395 · Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival

• Introduction
• Hosts: Mike (run of show), Joe (excited contrarian), Sean (cynical historian).
• What it is: 1990 NES compilation of four carnival rides (plus a finale), starring Kermit, Fozzie, Animal, and Gonzo on a rescue run for Miss Piggy who has been PIGNAPPED.
• Why it matters: Snapshot of Hi Tech Expressions licensing on NES and one of the few core‑cast Muppet outings on the system. The NES version reshapes the 1989 computer releases and assigns one Muppet to each stage.
• Release, Credits, and Context
• Platform and year: NES, 1990. Publisher: Hi Tech Expressions. Developer: Mind’s Eye Technology (NES conversion). Earlier Apple II, C64, DOS versions arrived in 1989 with different minigames and some two‑player support.
• Story Setup (use right after the intro bumper)
• Inciting incident: Dr. Grump and his pet Grumpasaurus pignap Miss Piggy.
• Objective: Clear four rides in any order, collect four keys, and storm Grumpasaurus Cave.
• Quick question
• Do you like the free order or would a fixed sequence have built better difficulty ramp?
• Game Structure and Shared Rules
• Single player only. HUD shows score, hearts for Power, and Rides for lives.
• Select often quits a ride to the hub. Start pauses.
• The Carnival Rides (insert questions and prompts where they occur)
• 1) Raging River Ride — Kermit (vertical river run)
• Controls: D‑Pad left or right to steer, hold down to speed up, hold up to slow down.
• Hazards and pickups: Swaying logs, rocks, whirlpools that can pin you, and a raft‑riding critter that tracks you briefly. Red periscopes restore health, red buoys award extra Rides. You can drift past the end key; doing so loops the stage back to the start.
• Tips: Read shoreline bends early, pre‑steer before speeding up, treat whirlpools as zones to exit quickly rather than fight against.
• Discuss now
• Did anyone accidentally skip the key and reset the level, and does that feel like a funny gag or bad signposting?
• near‑miss with the whirlpools
• 2) Crash Car Course — Animal (overhead bumper‑car circuit)
• Controls: D‑Pad left or right rotates the car in eight directions, A is throttle with slight auto brake when released.
• Course objects: Oil slicks, bombs, bouncy walls, rising gates. Red flags are points; green flags respawn one at a time and refill Power after you collect enough in a row.
• Tips: Favor a two‑wide line on straights so rebounds do not chain into hazards. Ease off before slicks and correct gently after contact. Later patterns require fitting through small gaps at low speed.
• Discuss now
• Momentum and eight‑way steering can feel slippery. Good arcade feel or clumsy for kids?
• Which obstacle felt the most unfair, and what was your trick to get through the late narrow gates?
• 3) Lost in Space Ride — Gonzo (auto‑scroll shooter with thrust)
• Controls: Left or right rotates the ship in eight directions, A thrusts forward in the facing direction, B fires.
• Hazards and pickups: Drifting rocks, satellites, turrets, space dogs in pods, and electric barriers that can be destroyed with repeated shots. Fuel canisters restore health. Rescuing Camilla gives an extra life. You can accidentally shoot powerups before collecting them. The autoscroll is very slow and the ride ends with a boss.
• Tips: Center lane for aim time, edge drift to dodge clumps, short controlled taps to reduce flicker and misses.
• Discuss now
• Does the slow scroll kill momentum, or does it give room for younger players to read lanes? Did you ever blast your own powerups?
• 4) Amazing Ice Cream Maze — Fozzie (single‑screen maze chain)
• Goal and rules: Each screen spawns three prizes in order (bow tie, gift box, bow tie). Clear the set to advance. Some screens include throwable distractions like bones, hearts, or banana bunches. You can only hold one, they throw in a short, odd arc, and they are often less useful than they look. Large patrolling enemies blend into the background and only move periodically, which means you can safely pass through them when they stop. Background color shifts every few screens as a progress indicator.
• Tips: Hug outer walls to break aggro loops. Aim throws short so enemies walk into them. Expect many screens and steady pacing rather than big spikes.
• Discuss now
• Does the maze overstay its welcome, or is it a relaxing change of pace? Does the throw arc help or hinder?
• Finale: Grumpasaurus Cave — Kermit (side‑view platformer and two bosses)
• Controls: Left or right to walk, B to jump, A to wave Kermit’s feather. Hold up or down to aim high or low. Note the unusual B‑button jump muscle memory.
• Stage items and hazards: P papers, Miss Piggy’s lipstick, and her necklace grant extra Rides. Fireballs, pits, bats, and tight brick‑to‑brick jumps appear near the end. The feather does not affect enemies, so dodging matters.
• Boss 1: Grumpasaurus on small ledges. He punches to knock you back, then creeps forward. The solution is to tickle his armpit when his arm is extended, which pushes him backward. A consistent method is to jump and drag the feather across his body on the way down, timing your swipe with his punch. Sometimes you need two pushes per block gap. If both of you fall at once, a quick‑kill outcome can still count in your favor.
• Boss 2: Dr. Grump. Toss hearts upward so they land on his head. He blocks rising hearts and throws bombs. Keep throws low so they drop onto him.
• Discuss now
• Fair challenge or difficulty spike that undoes the easy four‑ride loop? How did the B‑button jump and armpit tickle timing sit with you?
• Graphics and Sound (place after the first ride segment)
• Visuals: Readable Muppet sprites with plain backgrounds. Perspective variety keeps things visually fresh even if tiles repeat.
• Audio: Short carnival loops and clear SFX for hits and pickups. Tone can feel a bit dark for a carnival.
• Discuss now
• Does the soundtrack fit the setting, or does it clash with the bright Muppet tone?
• Speedrun and Replay Notes (drop after Finale segment)
• Leaderboard note: World record around the mid‑20 minutes, with a route that often starts on Car Course, then Space Race, then Maze, then River. Space Race consumes a large chunk of the run time, and a Grumpasaurus quick kill exists where both fall and it still counts.
• Prompt
• Would you route the rides to front‑load failure points like Car Course, or do the slow Space Race early to get it out of the way?

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

00:00 Jim Henson's Muppet Adventure, Chaos at the Carnival, Jump, Leap, Hop, and Charge into Action.

00:24 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. Miss Piggy has been pig-napped. Oh, no. For some reason, it just feels like really dirty. Pig-napped. I actually, I wouldn't have thought pig-napped sounded dirty. I thought it was like too playful to be taken seriously. Like, oh, all right, she's been pig-napped. Yep. Great. She'll be back next episode. Like, what's going on? Do you get man-napped? Is anybody going to care if she gets kidnapped too? Like, I hate to be that guy, but like, I'm low on Miss Piggy as a Muppet. Yeah. Isn't she kind of abusive?

01:10 Absolutely. Is she not canceled yet? Even if she's, you know, kind of mean, like, that doesn't mean like nobody should care if she's been pig-napped. I mean, I don't know. I would be worried if you guys got pig-napped. Aw. And we're mean. But I would be man-napped, right, to your point earlier? You would be man-napped, yes. Yeah. Okay. And do you just become Sean-napped? Well, I don't know. I don't know. Like, she's being pig-napped because she's a pig, not because her name is Miss Piggy, right? Oh, yeah. That's what I meant. I wasn't really sure where you were going with that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, you're so- Because I'm not a man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, are you a man or are you a Muppet?

01:51 I don't know. Maybe you're a Muppet of a man. Oh, I get it. I didn't see that. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're a very manly Muppet. Are you referencing the musical thing? Yeah, from the movie. Yeah. Is it the most recent movie? I don't know. Is that for getting Sarah Marshall? I can keep track of Muppet stuff. Yes, it is. Okay. Just checking. Did you guys hear about the kidnapping? Yeah, I was going to see if you heard about the kidnapping at that school. That sounds terrible and real. He woke up. It's okay.

02:24 Oh, God damn it. Wow. This will be my last episode, everybody. I was wondering if we were just turning into a breaking news podcast. Because I was like- This is now current events slash knock knock jokes. Miss Piggy, pignapped, been covered. Dr. Grump. Anybody know if he's like a real- No, I have no idea. He's the one who did the pignapping. Is he from the Muppets? I assumed he was. Have we not heard of him? Did we check the Muppet Wiki?

02:56 The Muppet Wiki would know. So I feel like I owe it to everybody to just do a quick, does he exist? And it seems like- Yeah, this podcast would be better if we did a little research. A little research would be great. It seems like there might be a Dr. Grumpy. I think that's probably it, right? Yeah, maybe they just couldn't get enough characters on screen. No, there is no Dr. Grump in the Muppets. There is a Grump, but he doesn't look anything like this guy. Well, maybe he's a Grump. Maybe he's just like a doctor for this game.

03:29 Do you guys ever watch the show? I love the show. Don't get me wrong. But I feel like Grump, it seems like he was like a weird one-off thing in the 60s. And it would not be referenced in this rather childish Muppets. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wasn't trying to insult you, because I have never really watched the show. And I was just checking to see if maybe you guys had a bit more historical experience with this franchise.

04:00 I think when I was a kid, I would catch an episode here and there or something, but I never really watched it. I was more of a Muppet Babies guy as a little kid. Yeah, I remember Muppet Babies. I don't remember anything about it. I just remember that I did watch it at least a few times when I was a kid, but never Muppets. Muppet Babies is a very cozy show. That's why you don't remember anything, because you didn't have to. It was just like you just watched it and you felt good. Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, the Muppet show is interesting because it was trying to be a variety sketch show as if it was live and being put together.

04:39 Like, oh, we're the Muppets and we're trying to make this show, but it's also all obviously scripted and filmed in advance and not live, but it's put on under that guise. And I think that's a pretty unique hook about the show. So, I dig it. And I feel like the main hook of every episode was the guest stars. There were a lot of guest stars across many different seasons. And I think even off the show, we were talking about some of the guest stars who showed up. And they got some, like, really big names at the time. So, I feel like while we know of the Muppets now, they were never hotter than they were in the 70s. Like, that was peak Muppet time for everybody. And the Muppets have only lost value over time.

05:24 I thought they were having a little bit of a resurgence. They were having that resurgence with the movie, which did do well. But then they got that show, I believe, on NBC, which was also just called, like, The Muppets. And it was, like, same idea of, like, now you're going to watch how they put together this live show and everything. And it was trying to be a little bit of SNL, a little bit of 30 Rock and all that. A little bit of jackass.

05:48 Sure. But it was none of that, really. And while I thought it was, like, an okay show, I didn't hate it by any means, it was canceled pretty quickly. Damn. So, people were not, like, coming back for The Muppets. Did they have any, like, contemporary, like, co-hosts? Or was it, like, a single-camera sitcom thing? It was a single-camera sitcom-style thing. But there were still guests. Oh, okay. So, like, Billie Eilish?

06:14 It wasn't that recent. Oh, okay. That's too bad. They still have enough, you know, they're still big enough that Disney will bank on them for Disney World. You know, they're making, like, aren't they making, like, a ride and, like, a section of Disney World that's going to be Muppet-themed? I don't doubt that the Muppets can sell. Like, I'm sure there are toys and there's plenty of, I feel like just the appetite. The appetite for the Muppets as a TV show or a media thing is less than as a brand.

06:48 Sure. It's kind of crazy, though. Like, I would have thought that maybe, like, oh, they've had one there and it doesn't, like, the numbers just don't work out to replace it. Like, it's doing fine as it is. But, like, to think that they're actually putting resources into making it. Yeah. I mean, I don't quote me on the fact that there's going to be a whole section. I think there might be, like, an area that's going to be like a Muppet area. I'm not sure, but I'm positive they are changing Rockin' Roller Coaster, the Aerosmith roller coaster, into a Muppet roller coaster. But that sounds fun. I never knew what Aerosmith was doing at Disney World anyway.

07:23 Yeah. It just, that just seems like, you know, as someone who's been to Disney World twice in my life, like, many years apart, that's, like, one that I've always heard of. You know, it just seems like I knew what Rockin' Roller Coaster was before I went. I didn't know until this moment. It's weird that they're getting rid of that for a Muppet thing.

07:37 I didn't, I feel like, I know that, like, you know, there's all the Disney princesses and Steven Tyler's among them, but, like, I just didn't think that that was ever a thing. Who is your favorite Muppet? Big Bird. Well, does it have to be, yeah, can it be from Sesame Street? They are Muppets. I'm not going to, I'm not here to fight on the definition of a Muppet. Because as a kid, I was obsessed with Oscar the Grouch.

08:03 You, you don't strike me as a big fan of Oscar the Grouch. Do you want to explain this a little bit? Yeah, I'm a very positive person, but, uh, I don't know, maybe that's why. Maybe opposites attract, and I just thought Oscar the Grouch was so cool. See, I'm just disappointed that, like, I thought I was making a really bad joke about how I didn't know anything about the Muppets, but now you're telling me that they are actually the same, like, kind of moral subject?

08:28 Like, okay. Yeah, technically, like, everything from Fraggle Rock counts as a Muppet. Yeah. I've never seen Fraggle Rock. I mean, think Kermit the Frog. He's like a Sesame Street, he's like the linchpin that holds Sesame Street and the Muppets together. Well, I thought Jim Henson would have been, but okay. Yeah, he's the one with their hand, like, up his ass, right? That's kind of how it works.

08:53 Kermit and Jim Henson were partners on the Muppets. Yeah, I heard they worked together pretty closely. And, Mike, since you seem the most versed in the Muppets, can I ask you something about this back of the box? Yeah. First of all, can you read it again, the back of the box?

09:10 Just the part I read on the show? Yeah, after the... Yeah. Jump, leap, hop, and charge into action. Okay, so now are those all... First of all, jump, leap, hop, all synonymous, really. I think they're all things Kermit does. They're all things Kermit does, but it's not anything... You don't do any of those things in this game. Well, you do if you're good. You do them if you're really good. Yeah. Oh, you don't know?

09:37 I don't know. All right, well, this is actually a good setup to finally talk about... It's a good setup to talk about the actual game because... So, the game is basically a compilation of four minigames that are disguised under this carnival theme. But you have to... You have four carnival rides that star Kermit, Fozzie, Animal, and Gonzo on a sort of a rescue of Miss Piggy. They have to play the stage long enough, clear a certain amount in order to clear the stage and get the thing that will progress to the end. And basically, once you do those four carnival rides, the finale is with Kermit in this sort of...

10:18 Like, I don't want to... Platformers being nice to it. But, like, yeah, that would be where the leaping and the hopping into action comes into play. I would just like to make an argument against the idea of these being minigames because they do take a very long time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, these are long games. Yes, long games. But long games with the substance of a minigame.

10:41 Absolutely. And then I would also like to argue that there's any characters in this game aside from Kermit because... Like, Kermit's the only one that has any actual, like, recognizable... Of the characters that you play. Okay. I thought I distinctly recognized Animal as the one, I think, in the car one. Yes, yeah. He kind of looks like Elmo if you're not trying, but... Yeah. Fozzie, that's clearly him in the maze. Okay, you're right. The maze and the...

11:13 Which isn't even like a carnival ride going down a river in an inner tube, but... Yeah, it's like a lazy river at a water park. Okay, sure. Not a carnival. And you don't go to space at a carnival either, but it's like, that's neither here nor there. What I'm saying is that they could have done a better job using the sprites to signify that these are the characters from the show.

11:39 I mean, that should have been priority number one, right? Priority number one, it seems like their biggest thing was just like, hey, how do we get the Muppets in a video game? Because they're not really thinking too hard about anything else regarding the show. So the game is very bare bones in my opinion. And it comes off right away.

11:59 Not because this is made by the same people, high-tech expressions, the guys who also made the Sesame Street games. So you immediately notice that there is no correct way to control which game you want to play. No matter what button you hit, it just goes down and then up again in the menu like the Sesame Street games. That's not the problem, but it is like automatically a warning sign.

12:19 The real warning was as soon as you select which minigame you want to go into, you just immediately get dumped into it. Like it had already been going and now it's just like it's still happening while you're like just, okay, and now you take the wheel as Kermit. Like, okay, like what do I do? Like what am I supposed to be doing? And it turns out the thing you're supposed to be doing is exactly what it looks like.

12:40 Not much. I kept going back and forth in my head as to whether like, I know that this is a kid's game. And I know that like this is not designed for me. This is not for me. But like I kept going back and forth like, is this just a kid's game or is this actual shovelware? Yeah, I think I would lean towards shovelware because like we say this is a kid's game for something like Sesame Street. And that's like, yeah, that's goal is to do something very different than like be a fun game. This is trying to be a fun game. Even if it's for younger kids, it's trying to be a video game.

13:16 So like for it, you know, Mike, what you were just talking about, about it just throwing you into the levels. I think the biggest, at least for me, the worst offender of this was the Kermit ones where sometimes I'm, I just, I'm starting on top of a rock that's damaging me. There are times where the level spawns me on top of one of those logs that damages you and moves you. And I just lose all my lives immediately before I get any agency as the player.

13:41 So like, I think that shows that it's like, this was not either not play tested or it was not polished enough. Yeah. Well, it's certainly, even if it is for kids, which I'm not going to challenge, like I agree that the difficulty is not really there other than that. I mean, there is a difficulty to it because of how long it goes on for. Yeah. But that's more in your head. Yeah, exactly. It's in your head.

14:06 The problem is, is that if it was for kids, they should take more time to like explain this, like how Sesame Street games do. You know, the Sesame Street games might be guilty of holding your hand too much, but at least they are education games that are designed to do something. I get that these aren't education. They're not teaching you anything. They just have a clear or maybe not so clear goal because you do kind of just feel like you're drifting endlessly in these levels until they suddenly tell you that they've been cleared. Yeah. But there's nothing really, like there's no setup. Even the pig nap thing at the front of the thing, to Sean's point, these don't even feel like carnival games.

14:46 I get the idea that like Animal's supposed to maybe be in like a bumper cars ride or something. The bumper cars are the closest we got, yeah. But it's not even like, it's not in a bumper cars environment. It would be better if you had to do like a survival against Dr. Grump's henchmen in a bumper cars style game. We're like, oh, don't hit the side of the walls or something.

15:05 Instead, they just created these really long levels that auto scroll or you scroll depending on which level it is. But like so if you're in the car, you control the speed. But if you're in the space shuttle or the Kermit the Frog rowing game, you know, like those games auto scroll. And so you're just kind of drifting and you think like, okay, is it multiple levels? Like when does this end? And it goes on for a really long time. I was at a point where I thought that like I was missing the point of the game. Like I was supposed to have been doing something and this was just going to keep going on forever until I did that.

15:48 But no, I just had to wait for like eight or nine minutes. Yeah. And the issue for me with the go-kart one is that there's no incentive to go fast. Like there's no time limit. It's not a race. There's a bunch of little obstacles that will hurt you and you have limited lives. So you can really just take your time and go really slow and make it really boring. But like the only incentive to go fast is like because you're bored, you know. But like if you want to optimize, play this game optimally, like you should be just like inching along on this, which is so stupid. Like this is like the one time I would advocate for a time limit.

16:32 Sure. I wonder if you just hugged the top or bottom of the screen and just tanked whatever damage. Like could you just power right through it? I for some reason psychologically did not do that. I did try that. I tried. It doesn't work because eventually you will. So I think it actually is designed to have you slowly drift like down on the screen so that you don't ever just stay in a perfect spot and slide through everything. And so then eventually you'll hit one of those like oil spills that will just cause you to spin out and then you'll be completely out of control.

17:08 Let's talk about, we'll start with the car crash ones or car crash. That's what I was doing in it. Burnout. Same. But yeah, let's talk about the car level first since we're on that subject. That's the one with the animal. You're dropped into this one. The car does move in eight directions. And while that sounds really intuitive for an NES game, it's kind of not helpful. It'd be better if it was a little more rigid.

17:35 There are things to like watch out for and things to collect, but it's mostly just obstacles. The idea is just avoid everything and just keep moving on because you just want to get to the end as fast as possible. There's no real reward other than score, but it's kind of weird when there's score in a game that also has story because the score doesn't affect the story. So I still just advocate for like dodge everything because there's not even like cool power ups that like, oh, collect this thing and it'll make you go really fast. Or this thing will launch you in the air so you don't have to worry about the obstacles on the ground. There's nothing like that in the game. So you basically just want to avoid everything and rush to the end of the stage.

18:16 Was there anything more to the game that I missed? Were there any like, oh, that's a clever obstacle to throw in this game? That really took me for a spin. No, the one thing that there is that still doesn't make sense to me is a bunch of barrels that don't hurt you and don't seem to give you anything unless they're giving you points. And I wasn't noticing, but like you hit the barrel and it lifts up. So I was convinced after a while that the key was going to be under one of these barrels and I had to find it. But to my knowledge, those barrels are there for no reason.

18:48 Yeah, I would say that my only note is like, it's sort of in the same vein that I don't think that like the legibility makes a lot of sense. It almost seems like kind of reverse the kinds of things that you should be attracted to and the things that you want to avoid. Like you want to pick up what to me look like banana peels.

19:14 And maybe you're not, maybe they're not banana peels, but with enough Mario Kart, I have been trained to avoid all banana peels. And I think that like, you don't even need that for it to look like a bad thing to hit. And then the thing you want to avoid, which I imagine are like cherry bombs, just look like cherries.

19:33 And I think that cherries as a thing that you want to collect has existed for a while, even at this point in video games. So yeah, it was just odd. It was just a weird thing to do. And the things, I don't know if what you're talking about is the banana peels are these red flags. Are they flags? Yes. But even if you know that they're red flags, I think the term red flag is like definitively something you want to avoid, a red flag. That's true. There's also like greens, they are flags. I'm looking at it now, they're just freaking flags. But to me, they look like banana peels.

20:09 You know what's funny too? If you just take it as Animal went off the bumper car's course, right? And now he's just riding around this car, which is something like Animal would do. He's nuts, right? Now he's just riding it around. This isn't like a course, you know? This isn't even like there's no clever turns or whatever. It's a straight line the whole way through. They couldn't even design like a racetrack for this. Every single thing in this game is a straight line. There is no concept of turns in this game. You have to turn around the stuff that you don't want to hit.

20:48 No, I know that. But you know what I mean? There's no turns on the course. Yeah, that bothers me. This would have been a good chance for a real racing segment instead of what we got. And while the key does eventually show up or whatever, it is possible to also just fly by that. Oh, I didn't even think that's a possibility.

21:11 Yeah. Oh, it's worse in the auto-scroller. So in the Kermit the Frog one, when you're in the rowboat, in that one, because it's an auto-scroll and because of the way – so the way that game works is you use the D-pad, use the left and the right to steer the boat. And then you either hold down to speed up or hold up to kind of like slow down the pace of the boat. But there's a very tight track with a lot of obstacles and a lot of things to avoid, very few things to pick up. But there is a reason to pick up things in this one because you're taking damage on everything you hit, so you do want to recover your health.

21:51 If you miss the key at the end of this long adventure, it just resets you back to the beginning. You have to now play the entire stage again. Then, like, it just auto-scrolls you right back to the start, and now you have to do the whole thing again before you get a chance to collect the key.

22:08 So I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have, like, one health left but the key be placed in a spot where, like, you probably would take a hit to get across. Because there is very little in the sense of momentum on this. Like, you're either, like, in the correct spot and you're not going to take damage or you kind of have to just, like, you know, in certain platformers or action games we talk about sometimes you just want to take the damage hit to get the invincibility to move through it.

22:35 That's kind of what happens in this river ride with Kermit as well. There's also some problems with, I think, like, just hitboxes too. I feel like I have this complaint in most games, but especially in a game like this where there isn't really much else to do aside from avoid things, you would think that maybe having hitboxes that were tight to the actual sprite would be important. Yeah, or hitboxes and also, like, detection of hits. Or not even detection, but, like, feedback.

23:10 Because, like, if you run into a rock, it's just, like, health draining. There's no, like... Just melt you. There's no, like, you don't get pushed back or anything. Sometimes you can get stuck on a rock and just watch your health drain and, like, you can't move. So it just feels really weird.

23:53 The next ride, Gonzo's space ride. Asteroid. That's probably the closest we get to anything other, any other video game we've played where, like, you can make the case that this is, you know, asteroids or something, I suppose. It is an auto-scroll shooter, so in some ways it's even a shmup.

24:14 But it's barely any of that. You do, you are, you're in the spaceship. You can control again in the eight directions. But this one with the thrust, so that's what reminds me of Asteroid, where, like, you have this momentum that powers through and you kind of have to, if you're going too fast in one direction, you gotta turn the ship around and thrust in the other direction. So there is a game here, and the slow scroll in this one isn't as painful because I feel like it is necessary, especially if we're arguing that this game is somewhat for kids.

24:48 That it gives younger players the chance to choose which path they want to go in because there are sometimes branching paths with different, and branching paths is being polite. It's just, you know, oh, we're going to put a bar in the middle of the screen. I mean, yeah, do you want to go up or down? But there are things in here, too. There are other enemies. There are drifting rocks. There are fuel canisters. Yeah, sure. The meatballs were the rocks, in my opinion.

25:19 But at the end of the auto-scroll, this one doesn't have, like, a key you can miss. It does have a boss fight, I guess you can call it, where you do shoot at an enemy spaceship. And then you're rewarded with the key. It poops out the key. Very, very well said. Yeah. All that to say, like, this one actually felt like they might have been onto something. Like, if they just did this with the other Muppet games, it would have been okay. It's definitely the best one.

25:49 I think that there's still a little bit of, like, wait, what am I doing? Like, this still needs a little bit of a setup. But yeah, I mean, this is definitely the most... It is the most, like, the execution was the best here. But it's a pretty low bar of just like, okay, at least it feels like Asteroids is the best we can do so far. And then the last game of the four minigames with Fozzie Bear here, which first off, nobody likes Fozzie, right? I thought he was cool. I thought he was beloved. Oh, Waka Waka?

26:25 Yeah. Oh, now that you say that, I love him. Right, yeah. Now you know who he is. Fozzie Bear. Amaze is a carnival thing. I think we can agree on that. This is the one that takes place inside the carnival. Maybe the other ones took place in, like, the parking lot.

26:41 You know, like, he wrote the... I will grant that mazes exist in carnivals. He wrote the... Mazes where the walls are ice cream sundaes. But that, like, they are. And it's just like, what could they have done? Like, they could have used literally anything to make these walls. And in order to make the walls look like, like, have any sense of, like, oh, I can walk here but not walk there, they chose something that just sort of looks like a, like a MS paintbrush.

27:13 Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, like a stamp tool. It's very, it's very hard to read the maze with this, like, this pattern that they're using. And the loop of this is very strange, too, where, like, you have to collect three prizes and then they just kind of, like, spawn. So you just collect it and then you collect the next one and then you collect the next one. Like, you don't see them. It's barely a maze in that sense. Like, I thought it was going to be this. I just thought you were going to see this thing.

27:46 That is actually a Fozzie Bear-style joke, Sean. I don't know if you know that. You made it. Yeah, but you connected it. Also, real quick, is he being chased by, like, a mini Fozzie Bear? No, there's a mouse Muppet, too, and I forget his name. Oh, okay. A little mouse. Oh, yeah, Rizzo. Rizzo the rat. Oh, okay. He's not a mouse, he's a rat. My bad. Sorry, Riz.

28:12 But you know what I mean? Like, it's kind of weird that these things just, like, spawn in. Like, they're not purposefully placed, and then it's only after you, like, you collect one, and then the other one doesn't, like, pop up right away. It sometimes takes some time for it to be like, all right, fine, we'll throw this one, I don't know, over here. And they just go there.

28:31 But, again, it's not really a maze. You see the entire, a maze is where you don't know where you're going. Yeah, yeah. This would be like if the entirety of Metroid was on one screen, you know? What would you call this, then? This is like a walk in the park with Fozzie Bear. A walk in the park with Fozzie Bear. It's like a path. Yeah. And if that really is Rizzo the rat, he's not a bad guy.

28:56 So he's not, like, in the show. He's not a villain. He's like Gonzo's friend. Oh, okay. Well, do people like Gonzo? Gonzo's my favorite Muppet. Oh, okay. I don't know. Nobody asked me earlier, so I thought I'd just say that right. He always struck me as someone, like, that didn't, like, he wasn't really considered part of the clique. That's why he's my favorite.

29:17 Oh, okay. But I just wanted to, you know, once again, you just have to do this. There's nothing that indicates that you might be, like, halfway through or, like, near the end. It all just sort of ends after, like, doing this for eight to ten minutes. Right. Screen one of 20 would have been nice to see, you know, as you're progressing along. Like, how many more times do I got to do this? Yeah. Are there two Rizzo's? Because there's two Rizzo's in this game. There are not two Rizzo's. Good. I don't know if, like, Rizzo has cousins.

29:52 Yeah. You know? Plankton has, like, a million cousins, so maybe that's the same situation with Rizzo the rat. Maybe. Plankton, famously not a Muppet, shouldn't have been mentioned in this episode, but.

30:05 Well, we all kind of agreed that the Gonzo space level was the best level. Do we agree that this is the worst level? This is barely a video game. I don't know. Yeah. There's nothing fun about it. You're just walking slowly around, picking things up. I was going to say. And I've never. Go ahead. I've never seen a video game get walking in four directions wrong.

30:30 But, like, it doesn't work. Sometimes I hit left and I'm, like, too close to something and it just takes me down or right. Like, I don't know how that can happen. It's using the menu logic. Yeah. Any button just takes you the next direction. The next direction. Yeah. And you could argue that, again, they're going for reference to a classic arcade game here with Pac-Man, but they didn't do anything like that. The Rizzo the rats don't act like ghosts. There's no, like, there's no, like, oh, collect every pellet on the screen or whatever. Collect these randomly spawning accessories. It's like bow ties and gift boxes, right?

31:10 Yeah. Collect these things, which you were never told to collect, by the way, either. So it's never communicated that you have to collect these three things for the stage to end. It just happens to end after you collect those three things. And then you just say, well, I guess I'll do that again the next stage, right? For all you know, just to the point of the length of all these games, there's something else you're supposed to be doing in order to secretly unlock the stage that gives you the key. It's never talked, the player has no involvement with the game, really. And that's going to be the argument against this game in general.

31:42 But I feel like usually there are enough details in a game to warrant me, like, some follow-up questions with you guys or whatever. What am I going to ask? Like, does the maze overstay its welcome? Of course it does. Like, is it a change of pace? Like, no way. You're right. There's really no way to actually have any kind of critical conversation about this game beyond just the surface-level bullshit that we've been talking about. Like, there's nothing to it. I guess, like, we could talk about the mechanics of how to get by the cousins of Rizzo the rat. Like, you can throw bones.

32:27 Which is a famous Fozzie Bear thing to do. You ever throw, you ever just, like, sort of emit love out of your chest? Yeah. Well, now, do you have to have collected the hearts to do that? Because hearts are collectible. Okay. But they, like, are indistinguishable. Is that, like, what does it do? That's your power. I don't know. But it doesn't replenish your hearts.

32:52 Does it matter? You're right. It doesn't matter. It does bring up a good point, though, about the UI, if you can call it that, the bare-bones UI, which every, the placement of it is different across the games, but they all have the same thing of score, power, and rides. And rides is very interesting, because that is a, that is maybe the most personality put into this game, is the word rides instead of lives. But you wouldn't even think that they were your lives, right? Like, there's so many of them. Like, do I really get 15 lives?

33:26 But that, that, that, that's true. But calling them rides is fun, because, of course, Muppets don't die. Uh, they don't have lives. It's just, it's just, how many more times they get to go on the ride before Miss Piggy's pig-napped? Um, and that, and that's really cute. No, no, no, no, she's already pig-napped. They're doing this. They're doing this to get her back? Yeah, before she's roasted.

33:49 Yeah. We have to, like, Kermit was like, we have to, we have to save Miss Piggy, so we have to make this quick. Like, like, go on, like, we can still go to the carnival, but just, like, do what you gotta do, and then we'll, we'll, we'll be back, we'll meet back here in, like, 20, 30 minutes, then we'll go save Miss Piggy. Like, is it, is it, like, does the guy who ran, who runs the carnival, did he do it?

34:17 It doesn't seem like, um, Dr. Grump is, uh, am I saying that right? Yeah, Dr. Grump. It doesn't sound like he's behind at all. Like, he's not behind at all. Oh, no, it is. Sorry, back of the box over here. Dr. Grump's Carnival of Clamorous Confusion. Got it. That was confusing just reading the title. We got, we've got media literacy here. Well, here we go.

34:43 Dr. Grump's Carnival of Clamorous Confusion is a rollicking rollercoaster of thrills. We show these games for kids. There's a lot of big words. Thrills, spills, and chills. Join Kermit as he faces the fearsome challenge of the Raging River Ride. Help Fozzie lick the amazing ice cream race. There's no licking in that game. I guess that maybe. Is this a race? Yeah, right? But, uh. I guess there's just no explanation as to why they are interacting with carnival rides.

35:13 Like, what, to get to Mr. Grumpy? Like. Here's some interesting lore, though. All right. Fozzie's in that ice cream maze, right? That's not Rizzo the Rat. Those are apparently dogs. And that's why you're throwing bones. Oh, that's why you're throwing bones. Those don't look like dogs at all. And we have a reference for what a dog should look like in the Muppets universe. Do we? Ralph? Yeah, Ralph, the dog. He's great. He's a good Muppet. He's a good boy.

35:46 Okay, so I watched one, a few clips of an episode of The Muppet Show, and they had, like, what looked like the closest thing to a real animal. It was Muppie. Did they, like, did they retire Muppie? Whoa. I'm not saying Muppie's, like, a deep cut or whatever, but I don't remember Muppie. You're saying Muppie looked just like a regular dog? It was basically just a dog with, like, yeah, it looked like a regular dog. That is so funny.

36:19 Apparently, Muppie has had multiple appearances on the show, so I just don't remember this guy. But, yeah, he does look like a dog, which is weird, because then that's, like, but that's always, like, the thing with Pluto and Goofy, right? It's like, aren't you guys both dogs, but one of them is domesticated? Like, what the hell is going on there?

36:42 And after you get all four keys, you get to go to the final level in the Grumposaurus cave with Kermit. It's a, like I said, platformer's kind, but I guess that's mostly what you're doing.

36:58 And in this stage, there are two boss fights, if you can believe it. Was anybody expecting that? No. I wasn't expecting this stage to exist. This stage at all, right? But here's the interesting thing about this stage, and you'll notice it right away if you're watching the long play, but it catches you off guard when you get to the stage in the game, too, is, like, finally a good view of Kermit, and he does, he has an awkward stance, I would say. He kind of looks like he's standing- He's, like, fencing with a feather? With a feather, right. That is the thing that is very apparent right away, is that why is he holding a feather? Like, I get it.

37:35 He's all about peace and love. Kermit wouldn't have, like, a baseball bat as his main weapon. But he arguably didn't even need a weapon, right? It could have just been that he, like, slapped things away, right? Like, just swatted things with his hand or whatever. He didn't need a weapon. I don't think anybody was expecting him to hold a sword. But the feather is odd, but the feather comes into play because you have to use the feather on Grumposaurus to tickle- Are you just tickling him? Yeah, okay. Tickle Grumposaurus's armpit to get him to move back.

38:09 And in true fencing form, like, once he moves back enough, he'll fall over. Huh. I just think that's really cute. I think that is, like, that is actually, like, something that respects the Muppet worldview and is also very playful. And, like, of course you would tickle the boss. Like, that's so funny. It's kind of weird that Gonzo, you know, blew up that spaceship in hindsight, right? Like, Kermit's got a much more peaceful method to this whole thing. Yeah, how many people were on that ship? Like, I don't know.

38:45 Yeah, and he wasn't even at the carnival, so who knows? Gonzo's mission was, like, completely separate from all this. Unless, like, they're all just on, like, a pretty high dosage of, like, hallucinogens and, like, none of this is actually happening. Maybe Kermit actually does have, like, a bladed weapon.

39:05 But his, like, his weird LSD brain, he thinks he's just tickling people. I'm going to read it like that. Yeah, I'm thinking you're not even playing as Muppets. You're just a guy on LSD who thinks he's the Muppets.

39:20 Most video games can be explained away like this, I think. Most media. Yeah. And unfortunately, the creative tickle match isn't the end of the game. I think it should be.

39:32 You actually do have to face Dr. Grump, and he is, like, on the top of a platform that you can't reach, and you're below him. And he's throwing bombs down at you, and you're throwing hearts up at him. So, like, now it's, now all, you know, like, all metaphors are lost, and it's just truly the Sesame people pushing their agenda on us in that war never triumphs over love or something like that. But Miss Piggy is also up there with him, and she's not exactly, like, she's not moving at all. We don't even know if she's breathing, I guess. I'm not trying to say she's not struggling, but, like, she's just not moving at all. She barely looks like Miss Piggy on first glance, but then you realize that's her.

40:20 And then when you free her, she still doesn't really, like, animate or come to life, and it's kind of creepy. Yeah, it's like a, she just kind of gets pulled down, but via, like, some kind of, like, if you were dragging and dropping something in, like, Photoshop, but very slowly. And then, and then, uh, frickin', uh, Kermit very slowly, like, very creepily, like, sidles up to her, and kind of, like, goes behind her.

40:51 Um, but then they, like, stand up, like, you know, face to face for, again, an uncomfortable amount of time, and then she thanks you for saving her. Right. The thank you is important because that's, like, proof of life. You know? Like, until that moment, I would have thought that, like, you know, hey, we never saw her take a breath. Like, for all we know, she was strangled to death. Proof of life.

41:14 It's important these days. It is. Now, I know you guys didn't play this because you were surprised that it even existed, but... I didn't say that. That was Joe. Oh, okay. Sorry, Sean. We're the same. What's the difference? Sean, so let me ask you then, since Joe can't really speak to it, in a game where it has been so bare bones, is this a fair challenge, or is this a difficulty spike that kind of undoes the, the, the easiness of the rest of the game?

41:44 I've been, so, I would say that, like, you know, by and large, from, from minigame to minigame, it was very easy, except in, like, some parts that, like, it was just poorly designed, that, like, you will just get shot from off screen, or you will get stuck on, like, the geometry, or, like, this. Like, it'll spawn you into a, like, into a death pit, and then you have to get, like, respawned again, and it might spawn you into something else that kills you until it moves you. Excuse me. It moves you.

42:24 So, yeah, I was dying a lot, but again, I don't think that it was actually, like, it was challenge. I think it was, uh, jank. Oh, yeah, this game belongs in our jank folder. If we're still, if that still capes around, yeah. Uh, I don't know if this is, I don't know if I have a case for this, but just, like, in general, didn't the tone of the game and, and just the color palette and a lot of other things about this just feel, like, a little darker than the Muppets? Yeah, the music in this Kermit section, which I'm watching right now, uh, to my horror, uh, is very, like, dark.

43:02 It's like Castlevania. Yeah, I agree with you. I guess, like, just in general, though, too, right? Like, the color palette is kind of gray. There's gray in every level. Yeah. There's grays and there's blacks, and I just don't think of the Muppets like that. I think they should have went with more vibrant and cheery stuff. I get it. Miss Piggy's in danger, but she's in danger at a carnival. Make it a little fun. Make it a little bright. Where are the elephants, right? Come on, guys. Where are the elephants? There's elephants at a carnival.

43:32 Okay, when I think of, when I think of carnivals, I'm thinking, like, real side of the road, like, this is just a parking lot of an old Sears, and- See, but I hear you. I agree, but I'm thinking Muppets carnival, which should be, like, early 1900s carnival, Barnum and Bailey style. Yeah. It's a circus.

43:51 Yeah, but technically, they offered up a circus. The back of the box gave it, like, a carnival of clamorous confusion. You know, I'm reading that as bigger than, like, Ferris wheel. But did they say carnival, Mike? I just, I guess I'm just, yeah, it does say carnival, but I guess I'm reading that as- Circus. No, they never said circus. But I guess I'm just not thinking about, like, Ferris wheel in front of the local church. You know, like, I'm gonna give them a little more color than that. I suppose so. I would, too. Do you guys have a chance to pull up the box art for the game? Yes. Okay. Because that's probably the best thing about this game.

44:31 Is the box art. It feels like it's, like, a comic book cover. I like it. It's alluring. Oh, yeah. Miss Piggy- I would buy this game in a heartbeat. Yeah, Miss Piggy looks, like, a lot more alive in this one. Yeah. Yeah, she doesn't look like she's being, like, completely tied up from her feet to her neck.

44:53 Like, no, she does look like that in the final stage. I mean, she actually, I mean, she looks pretty good in this, to be honest. Oh, okay. And I don't know about you. I don't know about you guys, but Grumpasaurus looks completely different than I imagined, because in the front of the box, he does look kind of terrifying. Do they say Grumpasaurus? Are you adding a-saurus?

45:19 I feel like I got that. Grumpasaurus. No, no, Dr. Grump is the guy. The guy behind Kermit on the box. Oh, you mean, like, okay, like the King Kong-looking guy, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The Donkey Kong. Yeah. He looks pretty chill. Great, great box art. That's what I would- Now, is Miss Piggy tied to, like, a magic crystal? Yes. Yeah, because that doesn't show up at all. Yeah. I guess, like, if it was just, like, a lamppost, it wouldn't be quite as, like, visually interesting. You would think you would have to go to, like, Superman's lair to save Miss Piggy based on this box art. Is it fair to call that Superman's lair? Lair is, like, reserved for villains, right?

46:00 Fortress? Fortress. Do you have a- I mean, like, I would have a lair if I could afford it. Is it not the Fortress of Solitude? Isn't that what it is? Yeah, it is. It is, yes. Okay, yeah. Oh, good, good. So we all know about Superman. We just don't know much about the Muppets. Yeah. Yes. I don't know how to tell you. Okay, well, you have to exist in the same lane, you know? It's like, you're either a Superman fan or a Muppet fan.

46:24 There's not enough time for both. There is a lot of Muppets media, and I will just say this, and this is not to offend anyone who's in either, but there is, like, there is a certain level of obsession needed for both of them, right? Like, to be a super fan. You can say you like the Muppets, but to be a Muppet super fan, it requires, like, a totally other kind of commitment that I'm not ready. I'm not ready to watch Dark Souls. I'm not ready for it. I have known Muppet super fans, and I agree that they are really into it.

46:56 Like, I know about Fraggle Rock. Dark Crystal is kind of where they lose me. I'm like, I don't know if I ever want to see that. I don't even know what Dark Crystal is. That was a movie that the Henson Company made. It was directed by Jim Henson. Wasn't, is that the one with David Bowie?

47:13 Yeah. That was Labyrinth. Oh, that was... Oh, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah, sorry. What am I thinking of then? Maybe I was also thinking of Labyrinth. Dark Crystal. No, I just know because I saw some Dark Crystal stuff at a Muppets exhibition one time, but I don't know anything about the plot of this movie now that David Bowie thinks the other one. Yeah. But I can picture the Dark Crystal characters. I have that much in my head. But yeah, I was conflating it with Labyrinth.

47:40 We mentioned a lot that the levels are long, but just to prove it, the world record for this game is around the mid-20s minutes. Mid-20 minutes. So while there is some kind of, I don't know, there's some kind of routing from level to level, there's no like great glitch or anything that makes this any faster. You do just kind of have to experience the entire level. So that happens. So yeah, you just basically, the speed run is just playing through the entire game and just collecting the key as soon as they show up. Huh. And I guess we're just going to move on to what happens next in this episode, which is the Essential Games list.

48:28 This game is more like the Muppet Misadventure, if you know what I'm saying. And maybe that's just a thing I'll do going forward. I'll give new titles. We'll see how it goes. But yeah, this is a total miss. This is barely a carnival theme. Barely any chaos for what it's worth either, though. Like I never felt like things were so crazy or out of control. Like it's kind of weird that in the Muppets world, this was kind of the zaniest stuff they could come up with. It's all kind of practical. And then there's just a lot of jank in the control of it all.

49:04 I did not have a good time playing this from the moment I started playing it because of those menus and the way that you select them. But I knew I was almost in for some kind of computer game style video game. And I've tried to say this before of games that feel like computer games. This one actually turned out to be that. It was already on Apple II and Commodore 64 and all that. And sometimes those games, you just have a feel that they've been translated that way because they don't feel like other NES games. And this certainly doesn't feel like it belongs as part of the larger catalog that we've been playing. We have played some bad games, but this is this is next level bad and feels very lazy.

49:46 I do not like almost anything about this game other than the fact that Kermit tickles Grumposaurus off a ledge. Sean? Yeah, I was I was trying to think about like we've I've been kind of like I've been angry during these episodes during some games. I just consider like insultingly bad.

50:07 But I I never really got angry with this game, but it is probably the most like it like where I felt the most lost in like how like how I live my life to to have like that. This is like an assignment that I have to do. Like I had to play this game and it was the first time that I think the word shovelware actually crossed my mind and I'm sticking with it. I'm going to stick with that. This is a pretty terrible game. And I'm pretty sure that the like the budget was probably 95 percent licensing.

50:43 And then like it's also weird, too, that we played other games by this company. And it was just the fact that they were education games that really hid how bad they are at this.

50:57 And like once they finally have to like have gameplay, it's just like, oh, this is just like the guy that owns the company, his cousin programs everything. And like he never actually like he actually like he self-taught. He's only been doing it for a couple of years. Like this is some actual like libelous shit. So I'm I'm like maybe I should maybe I should be quiet. But again, no, this is a really, really bad, non-essential game.

51:23 Joe. Yeah, I think that you're hitting something there. Like I think that this is what they know how to do and they didn't realize it's like when they made this game, they like forgot that they have to add game design to it because they're like, well, yeah, the other ones like worked fine for, you know, kids trying to learn their letters or whatever. But it does feel like like a really early first draft or something of of the game where it's like, oh, we forgot to actually put any like polish or complete the game. It just feels unfinished to me.

51:58 So I definitely think this is no question about this. Not essential. And since we're talking about high tech expressions who also made the other Sesame Street games, it's worth mentioning that they did make a few non Sesame Street games for the NES, all of which we have said are pretty terrible. Are you ready to hear which other ones they've made? OK, yeah. Orb 3D. Oh, wow.

52:27 Remote Control, the game show. Oh, the game show. The MTV game show. That wasn't the worst. It wasn't the worst, but it really was just trivia. So they didn't screw it up either. Win, lose, or draw. Now, that one was bad. I don't know if you remember, but that one was bad. It was a long time ago. And then interestingly enough, Chess Master, which was fine. They probably stole someone's chess engine. So they are just a software company. And this was the first time they ever had to make like gameplay. Yeah. If you think about it, this is the first time that they've ever had like a platformer stage.

53:05 Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if we see them again. We won't see them anymore in 1990. But I think you guys said a lot of great things in your Essential Games list vote too for why this is disappointing. But it's really disappointing because of the IP attached to it, right?

53:24 This is, this might be the one shot. I don't know. I don't look at things. This might have been the one shot we get at a Muppets game on a Nintendo console. And like the Muppets could have been up there in terms of like mascot platformers as the, as the Marios and the Mega Mans and everything. Like it would have been fun to play as like Kermit and the gang and like switch off on them and they have different abilities and everything.

53:49 And I get that they wouldn't fight necessarily, but I don't know. I don't think of Mario as a particularly violent person either. Like there's a way to, there's a way to skirt these things. Yeah, I would definitely play like a, a, a street fighter style, like, uh, like a TMNT or that. Yeah. I would, I would do like a streets of rage, but Muppets, um, I would do, I would do a lot of things with Kermit. And his piggy, apparently.

54:43 I have a little, uh, post show, uh, suggestion here. Post show. I, I've, I've been talking, you know, I've been talking about revisiting my backlog for a long time. And I did this week play three games that I missed on the podcast. And I think I'm going to slowly go through and, uh, try and just dabble, just barely dabble in each of these games that I missed. Okay. So I just want to give you guys my thoughts and see what you remember about these games. The first one is the one I have the least to say about. I played, we played this a very long time ago. This is pro wrestling on the NES. Which is the Nintendo developed. Like the menu based wrestling game. No, no, no, no. That one, that was a tag team wrestling.

55:29 Ah, okay. Yeah. Which I believe I played that. Um, pro wrestling is, I, so I, I'll admit I did not play this one for very long. I, I, but pro wrestling is just, I think there's like two, two buttons, two moves you could do. Maybe there's a couple of, a couple, a couple, you know, a couple of other input combos, but really just a very basic, especially having played all these other terrible wrestling games on the NES. A very basic wrestling, like WWE style experience for me.

56:03 Uh, I, the only thing I was kind of impressed by for being such an, like an early wrestling game was that the, uh, the animations were, were not bad. You know, you kind of do that thing where like you knock someone down and then they like pick them up. They do this in a WWF, WWE a lot where they pick them up in a way where it looks like you're grappling them, but you're really picking them up. I don't know if that's like a real wrestling translation of this, just this like, like a show wrestling thing.

56:29 Like a, what do you call that? Uh, like a suplex. It's like, it's like you're about to maybe do a suplex, but what you're literally actually doing it to my eye is helping them up off the ground. And then like, and then like you grapple for a second, but it's like, Oh, why did I just pick that guy up? But it's, I don't know how, like what input I'm doing to make it happen, but, uh, that's what's happening. So what made you want to play this game?

56:56 So I started from the beginning of the games that I missed. Oh, granted. The first one that I missed was gumshoe, which I just didn't really feel like setting up my zapper and everything. I'm digging on it. I'm not even sure if I have the, uh, cartridge right now. So I skipped gumshoe, but started with pro wrestling.

57:13 Uh, I don't have too much more to say about it because to be honest, I played for like maybe eight minutes of this game. I did play two player, uh, which was probably more fun than playing alone. If I could add, if I could add to your thoughts, Joe, to give you more to talk about, um, you know, two things. One, this is one of those surprising ones that, um, the people who grew up with the NES seem to really love this game, especially because it was made by Nintendo.

57:39 Um, but I, I believe we even said on the episode, like, I don't know. I, I, I thought it was kind of shallow. Like it didn't age well at the very least, but one thing that it had going for it was the roster, uh, of wrestlers. And they all felt like wrestling personalities that you might see in the WWF or WCW. Did you have a favorite, uh, person to play as? I'll be honest. I don't even remember who I played.

58:05 Okay. That's fine. So they didn't stand out to you then. That's fine. Do they, do they have like significant differences in gameplay or is it just recognizability? I, I, I, my understanding is that there is a very minimal other than like maybe a, what their special technique is, like their special move, uh, would be the only thing that's different. Otherwise they all have the same basic moves and then each one can kind of do this one special move that, um, is exclusive to them. Cause I, I played with a buddy of mine, John, friend of the show.

58:41 Uh, and he, him, he and I, we were doing, we were doing the same thing the whole time pretty much. Like there was, there, we were carbon copies of each other. It seemed, but, uh, I like, I did notice a lot, you know, you can run at someone as if you're going to like tackle them or clothesline them or something. You can kind of go off the ropes and run at them, but it's just so comically easy to take one step to the side. If someone's coming at you that that was like, most of the time was just trying to get a hold of the opponent.

59:12 Um, let alone like fight them. And I know this happens. Oh, go for it. In, in all fairness, I think like, you know, that, that whole, what do you call that move? Uh, is it a Russian twist or like a, like when you, when you bounce off the, the, Mike, you know what I'm talking about. You bounce off the ropes and like run at them. Yeah. Lay them out. Like a clothesline? Uh, sure. But like you would, that is easy to like, I feel like that would be easy to say. Yeah, that's true. But like in a, in a staged, like WWF WCW fight, they just don't. Yeah, exactly. But it's just funny that they allowed you to do that. So, so easily. You have to manufacture your own K-5 or K-fabe or whatever.

59:59 Joe, also when, when you, at least in the single player, after you win the match, there is a famous congratulations screen. Does that happen in two player as well? Did you get that a winner is you screen?

1:00:41 Yes, we did. Punch out for wrestling. But it wasn't that. I'm not even sure I wanted it to be Mike Tyson. Because Mike Tyson's punch out, like we always say, is more of like a rhythm game or maybe even like a puzzly game or, you know, not quite. But like, I think I just wanted it to feel better. Like, it just didn't feel good to play. And I think none of these old wrestling games hit me. Like, like they don't feel, and like, you know, I grew up on the PlayStation 1, like WWF games.

1:01:08 And I'm sure those have aged very poorly too. But like my inputs in these games and a lot of these wrestling games don't feel like, I don't know if I want to say that it eats my inputs, but it feels like, it doesn't feel super responsive. I don't feel like I ever know how I'm doing the things I'm doing and why sometimes it doesn't work. And I got that immediately from this game. So what were the other games? So game number two was Trojan on the NES.

1:01:35 So we're moving up a little bit in quality. I think, I don't know if you guys remember this at all. It's kind of got like a Kung Fu style, if you remember that game, because I feel like that was a little more memorable. But Kung Fu style, you're walking around like a post-apocalyptic city. Oh, yeah, I remember this game. You're walking around like a sword and your shield.

1:01:52 And this one, you know, was a little more fun for me. It's a little, I think like the one flaw to it is it's a little too hack and slash. Again, not a ton of like feedback or reaction from enemies that you're hitting. But I love the vibe of it. It was pretty cool. And also got to play a little bit of versus mode, which I'm not sure if you guys got to play at the time.

1:02:19 But that held my interest for a little bit longer than this game normally would have. It's definitely like becomes like a big slap fight because of how I guess how like rapid you can just like swing your sword. There's no cool down. There's no there's no like kickback from the enemies or anything. So you kind of just like both sitting there holding your shields up like rock and suck. Slapping each other with your swords.

1:02:45 Exactly. Yeah. And as soon as someone lets an opening, lets their shield down for a second, like you can very quickly drain your opponent's health by just like mashing away on their weakness. I remember we did make a big deal about the Trojan multiplayer on the episode because it was like pre Street Fighter, you know, combat and that that idea of just one V one on a screen. But the actual game, too, I was I definitely gave it a play it like I really liked the game. And from what I remember, the boss fights were pretty good, too.

1:03:20 It's it's Capcom. So I trust that it's still OK, but I haven't revisited it. Maybe I should. Yeah, I think it has like both very satisfying. Like the same thing that makes it sometimes feel a little jank to me is like that lack of feedback also makes it very satisfying. Because I do feel like I could just kind of like run through and just like slice away at enemies and I mow them down very easily.

1:03:46 And there is a satisfaction element, too, with the shield. Like once you kind of get the timing down with your shield, being able to utilize a block button like this, it's weird that it's not more common. Like I know like Legend of Zelda has a shield, but it's not like it's not used in the same way. It kind of just has more to do with like which way you're facing kind of thing. But this felt very it felt very good to to be able to defend yourself in that way. You could even kind of crouch and defend and make yourself like a very small target. And not to say that you're invincible in that way, but it does feel like you have to use different strategy a little bit of like, do I want to be more mobile? Do I want to kind of sit here and tank hits?

1:04:29 But yeah, it feels it feels good to play. I don't know if I would give it a play it now after having played a bunch of other things, but like I'm teetering on the edge of that. Definitely not wouldn't say it's essential. I just remember to Trojan was our first episode of season three, 1987, and it feels graphically like a leap from what we had been seeing in 85 and 86. It had more promise of like, oh, you can push this system more and games can look different than the black box games. Yeah. All right. What else? The third and final one and my favorite of the three was Breakthrough.

1:05:12 I don't know if you guys remember Breakthrough. I was assuming Breakthrough was going to be like an Arkanoid type thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. It is very much not. But yeah, so this one I do actually have visual memories of.

1:05:29 Unlike. Yeah, I feel like it sticks out a little bit, right? Yeah. Like it's a it's different. It looks nice. And at first I was a little like, OK, this is going to be just like a really janky just based on like the the not the menu screen, but the like level intro screen, which looks literally like a like blank VCR screen, you know, that like blue screen at the play button up there. Yeah. But as I started playing it like this one, I really kind of got into this is the game. If any if anyone listening doesn't remember, this is a game you're driving a car through like a war, I guess.

1:06:09 And you're trying to, you know, basically you're just trying to get through all these defenses, all these enemy defenses. But you control your speed. So it's not like it's not like exactly an auto scroller. I mean, it is technically auto scrolling. But and you have to avoid obstacles, shoot down enemies and you do die a lot. Like it's like one of those games where there's like a lot coming at you. But I think what makes this game for me so playable and so much more enjoyable than other games like this is that you basically have unlimited continues.

1:06:42 Not that that's always a good thing, but I think in this case, it's like this. This almost gave me like the kind of satisfaction I get with Cuphead or, you know, or even Mike and I recently Mike recently showed me Super Monkey Ball.

1:06:55 Where like and I've never played that before, but like we're like, hey, if I could just keep playing this level over and over again, like because I'm running into this challenge, like I'm fine with progressing slowly in that way. Because there are a lot of obstacles in this game where I get or it's like, OK, I keep dying, keep dying. I can feel myself getting a little better at it because I have I have unlimited times that I can try it again. So I only got to like the third level in this, but there's like five levels. But it took a long time to do that. It took a long time to do that, but it didn't feel like I had to memorize so much because I didn't have to start back at the beginning after every like six deaths or something.

1:07:33 Wasn't this the game, too, that actually had like a story reason for why you're apparently like this one guy going to war alone? Like it was like you were tasked with like just sort of like scouting ahead or something like that. I didn't read the manual, but I did listen to the original episode. And you guys sort of talked about that a little bit about like and I think, Sean, you said something like that. The only way that this could happen is if like the other military was having like a military wide field day and it was just like a free day for them. And then you came driving in and then they're like, oh, shit, there's an enemy here. That's something I'd say. Yeah. Joe, I can't remember, but the breakthrough also has your car can jump in the air.

1:08:20 Yes. And you're go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say and I remember that there are certain moments in the game where you have to jump because otherwise you will fall into a pitfall. But that maybe a complaint was that like sometimes you don't know how long, like how high you have to jump and how long those pitfalls are. Is that is that a problem in this game? I think I had that complaint at first where I would there would be it wasn't a pitfall. The first one, it was like a landslide. I was trying to jump over and I would always not be at the right speed to get enough distance.

1:08:56 But then I realized I kind of did get the feel of that, first of all. And I also realized that like you really have to decide where you're going to jump, like, you know, like which part of the landslide you had to jump over and you got to jump over the narrow end.

1:09:08 I mean, you can jump over the long end, but you have to be going full speed, which is admittedly tough on the first time you run across that obstacle because you don't know it's there. And sometimes you don't have enough time to get up to speed to make the jump. But that was just the first one later. The second level has like bridges that have broken areas and you do have to make jumps like that. But I feel like by then I had gotten the hang of it where like I was dying much more from enemies than from falling. I'm glad you replayed these games or played them for the first time. I'm glad we got a chance to talk about them again.

1:09:39 Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing a few more. And I don't know if you guys want me to tell you what I'm playing so you can look at them or if you prefer just like being surprised at what they are. I prefer the surprise. Yeah. All right, then I'll keep doing it kind of as we go here. And my goal here is I know I've definitely missed other than Sam, I guess, missed the most episodes.

1:10:02 And I'm just thinking like by the end of this thing, I do want to be able to say I at least played every single NES game. So I'm trying to catch up here. I believe in you.