302 · Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular

• There’s more fun here than a month of Sunday Comics
• NES Longplay
• Manual
• Is that a diss at The Peanuts?
• Finally SILLY sports.
  • Events include boot throwing, pizza balancing, sack racing, pogo, river jump, and overboarding
• Landmarks unique to Italy are shown (i.e., Leaning Tower of Pisa) and the structures using Roman architecture (i.e., the Colosseum) are shown while the player competes at the six events.
  • Manual mentions Greece as well
• This episode is officially longer than the time it takes to experience the entire game
• Does the silliness make up for the lack of features?
• The B button is only used in the River Jump
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • (Donald Duck in the Japanese version)
    • The difference is that Donald can cast Zettaflare
    • As Japanese video game company Capcom USA held the Disney license in North America, Kemco decided to license Snoopy instead for the North American version.
  • A majority of the game seems to be ported from the Commodore 64 video game Alternative World Games by Gremlin Interactive.
    • But Kemco made this game. Interesting. Turns out they had a deal in place to port their computer games to the western NES market
• EGL
• Next week - Super C
• NEStalgia Byte - Honoo no Doukyuuji: Dodge Danpei
  • (HOE-NO NO MICHI-KOJI DODGE DEN-PIE)

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

00:00 Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular! There's more fun here than a month of Sunday comics! Nostalgia! 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. Is that a diss at the Peanuts? I don't even know where we are right now. There's more fun here than a month of Sunday comics? Like, don't bother reading the stuff Charles Schultz is writing because, like, the game is more fun? I can read it that way. This is Charles Schultz's, like, angry, jealous brother who's like, I made an even better Snoopy thing. You have to understand how I got to that conclusion of the back of the box

01:13 And it writes this whole thing about, like, all the different silly sports and what they're gonna be doing and everything. And then it just puts at the very bottom, which is what I chose for the back of the box, it just puts in parentheses, alternative, dot, dot, dot. There's more fun here than a month of Sunday comics. It's like... Alternative? Like, that's an alternative thing to read? Like, they left in the notes about the copy? Yeah, they, like, left in the notes.

01:40 Exactly. Wow, that's weird. That's funny. Also, I never knew Dusty was his brother. I thought Dusty was, like, his old uncle or something. I didn't even know there was, like, another looking Snoopy character. I didn't know that was a thing. I thought there'd be more peanuts in this, but I guess they did just call it Snoopy. I don't know why they're in Italy. Can we, like, just do, like, a post-mortem here? Yeah, well, I have a question of why do they fly west from New York to Italy? Doesn't that take way longer? And why are both cities in the clouds?

02:13 That was my secondary concern. Well, if they're in the clouds, right, to just, just as everybody's on the same page, Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular takes place in apparently not just Italy, but Greece. I don't think the Greece one, like, has any monuments, like how the Italy has, like, the Coliseum and stuff, but they insist that he also went to Greece in this, uh, in this trip. And the reason why that's confusing is because they're showing at the very beginning of the game the Statue of Liberty and the USA and Snoopy flying from that cloud to a cloud that has the Coliseum and Italy and everything.

02:51 And it's like, okay, cool. I get it. Um, he's, that they're like letting it known in a silly, spectacular way that, um, that he is in, that he's competing in Rome. Right. But like, why, why does he have to compete in Italy? Like this, the Silly Sports Spectacular isn't a franchisable thing. It's not something that happens like, oh, don't forget, uh, every August, everybody tunes into the Silly Sports Spectacular in Pisa.

03:22 Yeah. This is exactly, here's where I'm thinking this happened. There was just a bunch of miscommunications, uh, while they were actually designing the game. The first little mini game that got designed was the pizza balance thing. And they're like, oh, they'll put the, put the leading tower of pizza behind it. And then whoever was next, like, you know, the next guy that had to design a game for this was like, okay, so this, this has to be something that's all in Italy and it surrounds. So, and then that just sort of, that idea just sort of took off and you end up with a fully

03:59 Italian centric slash, I guess, some Greek, uh, Snoopy game. I think that's how it happened. That everyone was asking for. Yeah. That's a great question, Joe. Is anybody asking for this? I think yes, because look, like it or not, every, uh, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, the peanuts resurrect from the dead and become part of ABC television. Oh yeah. And so they, they are, you know, they are incredibly popular.

04:30 I'm not saying that the Snoopy IP was about anyone's asking for. It's like the, everything around it was, is just kind of randomness. Not in a bad way. I'm just, it just, it was just a weird way that this came up, like came to be. I'd argue that there weren't too many people asking for a Snoopy video game too, but that's just me. I just don't think they were asking for this kind of Snoopy video game because look, Snoopy is without a doubt the coolest peanut character, right?

04:55 Like who's even second to Snoopy? Minus is second, but yeah, Snoopy's. Okay, good. So at least you're agreeing Snoopy's first. And maybe that says more about the characters Charles Schultz created than anything because, uh, the dog is the coolest character, um, on the show, not the actual humans who talk and have personalities.

05:14 I like the dog. Woodstock's up there. I like, I like Snoopy. Did you know Snoopy had a brother? No. Okay. Me neither. But, uh, he's an asshole in this game. I mean, he seems to be, uh, like more of victim of preferential treatment from the bird. Uh, that's all I know. Wait, how so?

05:37 The bird will like, you'll push him. Well, he pushes whoever's losing. Oh. It's not just him. Yeah. Okay. I never, I guess I never lost at that bad. I never won the sack, the sack race. Um, but watching other people play the other guys getting pushed. So. Yeah. I, I, I, I once again played two player on this. So one of us was always losing, which is how that works. I don't know why I'm saying that. Two observations. First off, Sean, nobody else has ever played this game. You're watching computers play this.

06:10 Okay. And then, um, following up on that for Joe's thing. Joe, you know, it is a good point that you played with another person, but also Snoopy went all the way to Italy to do the silly sports spectacular, or as it's referred to in the manual, just the international games, which is not like the Olympics. It's totally its own thing. Uh, and he went all the way there just to compete against his brother. They could have done this in fucking Charlie Brown's backyard, but instead they went, they expensed a trip on Charles Schultz's dime to go to Italy for this. Well, you only can find a gondola to sumo wrestle on in Venice.

06:50 Yeah. Cause they, you're right. What are they wrestling? They must be, they're just pushing each other. Sumo wrestling is being nice. They're just pushing each other. And again, uh, his brother spikes just being a dick here. By putting up a fight. Like, do you have a problem with him? Like trying to compete with the golden child? Like does, does Snoopy the golden child have to win everything? When you're the, when you're playing a Snoopy. Yes. If I was given the choice to play as spike, I would have, I would have picked spike over Snoopy just to have the underdog. Get it. Uh, win.

07:22 All right. At least we can agree on that. All right. So forget about the locations cause that's tripping us up too much. Now we need to talk about, uh, the actual game and the silly sports. Uh, the silly sports are boot throwing, pizza, balancing, sack racing, pogo, river jump, and overboarding. And I have a lot of thoughts of which we'll get to, but the biggest one would just be that, uh, how did like the pogo stick get shafted so hard here? That's like, that could be a real sport that involves a real piece of equipment. The other ones are literally games that somebody just made up that day. Boot throwing is just taking a boot and swing.

08:06 It's no different than like doing a hammer throw or, um, javalin or whatever. No, I know, but they're just making it a boot instead and it's funny and it's silly. And the way you throw the boot is funny and silly, blah, blah, blah. I get it. But pogo ing, if that's a verb, is just something that like people actually do. And now it's a silly sport. That would be like if it was boot throwing, pizza, balancing, sack, racing, river jump, and karate, you know, it's like, oh, so now karate's silly.

08:34 In, in, in the defense of the decision-making here, I'd say that no one looks like, like normal on a pogo stick, on a pogo stick. Like it's, it's pretty ridiculous in itself. I was going to say, regardless of, you know, I'm sure there's very serious pogo stickers out there. This game is not the first thing to ever consider pogo sticks silly.

08:59 So let's just, let's go through them one by one. I gave you a boot throwing and what the equivalents are. Uh, you could talk about the game mechanics or you can just talk about the silliness factor of the sport. You have at it. You have your pick. So Sean, take us through your thoughts on boot throwing. Uh, yeah, it's, it's pretty much just, I don't know why they selected boot. I don't know why that's like a boot that you're throwing. I'm sure there's any number of silly items that you could, you could throw. Um, and they just selected boot. I mean, I guess what's like a shot put or I guess, yeah, hammer throw, like you said.

09:36 Um, it, you know, you just spin your little D pad in a circle. You try and, you try and, uh, you try and stop it at the optimal angle. And then, I don't know, the highest I could get was 30. Um, but that was fine. That was fine. I think they could have picked a sillier, a sillier item though. If we're going for maximum silliness. Yeah. I think that this one also for me might be the, the most forgettable or basic. It's like, it's like a very quick, like one thing.

10:11 It's yeah. The moment of release, we tried it a couple of times and we would either at first get like zero, or one cause we were bad at it. And then we both just kept getting 30, which I'm wondering if that's the max. I feel like that's the max. Yeah. So it felt like that one was like, okay, we did it. And not to say that like that other games in this, like you're going to keep coming back to for, for decades to come. But like after, after boot throwing, I was like, I don't ever need to do that again.

10:40 Sean, you said you would have liked to have seen a sillier item than a boot. Yeah. I mean, why a boot? What else? What do you got? I don't know. Pitch it to us. How about a calzone? A, okay. Yeah. Calzone is one. Um, a bag of lettuce.

10:59 Um, calzone sounds right because we're keeping it at least in the Italian vein, but try not to do it. Well, a boot has nothing to do with Italy. Well, no, it, yes. It's because of Italy. It's a boot. Guys, I just figured it out. Italy is in the shape of a boot. Oh, it is in the shape of a boot.

11:15 Oh, wow. I can't wait for you to do this for every other game, Joe. And you can just figure it out every time. Yep. Well, the next one needs no help because it's the only reason they went to Italy. And that is for the pizza balancing competition, which makes sense because they're in Pisa. You see the leaning tower and you yourself are carrying, carrying, carrying a leaning tower of pizzas, uh, which you have to, like, manage balancing while also moving with these pizzas. And, uh, of course it would be cool if they had any kind of actual physics and, and, uh,

11:50 movement to it. Don't go too fast. It's don't go too fast. And also it's just that the pizzas all just move like, um, kind of like a vertical slinky would move. And if they just move a little too far off to the sides and you don't pull back on the controller, uh, the, the top pizzas will fall over. And so you want to have almost all your pizzas still there and you want to do it somewhat fast. And that's how you get the most amount of points.

12:15 All this to say, I did appreciate the actual, like feel of using the D pad to reign in my pizzas. I don't know if it worked at all. Like, I think sometimes they would fall regardless, but I felt the invisible touch of pulling back. That would be the, um, the left button on my D pad, pushing that to kind of help pull the pizzas back, whether or not it actually did anything. Yeah. I liked the, the look of it. Uh, like it, well, each, each pizza while way too small to be considered pizzas.

12:49 Um, the fact that they're all like individually animated, I thought that was like, Ooh, that looks cool. Yeah. They're, they're personal pan pizzas for sure. But I, uh, I will defend a little bit the, uh, the kind of movement of it where I, I did over time, like realize that there is like a rhythm you have to get into to go a little faster. You can't go too fast still, but like at first we were doing like one step at a time, but like there's a specific rhythm that where you have to kind of do the risk reward thing of like, how fast do I want to go versus how, you know, safe do I want to be?

13:25 Uh, so like it did, it was different. It's like, we haven't really had anything that's like kind of the opposite of most games where it's like, be really careful with what you do. So like, I appreciated what it was trying to do. And there is a balance in the controls schemes for almost all of these, right? Like the, the boot throwing that we, you know, we didn't, we chose not to talk about the gameplay, but you spin your D pad around to rev up Snoopy's arm and everything. And then you have to make sure that, you know, you're throwing, uh, the boot while it's in forward momentum. Like you can theoretically be going, moving it really fast, but then just throwing the boot backwards and it going nowhere. Oh yeah. It did, it did a lot of that too.

14:04 Yeah. So, I mean, you know, these games are well designed for, for what they are. I'm not trying to rush through the sports and not go in depth enough. I think it's just worth talking about, um, each of the silly sports and making sure that we covered that all in this episode. So thinking about that, we're moving on to sack racing, which unfortunately now Joe has to explain what sack racing has to do with, uh, Italy.

14:29 Yeah. I've been thinking about it this whole time. And I'm sure it'll come to me while we're, uh, while we're in the middle of talking about it. Great. So in the sack racing, this is, uh, the one that, uh, Sean was mentioning Woodstock is favoring. Who's ever losing because Woodstock is just kind of hanging out. He gives you a little push. Makes you wonder why Woodstock in general just isn't helping with all the games then.

14:50 Like, why did he decide it's okay to cheat in the sack thing, but he's not like able to catch one of your pizzas as they're falling and lift it back up onto the top. Uh, you know, go figure. I guess he didn't want to help there, but in the sack race, you're just, um, hopping along and using the D pad to kind of maneuver yourself around the street where there are these, uh, I guess either potholes or sewer caps or whatever that are in your way. So make sure you don't, uh, get into those.

15:18 And all the while your brother's spike is also, um, is also doing the same thing. And I guess it's a competition. So, uh, here, here's how it relates to Italy. Um, there's actually continuity, um, where you are also making the pizzas that you're balancing, uh, in the future game. Uh, this is the sacks of flour that you use to create the dough. Um, so this is Italian flour. Mmm. That's interesting. I was going to go with, there is this famous Italian piece of art called sack race, Italy, 19th century of a sack race in Italy in the 19th century that I didn't just Google right now. Yeah.

16:07 But it's famous enough to be on Google. You have to be world famous for that. And where do you guys think, um, the sack race took place in, uh, Italy? Uh, that's in, uh, Pampaglia as they say it in the, in the home country.

16:23 Yeah. Mount Vesuvius, the small Italian town at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Uh, wait for the, yeah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I just thought that was funny that like, okay, now we're just actually trying to give a history lesson or something in this. Like the Coliseum, everybody knows it. Leaning tower of Pisa, everybody knows it again. And now we're just like, yeah, Mount Vesuvius. Everybody learns about that in school.

16:46 And it's always just kind of smoking up there. Yeah. It's like that, that isn't, that's an actively erupting volcano. Okay. Moving on to the Pogo. This is the, the, where they go to Greece for a little detour. Um, because. Well, what tells, what's saying that that's Greece? Those are the ruins of the Parthenon.

17:04 I mean, it could also just be the ruins of like, you know, the Roman forum. I agree with you. And that's what I thought it was. But the manual insists that. They said it's the Parthenon. They say it's the Parthenon. Why, why did they have to go to Greece? I don't understand. I think someone just got their wires crossed there. Yeah. This has to just be a really bad writer of the manual, you know? Right. Because it shows the Colosseum and it shows the Italian flag. It doesn't show the Parthenon and it doesn't show the Greek flag. Is it maybe the Pantheon? No, it's not the Pantheon, um, in the manual.

17:40 Uh, if that, if that's what you're getting at. But I agree with you guys that like, this person just didn't get the manual right or didn't get the memo that this game only takes place in Italy and that these are just the Roman ruins, you know, the Roman forum. Silly, silly, silly. Silly. Okay, but the actual Pogoing. Um, this is, uh, I believe the, uh, no, sorry, this is a different game. This is, uh, another one where you're just essentially, it's like the sack racing except for this time you don't even have to move around. Instead, you just have to time your jumps to make sure you do higher jumps to get over

18:24 the barriers, which are just a bunch of like logs, uh, stacked on top of each other, which again, we're definitely not part of the, uh, Parthenon or the Roman forum. So now they're just like, they're just graffitiing or vandalizing a space, uh, you know, a sacred space with, for their own amusement, which is just, you know, typical peanuts bullshit. Like doing a sick, like grind off a rail, uh, in the Louvre or something. Yeah. How come Tony Hawk never skated off the Coliseum? I don't know. Um, but I will say that this, this game is the most trivially easy one. Okay. That's fair to say Joe, any thoughts?

19:04 Uh, yeah, I guess, I guess so. Unless you consider the boot thing once you get that down being pretty easy, but I won't pretend I didn't smash into a wall or two at first, uh, doing this Pogo stick game. The, the boot one is a, is challenging with the, the D pad thing, but it's incredibly satisfying too. When you, when you do get it right and build up a lot of speed, the Pogo thing never really got satisfying. It's not satisfying to get over those high heights. Cause one, they're not even that high. So it's like, whatever Pogo stick should be able to get you over those. So then it's just frustrating when you don't get over them.

19:39 Yeah. I mean, I would agree that this is another one that like, after I did it, I'm like, all right, what's next? Give me another game. Oh, wait, guys, guys, stop right now. Stop right now. I stopped. Wait, the, the episode is officially longer than the game ever could be. Oh, all right. Let's wrap it up. Yeah.

19:58 The, uh, we have to, we have to officially just go into a turbo mode and talk through the rest of this really fast. So, uh, next you have the river jump. The river jump is the only game in this whole collection of games that uses the B button. That's what's noticeable about it. Uh, it's funny that none of the other games use the B button yet. They were just the A button for jumping and, uh, the D pad for maneuvering. And then you have the overboarding, which is, uh, in Venice and you're on the, I know, I know. Okay. I have a lot to say about the river jumping.

20:32 Please. I don't know what you guys think, but, uh, did you guys have a hard time succeeding? Yes. No, there's only one spot. I just did one. There's only, yeah, there's just one spot that you can, that you can jump from to get over to the other side. Otherwise all other spots are fail states. So it actually turns out that there is a way. So my buddy and I, we just stopped competing after a while. We're just like, we have, one of us has to get this by the end of the night. And we spent a really long time trying over and over again. And the manual tells you how to do it. Um, I looked up a bunch of like, I was looking up on like YouTube and Googling it is apparently there's like a pseudo, this is like a pseudo legend of like a very challenging NES task

21:12 where it's like, nobody can ever get this. There are, there are some, I mean, there's like not a lot of them. So that's why I say pseudo, but like, there are, there are several videos of people being like, Oh my God, I, I actually got this. There's like people like, like two friends, like clearly trying for hours to get it and like stuff like that. So it's clearly like a thing. And we found one source online that gave us like the actual controls that are not in the manual. And it's still hard. But after that I was able to get it like three, four times in a row. Wow. Well, what, what that is, what doesn't tell you is that first of all, you press, you press

21:50 a at the moment that the, um, at the moment that the, your pole lines up with the edge of the river, like that's the perfect spot. Then when you're at, then you press B or I'm sorry, you press B. That's, that's how you, that's how you plant your pole. I could understand that you forgot that you could even press the B button when playing this game. Yeah. You're tapping A to run. Once you get to that spot, you press B when your pole is, is lined up with the river.

22:15 And then when you are at the maximum point, the peak of your arc, you release B. Oh, it's a release thing. It doesn't tell you that in the manual. So we were trying forever and nobody online seems to know this and still, except for this one source that we found that like said, release B at the peak of your height. And then still had some trouble, but got it so many times. Yeah. I would tap B and then like, okay, I'll tap it again. And like, okay, then I'll try and tap A.

22:43 We tried rapidly tapping it. We tried tapping it once we tried holding it. We just didn't know that you were supposed to release at the moment that you would jump off, which I guess makes sense, but it didn't tell us that. There are people who beat Ghost and Goblins. And then there are people that beat River Jump.

23:02 And I'm the latter. Okay. And then the overboarding thing, that's where you're on. You're in Venice and you're on the, what are those things called? Gondola. I almost said gazebos. Thanks. It's a gazebo. Yeah. It's close enough. It sounds Italian. The gondola and your wrestling spike. Cause now he's really pissed about the results of the sack racing thing. So he's now coming after you and you're just in a shoving match really. And I couldn't, I won, but I couldn't really figure out why I won. Like I was, I guess I was timing my push better than he was, but it did kind of feel arbitrary. And I just kind of slowly kept pushing him over and over to his side until he fell over. And, um, it felt good to see him fall into the water.

23:50 What do you got against spike? It's nice to have some kind of catharsis after everything that's happened in this game. Spike just looks like the evil Snoopy. Isn't he just wearing a hat? Yeah. That's, that's what makes him evil Snoopy. I think he's a very cool looking dude. It's that little mustache too. Yeah. It's like a, it has like, yeah, exactly. It's like a swirl on the mustache. Yeah. He looks, I think, I think he looks like he's a, maybe a little bit of a con artist, but cool guy. Yeah. You can't really trust anybody who wears a hat.

24:23 That's true. I just made sure I didn't say fedora or whatever he's actually wearing. Cause I just want to make it known. It's all hats. Can't trust anybody who wears a hat. Uh, that's the games. And so here's the big question. Does the silliness make up for the lack of features?

24:41 Um, no, but I'll say that the silly, and I knew this, this is what I was, I was thinking it was going to happen when I came in here today because I played with someone and I, it's always a little more fun to do it that way. I was going to come in here and I was going to say some things like that were positive and like that I had fun. And you guys would be like, what are you talking about? This game is terrible. And I don't disagree with that. I did have fun with these silly games. Some of them, not all of them, but like, yeah, there was, there was some fun. Like the, the river jump thing was fun because I like, it was satisfying to figure it out.

25:12 But I like the, I can't, I mean, I'm like reaching to think of one that I had fun with now, but the, you know, this, this sock hop one or whatever, like, it's a fun race against, you know, multiplayer race. I would take it over. I guess I'll say this. I would take it over really any of the other multi game, like Olympic games or, or weird sports, like multi challenge games that we've played in the past. Okay. Like, so better than winter games.

25:42 Yes. Yeah. And just for the record, I'm having fun with the episode, but yeah, I do think that the silliness is at least somewhat dialed in like pizza balancing is a funny thing. Kids will appreciate that sack racing. I don't know. I don't think that there was enough fun to be had there. There probably could have been more obstacles or more silliness or like some kind of funny visual, whenever you fall over or whatever.

26:07 But I think it just needed more of the, the cartoony feel, or at least more of the peanuts feel like, why is it Italy is like the dominating factor. And then Snoopy's the afterthought, right? Like give me more peanuts for air. Yeah. And I, and I'm not defending the lack of content. It does feel like there needs to be more here, but I, yeah, as mini games, they were largely

26:32 acceptable mini games. You know, some of them were, some of them were more fun than like a lot of the mini games that we've played in other games. Sean scale of one to 100 on the silliness factor. Um, I, I think the, the silliness factor for this game is more so like the game as a concept, like the fact that this game exists at all with the, with the thematic elements that does have not so much how silly each, uh, mini game is. Uh, it's just more head scratching how this came to be and how this like is something that's on, uh, this is on a real company's P and L. Like this is something that they decided to make.

27:27 I think I can help solve that problem when we do the sequels and spinoffs, because it's important to know that, um, there was another version of this game that is exactly the same version. Okay. Yeah. It was released in Japan and it's Donald Duck. Okay. So why the hell is Donald Duck in Italy?

27:49 Okay. No, no, no, no. The difference is that. We need a Mario game. That's why, because of the Mario video game fame. They're all trying to capitalize and they got the wrong part of what makes Mario good. See, the difference between Donald Duck and Snoopy is that Donald Duck can cast Zeta Flare. Okay. Which is something that only like, bomb at zero can do. So I think Donald Duck would win the silly sports spectacular over Snoopy. Um, that said, uh, in Japan, uh, it was okay to use Donald Duck B. Uh, but, uh, Capcom who holds the Disney license in North America where we played, you know, games like DuckTale or whatever.

28:29 Um, they, they needed to, uh, the developer here, Kemco needed to essentially change it from Donald Duck for the North American version. And so that's why we get Snoopy instead. So in Japan, I went to the bargain bin of the IP, uh, licensing. And it's like, no, we, we don't want to license the entire peanut gang. We'll just take, we'll just take Snoop.

28:53 Yeah. But I think that's the right choice because the only other thing that could have been funny is if you took that kid who carries his blanket everywhere and put him in the sack racing, right? Like that would have been the only other, like, oh yeah, that's relevant to the peanuts. Like I understand that gag. I think the game would have been measurably better if in each game you have different characters from the peanuts performing them.

29:15 You know, Sean, that's a great point because it's the silly sports spectacular and Charlie Brown's not even trying to punt a football. Exactly. Right. Fucking crazy. Uh, who was the other, uh, player in the Donald Duck version? I can't find anything about the Donald Duck version. Cause I don't, I don't think it's called Donald Duck, silly sports spectacular because it's all in Japanese. So can't find it, but I would love to find out who it is, but it's probably just a pink Donald Duck. Yeah. I was going to say a spike duck or something. I got it right here. It looks like it's Daisy. Okay. Yeah. Donald. Oh, look at Hugh. Oh, Huey, Dewey, or Louie. One of those, the green one is the Woodstock. And see, that's perfect. That makes so much more sense.

29:58 Uh, and, but it's all the same sports, right? He's throwing a boot. Well, I'm, I'm watching them do the sack race right now. Okay. Yeah. Is it better? We're going to wait. We're going to wait for you to continue to watch the entire game. Oh, he's throwing a boot. I'm scrubbing through. I'll do this. I'm, I'm, I'll come in. He's throwing a boot. He's, he's, he's, he's pogo sticking. All right. Is he, here's the interesting thing though, cause we're still in the sequels and spinoff section. A majority of this game and the Donald Duck game, obviously, since they're the same game seemed to be ported from a Commodore 64 game known as alternative world games, which was not made by Chemco. It was made by Gremlin. There's that word again. Interactive.

30:38 Well, the back of the box had alternative on it. Yes, it did. And I thought you were saying world games cause we played world games, right? Oh yeah. I just meant alternative. Yeah. I'm just saying every word, every word in that sentence, we've said all those words in the podcast somewhere, you know, just not in that order.

30:57 And so let me just get back to my detective work for a second. Gremlin interactive made this game called alternative world games on the Commodore 64. And then Chemco seems to have stolen most of that stuff and put it on these NES games. Uh, so what's going on there? Well, apparently it seems like there was a deal in place for, uh, Chemco to port Gremlin Interactive's computer games to the Western NES market.

31:28 Uh, and this was the only one that they ever did. So that makes me think Snoopy's silly sports spectacular did not, uh, you know, do blockbusters or whatever you want to gangbusters, gangbusters, or, or was not a blockbuster. Wow. I'm also now looking at alternative world games and there are just more games here though. Like a lot of them are the same, but they just have a bunch of extra. Well, you can't expect them to do it all Joe, right? Like, yeah, but they could have done the same amount. No, I know, but you can't expect that requires a lot of Donald duck animation.

31:58 That's true. They did the actual Disney animation studio had to frame by frame like Cuphead animate that. Just imagine the conversation when Chemco found out that Capcom owned the Disney license for North America and they were like, Oh, son of a, now we gotta, we actually have to change the game a little bit again. We already changed the game once. Can't keep getting away with this. Yeah. And one thing that we won't change is that at the end of the episode, we do a thing and we're going to do it again. And it's called the essential games list.

32:35 Snoopy's silly sports spectacular. Nice alliteration in that title, but makes me wonder if the Donald duck one had a bunch of these like Donald ducks doofy. Don't, don't, don't even worry about it. Anyway, my, my point being that, uh, I was trying to think about ways to fill up my time to the vote before I get to the point where I just say no, and I didn't do a very good job at it. And this game didn't very, do a very good job at making me think it belongs on the essential games list. So it's a no Sean Daffy ducks.

33:07 Sorry. Donald ducks dastardly dance with the devil is what that game would have been called. Um, and I think at the end there would have been a boss fight where it actually switches to normal, like 2d side scrolling, uh, uh, controls and there'd be like special moves. And, uh, if you lose, there'd be like, uh, an animation where you actually get like sent directly to hell. But if you win, you just sort of get the gold medal. I think that'd be pretty cool. And the only way to win is to use the C button. Yeah. Or, or just like, you know, to plug your controller into the two player slot.

33:50 Um, and I think that would have been great. So I do want to play that game that definitely exists. Uh, but this one is not essential. Joe, since we're all going on about the title, I've got a, I've got a thought here too. Calling it Snoopy's silly sports spectacular. I think does it a disservice. That's what makes us look for the silliness. That's what makes us think, is this game silly enough? And it's not, but if it was just called Snoopy sports spectacular, you would pick it up and you'd be like, wow, this is a silly game. So I think that they, they made a mistake in actually putting silly in the name.

34:25 But, uh, as far as the games themselves, uh, yeah, they can be fun when playing against someone else. If, if you have to play it for a podcast, but probably just wouldn't recommend that like, you have to go out and play this game. So I'm going to say not essential. We should have like a, a separate recommendation for like, if you have to play this for a podcast, how should you expect this to go? Yeah. Like, is it worth quitting the podcast?

34:55 I don't think anybody's going to be able to fill up anything else for 35 minutes about this, uh, this game, like, and not repeat anything we've said. So I think we covered it. I think we did the work for everybody else. And, uh, that's what we're here for. I'm telling you, I think there's a lot of people that frequently think about the river pole jump because it, because it, it, it haunts them. I think it's just called river jump. River pole jump.

35:20 Uh, and next week we'll be playing super C. Um, not to be confused with regular C. Is that a letter C? Super letter C? Super letter C. Not super C like under C. Um, and I'm just going to leave the title at that. I'm not going to get into anything else about that game because it might surprise, uh, one or two of you. I know it. I don't. analyst analyst analyst