off too for, for magic and physical, because we haven't really seen that in games. You know, usually you just get stronger spells and stronger, uh, weapons as the game goes on, right? And your older weapons kind of become useless. But even at any point in this game,

16:50 the spear, which is the weakest physical item might have a play. If you want to use more magic against the bosses specifically, which would be like the optimal time to use them anyway, because they do a good amount of damage. Yeah. Uh, I, I didn't actually realize that that was how that worked. I was like actually the whole, my whole playthrough very confused. It's like, how come sometimes it's taking down, taking down 10 of my MP and sometimes it's, it's like half and sometimes it's like a third.

17:14 So that was frustrating. But now that I understand that, I like that. It's, I feel like that's kind of a, uh, a cool way of like giving you like the option between like, do you want to be more of a warrior or wizard? And giving you the option to switch between it. Neither. I'm an Ashton ass.

17:30 That's right. A Greek myth. I said it was potions that refill your magic, but that is only how you refill your life points. Uh, it is cutie, uh, the fairy, uh, that will come and, uh, restore your magic if you're low on it. I believe. Interesting. Yeah. You get the choice to change your weapon or restore your magic. Yeah. Which also makes magic again, uh, something that you really want to consider, uh, using. Like, I think it's, it's almost,

17:56 you know, correct me if I'm wrong, Joe, you, you played through the game, uh, almost to the end or you beat it. I finished it. Yeah. Uh, it's magic is not something unless you're in a really tight bind. Uh, it's not something you want to use against the traditional enemies. No, I mean, it's nice to use it against traditional enemies, but you really do want to save it for, well, I'll say you want to save it for the,

18:17 there's like, there's like end level bosses. And then there's like, yeah, it's like a mini boss. And then the level boss. Yeah. And not every level has the like giant boss at the end. So like, sometimes I would use it. There are certain enemy types that would just really get annoying. Like those floating jellyfish things that like, I'm just like, all right, I'm just gonna use magic here. Uh, I should've used times. Cause hop, I'll admit that, uh, I used every spell once to test it out. And then I pretty much exclusively use the fireball.

18:47 Um, um, time stop might've been useful if I used it more too, but, um, but yeah, I, I'll say that like I used magic once in a while if I absolutely had to, if I was getting like getting totally stuck somewhere, but I really tried to save it for those big major bosses. Since you just mentioned the bosses and those mid bosses too.

19:06 Uh, I think one of the most surprising things early on in this game is when you get to that first mid boss and realize that it's only the mid boss. Uh, it's, you know, it's a very detailed and somewhat, um, challenging fight for so early in the game and then to defeat it and immediately go into a boss that kind of has like two forms as well. It's, it's, uh, it sets the stage for what kind of game you're going to be playing here. Yeah. These bosses are, are pretty, uh,

19:36 spooky too. Like the, the designs are, are nice and, uh, they make my eyes unhappy in a good way. Um, and, uh, they, they at least have something going on that made like, like a pattern to recognize and to take advantage of and to exploit if you just have time stop. And, uh, I, I was a fan of these bosses. Yeah. They were all like very nicely,

20:05 like designed. I mean, I don't mean that's just aesthetic design. I think like the boss battles were well designed. Whereas I feel like sometimes we get battles where it's like, oh, this is an interesting thing, but an interesting like loop, but either just hit it or it just kills you. And there's like really nothing you can do this. I felt like every time I could like pretty fairly figure out how to beat it, like figure out a pattern. And it was tough, but it was not like,

20:29 it didn't feel that unfair version of Nintendo hard, which I just think is a testament to the design. I think it's because the enemies, um, sorry, the bosses have a pretty telegraphed move, uh, that can be challenging to avoid. So you still have to work on dodging their attacks because their attacks are, um, you know, more dangerous and therefore will deplete your life,

20:51 uh, faster. But, you know, because they're telegraphed and you can prepare for them, it has that whole like Mega Man style boss fight to it. But also there's something interesting about each boss where they are colored in a specific way that is communicated almost immediately to the player that this is the weak spot. And, um, it's not, it's not like red or doesn't have like a target around it. It is like this pink shade or whatever.

21:16 Um, for most of them, I don't know if that's every single one of them, but it's like, you just know right away, like I've got to hit that. So between having a weak spot, which is the only spot where you can actually attack them, it causes some kind of, you know, uh, specifically going back to the first boss, it's its head and it's kind of has like this long neck. So you have to time your jumps and attack for that. So that has a cool challenging feel to it, especially while dodging. And then there's also like the, the whole component of, well, you know, the, as long as I learned the boss's pattern, I can deal with it. So it's kind of satisfying to learn, learn the beast and then take it down in a way that isn't going to like,

21:55 first, you know, you're totally caught off guard and you die right away and you have to restart the whole level. And it's like, wait, what happened? Like, I got to learn this thing. You know, it's like, you're learning it in the very first playthrough of the boss.

22:10 So what about like the stage design itself? Sometimes the levels get pretty vertical. I noticed at least a few times where enemy placement on these vertical stages was a little like suboptimal for what I wanted because it's like, you have to, you have to jump and strike at the enemy that's on the platform you want to get to. And then you can clear that platform. They're kind of like in your way in, in an obtuse way that makes it so that you either take the damage or have to continue to strike from a distance, come back, strike from a distance, come back, get that new platform and then continue to move up.

22:48 That's, that's a small gripe in the grand scheme of things. What did we just think of the stage slash platforming aspect of the game? I think most of what makes the game stand out at all, and it's not really stand out. What makes this game different in any way is because it's so zoomed in there. They're much simpler levels. Like there's, there's not a lot of like navigation going on. Like, yeah, you will have those, uh, vertical,

23:19 but it's more so just a bunch of ways to go up or a bunch of ways to go right. And there's never too much going on with these levels, at least in their base design. Like obviously,

23:34 uh, visually some cool things can be going on. Like as you're climbing up, um, the mountain to get to the final like castle area, you'll see like you're, you're climbing up the rock face, but among the rock face is a bunch of, uh, like prison windows of people like that have their hands hanging out. They're all like, this is just the evil layers, uh, dungeon with, you know, balconies.

24:02 Um, uh, so some cool things happen visually. I wouldn't say too much is going on. Uh, uh, structurally. Yeah. I kind of wish that like those guys were, uh, you know, it wouldn't make sense because they're clearly in like jail cells or whatever, but I wish they were like grabbing out at you and like they did damage or something, or like the environments were a little more interactive. I, I know what you're saying, Sean, where it's kind of like,

24:27 yeah, every level has a different, uh, look to it. And so, you know, in some you're in like a cavern and, uh, you got to jump over the cavern platforms, but then in other ones, you're in the castle and it's like, you got to jump over the castle platforms. There's no like, Oh, in this stage, uh, if you stay too long on something, it collapses. Or, uh, in this stage, you know, like, uh,

24:47 fire spits out from the, from the floor and you have to make sure you don't get hit by those fireballs. Uh, you know, those are all like things that other NES games do. So it's not like they're sorely missed here, but it is kind of repetitive in a way that, uh, you don't notice too much because the, uh, graphically it keeps changing, but the enemies even just like most, you know, the skeleton is the skeleton and yeah, they're changing his color. Yeah. There's always a skeleton though. It's like, do something with the skeleton. Give them a, give them like another weapon that does something different. Give them a top hat.

25:19 There you go. Make them really spooky. Yeah. Name them Mr. Bones. Or a newsboy cap. The designs of the level in a vacuum was fine. You know, like, yeah, it didn't do anything like crazy. I mean, I think there were a couple of times where there's like, oh yeah, I mean, there's pits or there's like conveyor belts or whatever, but like nothing, nothing that crazy, but like, I think it worked perfectly fine for this game. I mean, it's just, it's just a kind of like Castlevania-ish feel. What I think was the biggest offense of it is how they worked with some of these enemy placements. Like you mentioned,

25:56 Mike, like there are some times where like an enemy appears as you're jumping onto the platform and it's too late to not get hit. So you do have to be like cautious about that. And you know, you learn to be cautious and it's not even close to the worst offender of this, but we've had this talk about like enemies that just constantly spawn. And this game doesn't exactly do that, but like sometimes it does. If you're standing in a certain spot and you kill an enemy, it'll spawn more. It's a little too liberal with the like patterns of flying enemies that will just come out of nowhere. It's just, it's constant. It's near constant in addition to the ground-based enemies.

26:36 Right. But like that being said, it's nowhere near like, what was it? The Karate Kid 2 or whatever. That was like, like unplayable. It was just like a thing that I wish they had done a little better. Cause I, cause I, it clearly is that the, these enemies are placed in intentional specific places. It's just that they respond in like a weird way that like makes it feel infinite in some instances. And I think as to, as to an axe,

27:01 uh, sure. Let's go with that. I think, uh, overall, like he's a, he's a little slow. And again, that has to do with the size, but the enemies, especially those like jellyfish looking things that are green with the eyeball. Um, only those who played the game would have any freaking idea what I'm talking about. But like, those guys move pretty fast.

27:21 And again, they're, they're the kind of enemy that like travel all you want. Like they're staying on the screen and you're stuck with them until you kill them. They're not that hard to kill. It's not the end of the world or anything, but in a game where like,

27:32 you know, hearts are to be preserved. Magic is to be saved for the boss fights. Like these, these kinds of characters that move just at a little bit too much of an advantage do also break up the flow of the game in a weird way where, um, I found myself a few times just having to like either, either use my magic there and just hope for the best later on. Um, which, which is fine if you learn the boss patterns or, you know, the kind of thing where it's like, you're trying to move forward and these guys just stay in your way. And like I said, the game really wants you to fight every last enemy that you encounter on the screen. Or it will crash your system.

28:12 Not really. Well, yeah, but the slowdown is intense. Yeah. It becomes almost unplayable. The slowdown reminds me of, um, Gradius is slow down too. Um, and that's funny because in Gradius is slow down. It's beneficial to you. Yeah. Here. It's kind of like, I, I couldn't decide if it was helping me like think more or, you know, the resulting slowdown was like, wait a minute, there's just too many enemies on the screen. I'm kind of stuck.

28:39 I definitely 100% noticed a slowdown, but I never thought it was like, it never actually like bothered me other than like, oh, that's kind of, that sucks that it's slowing down, but it never like bothered me on a gameplay level. I feel like it, it never felt unplayable to me, I guess I'll say. Yeah, no, I don't think, again, that's what I'm saying is I don't think it like, it doesn't give you an advantage or a disadvantage necessarily. It just makes you aware of it in a way that is a little jarring, right? Like it, it's the same way when you have, um, 60 FPS games drop in specific locations,

29:09 you know, cause there's too much being rendered nowadays. And it's like this whole game was going great. And then, uh, I think Breath of the Wild had like, when you were in the master sword area and you were trying to pull out the master sword, like in that field, for whatever reason, the game would just drop to like 12 frames per second. And you were just really enjoying and vibing in this world. And now it's like, what the heck is going on? So did you vibe with this world? Sean, you seemed like the biggest fan of the plot.

29:36 Um, I mean, I, I appreciated that there, that there was one. I have to imagine, well, I guess you, you already said that this isn't the original story. This is just whatever they did to try and sell the kids. But, um,

29:53 I, I think that the, the art is cool. And the fact that the places have goofy names, I think there's a, I think there's a level that just called like bent or something. I can't quite remember. Um, and I think that that, you know, that's some kind of world building. I don't know if it's good world building. I just like the attempt. Um, and it's, it's unobtrusive enough aside from, cause you can skip the cut scenes. You know, you don't need to watch them. I think, um, I might need to be fact checked on that, but I'm pretty sure I pressed start and it stopped.

30:26 Um, why would you want to skip these cut scenes? Sounds like you wanted to. No, you know, what's funny. I, I was hard on it, right. But only because it's ridiculous. You, you, you actually made a great point that like the silly plot, it keeps you engaged on some level, right? Like you have to, once you're in there and you find out that you're, you know, your mission and everything, you want to know like, what's the whole, what's, what's the deal and everything. So I don't mind the cut scenes afterwards. I just found the whole thing very far fetched from the beginning. Yeah. I mean, that's what makes it fun to me. Like this plot is so stupid. this guy gets sucked into, uh, an alternate world. I don't, I don't know if I buy that.

31:07 That's you, Mike. That's me. That's me a little bit only because it's also like, green view high school, like 16 year old boy from, like, it's like, I not, you know, the arcade version is a worse offender because it's just so generic that it's bad. Right. It's like, nobody wants to play one where it's like, you're a guy named Roche who has a divine revelation from God and granted the mythical fire axe.

31:32 And therefore you can go to the castle of Algerine. It's like, those things don't mean anything to people either. So yeah, I get the whole like, boy from high school transported to another world. I'm not saying like, obviously now that's cliche. Probably even then it was cliche in 1990, but like, I get the appeal. It's just that, uh, it's not, you know, for me, it's, it's not, it's not enhancing the game for me.

31:56 It actually is deconstructing its own story. This whole time, you think that Astynax is, is just in it to get the, you know, the princess girl because everyone wants the princess, but this whole time he's got this, whatever fairy following him. And it's just like, it's very platonic. And then like,

32:18 and then she sacrifices herself after she figures like, Oh, I'm not going to kill the kid. I can't kill the kid. Um, so then she dies and then you meet the princess and then she's kind of just like nothing. She's just like, Oh, thanks. Like we can, you want to, we can have a party back in my house. And it's like, and he's just like, eh, and then he goes back and then there's like a human version of the fairy. Like she died, which means that we're living in the afterlife for Remlia. And you might run into all those people you killed in the game, but at least now you're in a relationship with the fairy.

33:13 Joe, you beat the entire game. Uh, so not, not asking, uh, for your essential games, let's vote or anything like that. But as a, uh, a beginning to end game, first off, how long was it? did you, did it feel considerably long or did it feel like, you know, the kind of thing you could beat in an afternoon and do like, what's the journey, the progression like there?

33:33 It felt like, okay, here's one thing that I wish that it had was maybe a checkpoint before the boss. Cause where the, where the length comes from is like dying at the boss and having to redo the whole level to get to the boss. So you can just get a little more data on like what you should be doing to fight the boss, then dying again to beat the whole level. It takes a lot of tries to like kind of figure out, okay, this is how I can beat the boss. So I would like a checkpoint before the boss. I mean, I'd say it took us,

34:02 uh, about three, two and a half, three hours. Uh, maybe I'll leave it, uh, I'll leave it, uh, vague whether or not there was any cheating involved as far as, but, uh, it was, you know, any, any cheating that would have maybe happened if it had would have been like maybe a save state before a boss, but never in the middle of a boss. Especially because at the end of the game, there's like a, there's sort of all those mini, those mid bosses,

34:32 that you've run into that you get like a, a boss rush at the end with all those. And it's, that's hard. It's a very attainable goal to beat this game. There's a lot of games on the NES that I feel like you have to just be really good at NES games and have a lot of time and like be very interested in it and like be really skilled to beat it. This one, I just felt like, okay, it's tough, but, but I can do it, you know, like, and, and that's like, that's refreshing for, for my like video game brain. That's used to playing games and, you know, the early two thousands and stuff like that, where it's like, things are a lot easier. So, so that was nice. And what was your second part of the question? Just the progression. Did it feel like, um, you know,

35:15 were you, were you just completing stages and getting to the end of the game? Or did it feel like, uh, the game was evolving as you went, uh, deeper and deeper? I mean, you feel the little bit of like your power meters evolving. That's really like the, that's really like the main thing that I feel like you feel for your character. But I did feel like the levels were evolving. Like I mentioned earlier, like, you know, we, we talk about like,

35:39 okay, yeah, there's a lot of these re-skinned enemies, but like, it's always kind of throwing new stuff at you too. New, like, aesthetics, and also just like enemies that do new things. I mean, like halfway through, suddenly there's these like weird blobs that grow into like wiggly spear throwers. You know what I'm talking about?

35:56 And like, you got to approach those in like different ways and stuff like that. Like, I appreciated that. But it's also, you know, it's a short enough game where like any lack of like tons of evolution is not like a major crime to me because it's like, you know, but by the time I start to notice that it's not changing as much as I want, the game's over, you know? So I think it was a nice little, a nice little bite-sized like, uh, adventure.

36:22 The final boss fight, um, is not against the evil wizard Blackhorn, uh, who is the one who kidnapped Princess Rosebud. It's against a dragon. Um, and I, I wonder, so, you know, in most video games, right? Like the evil wizard, would then like transform into the dragon and you'd fight him, uh, as the dragon. I'm thinking like, a la dragon warrior, where it was, you, you fought the final boss and then he turned into a dragon here. We just are fighting like his pet dragon at the end is what I kind of got from it, but maybe the dragon was actually behind it all. Like the evil wizard Blackhorn was resurrecting this dragon. Who's actually like the, the supreme leader of it all. Uh, Joe, any,

37:06 uh, as somebody who beat the game, any thoughts on that? I mean, I don't, I don't know if I got any, like, I, I guess I just, I just assumed that he transformed into the dragon, but yeah, there's no, it's just like you fight him for a second and then it's like, ah, you're fighting a dragon. Just, I guess it's like completely up to your imagination. What happened there? It's kind of like, like, oh, there was a door and like the door was rattling during the fight and then the door breaks open, but there isn't like a cut scene for that. It just sort of cuts to black. And then there's the dragon that actually kind of looks like it's just like chicken strutting at you back and forth.

37:43 It's, it's the, the, the way they animated the dragon, it's, you can't really take it seriously, but it sort of looks like Bahamut to me. Yeah. Some Bahamut. But if Bahamut was animated as like a chicken. Yeah. Like a chicken. Yeah. Chicken Bahamut. Well, he's doing, yeah, he's doing that pose that like power pose thing where he sticks his chest out to assert dominance over you. But it's like, dude, your chest is the weak spot. Yeah. And that's the most obvious one in the game. It's, it's literally glowing.

38:11 And it's like a diamond. But it closes sometimes. You gotta like, you gotta find your right opportunity. Joe, you were talking about, there may or may not have been cheats involved. Just wondering, were they the official cheats of the game? Because there are a few.

38:26 I'll leave that open. I'll leave that open to interpretation that, you know, cause definitely wasn't save states. Yeah. That was a slip of the tongue before. Yeah. Save state is what I mean by official cheats. Right. The official cheat of course is for invincibility, which you can do right on the Ask Gen X title screen. Hit up four times, then down, left, right, and up on controller one. Now that's funny because this is not a two player game. So it felt weird for the cheat website that I grabbed this from to specify controller one. But I guess if you plug it into controller two, it would not work. Does it tell you which NES to do it on? Yeah. It doesn't tell you which of your NES is right.

39:04 And is that invincibility for the entire game? Yeah. If you did this right, Ask Gen X cannot take any physical damage for the entire game. He can still be affected by the enemy's magic spells though. Different, different types of, um, uh, attacks maybe, or a different programming thing. Like the, the magic spell attacks register as different kinds of hits. Maybe. I don't know how the code would work there.

39:27 It's all damage at the end of the day, right? Should just be like, always remain at max health with this stat, but not true. And then there's the stage select, uh, which is also at the title screen, hit up, down, left, right, and B four times. Uh, I like that one. Usually you don't have to, you know, usually it's like a bunch of different directions. This one's just finish off with B four times in a row. Uh, if you did this right,

39:50 you'll see a stage select screen that lets you start at any level after the first one, which is a weird choice, right? Why can't I do the stage select and then just jump right into the first stage? You, you can only choose the second stage from there on out. Uh, you'll also start with a sword at full power. So it feels maybe like a debug thing. Maybe. I mean,

40:11 but where was, were we at a time where like cheats were supposed to just be debug, uh, tools and like that wasn't for public consumption? Like, no, I feel like it's like half and half, right? Like sometimes they accidentally get left in there, but like, we're definitely at a time where cheat books are being, uh, code books are being published. Uh, you know, like how to win at NES games and stuff like that, but you won't find those in Nintendo games. I feel like very rarely have we seen a Nintendo game that has cheats. It's, it's against, it's against the central tenants.

40:44 It was in their code ever since 1889 when they were a card, uh, trading company. They were like, yeah, there were no cheats in their cards either. Yeah. No. And to this day, they still don't let you count cards. They won't let you. Uh, that's just a stupid joke. Oh, yeah.

41:02 right next to the Nintendo love hotels on the sequels and spinoff side. Uh, no sequels or spinoffs to report here, but just thought it was interesting to know that Ashton X, uh, had the whole Facebook thing. They dropped the, the, for the NES in arcades. It was the Ashton X. What? But that doesn't make it. That's his name. No, I mean like this is, if it's in the arcade. Yeah. So what was the Ashton X supposed to be in the, the sword? Yeah. Literally the most confusing thing because, uh, it has to be the story. I imagine because there's no mention in the small plot that you get for the arcade anywhere. That says Ashton X. The guy's name is Roche. The castle is Algerine. Um, the,

41:46 the axe is just called the fire axe. Uh, so hopefully there's an explanation at one point or another, but also Ashton X nowhere to be found at all in the, uh, Japanese version of this game, both on the Famicom and in the arcade where it is just known as the Lord of King, which is kind of saying the same thing twice. Maybe it's like more King of Kings, Lord of Lords. Uh, you know, I like the Lord of Lords. I'd play that game. The Lord of King sounds a little clunky. The Lord of the Kings. No, no, you're again, you're adding a clarifying word in there. Uh, Lord of King.

42:22 I mean, I kind of, you know, it's like the opposite of poetic, right? Like what is the status of that person? The person who is the Lord of King, Lord of one King and nobody else. That's maybe what the dragon was. Maybe the dragon was the Lord. Of King Blackhorn. Yeah. I like this interpretation. Uh, for further interpretations on Ashton X, we are going to jump into our final segment. A little thing we call the essential games list.

42:56 Ashton X, which before this episode, I was calling Ashton X. I'm pretty sure you can hear that in the previous episode at the end, when I always say what the next game we're going to play is for the few people that play along.

43:08 Ashton X is a perfectly serviceable game. I think most people will have a good time with it. And I feel like, you know, at the end of the day, I, I played this game on multiple systems and, uh, the feel that I got from it wasn't something that, uh, made me want to throw this onto the essential games list. I, I just don't feel strongly like either way. Um, it's definitely not a bad game, but I feel like level to level, it wasn't really evolving. And I was just kind of like,

43:42 look, I know the guy has an act, so it's easy to go to like golden acts or something like that. But like, I guess I was hoping for like more focus on like fun combat with these weapons and, and, and the kind of enemies I would face. But ultimately I just kept facing the same types of enemies over and over again and just dealing with like really,

44:03 uh, not like, I guess unimpressive platforming where it's like, yeah, it's never challenging and there are pits and stuff. Uh, but the only time you're ever going to fall into pits is because they placed an enemy in a really unfortunate spot and you're just in a bind. Uh, otherwise like there's no tricky maneuvering in this game. So it's not really a platformer. It never really claimed to be a platformer either. And then on the action side, uh, the action really only kicks up whenever you're in the, uh, boss fights or the, um, the more interesting enemy encounters for the most part in this game, you're just kind of moving right or climbing up.

44:38 And so no, not on the essential games list. Sean, I'm going to ask you next. The, the things that we've had to say that are nice about it is like, it's got good boss design. It's got good, like visual design in general. Um, it, it tries some, uh, actual like system things. It tries to play around with that. It doesn't always succeed.

45:03 It, yeah, it's very, it's serviceable. As Mike said, it does not have what it takes to get onto the list. So I'll just stop there and say, not essential. Joe, you beat it, but did you like it? Uh, well, yeah, I liked it, but now here's my essential games vote. Uh, when I was playing, I finished this last night and I, this is, this is kind of the conclusion I came to was like this game. Like I said, it, you can play it and it feels like attainable to beat it. And that, that already goes far.

45:35 It's fun to play, but I also kind of walked away from it with the same feeling of like, it's fun that I don't have like a lot where I'm like, okay, this is a bad game. I don't have a lot that, that turns me against it, but is it up there enough to be on the essential games list? And I, and I kind of came away from that with no, not really. It doesn't really get me there,

45:57 but here's the thing during this recording, as I'm watching footage and I feel like defending a lot of things, I'm just like realizing, like, I kind of really liked this game more than like I, I realized at the time. So I don't know, maybe this is just my weird fluctuating bar. It's definitely not a perfect game, but I thought it was really fun. And this isn't just because I know that my vote doesn't mean anything because I'm going third today, but like I did halfway through the episode decide, you know what? I think I am going to throw this in a central game vote.

46:27 Wow. Even as I'm saying it, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but like, I want to give it a, I want to give it a little, little love. I like that. You got nostalgic watching a YouTube video of a game that you beat earlier this week. Yeah. I beat last night. I love the days. Yeah. Tuesday. You're going to get a photo memory on your iPhone of like you and Ashton X.

46:52 That's fine. Joe, just so you know, you can always vote however the hell you feel like on the essential games list. And I always do. You always do. But I guess I'm just saying just because it doesn't mean anything is that is the time to put your, you know, your foot on the ground and say, no, you know what? You're all wrong. Um, I can't think of, usually it's Sean who does that. Just looking at this list here, there's a bunch of only Sean voted essential. Really? I'm surprised. I feel like I, I, I had a lot. Cause I feel like I'm like, it's swayed to the Joe side of things recently.

47:26 Yeah. I feel like I'm just like very forgiving on, or like maybe I'm like very like, uh, sometimes I overlook negatives because I just like had such a good time. I noticed that a lot of times. Here's two Joe voted essential, uh, almost back to back, uh, Cobra triangle and Strider, both great games. Um, kind of fall into this Ashton X thing though, for me of like, you know, yeah, serviceable, but not, not over the line. I've just learned about myself that I'm more of a follower than I am a leader. So I just go with whoever said one thing or the other before me. Yeah. If you go back through the, go back through all the episodes, Sean has never voted different than the last person.

48:09 Uh, yeah, that's, that's definitely true. Uh, also, Sean, you're definitely a leader because you were, uh, the first guy and the only guy to put, um, DuckTales on the essential games list. And we all vetoed it. And then on the best of 89 episode, we were all like, Oh yeah, what the hell were we thinking? Yeah, I guess it's a great game. Right. You're right. So you have an opinion and it's solid. And the listeners have an opinion and they're solid. And if you want to talk to other listeners about their solid opinions, you can do that on our discord, which is only available. Unfortunately, this is the part you're going to hate guys. It's available to Patreon members only, uh, but you can get it for like a buck.

48:49 Cold, hard cash. Yeah. in fact, nothing stopping you from just giving the buck, getting on the discord, asking for everybody's phone numbers, and then just never talking to us on discord. I'm pretty sure that's what half the users are doing anyway. Just, just calling each other on actual phone calls. Yeah. Landline.

49:10 Yep. Uh, next week we are playing baseball simulator. 1000 or 1.000. You, you know, read that how you will. Uh, I'll get into this in the episode, but the reason why I think it's 1000 is because in baseball, you say, Oh yeah, that guy's batting like 300, right? Like his average. So, yeah, that's what I figured it was going for. Nobody bats a thousand in baseball ever. It's never happened, but, uh, presumably in a baseball simulator, you would want to.

49:41 And then if you still want more nostalgia, as I mentioned on that Patreon for one buck, you can get access to the discord for five bucks. You still get access to the discord too. Don't worry. It's not just for the people who pay a buck, uh, for five bucks, you can get access to nostalgia bites where we are going to have this month's episode be downtown special. It's Kunio Kunz period drama. Gather everyone.

50:02 Yes, that's the full title. It is the spiritual successor to river city ransom in essential game. So, you know, you want to check out this one and be like, wait a minute, there's more river city ransom like games. I thought that was like the whole thing of what put it on the essential games list. Well, this one's only in Japan and it's only on the Famicom and technically it's only playable in Japanese, but we found some translations. Uh, uh, some of us did at least we'll talk about it in the episode.

50:54 Wait, I like Ashton acts though. I just, it's like, I've been saying the other way all week. You know, I say this line like all throughout the week to practice. It's the one line I can't miss. This is what you do every week. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Good. Well, you didn't do the segue from earlier. I'm fucked. I don't even remember what it was. I don't either. I don't remember it either. What am I going to ask you next? Oh yeah, I'm going to ask you next. All right.