334 · Wall Street Kid

• From out of darkness…shall arise a challenge to your wisdom
• NES Longplay
• Manual
• A good game always starts off with your Uncle’s lawyer telling you he died.
  • Really makes you question the intentions of the title WALL STREET KID
• 600 BILLION DOLLAR INHERITANCE only if you can prove yourself
  • Turn 500k into a profit…how much a profit?
    • 1 MILLION DOLLAR HOUSE PROFIT
• OH BTW IT’S APRIL FOOLS DAY
• So the game really is just buying stocks…
• Essential Games List Vote
• Next week
• NEStalgia Byte

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

00:00 Wall Street Kid, where life, love, and money all depend on how well you play the game.

00:22 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. A good game always starts off with your uncle's lawyer telling you he died. That's true. I think that's, isn't that how Legend of Zelda started? Yeah. The guy in the cave, he's your uncle's lawyer. The guy in the cave, he said, yeah, it's dangerous to go alone. Your uncle died. Take $500,000. Yeah. It was mistranslated in the North American version.

00:57 Really makes you question the intentions of the title Wall Street Kid though, right? Like, did you guys must've thought, or at least I definitely thought that you'd be playing as like a kid who's gonna do like some fun Wall Street style shanigans. But instead, you're just- You could be like running through the like floor, like knocking people over as they're like, as they're like playing the stock market. I would've been here for it. But even just like a kid's perspective of the stock market, which maybe this game is, but like, you know, like you're not a kid in the game, but you are, I guess, a- You're like a relative kid. You're like your 20s. Yeah, you're a novice in the Wall Street.

01:35 Yeah. You're not like some hedge fund guy who already knows the ins and outs of the market. You've just acquired a large inheritance. How large, Sean? Oh, it's $600 billion, which I'm pretty sure would make you the richest person in the world in today's money.

01:59 Especially in 1990 money. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they future-proofed that for a while. Yeah. But here's the thing. You can only get the $600 billion inheritance according to the will if you prove yourself. Yeah. Which is crazy, right? Yeah, at a certain point, if you're like a hundred billionaire, does the ability to like work with millions of dollars even translate at all to what your life would be like as a hundred billionaire? I don't think it's- I think it's a different kind of wealth at that point. Yeah. So it would be like saying like, oh, before you can earn this million dollars, let's see how you spend this nickel.

02:42 It doesn't really translate. Right. I agree with you. And not even like, let's see how you would use the money or let's see if you're financially responsible. It's just, you have seven days to, or maybe it's 14 days, to double your money. You've got a month. I'm going to give you $500,000. Well, they start asking you about the house pretty early. They do. But you don't need to say yes. You get a month. Right. Okay. That's actually a good strategy for the players at home because it took me a couple of resets to get to the point where I could afford the house in time before the game over. But let's not jump into- Yeah, don't jump in there.

03:21 Shit. Instead, just think about the proposition for a second. So the game starts off by telling you, your uncle's lawyer tells you your uncle died. Uh-huh. He had a $600 billion inheritance that he's going to give to you.

03:33 Only if you can turn $500,000 into a million dollars, but not like to do anything else other than to buy a million dollar house. So the only way to do that is not to start a small business or go on Shark Tank and pitch an idea. It's just play the stock market. Yeah, no. There's no earned income here. Yeah. So you have to do it by just buying stocks. And in the way of it all is your health, which can deteriorate very fast. And your annoying girlfriend who happens to be very needy and may not be aware that if she just chills out and lets you do your work, she could have $600 billion or at least half pretty fast.

04:22 Now, here's the thing about your wife. I think she's your wife. She becomes your wife. If you're playing the game right, she'll become your wife. Oh, I see. Yeah, you're just dating. Okay. So I mean, in the grand scheme of things, like, you know, the things that she's asking for, she's like, oh, I want a dog. Or like, oh, I want like a new sound system. Like, if you're playing the game right, it's going to be negligible. So, you know, you signed up for this. You knew she was a gold digger.

04:48 That's really the only thing that defines her. Actually, I think in the intro to the game, she's described as like, Diana, the prima donna or what's her name? What's her name? Priscilla is her name. Priscilla, the prima donna. So you knew this. That's her last name. The prima donna.

05:11 I love that. That's her last name. The prima donna. But yeah, she also, you know, she likes picnics. You know, so she's, you don't always have to spend a lot of money on her. And she likes, there's picnics, well, shopping, and carnivals. Carnivals aren't necessarily super expensive. Actually, the fact that you never spend any money when you do those things. Okay, so let's just define. Yeah, you go shopping, but you steal most of it.

05:36 Yeah. So when you're playing this game, you basically just buy and sell stock. Like these are the things that you do in the game. You buy and you sell stock. Stock prices don't move intraday. This is, you're, you may have a computer, but we're in like the 1950s in terms of how stocks are priced. So nothing happens during the day. So you got to spend your time doing other things. So you can use your, like your Palm Pilot or your, uh, or your special flowers.

06:11 To go do things during the day. And I don't really know if there's any actual, aside from like doing it once in a while, I don't know what the benefit is. Well, I think the, I think the benefit is, is, is that you don't get a negative. Yeah. Cause I have a couple of times gotten like, your doctor says you're really not healthy. Are you exercising enough? And I'm like, Oh no, I forgot to go hiking this week.

06:33 So I'm assuming that if you also, on a Thursday too. Is that the only day that it works? Yeah. Like I forgot to go hiking on like a specific weekday. Like I couldn't wait for the weekend. Well, I thought you had to just go hiking first thing in the morning because it takes like eight hours. Yeah. It takes the whole time. Right. Exactly. But this is just like describing this. It's like, just does not sound like what this game actually is. But, but also I imagine I didn't, I didn't get to this point because I'm a good boyfriend, but I imagine if you neglect your girlfriend, like she'll leave you or something. And part of the deal. Yes, that was a game over. Yeah. Part of the deal with your uncle was like, you also have to like prove you can like hold.

07:10 Hold down a relationship. Yeah. Like hold like a healthy, long lasting relationship and have the money. Right. So if you don't do those things, if you, if you just spend the whole time buying stocks, which is almost impossible because it doesn't really eat up anytime. Um, if you just use the clock, uh, to continue to skip time instead of paying attention to your girlfriend or, um, contributing to your health with exercise. What a life lesson. Yeah. Then if you don't do those things, those, that that's how you get game over. So the game overs are threefold. You can either have a take really bad care of your health, lose your girlfriend or, uh, not meet the money requirements or go bankrupt. Really? Yeah. If you're really playing this game poorly.

07:54 So the rest of the game though, if we just take out the life simulator parts, which are really just broken down into three choices, right? You get to like, you guys said, take your girlfriend to the carnival, take your girlfriend shopping or, uh, what was the other one?

08:10 Uh, uh, picnic. Picnic. Yeah. So you get to only choose those three things. Then that's like, that's it. It's not like, then you have to do the picnic mini game. Yeah, no, you just choose it. It just happens. And, and, and because it happens, the only thing, the only way they gamified that is that the morning of in the newspaper, there will be a story potentially about like some kind of crime that happened, uh, you know, on the streets or whatever. And so that's a cue to like, well, I shouldn't suggest we go to the carnival.

08:42 Oh, I didn't think that at all. I thought that was supposed to, that was telling me like, oh, don't buy whatever company that's sort of like a hint towards. Yeah. You wish it was like that. I thought that initially, and it wasn't until right now that it was confirmed to me that like, I realized what you were saying, like that it's like, yeah, it'll say like the, there's been sharks in the water or whatever. So like, okay, don't go swimming when you want to do your exercises.

09:07 I realized that, but I wasn't sure if some of the headlines still had to do with like which stocks to buy or not. And it sounds like they don't, they don't. They don't. Yeah. Not the headlines themselves. It's just like, oh, you know, uh, you know, this kinds of, this kind of stock, like blue chip stock did well, but the others didn't are like, oh, the fed raised interest rates by 0.5%, which is like, you know, something you might hear nowadays, but didn't happen for the last 20. So it just like silly stuff like that is in the newspaper. And then it sort of picks the five top stocks from the last days trading. And so you can kind of like, you can use that to tell you like, oh, what should I pick going forward?

09:51 And there's some funny stocks. Yeah, but it is weird that, um, you know, if the whole rest of the game is just based on buying a stock at a certain price or buying multiple stocks, right? Multiple shares of different companies and watching their values fluctuate, deciding when it is time to sell. It is weird that the game communicates to the player. So obviously via the newspaper, which stocks are going to do well that week. Like, like I was surprised to find out that it wasn't like a, this is the, this was the trend and now the trend is going to change and you have to try to guess the trend.

10:28 But instead, if they tell you blue chip stocks are on the rise, you should sell everything else and buy blue chip. So that doesn't even require any thought on the player for like speculation. It's just, well, the newspaper told me that these stocks were on the rise, that these, you know, this group of stocks was on the rise. And if you know which ones are the blue chips or which ones are the cyclical or the growth stocks, then you might as well just buy the lowest priced one. So you can get in the most amount of shares so that as they grow up from Monday to Friday, you gain the highest return.

11:04 Uh, I, I just can't believe that they would telegraph it like that. That would almost be like if, uh, to take a different game, right? If Dracula and Castlevania told you, uh, you know, I'm about to turn into a bat. Like, so this way you prepare for that. Right. And like, I'm about to punch you. Like they don't, they don't telegraph in that way. They telegraph in like other creative ways. I think there's a couple things here. I think that one, it's not as telegraphed as you're describing. It's still like nudging you towards a certain like, uh, stock type. And then the ones within that type will do better or maybe not as better. But to get like actual inside information, which is like always 100%, like just spend the $500. Talk to Connie.

11:52 She'll fucking tell you what to do and not to do. Like that's the actual information. Cause like when you're on the newspaper, it's only telling you what happened yesterday and that may or may not continue. It's like, if you pick something that's described in the newspaper from yesterday, it's more likely than not to be good. It just might not be the best. But I thought that groups, the groups didn't change throughout the week. Like I thought if they told you blue chip is good, it's good for the week. I never had that kind of cycle change from a Monday to Friday.

12:24 Oh, I don't, I guess like I just, I kept changing the stock that I had like a hundred percent. Like I would, I wouldn't diversify. I just pick one stock. Yeah. Buy it the one day, sell it the next, and then buy the, buy whatever I thought was going to be the next one. I think that would still get you a good return.

12:42 Yeah. I went through like a couple of different strategies because I first started out where I would like diversify and I, you know, and then I did realize like how, how simple it really was. And like, I, I didn't see a benefit to buying anything other than like the one hot stock that was cheap that like, and I would just put it all into that. And then as soon as that changed, I'd switch it all to the next thing, just like you were saying, John. And that actually like worked for me a lot better than the initial strategy.

13:13 Yeah.

13:46 The whole game is, is sort of like a cartoon version of, of like modern life. Uh, like it, it just even forgetting, like the fact that when I started this game, I thought like it was going to get into like nitty gritty stuff. I don't know why I think that like you could short sell and like do goofball, like hedge fund stuff. I thought maybe it would do that. Uh, but it wasn't and it goes so far in the opposite direction where like in this universe, there's no such thing as a mortgage.

14:16 Like you have to buy that house, which is like your third of the game, like milestone. You have to buy that house in a million dollars cash because you can go to the bank that you can go to the bank and you can ask for a loan. And they're like, you don't have any collateral. And it's like, holy shit. If we lived in a world where you needed collateral to get any kind of loan and not even just that, if you get a loan, because once you buy that house, you're pretty much, you've pretty much spent all of your money. So you can't buy stocks anymore. Then you'll have to go to a, uh, you'll have to go to the bank. You'll have to put your house up as collateral and then they will charge you like 60% APR and have to pay it back in a month.

15:00 And I, obviously this is just like to make the game have some stakes because otherwise like this game would be kind of silly, but it's a really goofy version of the world that they're put in here. And I think it's on purpose, obviously, but it, you can't help but laugh. I don't know what you guys thought about the whole tone of the game.

15:19 Well, like some of the stuff like the, that you had to buy the house in cash and everything. I just assumed that was like part of the challenge from your uncle. Like, yeah, anyone could get a mortgage on a house. We tell the bank not to. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Maybe that was like, well, yeah, if you, maybe it was read between the lines and it was like, if you get a loan from the bank without, you know, without putting up your house as collateral, then it doesn't count. I feel like that was probably just not translated properly.

15:47 I don't know why I expected to be like a kid walking around like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit style game, but like without any enemies, of course. Because a casino kid. Yeah, I guess that's what it was, right? It's like, I just expected to. They did let a kid into a casino. I expected to just go around from like building to building, meeting with these companies, being like a little Warren Buffett where you like talk to them, find out their values and be like, I'm going to invest in this company because they seem to be on the right track. Right. It's like, there's no thought to that. And to just have it all done via the computer.

16:23 I don't know. It just like really removes you from it. And maybe it teaches you something about, you know, our capitalist society. I don't know. But other than the infrequent like cutscene moments where Priscilla finally wants to do something other than those three choices or, you know, your real estate broker or doc who owns a bunch of ships.

16:48 Like those guys call you up and they provide like moments that just break up the game. Again, it still just becomes a do you want choice A or choice B kind of thing. Like there's not there's not really like a whole lot to this. And so I wonder, like, what else could they have added to your desk to like interact with other than a clock, a flower, a newspaper, a computer and a personal assistant?

17:14 Here's what I think they needed to add to this game to make it at least like to make you feel like you have a bit more agency. Because as we're describing it right now, it just feels like it like, yeah, they're giving you they're like telegraphing to an extent. But there's no there's really no correlation between what you do during the day, whether it's treating your girlfriend to a picnic or going swimming.

17:40 There's no correlation between that and your stock trades. If they made it so that the price fluctuated during the day and you had to do like a cost benefit analysis, like, oh, do I take the wife out?

17:56 I mean, like, I'm in a pretty I'm in a pretty over leveraged position right now. Like I could if it could all come tumbling down in just a couple hours, but she might leave me.

18:08 And then if there was actually some stakes to what you did during the day, like, oh, you get back three hours later and now your stock portfolio is half the half the size it was like if if they did something like that, where intraday changes could happen. I think there would be a bit more engaging that wouldn't fix the game, but it's a pretty simple thing that could at least make it a bit more interesting.

18:33 Yeah, it does kind of give you like the vibe right away that it's going to be one of those like heavy time management games. And I mean, I think it's going for that. But I mean, even in a game like The Sims and if you have like three people in a house in The Sims, like it gets like stressful at times. Yeah. This guy's got to go to work and then the kid's got to go to school. You got to keep managing all that. Like peeing on the floor. Yeah.

18:57 It feels like it feels like this should give you that sort of like time management stress. But really, there's plenty of time to do all the things you need to do is just like kind of making the right choices. I mean, like, let's be honest, this game is kind of just like a calculator with like pictures over top of it and like some little story beats. But like really what this game is, is like you move the money into like stocks you're buying to stocks you're selling and like it does the calculation. So do you guys know what the end game is? I think you just you win the castle, right?

19:35 Right. You have to get the castle back. And it's like the guy had six hundred billion dollars. Why can't he just get that? Like you have to get it back via an auction for like a lowly two million dollars to write like if there was six hundred billion dollars sitting around there. The castle was so important to your uncle. He could have bought it for two million. He would probably make it two million dollars a second. He was an eccentric billionaire. Of course, you got to set this big like, you know, trial for your nephew.

20:03 I mean, I bet you he's not even dead. That's going to be like the murder solved. Like he he isn't even dead. It was all just like a ruse to test you. This is just an alternate plot succession. I guess I did expect the uncle to come back at the end for one reason. We were talking about all the things your uncle's lawyer. I think his name is Larry. All the things he tells you up front. But we left out one big thing he tells you up front. Do you guys remember what that is? No, I don't think so. How he died?

20:29 It's April Fool's Day. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. He just rose that out of nowhere like, oh, and by the way, it's April Fool's Day. But that's not important. And he means it. It really isn't important. It never comes up again. It begins in April. Yes. Maybe someone that's maybe someone at maybe someone at Nintendo was like, no, we can't. We can't talk about the uncle dying. And they're like, well, we'll make it ambiguous. It'll be like the end of Inception where like, you don't know, was it an April Fool's joke? Was it not an April Fool's joke? Yep. The top is still spinning.

21:01 Yeah. What's also weird about the castle thing is like you participated in an auction to get the castle, which again is like a, you know, it's a cool, nice touch, right? Rather than just saying like, I'd like to buy the castle and just get the funds to it or whatever. But you participated in an auction, set the price, you win it.

21:18 And now you have to pay back the bank for the price you put down. And so that becomes like the end game is just paying off the final loan. Kind of like if Animal Crossing ever had an end game, it would be like finishing your payments to Tom Nook. But in Animal Crossing, you finish your payments to Tom Nook and then you still have a whole world to live in and design and talk to your villagers. In this game, you're just paying off that final loan of the castle. And that's how you finish the game is just by getting your loan back down to zero. And everybody just says, Priscilla's like, you're the best.

21:56 And Larry tells you that your uncle would have been proud and all those things. Like everybody chimes in, but that's it. It just feels like the real- You don't even get to see the $600 billion in your bank account? No, you get to see a picture of you holding a briefcase that says top secret on it. Top secret. And a bag of money. So what's top secret now? Wait a minute. That's interesting. So the money is in a bag and then there's also a briefcase that says top secret? Yes, he's holding it. I think this might be- These might be like nuclear launch codes.

22:28 Yeah, I mean the guy's got $600 billion. You know he's like the person really running the country, the world. $600 billion in 1989 was over 10% of the entire US GDP. Then I think that's it. I think we've solved it. Well, I'll tell you one thing. We're talking about the US GDP and we're talking about APR and we're talking about Warren Buffett. If I'm a 10-year-old in 1990, I am running to Blockbuster to grab this game. I mean this is just all the things kids want. Right. Which also brings up the Wall Street kid thing because it feels like it's like, oh, this is for kids. But really, it's not for anybody. It's like for a very specific- If you were maybe between 15 and 21 and you saw Wall Street and you wanted to say the greed is good. And you could still fathom what was going on in the game, even though the definitions of things that you do in the game are kind of wrong.

23:38 Then I think, yeah, there's like a teen to young adult demographic that I think this game might have been for. Maybe not very well marketed towards them, but I think that's the closest thing we got. Yeah. I feel like now I would play a better version of this game on my phone for a couple minutes on the subway. Like a clicker? Yeah. Well, you can play with fake dollars like the actual stock market. Yeah. There's online simulators for that kind of thing that actually do follow the stock market and update and you just say, I want $500 million in my account. Right? And that's how- That's kind of like what this game was. But now you get to live the rest of your life and just do the stock market part. But even that is not too gamified.

24:34 What I think of a stock market in a video game, Grand Theft Auto 5 had a great stock market in a video game, which was like, wow. This is like the entirety of Wall Street Kid plus some commentary and comedy while I'm also playing a giant open world game with a thousand other things to do. So I understand there's a huge difference in generating console generations. I recall City Skylines also has a stock market that you can like, as a municipality, play in. I feel like that would be- That's pretty irresponsible if you are running a city, but you can do it there. That's a thing too. They actually give you charts, which don't exist in this game.

25:21 Best stock market game I ever played. Yeah. Universal Paperclips. Yeah. Great game. Great. The stock market in that one, it has some great commentary and also becomes like, you're not just, you're not picking stocks at all. Instead, you're just testing game theory. Yeah, you're just, you know, doing a 60-40 split, bogle head theory, you know. Oh no, sorry. You become, you become God. Whoa, whoa. Whoa. Spoiler alert. I don't, I don't know about that. What do you mean? It's only a spoiler alert if you say spoiler alert, I feel like.

25:59 Yeah, I'm alerting people that I'm spoiling it by saying spoiler alert. Yeah, okay, good, good, good. Yeah, yeah. All right. And I guess we'll spoil if this game is any good when we vote for Wall Street Kid on the Essential Games List.

26:15 Despite any negative comments I've made on the episode about Wall Street Kid, there is something cute, not necessarily entertaining, but cute to this whole idea and setup. And I didn't just dismiss it.

26:32 I did play through it for quite a while to see if it would open up or if you would continue to, like, grow your network of people that you interact with and make something out of that. And I guess I'm just disappointed that, like, where the game started was really all it ever was. Like, even if your desk could have eventually, like, added new items to it so you have new things to, like, interact with. And I don't need a picnic minigame. That was just, like, a nitpick for the show. But I did need more to do as time went on, and that doesn't happen. And so if you can experience what the game is in less than 20 minutes, that's a problem, especially for the replayability of your game.

27:17 It's fun to watch, you know, to watch the time pass and then the next morning find out if the thing you invested in made any money or not. But you're essentially just watching numbers go up and down. And so I am watching yet another game not get on the Essential Games list because I am giving it a no.

27:38 Sean? Yeah, I think there's something really at its core that is satisfying about this game. Like, if I were to compare it to any of the game show games, which are the only games that we played that, like, try to simulate you getting a prize. Or, like, you go on a vacation to Cabo. Or you get a car. Or you get money. Tony, this is the only other game besides game show games that's sort of doing that.

28:13 And I think, like, of them all, this is the most satisfying because, like, whether or not there's actually any complex systems going on here, you could say that, like, there's more of an attachment to my high score here because of whatever's going on. But I agree with Mike, and I don't think there's enough going on here at several levels of the game,

28:37 whether it's the stock market simulation itself, whether it's the life simulation aspects of it outside of it, or whether it's just all the other weird tendrils that come off of it. But you can experience the entire game in 20 minutes, and that's definitely a knock against it. There's a lot of potential here, but it's not essential. Joe, I'll just come right out and say that, you know, I don't think this is a great game.

29:08 I will say that as far as most of the bad games that we've played on this podcast, this one was certainly one of the most interesting and most memorable. I didn't hate the time playing it because of that, but it still falls among the bad games, in my opinion. So definitely not essential.

29:30 And I guess I would also say that I think that this, I was just thinking about other games like this when you were talking about that, Sean, and I guess Casino Kid would be the only other one that I would say kind of like you get that satisfaction, and I prefer that to this. All right. Three no's. But we all spent some time with this game and wanted to like it, and I think that says something about becoming older and being interested in the stock market or something. I don't know. It's kind of funny, right?

30:04 It's nice that it threw itself out there as something different for the system, at the very least. Yeah. It was also just fun to look at the fake companies that they had you buy, many of which are now out of business, like Bethlehem Steel and... But it was Bethlehem Steel. I'm sorry, Bethlehem. You're right. Pan Mam. It's got some good stuff. Well, two of my favorites are AT&T, because it's like not really a spoof or anything, but it's just a stupider way of saying AT&T. And boing. Yeah, boing, because it's boing, but it's just spelled boing. Well, some of those planes go boing now. They do. That's true.

30:48 All right. That has been another episode of Nostalgia. If you want more Nostalgia, don't forget we have a whole other podcast, Nostalgia Bites, on patreon.com slash nostalgia, where we play Famicom games. So that's pretty cool. And by the way, hot tip, you get the membership for that. You get all the past ones, too. It's not like... It's kind of like Netflix, right? You just unlock and you can binge right now 30 episodes of Nostalgia Bites. But if you just want to listen to this, rest assured, we'll be back here next Friday for everybody's favorite NES game, The Adventures of Gilligan's Island. Hopefully it won't be a three-hour episode.

31:33 Did that happen? No. A three-hour tour. Yeah, a three-hour tour. It was what they were supposed to go on. I see. You'll get us to find out next week that I was a major Gilligan's Island head as a kid. Hell yeah. Oh, so the game was made for you. Great. Yeah. We're not recording anymore, right? We are no longer recording now. You're not recording now.