348 · Bigfoot
At every stop, you first drive a qualification round against your opponent, which is in top-down perspective. Here, you can collect money and several power-ups to use to win against your opponent. After this qualification, you go into a side perspective head to head race, where you have to push left and right continuously. In this view there are all sorts of events, including Car Crush, Mud Race and Drag Race.
We assumed we would be hunting a cryptid and got the monster truck instead. Bigfoot alternates between top-down races and side-scrolling events like car crush, mud racing and hill climbs, with money and upgrades tying them together. It never convinced us that it understands what makes monster trucks fun. Beam Software, who are Australian, made it, so the west-to-east trip from LA to New York means little.
What works
- Two modes feeding each other. Top-down races earn the cash that helps in the side-scrolling events. It's an interesting structure, even if the execution isn't there.
- Side view feels more like a truck. Bigger sprite, bounce and spring in the suspension. We liked it more than the overhead races, though not by much.
- The license. Bigfoot is a real truck, started in 1975, and a game with his name on it put him in the same pantheon as Godzilla for kids at the time.
What doesn't
- Pedaling a monster truck. In the side-scrolling races you accelerate by alternating left and right on the D-pad. Nothing explains it. We sat at the start line, got game overs, mashed the whole pad as though we were the wheels, and only the manual set us straight. Gears and a temperature gauge pull your eyes off the race.
- Top-down RC cars. The truck feels floaty, like it's on ice, with no weight. The screen drags you along with your opponent, so the race becomes a spacing game, or as we called it, cock-blocking.
- Sound. The saw power-up makes the most violent dial-up modem noise we have heard from the NES. We thought the cartridge was glitching and considered blowing into it. Two saws at once is worse.
- Money that doesn't matter. You can max things out early, repairs are a screen of button presses, and opponents just get faster and more precise.
- No sense of scale. The title screen truck is nice, but spectators hang off a fence at half the size of the car, and on the winning screen the driver leans against a wheel far bigger than the truck.
Beyond the game
We looked up what happens at a Monster Jam: racing, two-wheel skills, freestyle. So racing is real, but what we wanted was bigger jumps, destruction, pyrotechnics and cars getting crushed. Monster Truck Rally is coming in 1991. We also wished this had been a search for Bigfoot himself.
The bottom line
Skip it. We all voted no. Mike said his vote was probably more meaningful than the game deserved. Sean said it isn't the soul of monster trucks and the sound design was heinous. Joe said the two-mode idea was interesting but badly executed, and more frustrating than fun. If you want to see a car eat a car, look elsewhere.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- CRUNCHING AND MUNCHING
- What is the Gameplay Loop?
- Bigfoot is a mix of racing and side-scrolling action with the player controlling a monster truck in various events.
- The core gameplay involves competing in races and other challenges like car-crushing, hill climbs, and mud racing.
- The goal is to win races and events to progress through the game's various stages, earning points, money, and upgrades for your truck.
- Players must manage fuel and repair damage during races, adding a layer of strategy to the game.
- The game alternates between racing segments and mini-games, breaking up the core loop with different challenges.
- Levels
- Bigfoot features different types of levels, divided between racing and obstacle events:
- Racing Levels:
- These are side-scrolling races where you compete against an AI opponent in a monster truck.
- Races take place on various terrains such as dirt, grass, and mud, which affect truck performance.
- Players must avoid obstacles and manage fuel and damage during these races.
- Winning races grants cash for upgrades and repairs.
- Arena Events:
- These levels include different competitions such as:
- Car Crush: Players must drive over and crush rows of cars to score points.
- Mud Racing: A more complex terrain race where trucks get bogged down in the mud, requiring skill to navigate and maintain speed.
- Hill Climb: Players must drive their trucks up steep, uneven hills to reach the top.
- These events are typically shorter but require precise control and timing.
- These levels include different competitions such as:
- Power-ups
- Power-ups in Bigfoot play an important role, helping players manage fuel, repair damage, and boost performance:
- Fuel Cans:
- Scattered throughout racing levels, fuel cans replenish the truck’s fuel meter. Running out of fuel causes the player to lose the race.
- Wrenches:
- Collecting wrenches helps repair damage sustained during races. Players can pick these up on the course to reduce wear and tear on their truck.
- Nitro Boosts:
- A temporary speed boost that helps players move faster, especially useful in obstacle events or when overtaking opponents in races.
- Money Bags:
- Money bags increase the player’s cash, which can be used to purchase truck upgrades between events.
- What Are Some Other Examples of Monster Truck Video Games? What Makes Them Fun?
- Monster Truck Madness (1996) for PC: Known for its realistic physics and chaotic racing, making it fun with destructible environments.
- Monster Truck Rally (1991) for NES: Another monster truck racing game, more focused on competitive racing across different terrains.
- Excitebike (1984) for NES: Not a monster truck game, but shares the off-road, stunt-based racing vibe, offering customization and track creation.
- Monster truck games are typically fun due to their exaggerated physics, massive vehicles, destruction elements, and larger-than-life races.
- Players enjoy the over-the-top nature of monster truck games, where flipping over cars, performing stunts, and competing in extreme events is central.
- What Makes It Unique/Different From Other NES Racing Games?
- Bigfoot blends racing and side-scrolling mechanics, unlike most NES racing games that focus solely on one genre.
- It includes mini-games like car-crushing competitions, which give it a multi-event feel compared to straightforward racing games like Rad Racer or Excitebike.
- The game incorporates a resource management element with fuel and repairs, which adds a strategic layer uncommon in most NES racing games.
- The use of a licensed vehicle (the Bigfoot monster truck) gives it brand recognition, drawing fans of the real-life truck into the game.
- Are There Any Other Monster Truck Games on the NES?
- The only other notable NES game featuring monster trucks is Monster Truck Rally (1991), which is more focused on straightforward races rather than mixed-event gameplay.
- Bigfoot stands out as one of the few NES games to feature a licensed monster truck, making it relatively unique for the system.
- What Else Could This Game Have Done to Stand Out?
- Improving the controls and physics could have made the racing feel smoother, as many players found the gameplay frustrating due to stiff handling.
- More dynamic events and better mini-game integration could have added variety, ensuring that the game didn’t feel repetitive.
- A multiplayer mode or competitive split-screen racing could have boosted its appeal for party play and added replay value.
- The use of a licensed vehicle (the Bigfoot monster truck) gives it brand recognition, drawing fans of the real-life truck into the game.
- Introducing more environmental effects like destructible landscapes, bigger jumps, or more interactive obstacles would have captured the extreme nature of monster trucks better.
- A career mode with more meaningful upgrades or customization for the trucks could have enhanced the progression system.
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Bigfoot, crunchin' and munchin'.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Joe. And I'm Sean. Right? Fuck. What? Was that an accident? That was a joke, right? That was not a joke. I'm sorry. You accidentally thought you were mean? I was like trying to think to say... I was gonna do like a bunch of like engine sounds and I just freaked out. And it came out as and I'm Joe? And I'm Joe. So I was like yeah... And I'm Joe. That's the sound monster trucks make. They go Joe. I can't go to the monster truck rally because I get confused. Are they talking to me?
We'll keep running with this. Why not? What else do we have to talk about? Has anybody ever in their life referred to monster trucking as Bigfoots? No, I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I thought it was like the name of your truck or something in this game. Sure, sure. But even still, that's a weird thing. The name of your truck might as well be anything. Bigfoot feels at least like your truck should have huge tires, right? But it should have something else as a double play for Bigfoot. Yeah, I'm looking and there was a Bigfoot that actually existed.
We're talking about a truck or are we like Bigfoot believers? The only one I think that I've heard of is Gravedigger. But there is a monster truck named Bigfoot out there somewhere. Well, there's also a monster named Bigfoot out there somewhere. We named him. He could call himself something else. Has anyone ever seen Bigfoot? Not really. I would like to know actually if the listeners ever went to a monster truck rally with Bigfoot there. You know, like that feels it feels like a very niche thing. But you know what? Again, not trying to be not trying to downplay any sports. Okay, all sports are important. It's a weird thing to say. I have to say it because it was just an observation. I was watching ESPN. Or no, I was watching NBC actually.
Saturday afternoon. You know, there's like college football to be had and everything. And instead, they were doing like bowl wrangling at like during prime college football hours. They were showing bowl wrangling. Bowl wrangling. Yeah, you know, like when you're... Not rodeo. Sure, rodeo. Whatever. You're on top of the bowl and you got to stay on for as long as possible. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's the rodeo. See, that's how uninformed I am. And so I want everyone to know just how ignorant I am about this sport. But like, I get it. If you're in town, you go to that, right? Like, that's cool. It's in your local town. You're going to watch some guys stay on bowls for as long as possible. It's a very impressive feat. But national television?
Like, it's the same thing with these monster truck shows, right? There's a reason why they just get the Sunday, Sunday infomercial, right? And not like NBC at 4 p.m. on a Saturday. Yeah, the only other time I can think of a bunch of obscure sports being shown on national television is the Olympics. And other than that, like, you got to go to the dregs of local sports to get anything like off the beaten path. It is strange. I do see now that Bigfoot is also trademarked in the game. I saw that too. That's cool. I didn't.
So we're Bigfoot, okay? And that's very important to the lore of this game because Bigfoot is, as you guessed, a monster truck racing game in which there are two different modes or two different types of action, monster truck action, that is top-down racing and side-scrolling racing. So you're controlling this monster truck through various events. The core gameplay involves competing in races and other challenges like car crushing, hill climbs, and mud racing. The goal is to win races and events to progress through the game's various stages, earning points, money, and upgrades for your truck. All points we'll get back to, so I don't want people to think I'm just blowing through the entire game here.
The most important part, though, is as you move through the events, you have to manage fuel and repair damage during your races, damage to your engine, that is, adding a bit of a layer between the money that you earn in these events and what you spend it on. So the game alternates between these top-down and side-scrolling racing segments as well as the minigames, breaking up the core loop with different challenges.
Guys, just starting with what it feels like to be a monster truck, right? That's something kids love. They love to go and watch these monster trucks crush other cars or do crazy, like, flips and shit that other normal cars don't ever do, let alone a monster truck. How does it feel to be a monster truck on the NES? I'll say that at least, I want to start with the top-down because that is the first part you experience.
It doesn't feel like a monster truck to me. It feels, like, weirdly floaty, which should be, like, the exact opposite of how a monster truck should feel. And, uh, I don't know, like, yeah, there's no, like, it doesn't feel like there's any traction or, like, the physics are weird. It's like you're not connected to the ground. It's like you're on ice or something. I will say that when I, have you ever seen even, like, video of a monster truck rally?
Yeah. I'm sure I have. I'm like, you know, like, I'm sure they drift and whatnot, but... I think, like, and I'm not saying that they succeed here because they don't. Um, I agree with you that this, that this does not feel like a monster truck, but, like, the way that you're describing it, uh, it kind of does look like that. There's, like, so much torque in those wheels that they basically, like, they're flipping and floating all over the place. Um, but I agree. This, this feels like chaotic RC cars,
um, not monster trucks. Yeah, I don't know how you would fix it, but, like, I feel like, yeah, even if they're drifting, there's no sense of weight, you know? And I, you know, it's easy for me to say that I don't know how to, how to actually fix it, but, you know, we've seen other games that have, like, a sense of physics. And, I mean, even Mario, which is not, you're not a vehicle, obviously, but, like, you feel like, okay, he's got significant weight. And there's gotta be a way to translate that to something much heavier. But, Joe, you mentioned the top-down.
Are you saying that maybe it's a little bit better in the side-scrolling? Because I did feel, other than the ridiculous controls that we'll talk about for the side-scrolling levels, I felt like the actual, uh, presentation of the monster truck and feel there, uh, did feel a little more like how you expect big tires to be, you know, a little bouncy on the car, have some springy to the, uh,
to the suspension. Uh, that was present in the side-scrolling. Yeah, I mean, I think by nature, the side-scrolling being kind of like a closer-up view with a more detailed sprite and it being side-scrolling so you can get the, like, kind of up-and-down, like, vertical bounciness physics
of it, um, makes it, makes it easier. But, yeah, I mean, I wasn't really commenting either way on comparing them. I just wanted to start with that because that's, like, the first thing I noticed when booting up the game was that top-down, um, thing was, it took a lot of getting used to and never really got to feel, like, what I had initially expected it to feel like. It also doesn't feel like even, like, the core, like, is this what monster trucks ever do is correct because it seems like the only way to do this, and I guess I'm getting more into strategy here, it's more of a, like, a cock-blocking simulator.
Once you get in front of a car, you just, because you can never really, you have no real control over how fast you go other than, I mean, there's, there's controls for it, sure, but, uh, I never really felt like that was a one-to-one, uh, like, control of my vehicle, so I was basically just playing, like, a spacing game and just, like, that's gotta make sure I'm right in front of him so he can't pass me. I don't know if that's how you guys are playing. I think it's how you have to play because I think what's happening is that the screen kind of pulls you along.
So you can't get too far ahead of the opponent and the opponent can't get too far ahead of you. You always have to be on screen together. You, you, you die and then respawn if you get too far behind, but, like, it's always going to come down to one screen's length of, of difference once you get to the finish line. You can't get far ahead of anyone. Yeah. And, uh, just to stay on the top-down racing ones for a second, uh, you know, the controls of the monster truck felt very similar to another NES game, uh, we played Bump and Jump. I feel like only Sean was on that episode. Do you remember Bump and Jump at all?
Uh, it's okay if you don't, but it was basically like you were in, like, a sports car and you had an incredible, you had an incredible jump, you know, because there was basically, like,
large, uh, parts of the road that were destroyed. So you were able to, uh, you know, just jump really high into the air with this fancy sports car. And so for me to think that this monster truck game felt similar to that shows probably how far off they were from the monster truck part, at least in these top-down races, which leads to my follow-up question, um, not necessarily just for Sean, but he does seem to be our monster truck expert, uh, for this episode. Uh, we'll look forward to Joe's... I saw it once. Yeah, we'll look forward to Joe being the expert on the Dick Tracy episode, but, uh, for Sean here, are, is this even a thing monster trucks do during these rallies, like, racing over long stretches?
No, I don't, I don't think so. But then again, like, what I say that I've seen monster trucks in action, I'm saying I've seen, like, clips of monster trucks, uh, I'm not saying that I was ever at a monster truck rally, nor watched a full video to see, like, is there an actual, like, uh, is there an actual goal to the monster truck other than crushing things? I don't know. Um, I just know that it's probably not cross-country racing. We're gonna have to look out for the next monster truck rally at the MetLife Stadium, you know, me and you are gonna have to find our way there.
I'll, I'll go. Okay. Um, but, and one last thing about the top down that I want to talk about, and I don't, I don't think we talk about this a lot, but it was just so, uh, prevalent, um, that, um, so basically, the, the sound design of this game is kind of all over the place. Um, the, when you're playing the top down version, it mostly just kind of sounds like a pinball machine because none of the sounds really correspond to anything. There's just a lot of, there's a lot of like blooping and blopping until you use a power up, which we haven't talked about yet. There are power ups. Um, one of which is a,
like a circular saw. And then it just turns into like the sound of like the most violent dial up modem that like that you can think of and God forbid both of you have the circular saw because then there's two of that.
Um, and I don't know how the sound chip does it, but it's probably the worst sound I've ever heard the NES make. Yeah. I honestly, there was a point where I thought like my, I needed to like blow in the cartridge. Like I thought that like, I honestly thought the game was just glitching out. Like that's what it sounds like. Like it just sounds like, it sounds like electric feedback coming out of the machine somehow, like not even coming out of the speakers, like coming out of the NES.
It is pretty, it's jarring. Yeah. It also doesn't feel like it's, um, not only intentional, but just that like, it doesn't feel like it's connected to that saw necessarily. Like I just thought like maybe, maybe like some penalty was occurring or something. Like I didn't know exactly when that, when that power up was first used that like, oh, that's, that's causing that. Yeah. No, there's a, there's a lot of weird, there's not a lot of feedback. Yeah.
Uh, sticking with the, the races for a second, the, the, other than the competitor, the other monster truck that you're going up against, there is like, you know, different types of terrain and different, uh, obstacles in the way. The only like fail state though, is kind of crashing into a tree or a large section of the woods. There isn't really too much of a penalty for being in the mud. Uh, obviously like it reduces speed a little bit, but because you're always on screen with your opponent, it, it doesn't really cause like, I don't know, there's never really like a large gap like there would be in another racing game. Like in, in Mario Kart games, they're famous for rubber banding, right? Where you could be, uh,
30 years old playing a game designed for children and know how to drift perfectly on every track. And they'll make sure that the computers stay somewhat close to you and go faster than the game can possibly do just to make sure that they stay competitive. That's the rubber band system here. It's like actual rubber bands are keeping you tied to this other car on the screen at all times to the point where it's almost hard to find out like, you know, am I controlling the speed of this car like appropriately enough or is the game dragging me along? Are we both being dragged at the same speed? Does speed even matter here? Is it just about to Sean's point, cock blocking? Like, is it just about that?
Well, yeah, that's something that I was like unclear because, you know, again, well, I'm sure we'll get into later that you can like power up your engine and power up, you know, your traction and all this. But does that matter on the top down? Because it never feels like your speed gets better there. Does that only matter on the side scrolling? I don't know if it even matters there. I would imagine it does, but I don't think it matters at all in the more
regular races. Yeah. But the one thing I'll say on this, the failed mistake is I think if you crash enough times, you do get a game over, but I'd say that winning the race is sort of like, yes, that's necessary, but your failed mistake would be you didn't collect enough like money and points to like, because there's like a more overarching thing going on between these top down races and the side uh the side view tractor pulls and stuff uh where points are accumulated and you give money taken out of your account to enter races so i'd say like it's more of a softer fail state there
if you did if you just didn't win good enough i don't know it might be a little weird that i don't mind uh the saws as power-ups on the actual stage as if that's something that happens in a monster truck rally but i am a little bothered by the bags of money just littered throughout the stage because what's the point if the point isn't to make sure that you win the race to secure the you know the larger prize which happens also right but like the fact that there's money in the stage that you should also be focusing on collecting it's kind of like if uh you know a more sim game like gran turismo or forza had you know just dollar bills floating around on the track that you were also
supposed to collect to upgrade to the next car instead of just winning the race the more obvious goal to win the grand prize to be able to buy the nicer car i like that idea as like an actual motorsport though like having just like caches of money that you have to get to and you have a vacuum on the bottom of the car you'd presumably have to get out of the car but the vacuum we could we could workshop that yeah i think so like i mean just a big shop vac not like a you know not not for carpets or anything this is like this is like high suction you do have to slow down right if you if you
go too fast you're just blowing the money away but it does suck it up nevertheless this is this is an interesting new monster truck race which um they invented here first on bigfoot moving into the side scrolling stages uh the uh more mini game like things uh you have the car crush you have mud racing you have the hill climb uh these various events do different things but before we get into the individual events the way that you control the car changes uh a lot between how it worked in the top down versus the side scrolling here you have uh you know a uh a fuel gauge and a temperature gauge to
keep in mind of you have gears to change and you have a really like okay so you're waiting for the race to start right you get the two lights right and and then you take off by holding down the a button for acceleration nah thanks yeah that's silly right or maybe like you know just pushing down right on the d-pad because you're starting screen left so you want to move to the right nah how about alternating between right and left on the d-pad as if you're rocking back and forth does the car not actually have any momentum and the driver is like throwing his body back and forth to move the car forward what's
happening here i i this this i honestly sat on this screen for like not moving multiple times and i kept getting you know losing and then getting game overs eventually and starting over until i finally like realized what you had to do probably should i don't think so no that's what i was gonna say like if this were like a bicycle race game that that's kind of fun that that's like oh i'm actually pedaling
no that i don't i i mean again i don't know i watch clips on youtube but one would imagine that you aren't physically pumping two gas pedals when you're driving a motor a monster truck i don't think that that's what happens it's also confusing because you don't have to do them like really fast to get the car in motion like you don't have to just do right left right left right left like you can you can just spam buttons if you're like me and joe trying to figure it out with the help of the
without the help of the manual in which case you can do like right a b left and now because you've pressed right and then left it does inch the car forward a little bit and you're like oh it was left left accelerates and then you and then you try that again and it doesn't work and you try some more buttons but then you accidentally press the right again and now it's like oh it was right and then that's not it either and when actually before i figured out just to read the manual i was using the entire d-pad as if i was rotating the wheels going right down that's what i write down yeah
you are the wheels yeah you are the big foot of this car i honestly thought like you know because we've talked about it before some games i'm like i'm not gonna need to read the manual for this this is so cut and dry uh this is the moment that made me crack crack open the manual um but i still wasn't good at any of these um because not only do you have to go left and right for no reason just to
accelerate you also simultaneously have to be shifting gears uh and the my my typical like you know the intuitive thing that goes through your head is like okay once you get to a higher speed you start to shift up uh or if you're going uphill you want to shift down like all that is sort of what i was thinking but i just kept losing these races and i wasn't really seeing much shifting going on in my opponent's view because you can see their setup too um so i don't really know what i was doing wrong but i wasn't doing very well in these
yeah and i think it's also with all these different things you have to manage right besides just like the actual controller inputs like studying the ui of this screen and trying to figure out like there's a gauge for how you know like your engine's running too hot how fast you're going which is kind of like i don't know does it really matter like in the grand scheme of things like you could see your other opponent you just need to go faster than your opponent is going the gear shifting thing
thankfully isn't actually like something you know you just press a button in the in the ui it's actually like um it looks like it would be a complicated d-pad layout but it's just the one thing you do yeah but but i just feel like watching all those things watching just those gauges takes you off of the fun of watching your truck pull uh something really heavy or uh go over those hills or um what's the other thing you do uh crush those other cars you're just you're missing all that because you have to watch that and even watching that i don't think i entirely um knew what i was doing enough to like
i squeaked out some victories i feel pretty good about that but it was only on like replay attempts after replay attempts to make sure that i could make some kind of forward progress in this game uh it's just a tough system to learn but that is also like you know we haven't seen too many of this there is a point to be made about this side scrolling part of a racing game uh is pretty neat right so one more thing i want to mention about these like gauges and all this like managing the the whatever the
temperature of your of your monster truck and everything and like i said i wasn't a big monster truck guy but from what i know about the culture if i were like a monster truck fan and i want a game that simulates monster truck like i don't think i want like a sim where i have to manage the temperature of my car i think i just want to crush things and like i want a good feeling like controlling game not like looking at all these gauges and looking you know like you were saying taking the fun away from actually playing as a monster truck is like oh i'm actually just like managing a bunch of systems where it's like i i want to i want to crush things and i want to have the feel of a monster truck
without the like hard work and like math that you have to do i don't think there's any math you have to do but i mean not actual math but you know what i mean like it's like it's like that type of like i don't want like a cerebral experience where i'm managing all these systems i just want to i just want to drive a monster truck i i i hear you um i don't still i don't know if we can call this like a sim right now um but i i do hear you uh i think that the the biggest problem here is what we started out
with and it's it's that to accelerate you have to alternate left and right i think the only way that that that makes any sense is that the game was just way too easy uh with just you know using a a button um so maybe this is their only way to make it to make it engaging in any way i don't really know what they could have done to make like a just a destroy things monster truck game uh that wouldn't just be like a uh almost like lawnmower it's like pretending to be a lawnmower and just
like oh of course all the cars um i i think it was a weird choice to make it a racing game is i guess where i'm going with this yeah but i mean you could have like you know this side scrolling with a little bit of depth in it and then it's like you actually just have to hit all the cars as you're going and you know it's like it might be hard to swerve to this from this car like crush as many things as you can or something like that yeah i do think that what is giving me that feeling of like it's not
there's like a detachment is less so the gauges and more yeah the like alternating uh the d-pad thing but which also just makes it feel more like simulationy to me just because it's like well i'm not i don't feel like i'm directly controlling the car i feel like i'm like doing a thing that is like powering the car somehow it's really weird but yeah like i would like it to just be like yeah try and crush as many things you can by like hitting them and maybe they're placed in spots where it's
like it's really hard to get to the second thing if you're gonna hit the first thing because they're so far away from each other or you know like something like that the the inclusion of these mini games uh which kind of gives it a uh multiple events like a uh not olympic style but just like the constant switching of what you're doing when you compare that to maybe a more straightforward racing game like excite bike or rad racer um or even just you know games that just are arcadey in
nature that just do the same thing over and over again like a spy hunter uh you know there is something to be said about the variety here i just feel like when you actually look at the uh the actual difference between the car crush the mud racing the hill climb uh those events there's not too much different going on or maybe i'm just too focused on like controlling the car compared to like the actual events themselves to notice a difference but to go back to what sean was saying yeah it is a little surprising that like the car crush isn't like a score based thing from judges
but is instead like you know a finish line with with your opponent i don't know how you know i've said it a few times already i don't know what actually happens in a monster truck rally so maybe maybe there is racing and maybe that's the the main draw but that's not what i thought i thought was about like crushing shit like joe was saying um and yeah i so i don't think any of us can actually judge this game i think no i just want to see that back i just want to see a car eat a car yeah i'm not
judging it based on how true it is to monster truck rallies i'm just judging it on how like much fun i'm having yeah because we already knew that you don't drive a monster truck by tapping left and right on the steering wheel uh back and forth right like that's no that's no way to drive a car so the jury's still out we don't know yeah we don't know we don't know it could be like you know how like you you wouldn't intuitively think you steer a plane with your feet on the when
you're when you're taxiing but that's how you do it i guess that's a good point uh you know another thing that the game does that uh is unique for a racing game um much more unique for the nes times there's a there's a little bit of resource management in the sense of like controlling how how great your engine is and your uh you know the your car parts and everything that is like that is something that is like secondary though right like you kind of do get an provided you win you get enough cash to almost max out everything pretty early on and then it's just about like okay well i you know
took no care of my engine to win that race so now i've got to use the remaining money to repair that engine back to max yeah that's really all it is there's really no balance in the resource management sector of this game uh if you are winning enough which i think like you actually i think you're gonna game over before you like get to a point where that actually makes any sense that like that you'd be focusing on that uh then it's it's kind of just a screen that you have to press a couple buttons and
then move on just to get back to max so it's another element of this game where uh you know it's uh larger to read about in the manual than it is to experience right there's not there's not truly uh a resource management like there was in jeez we played so many games now that even i'm drawing blanks from time to time but there was a like f1 style racing game uh where the money actually did matter do you guys
remember that was it uh boz lerman's uh maybe it was michael andretti's world gp that one yeah yeah that sounds right i think there was something even simpler though i don't think that was the one it rusty rockets uh oh i got it i got it i even iron man stewart super off road all i remember about these things are the names it kind of sucks that bigfoot is just bigfoot right they couldn't call it like you know bigfoot's big monster whoa whoa
i thought we were gonna be playing a game where you were searching for bigfoot so i was a little i was a little disappointed that would be so much better that's just yeah the opening level is with a car and you're just you know racing to find bigfoot and then all of a sudden when you got to the arena you were like oh i guess because he's not here but maybe he's in the swamp right you're in the mud race and you're like maybe i'll run over bigfoot maybe he's one of the people watching from
the stands if you just like if you were to slow down a bit yeah man i mean maybe it's just that we didn't find bigfoot bigfoot meaning we didn't beat the game like if we had done better we would have found bigfoot so really what this game needed to be was both you play as bigfoot the monster truck teaming up with bigfoot the monster to like take down some grander conspiracy like the illuminati
it's true because i was gonna say maybe you are bigfoot driving bigfoot but you're just the wheels you're just a guy oh yeah you are just the wheels i forgot about that uh and this is just a podcast uh of which i'm just gonna make a couple more quick notes before we move on to our main uh attraction here and that is that we will play another monster truck game uh we have not this was the first as far as i can remember this is a sequel to bigfoot or is it just it just so happens to also be about monster trucks it just happens to be about monster trucks and and for better or for worse it doesn't have a licensed monster truck in the title so maybe they felt like they needed to you know as a result
spend more of the time on the of the development on gameplay rather than securing the rights to uh a famous monster truck but we will play monster truck rally in 1991 which is really right around the corner like you know five six years from now yeah so we'll check that out and um apparently brief summary here monster truck rally is more focused on straightforward races than the uh you know the
car crush hill climb mud racing stuff that we experienced here in bigfoot which makes me think that we should really try to get to a monster truck rally before before we record this next game because maybe it is actually just a race maybe it's just nascar with big cars i'm googling it right now what happens at a monster truck rally i want vivid details yeah i want more than just like what happens in the dirt i want what happens at a monster truck rally at the concession stands what do they
sell you know okay all this is just the first thing beyond past the on wikipedia the first thing wikipedia here is uh at monster jam events monster trucks face off in three forms of competition racing two-wheel skills and freestyle freestyle would be it's like yeah yeah um racing is a traditional heads-up tournament uh where the first truck to cross the finish line moves out of the next round the final race of the night is for that particular events championship so there's racing cool i'm glad there's racing and then there's always uh when you're on an episode of nostalgia there's always the essential games list
even though i didn't know that bigfoot was a monster truck uh and to be to be fair to myself i don't think people are gonna know that going forward i don't think people in 2050 like i feel like the further away we get from when bigfoot was operational the uh the weirder it gets that he got a licensed game but i guess bigfoot is at this time is in the pantheon with like godzilla right of just like really cool big things that kids care about so let's get him a video game and
honestly the use of a licensed vehicle we what was the time you saw that night rider like bigfoot's up there with night rider now that's pretty cool so i i do like that it had a draw for actual fans of monster truck rallies i want to call them but i guess they're actually just races uh however forget about like the controls that we nagged about all the whole game i do feel like it's just lacking and also the kinds of things that make a monster truck rally cool like there should have been more
environmental effects destructible landscapes bigger jumps like the hill thing you just kind of like you don't launch into the air and i feel like that's what's cool at a monster truck ride that's that's like the we got to make sure we get that shot so we can show it in the commercial like you got to show a big jump you got to show some fire pyrotechnic stuff and who knows maybe in night by night you know they weren't doing that in 1990 maybe that was like later stuff they were doing that in 2000s it was more modest but like that's the kind of stuff that i want to see in a monster truck game more interactive obstacles and while the resource management thing is offering something it's very
small in the sense of strategy and so maybe there was a way to not build on that but also have some kind of like career mode with more meaningful customization of your truck over time because the money was such an important part to the game right you're collecting it both by winning races and it's on the racetracks themselves using that money to actually customize your monster truck and have a more drastic change as you face tougher and tougher opponents really the opponents just get tougher because they're more precise they're faster right there's nothing else that's really changing about them or you so if you don't get better at the game you know as you continue to play you'll just lose to those tougher
um opponents because there's nothing about the car you can really change and so i would have liked to see that so for all those reasons it's a no to be honest probably more a meaningful essential games list vote than the game deserves but i took the time to think about it sean what do you think about it yeah i'm not gonna get that far into it uh i didn't like this game uh that's pretty much the long i don't think this is the soul of this is not the soul of uh monster trucks i really didn't appreciate the sounds um like i don't we don't talk about sound design very often but this was especially heinous um the the accelerator thing we've talked about over and over like that's just so bizarre i don't know
how they can that they should never let that down i think that anyone that worked on this game whenever they worked at the next like development company that they're like hey you were one of those guys that made the monster truck game with the bicycle mechanics and they should be laughed at i hope that they were um so no this isn't an essential game joe uh i think it's an interesting idea having these like two types of gameplay and in one you collect what you need to buy things to help you with the other i don't think it was executed well at all and i yeah i think everything that you guys said and just my sentiment throughout the episode is pretty accurate as to how i feel about the game
um did you know it doesn't stand out a little more of a frustration than a fun time for me so i'm definitely also going to say not essential all right that's three no's but you know i just realized we never talked about like the fact that you are traveling the states uh from you know from place to you know like there's a map and you started in la and i think you end in new york um because again it just doesn't really matter that's just another way to tell us that we've moved on from level one to level two nothing about the game itself changes as you you know make your way through the circuit uh one thing that's am i crazy or are we never going west in any i feel like we've had games like
this multiple times we're like going across the country you're always going you're always i'm sorry you're always going from west to east right i i don't i don't know about that uh didn't we have like two other games like this where you're like starting in california and going to new york i think that's just because it's japan developing it though right like oh yeah getting like you know you're getting that that way of thinking i do have one last note about this game to point out and and that is just be uh the the fact that they can't they can't get a handle on scale i think the only time that scale makes any sense in this game is when you press power on and it brings up the main screen
you have this very nice little pixel art of the monster truck and then when you're you know you're in the top down stuff i guess scale doesn't really matter but you kind of click rc cars and then you get to one of the levels in the side scrolling and it you know there's people in the stands that seems normal enough but then you get to the next one i think it's like the mud race and they're just like hanging off the this hanging off the uh uh the fence and they're like half the size of the car which i think shouldn't be isn't really right and then the winning congratulations screen i don't know if you guys have seen this but it shows like the driver of the monster truck hanging out against
one of the wheels and that wheel is massive it is it is so big and the truck is so tiny like i just don't think that scale was ever really thought about in this game it's it's weird you know what else is weird the essential games list oh yeah let's do that again we skipped over the whole section about other bigfoot licensed video games of which there are a few there's bigfoot on the nes obviously bigfoot collision course for the we just you mean bigfoot license as in bigfoot the monster truck not the monster truck the other bigfoot monster truck games such as bigfoot collision course for the we bigfoot king of crush for the we monster truck destruction uh for i guess steam uh which features
bigfoot uh monster truck madness one two and sixty four they didn't skip three through sixty three that's just monster truck madness 64 on the n64 also all feature bigfoot uh damn bigfoot really um you know really making a name for maybe we just really missed out on this big like part of the popular culture in the 90s uh that's also the wii so i don't know man oh yeah yeah uh worth mentioning too that uh best i can tell on the bigfoot the video game uh you know wikipedia there isn't a like link back to bigfoot the truck but it uh but um bigfoot collision course for nintendo ds that one links you back to the truck this is important information people need to know uh because i'm discovering it in real time
uh but bigfoot was uh started in 1975 and i'm gonna be honest by today's standards bigfoot looks kind of small for a monster truck i don't think that's really that impressive it's sad that's his prime uh yeah i can't really tell but apparently bigfoot's still doing stuff as of 2018 uh bigfoot six years ago does he have any kids 2018 introduced bigfoot uh 21 but does he have any family or he doesn't have any family or kids okay uh beam software who published this developed this game is not japanese they're australian i think the same rules apply and i'd like to end the episode on that note yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! You
