365 · Low G Man

• THE LOW GRAVITY MAN
• The game immediately removes any mystery about what the Low G man could be
• Its our 365th episode, now you can listen every day for a year and not run out of content
• Game starts with IT WAS A ROBOT PRODUCING EXPLORATION PLANET LIKE ANY OTHER
• The player controls Low G Man, a special agent with low gravity powers, navigating through a mix of platforming stages.
  • At its maximum power reaches three screens
  • So the game depends on the movement. How is it?
• Low G Man’s jump allows him to hover and perform unique maneuvers, making for more dynamic platforming than typical NES games.
• The player has a freeze ray that did no damage to enemies; once they were frozen, the player has to stab them with an extending spear. AND YOU GOTTA READ THE MANUAL TO KNOW THAT BECAUSE THE INPUT IS NOT OBVIOUS
  • Other weapons included fireballs, boomerangs, 'force-waves,' and bombs.
• Does it bother you when a secret agent in a video game does anything other than be stealthy? It breaks immersion
• choppy character animations, jerky horizontal scrolling
• 421

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

00:00 Low-G-Man, the Low-Gravity Man.

00:18 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Joe. The game immediately removes any mystery about what the Low-G-Man could be. See, no, no, I think the opposite. I think that it's Low-G-Man. The Low-Gravity Man is not related to that title. That's just the subtitle.

00:44 The G might stand for something totally different. It might be Low-Government Man. This one is the Low-Gravity Man. Now the sequel will have a different subtitle, like, you know, Dead Men's Chest or whatever. Oh, I see. Oh, not even just a different G. No, no, it's like Low-G-Man, Dead Man's Chest. Yeah, that checks out. Historically, Electric Boogaloo is what is the second of any movie. Yeah. So I like Dead Man's Chest. I'm trying to go different, you know. Yeah, that's good.

01:11 Obviously, though, Low-G-Man is the Low-Gravity Man, and we will talk all about that in a minute. But first, I just wanted to make an announcement, Joe. It's our 365th episode of this show. Now you can listen to Nostalgia every day for a year and then just repeat it the next year. Wow. I was afraid for a second you were going to say it was going to be our 400th episode or something. I was like, I'm not prepared with a who-said-it quiz.

01:41 Right. No, 365th. I don't know if it, you know, we can start celebrating whenever we want. We could start, you want to just like randomly pin down the 421st episode as a celebration as well? Yeah, let's do it. Let's commit that to memory. I'll pencil that. Yeah, somebody remind us about that, please, because I'm not writing that down. And if I was, what am I going to do? Write it down on my Low-G-Man notes?

02:04 Also, if you consider the fact that we have the best ofs and like, you know, there's the Patreon mailbag episode and there's the game jam. Those aren't canon. No, but you could still, you got stuff to listen to. There's the alternate reality Sonic. You know, you got stuff to listen to on those days that aren't part of the year. Right, right, right. Yeah, those leap year weird ones. Yeah. You just like shove all that stuff in there that one day every four years. Right. The game starts pretty normally with, it was a robot producing exploration planet like any other.

02:39 Okay, that's definitely like, that is tongue in cheek, right? Like it knows, right? Like they know that that was, that's ridiculous. I think so. I love that. I love the boldness of that statement. Yeah. And of course it wasn't a robot producing exploration planet like any other. There are problems and you're going to have to solve them.

02:59 But we don't really get like, I guess in the manual there is more about like your mission and everything and the explanation. But we don't really know the Low-G-Man. We don't know why he's the Low-G-Man. Yeah, does he have, I mean, is it just because this, this planet has low gravity, right? It's not like he has some special attribute that makes him like not affected by gravity, right? I think he has like, no, you're right. You're right. Sorry. Everybody has like anti-gravity technology. I don't think it's this planet.

03:30 Oh. That has. I see. According to the manual. There's tech. Yeah, there's tech. So everybody technically, he doesn't have like, he didn't make it from the ground up. Like he has these special boots. Would be great. I feel like that's a better story.

03:44 But most of the enemies in the game also like either, you know, just like are flying or, you know, act as if they have low gravity themselves. So I understand why you might think that it's the planet and not the people. But because also like these are, these are not like jumps. These are moon jumps, you know, these are like epic long, you're hang time in the air for a while. And it grows to it. It grows to like three screens worth of normal height. You can travel, you know, in one singular level like that high and just kind of hang out there and hop over like a variety of enemies and just skip those areas completely.

04:28 They really are embracing the low gravityness of it. It's not just like, oh, yeah, he jumps a little bit higher or like he has a jet pack. No, he can jump really high. Yeah. And there is something oddly satisfying about having like a high jump. It reminds me of when I was a kid playing like 007 games. I'm thinking specifically Nightfire, but it definitely like came into play in earlier games as well, where you can turn the you could turn the gravity all the way down. And there's something just like really fun about just flying around the stages and shooting at each other. And yeah, this this captures that same kind of feeling because it's like there's like a.

05:10 There's an action excitement to it that you don't get just from a regular jump. This also has just while we're talking about the controls of low G man, this has a feature that I feel like became like a lot more prominent later on other consoles. But there's moving, which, you know, feels a little bit like a walk, but a power walk, not slower by any means of just obviously using the left and right D pad.

05:38 But then if you tap it twice and then hold down low G man runs. And that's like that's pretty cool. Like, I feel like that's something you see more in like the 3D error before that, you know, before it became like, oh, just hold down a different button to run at all times. I like this double tap to get a little more speed. OK, I'm going to be honest. You just blew my mind. I had no idea this was an option.

06:04 Did you find it was helpful to have that extra speed? Because now. No, I actually just thought it was like innovative for the console. Yes, because I had no idea that this is this was the case. But as I'm thinking back on these levels, I can't think of a time where I really wanted to run much faster because there's always an enemy or something right there.

06:22 I feel like this is a little more. You got to be a little more cerebral about your movement than running really fast would allow. But that's me speaking about it having not tried it. So I don't know. No, yeah, it's especially weird because as you're alluding to, like you want to be in the air a lot of this game. And so you you're not running at all when you're in the air. It's not it's not like it boosts you further by any means.

06:46 So it's a little strange to to to not think about the like to think about the game as if it's a platformer where it's really just kind of like you're a vertical, not a height game necessarily. Like you're not you're not you're really not climbing up that much, but you are using the height to your advantage to to get around things and to get over enemies and to, you know, choose your battles. I think a large part of this game relies on skipping over content. Mm hmm. And also, like, I think that the jump.

07:22 Oddly, well, it like, yeah, allows you to skip over things. It does add a a different type of like gameplay that you don't normally think of, of like the precision of where you land is very important because I mean, we haven't gotten into it yet. But the only way to really like the most consistent way to really attack enemies is by like landing on them with this. I don't know. Was it a spear? Yeah, it's a spear. You're landing on them or hitting them from below and firing up. You cannot fire this spear horizontally in any way.

07:57 So a lot of your attacks rely on you jumping to like avoid an enemy and then landing on them while hitting the spear button. And it's surprisingly a little more difficult than you think to land where you want to land with with enough precision to hit these things. So it it's different than any game that we've played in that sense. Yeah, especially because, yeah, the low gravity of it all makes it very floaty. And and the platforms or the enemies rather are a little small when you consider how much you're floating.

08:26 Joe, as you mentioned, that is the only way to really attack enemies outside of getting some special power ups. So the main way that you fight as the low gravity man is with what I thought was a freeze gun, but is actually a electromagnetic disruptor pistol in EMDP.

08:46 We can remember that acronym for a while. Electromagnetic. I mean, electromagnetic. Isn't that like one word? Yeah, it's a dash. It's got a dash in it. OK, I don't know if that's true. It just says that in this manual it has a dash. So EMDP and you use that. And I thought that was like an actual pistol. Like you you shoot this at an enemy and it would take them out, but it freezes them in place, but not forever either. It just kind of freezes them momentarily. So you've got to, you know, handle them.

09:19 And so I was like, OK, what's my like, how do I switch guns? How do I get out of the freeze gun and go to the pistol? And there is no like pistol. And I was like reading about it. I was like, OK, there's some power ups that I don't have yet. And I was seeing on the pause screen.

09:36 How do I get those power ups so I can finally start defeating enemies? And then I looked in the manual and found out the incredibly like complicated. But because of the system they've laid out, the only way to really handle this is you have to be like the direction in the D pad that you want the spear to go. But only up and down, not left and right. Up or down. And then the A button or sorry, and then the B button in order to use your spear.

10:08 So if it sounds complicated, it is. But imagine like in Zelda 2 Adventure of Link, Link has that down smash with the sword. If instead to do that with the spear, you had to jump first, hold down on the D pad and the attack button in order to launch your spear out. And so what you do is you wind up freezing enemies, jumping on top of them and then just pressing down on the D pad and your attack button in order to just kind of continuously stab them with your spear while they're frozen. It's a very vicious experience. It sure is. Yeah.

10:43 But I guess I didn't think about how I appreciated this until right now. But I do appreciate that when you freeze an enemy, they don't hurt you when you touch them. Because I feel like a lot of other games would do it that way. It's nice that you can stand on them and then press down. Didn't we just have that with Little Nemo? I was just going to say, what is going on with these projectiles that just freeze the enemies in two games?

11:07 And I guess they both kind of did it for a similar reason. I'm assuming that the reason it's like that in this is to make you feel like you need to use the jump more. But I guess it really, maybe this one doesn't pull it off quite as much. Because it's like, just because you froze an enemy doesn't mean you need to jump really high all the time, you know?

11:25 Did you have that learning moment, though, with the spear? Because I didn't know about the spear when I started. And I just legitimately couldn't find a way to attack. I was stuck. I had that also. I think I was testing to see, can I shoot up? Because this thing was above me. I was trying to shoot my gun up. And then the spear came out. I was like, oh, okay. And then, you know, naturally I tried doing it downwards.

11:49 And I did try for a while. I was like, there's got to be a way to do this horizontally. But it seems that there isn't. Since the game really relies on the low gravity aspect, though, is that a positive or a negative based on the way they've designed the game? Like, does it feel more like a chore to use the low gravity? Or does it feel too easy? Or is it just like, this is the interesting, this is the most interesting part of this game?

12:17 I, all right, I think that so far, everything I've said, after I say it, I'm like, wow, that sounded really positive. But I actually have, like, a lot more negative opinions on this game than I've let on so far. And one of them is that, while I think the idea of this, like, game designed around a high jump, and, like, I think that that's cool. I don't think they really designed this game very well around the high jump.

12:41 Like, that's their idea. But I'm not, I don't, I don't feel there are too many situations where I wouldn't just be more comfortable just fighting, like, treating this like a regular game and shooting at something. Or, like, half the time when I want to jump on something, I don't want to jump that high, because it's right in front of me, and I just want to jump up and land on it. So, like, it's cool, but I do think that they just, like, missed a huge opportunity to, like, really design their game around it in ways that made me, like, want to use it all the time.

13:16 Yeah, and even in the levels where there is some verticality to them, or even just some of the boss fights, there's that one after, it's the second stage, and, you know, you have to be, like, inside. You have to go through the boss, he's like a robot, and then get on top of his head. Like, again, it becomes more challenging because of the jump, whereas if you were, like, Mega Man, right, you would have more precise movement. I guess that's the point, but it doesn't mean that it's enjoyable. And then on the other side of that, even though this isn't directly tied to the actual, like, gameplay design of the controls, the animation in general for this game is, like, a little choppy.

13:59 Yeah, it feels oddly like games I remember from earlier in the podcast. And, you know, this is, I think I allude to this a lot, and I liked this game, but it reminds me of Rygar, which I like, I liked Rygar a lot, I voted it essential at the time. But I think I've seen enough NES games that, beyond that, and I'm talking specifically about, like, the animation graphic little style, not the gameplay and everything, but, like, it feels dated a little bit at this point.

14:34 Yeah. And beyond, like, just the character animations, and by choppy, I mean, like, it literally feels like they're not drawing all the frames of animation or something. Like, and I get it, they probably, the game's probably running at 60 FPS like all other NES games. It's just that they didn't draw enough of the movement, so they just kind of hang on certain sprites, and they just look like the sprites are, like, statically moving horizontally across a screen.

15:01 But speaking of horizontal, there's, like, a, there's a weird pause or stutter in the horizontal movement of this game, which is funny because, like, the vertical doesn't have the same problem. But the way things kind of, like, not load in, it doesn't have, like, that Super Mario Bros. 3 thing where, like, you see it on both sides.

15:22 It's just, for whatever reason, it's not smooth left to right, but it is up to down. Like, I don't know why that is. Like, I can't imagine why that's the case. Yeah, I mean, I wonder if they just, I mean, I wonder if it was intentional to make it feel like, oh, you're this, like, big guy moving clunkily forward, but, you know, you got low gravity, so you jump up and it's this very smooth arc.

15:47 Yeah, so the low gravity is actually only upwards, and moving left to right is actually very high gravity, so there's some friction there, right? Yeah, yeah. It feels like you're walking in the wind or something. Right. There's the gravity, in order to make it low gravity upwards, they had to turn some of the gravity 90 degrees, so it's actually pushing back at you.

16:11 While you do have other power-up weapons, I would say that, like, the most interesting addition of this game for weapons or movement at all is that certain enemies or robots that you destroy, you then gain access to their, like, vehicle, if you will. So you have, like, walking robots that you can, like, jump in, and now you have, like, a bigger shot, and then you have, like, flying vehicles that you can get into, and then you have, like, this spider vehicle that you can get into, and they're all just, like, they're all just different kinds of flavor and definitely make low G-Man feel stronger, but I thought that was kind of a neat touch that, like, the ones that even the enemies are controlling you can then hop into.

16:59 It felt very Halo in that regard. Yeah, so I'm not a big Halo guy, but I gotta admit that, like, I appreciate this level, like, this addition to that kind of thing. I just, I wonder if adding something like this, if the resources to put this in could have been better spent somewhere else. Like, how necessary did you find this? No, yeah, agreed. They're just different flavors of getting through the level. They're not, like, roadblocks that you need. Like, make sure you have that spider vehicle so that you can climb on these walls and get over this area. It's just like, hey, and now here's a different way.

17:40 And it kind of, like, removes the low gravity element a little bit. Like, they still move, and some of them are even fly, but it's, like, it's much more controlled than low G-Man's jump, so it's kind of, like, trivializing the one aspect that they were designing the game around, or at least theoretically were designing the game around. Yeah, I mean, I like the idea of it, but it's just, I guess I just, maybe I'm being too negative now. I'm overcompensating for my positivity earlier, but I just wish that they became a master of something before they tried to become, like, a jack of everything. Not that, like, they try to do everything in this game, but I just still, it still hasn't sold me on the main gimmick of this game yet, you know?

18:25 Yeah, so, going into that, and you don't have to have an answer prepared, I'm just asking you this on the fly, but, like, if you were to make a low gravity man game, right, I already can imagine just the level design alone on how I would handle it, because, again, these are very, for the most part, closed, like, at one point, like, the entire level takes place in a cave. It's like, why would no G-Man fight in a cave? Like, why would he go into a space that limits his movement?

18:52 But, nevertheless, like, what would you do, Joe, if you're starting over? Well, so, off the top of my head, I think what I would want is, well, one, to be, yeah, more open, fewer caves, but then also, they do have some vertical levels, but make a lot more verticality in the game, and make it, like, you know, it should really feel, not just like, oh, I can jump really high, so I can get above these enemies and then come down on them, but also, like, being able to jump really high should be what gives me advantages. Give me more power-ups to make me jump higher to let me reach places.

19:26 Put some, like, I don't know, put springs, maybe not literal springs, but, like, something like that that launches you even further, or, like, I kind of try, like, I'm thinking of, like, what Sonic the Hedgehog was trying to do with speed, but for, like, jumping, you know? Add a bunch of things that, like, enhance it. Yeah, you bring up a great point, because as you said that about, like, making the levels more vertical, you made me think, it's true,

19:49 Super Mario Bros. 2 is a more vertical platformer than this game ever was. Right. And, like, even, like, boss battles, like, make your boss battles, put their weak spots way up on top of their head, like, skyscraper level. You gotta jump up their, you know, maybe not skyscraper level, but, like, make it so it seems like you have a reason for jumping really high. Low G-Man should have at least one Shadow of the Colossus-style fight, where he has to scale up an enemy in order to get to their head.

20:18 Yes, and it should be in the same fidelity as the remastered Shadow of the Colossus. Right, right, just that one scene, though. Just that level, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, so, since we were talking about the game with, you know, fondness, I will start to talk about some, again, they're mostly, like, buggy complaints about the game, but things I just didn't like. And one of them, for sure, was the way that after you kill an enemy, how you receive its power-ups.

20:48 This is nonsense. This has never been done in a game before. This doesn't need to be done here. I say never been done in a game before. I realize it's probably done in every shmup, but at least in those, like, they don't fall, like, that way. So the way it works is you defeat an enemy, and the power-up, like, spawns out of them, and then immediately, as if it has no gravity at all, or as if it's very heavy gravity,

21:12 it gets pulled into the Earth's core, a.k.a. the bottom of the screen, and disappears immediately if you weren't directly standing over the enemy. It is very hard to catch any of that stuff if you didn't know that the enemy was about to spawn said power-up. So you wind up losing a lot of those. Why couldn't it just drop into the ground? Right. It doesn't interact with the floor in any way. And, like, I'm trying to remember. I feel like some of them are not even just power-ups. Some of them are, like, physical things. Are there not? Or are they all, like, little energy-looking power-ups?

21:47 Uh, that's a good question. Because there's not, like, a gun or something, is there? I don't think you get a gun. What are these, all, like, made out of lightsaber? Where they all just, like, immediately just burn through the whole ground and sink to the bottom of the Earth?

22:01 Yeah, so you collect a boomerang, a fireball, a wave. A boomerang. It is a boomerang. It's a physical boomerang. It's not, like, boomerang essence energy. It's just a boomerang. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But why does it not hit the ground? I can't understand. It is the icon of a boomerang, though. Like, it still has the square block around it. Sure. So maybe it's just, you know, beyond our comprehension. I mean, I'm being a little silly here, but it's just funny to me.

22:30 Joe, just for the record, because we always watch these long plays. LoG, man, I didn't get up to it. But Chapter 3-2B, which is just a crazy way to talk about a level, as if, like, as if these are crazy long. This is 22 minutes into a 42-minute long play. But Chapter 3-2B, that boss does have what you were looking for, an enemy that does...

22:55 Yeah, it's like kind of the, like, buggy thing up on the mountain, sort of, or above the mountain. Exactly, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you do have to, like, carefully land on top of it in order to strike it and everything. But the reason I brought that in is because I do have a good segue for it. The boss fights in general are also a confusing, buggy thing, at least the first time you encounter one. I don't know about you, but when I ran into my first boss on the very first stage, I didn't know it was a boss. I just thought it was just another enemy.

23:23 I didn't realize that was at the end of the level, because it just fell down into something. And when I froze it and then started attacking it, I thought it wasn't working because there is no feedback if it's frozen. Yeah, and is that consistent for all the bosses? I feel like some gave me feedback and others didn't. Every boss will give you feedback if they're not frozen. Right, okay. However, enemies do give you feedback if they're frozen, so why are the bosses the exception to the rule? Yeah, I didn't even realize that. Like, I think I had that frustration without even, like, consciously realizing what it was.

24:01 But, yeah, and the bosses, yeah, like, you would fall into a pit or something, and it just looks like another regular enemy. Some bosses, it's like you're at the end of the stage, and it's this big, giant thing. And other bosses look like little enemies. And I imagine there's some difference I didn't pick up on. Like, oh, these are just, like, the mid-world bosses or mid-stage bosses, and the other ones are, like, the end, you know, once you're in, like, 2B instead of 2A bosses or whatever. But it was just not always clear when I was fighting a boss and when I wasn't.

24:31 And because some of these, you fall into a pit to fight, and they're, like, moving back and forth even when you can't see them, a lot of times you fall, you just better hope you don't land on them because you can't see where they are. And sometimes that would be, like, a level ender for me, where it's just like, yeah, I jumped into the pit, I landed immediately on the boss.

24:50 I have to rescind my comment, though, Joe. It's just a, you know, I'm learning, I'm misremembering it. It's true of all enemies. They don't have feedback when you freeze them. However, most enemies don't require as many hits. Yeah, they just die. So it's like you're getting the instant feedback, which you don't get, obviously, with the boss fights.

25:33 You joked on the beginning of the episode that the sequel would be called Dead Man's Chest, but there is no Low G-Man sequel, Joe. Does that disappoint you? No.

25:44 I don't know where they would go from here. Yeah, I mean... Low H-Man? I guess if this... Well, if this was successful, I have no idea what the success of this was, but if it had been successful, I could see them just trying to hone it, polish it, and make, like, a... Like, I feel like it could have been, like,

26:07 oh, Low G-Man 2, everybody knows that game, and, like, was there a Low G-Man 1? You know, like, I feel like it would have been, like, that situation, because I think that there's potential. You know, like, a sequel... I wouldn't even necessarily, like, shy away from, like, there being a sequel. I would welcome it, because I'd want to see how they could expand on this concept.

26:30 Yeah, I... We usually don't cover, like, every game's endings, but I don't know definitively if this had, like, a cliffhanger or anything to it, but, like, yeah, sometimes, you know, like, you play a game and you just naturally expect that there would be a sequel, especially for these old NES games. Like, somebody surely eventually said, like, you know what franchise we should resurrect?

26:54 Do you think that this... Like, I've never heard of this before. Did this have, like, that kind of, um... Like, even a small, like, fandom? No, I don't think so. Oh, no. Okay. Well, maybe it had, like, an ending, like, such a definitive ending, story ending, that, like, they were like, wait, you don't make a sequel to that. It's like, we're not going to make a sequel to Saving Private Ryan or to, you know, to Cast Away or something. It was like, yeah, that was just one story. It's what I thought about The Last of Us before they made the sequel. I was like, no, there'd be no reason for a sequel. And do you think there was?

27:28 I do think... I stand firmly in that the first one is head and shoulders better, but I do appreciate that there's a second one. I love the second one. And I think the second one is a good story. I won't spoil... I won't spoil things, but something happens. Everyone who's played the game knows what happens that's sort of like a big story-changing thing.

27:48 And I was initially very reluctant to that. But now, some time has passed, I look back and I'm like, you know what? Probably better that that happened. And they can kind of, like, you know, make the story different than what everyone was expecting, which is playing with fire. Because sometimes I think that making the story different than everyone was expecting is, like, the thing people try to do that ruins the franchise. But I actually do quite like The Last of Us Part II. I'm looking forward to this whole discourse again when season two of the TV show comes out. That will be fun for people who don't play video games to experience. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. And I think that what they did in the game

28:29 maybe is a little easier to swallow in video game form than in television form. Can we, like, just say, like, spoilers for Last of Us? And then I'll tell you what I'm talking about. I don't know if you can. I don't think you're allowed to do that. I won't. What is the cutoff on spoilers? How many years? Oh, I think never. Oh, I like that. And I don't understand. I'll get a...

28:50 I feel like nobody thinks this way. Everyone will say, like, oh, like, you know, that came out 20 years ago. Like, I can spoil it. I'm just like, I haven't seen every movie that's ever come out. There are movies from the 70s I haven't seen. That doesn't mean I want them spoiled in case I do see them. I think it also depends on the quality of said spoiler. You know? Well, yeah, yeah.

29:09 Like, low G-Man, I don't think that there would be anything I would talk about in this game that I would be like, oh, I shouldn't let, you know, the listeners know about this because they should experience it themselves. But there are absolutely movies that are, you know, like, now 40, 50 years old that, like, you don't say everything, you know? Yeah. Because if there's a chance for it to be experienced, but then again, you know, we were talking about this before the show, Joe. Like, do you just run on the assumption that everyone knows who Darth Vader is?

29:40 Well, right. I mean, and I think that that's, like, a really weird outlier because, like, you kind of do run on it. Like, it's just such a pop culture thing that, like, I wouldn't be mad at anyone for spoiling that. But, I will say, when I was, we're going on a tangent here, but when I was younger and I was, like, still, like, you know, the prequels had just come out, my sister, who's 10 years younger than me, she was getting a little older, old enough to watch Star Wars, and me and my brother sat her down and had her watch Star Wars from episode one first.

30:13 And it was a very interesting thing because we got to, we got to see her be, like, the only person in the world experience the Darth Vader twist in reverse. Right. She had no idea that Anakin Skywalker was going to become Darth Vader and was mind-blown when he did. So it's like, you know, you never know. Maybe someone just, just hasn't heard of it yet. Maybe that's what the sequel to Low G-Man could have been. We could have found out how he became Low G-Man. Where did the G go? Right. Yeah, it would be, like, Solo all over again. They would just, like, his ID would be, like, all scarred up, only the G in his, his name's Giovanni, but only the G is left, and they're like, huh,

30:54 G? Yeah. Well, you're the G-Man. I want to get really into exactly where he got his blue shoes. Like, I want a whole prequel story about that. Absolutely. Like his mentor gave it to him or something. It's six episodes on Disney+, and then it's canceled. Yeah. What's not canceled, though, and is coming up next, is the Essential Games list.

31:19 Low G-Man is a game that, on paper, and especially in this episode, sounds kind of cool, and I do think if, like, I don't know if a ROM hack can do it, or if, like, just Taxan wasn't the right developer, but I think once you actually play the game, it becomes easy to realize that it shouldn't be essential, but that doesn't mean that, like, they didn't, like, lay down some cool, some cool,

31:49 not even controls, but just, like, some cool rules and format for their game. They just didn't deliver on it completely, and I feel like I knew that about ten minutes into the game, just, like, trial and error stuff, like, just the control of Low G-Man, and I knew, I put this in my notes, like, I knew that that's what it was gonna come down to, right? If your whole thing is that he's the low gravity man, well, then you're really putting a lot of emphasis on his movement, him as a character, how he controls, how he fights back, and that loop

32:22 is just like, you know, it just winds up becoming any other kind of subpar side-scrolling platformer or action game or run-gun game, right? Like, this feels like a bunch of different things, but not its own thing, and so for that reason, I'm not gonna put it on the Essential Games list. Joe? I think that this game has some interesting, like, production value that is maybe overlooked,

32:44 because the beginning of the game has that, like, sort of, that sort of, like, cutscene thing that we said was maybe tongue-in-cheek, but I'm just noticing right now, as I'm watching this playthrough, I didn't get this far, the end of the game has maybe, like, some of the coolest end credits I've seen in an NES game. Have you seen these? I did look at them, and, uh, what do you think was cool about them? Well, it's, it's low-G man sort of, like, marching through different environments, but, like, you see some really cool artwork as he's marching through, and then, I didn't even notice until right now, there's, like,

33:18 there's, like, a poem going on. Yeah, no, it's, telling you, it's telling you extra things, you know, what? It's telling you, like, extra things about the game, too, like, you know, there's two hidden levels, uh, have you seen, have you found the secret rooms? Like, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, I didn't even notice that. It's offering, yeah, it's offering, like, uh, you know, for the person who completed the game,

33:41 a, like, look at, uh, at the stuff that they might have missed. Yeah, that, that's, that's very cool, and I, I, I like these credits a lot. As for the game itself, uh, I think that, uh, this is one of, this is, like, probably, like, the most meh game that I've played, where it's, like, not like it's horrible or anything, but it's just, like, it's, it's kind of one of those games where it's just, like, a lot happening and none of it feels, like, super, super designed.

34:10 Um, like, I didn't have a terrible time playing it, but I will say, when I first started playing it, I was like, this is awful. Once I got used to it a little more, it was, like, a little better, but it's a little more of a frustration than it is, like, really fun to play. Uh, I think even, even if I wasn't frustrated, just, like, nothing about it really shines about this gameplay in anywhere where I would say it's, uh, an essential game. I'm not even sure I'd really say it's a play it. It's maybe, like, a check it out, but, like, you'll probably, I don't know, I, I pretty quickly was, like, I don't really want to, like, I'm not really enjoying this, so, not essential.

34:47 Joe, since you brought up the ending, uh, at the very end of the game, uh, it says, uh, it, it has a cool cut scene of the spear, like, spinning, and then, uh, low G-man catches it, and he says, yes, that is so. So what? Is he, like, saying, like, so is a, and then a period? Like, like, yes, that is so. Yeah, that's what I took it as, like, he's, he's confirming whatever this announcer is saying. Right, right, about finishing the game, and then he says, if you think you're good,

35:18 just wait for G.I. Joe. What? Which is the next game that the developer, Kid, would go on to make for, uh, the NES. Wow. So they, like, announced their next game in the ending of this game? that's some, like, deep, deep dive or birth by sleep, like, ending of Kingdom Hearts, uh, The Secret Ending, yeah, like, if you get those other two rooms, you get to see, uh, G.I. Joe meet up with Low Gravity Man. Wow, that, that's cool too. Man, everything about this game is really cool, except for the game. Right. And what's funny is, is I don't think,

35:57 I don't think G.I. Joe's coming up anytime soon, so it was like, it's not like, you know, oh, they were released around the same time. I, I feel like it was like, in development, uh, Yeah, it's like how, it's like how there's like, like, WALL-E is in Toy Story, because Pixar put like, references to their movies that were coming out 10 years later. Right, right, uh, and, and I'm sure at the end of G.I. Joe, uh, they say, you think you're good? Just wait for Low G-Man 2, and then they had to make a Low G-Man 2 cancellation trailer. Yeah, to announce it was canceled. Gotta love the cancellation trailers.

36:31 Uh, no, I think that's actually pretty neat though. Um, I, I'm, I'm all for that with games, uh, especially, you know, it's over, story's over, I don't need Low G-Man, Low G-Man can go, go ahead and break the fourth wall. Yeah. He's Low G-Man. He, he, he went so far out in gravity that he transported himself through the fourth wall. Yeah, they call him the original Deadpool.

37:20 Thank you.