433 · Conan: The Mysteries of Time

• In an age undreamed of, where bar-buh-rus kingdoms battle for survival in a savage and unforgiving land...you stand alone.

I. Setup & Premise

• The pitch: Conan seeks the throne of Aquilonia. A mysterious old man named Nemonios materializes out of a campfire — as you do — and tells him the key to the kingdom is recovering four sacred urns stolen from the Crypt of Cahalla. Conan must cross six locations to find them. Armed with a sword that reaches about six pixels ahead of him, he sets off.
• Developed by Eastridge Technology. Published by Mindscape.
• Here's the origin story the box doesn't mention: this game is not a Conan game. It is a lightly reskinned port of a 1989 British home computer title called Myth: History in the Making, developed for the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Amstrad CPC. In Myth, the protagonist is a modern teenager who falls through a hole in time and has to fight his way through Greek, Norse, and Egyptian mythology to get home. Mindscape acquired the NES rights and slapped the Conan license on top.
• Conan the Barbarian is one of the great pulp properties. Robert Howard created him for Weird Tales magazine in 1932 — a bronze-skinned Cimmerian warrior navigating a world of sorcerers, thieves, monsters, and corrupt kings that was simultaneously trashy and genuinely mythological. Howard committed suicide at 30 in 1936, got revived by Marvel Comics in 1970, and exploded globally with the 1982 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. By 1991, Conan was a household name And the game attached to that name is a ported British puzzle-platformer where you press down to jump

II. What Makes It Notable (For Better or Worse)

• Pressing down to jump broken
• This is where we start, because it's the fact that defines the entire experience. On the NES controller, jumping is conventionally mapped to A or B. In Conan: The Mysteries of Time, jumping is executed by pressing down on the D-pad. This is not a preference setting. It is not an option. It is the only way to jump
• The mismatch between intent and input is constant and punishing
• The combat range broken
• Conan's default weapon is a sword with a reach so short that landing a hit requires standing nearly inside the enemy's sprite. The manual describes the available arsenal as including short-range punches, sword strikes, and jump kicks. In practice, the sword is stingy, the punch is shorter than the sword, and the jump kick requires an input timing so precise that most players execute it either too early or not at all.
• The hidden weapon system mixed
• Each level contains a specific weapon hidden somewhere in the environment — not telegraphed, not marked, not hinted at in the game itself. The instruction manual provides cryptic clues about what the weapons are and their general significance, but their locations are yours to find.
• What’s true
• Many bosses require a specific weapon or item to be realistically defeated
• Using the wrong weapon can make a boss:
  • Take little to no damage
  • Become practically unbeatable before you die
• “We’re not technically stopping you… but good luck trying.”
• Walk up to the level's final enemy with only your starting gear and nothing happens — no damage registers, the encounter doesn't resolve
• The mechanic isn't broken in concept. The execution is broken because the game doesn't give you enough visual information to work with
• The mid-air hit stun broken
• When Conan is struck by an enemy while in the air, he stops moving horizontally and drops straight down. In levels built over bottomless pits — which most of them are — this is an instant death. You can be hit mid-jump by an enemy you had already cleared visually and fall into the void with no recovery opportunity. Reviewers specifically called this out as the primary reason the game is functionally impossible to progress past the early stages without prior knowledge of every enemy placement. It isn't difficulty from challenge. It's difficulty from the interaction of a bad control scheme and an unforgiving physics response to a common scenario
• The six levels context
• Six locations, all named from the Hyborian (fictional prehistoric era set in a reimagined Europe and North Africa) geography Howard built across his stories. The names are right — Zamboula, Brythunia, Asgard and Vanaheim — but the levels themselves bear no particular relationship to the places they're named after. The Forests of Asgard do not feel like a Norse forest. The Tombs of Zamboula do not feel like Howard's desert kingdom of poisoners and cannibals.

III. Pop Culture, Legacy & Connections

• Conan as a property: Marvel Comics launched a Conan title in 1970 with writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith, which ran until 1993 and introduced the character to an entirely new generation. The 1982 film with Schwarzenegger in the role that made him a movie star, James Earl Jones as the villain.
• The critical reception: Every professional review of this game converges on the same conclusion from different angles. One critic called it one of the worst NES titles ever made. Another described it as platforming at its worst. GamePro, always more generous than most, gave it a perfect score for challenge — which is technically accurate, since the game is extraordinarily difficult, but for entirely the wrong reasons. Difficulty earned through unfair controls and hidden progression requirements is not a virtue. The critical consensus places this game in the tier reserved for titles where the license actively damages the property it carries

IV. Closing Bits

• The question to leave listeners with: Conan is one of pulp fiction's great characters —He's been painted by Frazetta, played by Schwarzenegger, and at some point somebody looked at a budget C64 game about a time-traveling teenager and said, "you know what this could be Conan too"
• Is there a version of a Conan NES game that could have been good — something built from scratch that understood the character and the platform? Or was the era's business model designed to guarantee exactly what we got?
• Tease next episode

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

00:00 Conan, the mysteries of time, in an age undreamed of, where barbarous kingdoms battle for survival in a savage and unforgiving land, you stand alone.

00:26 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. You know, that was a pretty- And I'm Conan! Yeah. Well, I forgot Conan was on this. There's a pretty heavy plot drop there at the top of the episode. Oh, wait till you read the manual.

00:47 Right. Wait till you read the manual is right, because if you play the game, there's no plot. Yeah. The game literally just, as soon as you hit start, it just drops you right into the game. And then when you finish a stage, it just automatically transports you right to the start of the next stage. There is nothing in between anything in terms of story. But yeah, when you go to that manual, I think it's seven pages of story. Yeah. And it starts out like the beginning of a novel. It's like a chill of wind ran through your hair as you step out. It starts strong. Yeah.

01:21 I didn't read much further than that. But I will say my biggest complaint about the manual is that this game, well, I'm sure we'll get into it, but you need a lot of- there's a lot of information you need. There's a lot of questions I had while playing this game, but this game starts and you got like the regular like warning and the Nintendo seal of quality. And then you've got a blank page and then you've got nine pages of dense story. And then you've got like a page and a half of like controls and instructions that I feel like do not give me all the information I need. And that's it.

01:53 Yeah. It's like, okay, maybe we could have cut back the story and the blank page a little bit to give me a little more information on how to play. Okay. Well, I mean, when the page is intentionally left blank, if they, if they don't do that, they get arrested. Just to note that. I forgot about that.

02:11 So basically it starts out with, you know, kind of strong prose for a video game manual. And then it just sort of devolves into telling you everything that you're going to do, which I think is like a necessary ingredient for every great story. I need an old man to just sort of like expose the entire story to me before I experience it. Well, do you think maybe you're supposed to play the stage and then go back to the manual and read the paragraph and then go to the next stage? No, because it doesn't say like, please wait to read this.

02:49 It's like a choose your own adventure book. And the story overall is just... Get the urns. Conan's... Yeah. Conan seeking the throne and a mysterious old man named Pneumonios, I think is how I'm going to pronounce that. Pneumonios. He materializes out of Conan's campfire, I guess, as you do back then. And he tells him that the key to the kingdom is recovering the four sacred urns.

03:16 And it's just like, maybe the game was better off without a plot. Like maybe it was better off when I was just jumping, time hopping around and fighting what appeared to be, to me at least, like not even a cohesive time period. Like there was Romans and then there's Vikings and then there's like you're in hell at the start of the game, like with skeletons. I'm not entirely... Like how... Are any of us like familiar with Conan?

03:43 Conan? O'Brien? Conan? Like all I know is that it's like sword and sandals, quote unquote, and that it's just sort of like kind of a, like a sexier, grim, dark fantasy world than usual. I don't really know much else. Well, I think that's a, I mean, I'm not saying I'm a fan or anything, but I think that is good to ground yourself in is that this doesn't take place in any, you know, it's a made up world, which I don't think I have the name of that world in front of me. I thought I did actually in my notes somewhere. So it'll come up. Conan. But yeah, you know, yeah, it's got, it's got sorcerers, thieves, monsters, you know, it's, it, but it's pulpy. So it's like simultaneously trashy and mythological at the same time.

04:31 And Conan originally was a, from a pulp magazine in like the thirties, the author like quickly committed suicide after, like shortly after writing this story. That's not funny. I don't know. I think the way you're just saying it. You're making me like nervous. Yeah. Like he, you know, he wrote this and then immediately did that. Sorry. It's not funny. It was so, yeah, he was just so embarrassed by it, but no, uh, it, it got a revival.

04:57 And the reason, you know, why I think this game is made is it, it mostly got revived through Marvel comics in the 1970s. And then in 82, the film starring, uh, Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was like still new to movies like that. So that was a great role for him to play into, but also like people were like, holy shit. You know, they weren't really like exposed to this guy a lot before this. So he kind of like owned that Conan role. So like by, by the time of the release of the game, like it is kind of a household name. There's, there's, there's a lot of media attached to it outside of just the, the original Pulp Fiction, not the Tarantino. Yeah. We got it. Yeah. Good, good, good.

05:39 But you know, now here's the origin story that you're not going to find on the, on the back of the box. This game is not a Conan game. It is a lightly like lightly. I mean, like it is basically just a re-skinned port of, um, a, uh, British home computer title, uh, called myth history in the making.

06:00 And that went out on, um, computers like the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. And it's a completely different thing where in myth, the protagonist is a teenager who, uh, is in modern times falls through a, uh, a wormhole and has to fight his way through different time periods, Greek, Norse, Egyptian mythology. You see where it's coming from. So it's like, you can't just say that Conan's going to fight Romans. Like that's not how any of this works. Like you have to, uh, you have to agree to his world. And I feel like that's why the manual is trying to do so much makeup on the, like, you know, oh, let's make sure we get all that, um, you know, all that franchise stuff in there and all like that world building, because it's not in the game.

06:48 But that also makes me wonder, and I guess I wouldn't have this problem if I knew anything about Conan, but it like, did they just make that shit up too? Like, is that even Conan stuff? All these names of kingdoms that they mentioned? It's a great question. Let's find out if Aquilonia is a real, and it is, it is the, it is the primary fictional kingdom. Okay. In, uh, in the Conan the Barbarian stories. I will grant them that. Okay. And it's, it's, uh, the, the, not the world, but the nation is Hyborian, the Hyborian nations. Okay. Wait, so then what's, then what's Aquilonia again? Aquilonia is the kingdom. And it's, that's not the nation.

07:29 What's that? They say the Nemodian sky. The Nemodian sky. Well, wait, I thought Nemodian was the guy who appeared in the campfire. Was it? It says the Nemodian sky had turned black an hour before. Ooh. What page are you on? One. The second sentence. It's the second sentence of the. So Nemodian has to be the earth then, right? Okay. So Nemodian is the planet. Yeah. And the nation is not the kingdom. And the, is the kingdom inside the nation or is the nation a part of the kingdom?

08:02 Huh? Now wait, now, Nemedia, uh, is another, uh, kingdom. It's a, so there's, so there's the kingdom of the media and then there's the kingdom of Aquilonia. And it's like, the first two sentences are a chill rushed through the Sumerian's hair. The Nemidian sky had turned black. There's right away to like two words that I'm not familiar with. I'm sure people love us finding this stuff out on the fly, but, uh, I'm trying to, I'm literally trying to like zoom out. Like I need like a Conan map and I just need to figure out. And it's like very hard to zoom out beyond the kingdoms. I don't know why.

08:38 Hyboria. Okay. That's just. Right. That's like the, the, the setting, right? The Hyborian, like. Oh, I see. Okay. So Aquilonia is like, it's like, it's California and, and then there's Zingara, which is which it's like New Mexico.

08:55 I'm telling you right now on the wiki, there is an impossible amount of nations, uh, like that, that belong to this. Like I didn't realize how much world building there was. I thought it was all just desert to be honest.

09:09 See, I I'm seeing, this is AI overview from Reddit though, but, uh, Conan, the barbarian takes place in the Hyborian age, a fictional prehistoric era of earth. What? Okay. Well that's doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I don't, you know, sure. It takes place on earth, but everything is completely made up. Like all different. Is it like middle earth? Is this just like early earth? Yeah. It seems like it's a, it's, it takes place occurring between the sinking of Atlantis and the rise of known. Oh, that is important. Yeah. You know what? You are right. It, the, the, the, the Atlantis thing is, is important in Conan lore.

09:46 Okay. Well, back to the game. Uh-huh. There's no better way to talk about this game than to start with that. Uh, there are two jumps. There is, there is jump straight up in the air, which is performed by, uh, not the A button, not the B button. It's the up button on the D pad, something that we are known not to love, but we will accept. I actually always thought that it couldn't get worse than that.

10:16 I'm an up is jump apologist, so I've never really had an issue with it, so. Right, right, right. We're going to accept it because they have also decided that in this world, uh, of the Hyborian age, down is also jump and it is the, it is a longer jump. It is like a, a leap, a leaping jump. So this way you cover a lot of ground and so realistically you find yourself pressing down to jump in this game more than you do up to jump and I just don't, I don't get it. Uh, never, like you could have just made the leaping jump up into the right, right? Like you could have just made it a, uh, like a, a diagonal, uh, on the D pad down to jump as Sean just said is completely unforgivable and is just there to fuck with the player.

11:02 Cause there is a way to also, like there's also a third jump. You can also like kind of press up into the right at the same time and kind of do a less, a less, uh, uh, flourishing, uh, forward jump. It's just like you would never, you only do that accidentally. Right. Um, well, all right, I'm going to have maybe the hottest take here and I'm prepared to, uh, to, to be disagreed with heavily, but I felt better using down to jump than I did up to jump. Like you said that should be more time. I don't, I don't even understand how that's true. I'll, I'll tell you how.

11:40 I've up to jump felt weird. It felt like stiff or something down to jump felt like a different mechanic. I'm not saying it felt good, but it felt like, like you're doing some kind of like spring action. Like you, you, you pull down and then release to jump. And that does, that didn't feel that weird. I mean, it felt weird to me, but it didn't feel as bad. It felt more comfortable to me than up to jump. And maybe because this is a different jump and that pushes you forward as well.

12:06 But like, yeah, it didn't feel that like at first I was like, what the heck? But like, I was like, okay, I'd still rather do this than up to jump. I know. But that's, that's where I stand. I kind of get what you're saying, but, but, but this is like, if this were like a physics based, like Octodad thing, like. I'm not saying it makes sense for the game. I'm just saying it felt better for me to do than up to jump.

12:32 Okay. I'm, I am not claiming to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I had to remind myself that down was jump at almost every time I wanted to use it. Like, like anytime I needed it, I had to be like, oh, right. I have to press that down button on the deep. Like it wasn't, it was, it, I've been taught for so long, everything against down is jump that it's like, you had to forget it was in your arsenal, but you have to use it a lot.

12:58 Specifically in that first stage to cover the kind of ground needed to get between platforms. So the game is also telling you like, you know, get used to it. Like not even like, oh, you know, there's this other way to jump and it's the down button. It's like, no, use it a lot. We're going to make you do, we're going to make you do it. And so there is no, uh, there's no way around that. And it is the kind of thing that made me like go to the manual. That's what started my look to the manual was like, is that true?

13:27 Down to jump. And it, and it does, it says even, it says it, but it words it worse in the manual up is jump straight up and down is jump in the direction you are facing. Like, yeah, I don't, I don't know if that's a great description of what's happening with either jump. Now I, I, here's my hot take. I think that having the, the jump button also be like, you have to hold down a button, like you put, hold down attack and then press down. And that's how you kneel slash pick up items.

14:07 So it is now doing that. That same direction is now doing two very different things. Um, with a very strange modifier. Uh, I think that that's like, it's almost like they're fucking with us at this point. Yeah. Sean, uh, you just reminded me of the second time I went into the manual, which was to how the hell do I pick up this weapon? Uh, in, in every stage, there are hidden weapons, uh, somewhere in the environment. Uh, it's not, it's not really marked, not hinted at, but they're not impossible to find. Like, uh, we were talking about the hidden eggs in adventure Island two last week. Um, there, there are some cryptic clues in the manual, but what I, what I noticed was when I found the sword, which I think is like purposely made to be found.

14:52 Um, I, all of a sudden I was like pressing a, I was pressing B, I was pressing down, nothing was working. And then the manual says you have to press button a plus down, but down as you'll recall is a jump. So you have to be holding the a button first and then go down in order to pick up the object. Like that is where down to jump is wrong, Joe. And now they're mapping it to something else as well. Well, yeah. And that's the same reason up to jump is wrong. You know what I mean? Like just, just don't make either of those jump, but like, is it me or is there, is there any reason that you would not pick up this weapon?

15:31 No, there is no reason for you not to do that. You keep the weapons. Yeah. You always keep the weapons. As soon as you, you don't even have to waste a button or combination, weird combination of buttons on it. Just if I bump into the weapon, I've picked it up. But we're also like, if we're going to use that actual sound logic, then why are there two different kinds of attacks? If both of them hit the same enemies, basically. I know the flying enemies, I feel like you get hit more with like the B attack than the A attack. But let's just set that aside because it doesn't actually matter. And you're just going to button mash one way or the other.

16:10 Can't one of those fucking buttons be jump? Just have one attack. Right. I completely agree. And I will pretend to have had any concept of what was actually happening while I was fighting. I would just see. You were doing a slap fight. I would just hear sound effects and see the enemies die or me die. You were just slap fighting the enemies. Yeah. Like you're constantly just like poking each other and then eventually they die. And it's like, I'm sure I took some damage. Yeah. Oh, you did. During that encounter. Yeah. You probably took a lot more than you thought you did.

16:37 Yeah. That's the worst part, right? Also, you know, this is not the worst thing about this game, but the HUD is kind of, I mean, it's not hidden. It's literally right there in the corner, but it's almost like it's a debug afterthought. But they're like, oh, how do we keep track of, oh, we'll just like have this zero stylistic choice. No graphical design elements in it. Nothing even to represent what the numbers could mean. Right. No, you have two. They put numbers there. You have two and that's it. You have two and then a bunch of lines. Don't you have other numbers above those lines? Yeah. Who knows what that means? Yeah. I don't know. Are those your points? Yeah. It's probably points. Those must be your points. Yeah. Or your power line.

17:27 Yeah. But I agree. That is crazy that it is actually like, it's a cutout. Like the game is leaking and now we're just seeing like some numbers through the screen and I feel like Conan and everybody else can see them as well. Like if they just look up, they'd be like, huh. It's like the full moon. Right. Something's going on there. Bye-bye.

18:49 Is there a projectile weapon in this game where combat suddenly feels not even just good but different or unique? Or is it always just like, I hit you a bunch of times, you hit me a bunch of times, and we walk away from each other, one of us more scathe than the other? I didn't even understand what was happening in combat.

19:10 No. Yeah. I mean, it's chaos. It's absolute chaos. And I think part of it is just because the feedback is... It's not that it's not there. Because they do have sound effects and animations for hits, but they only happen every once in a while. Like, sometimes you'll be fighting a skeleton, and you'll see that, like, oh, you actually chopped his head off. And, like, that's cool. Or that there's a little bit of a recoil, and they don't attack you for a second. But then there's a bunch of times where that just doesn't happen. And the little hit sound effect doesn't play at all, but they die anyway. And so it just... You feel very removed from whatever's happening.

20:01 And then you just... You don't... There's no feedback for you getting hit either than... Other than your health meter melting to the right. So, it's very strange. It's very disorienting. I'm not a fan that Conan doesn't have a face either. That's a little disturbing. I think he needs bigger muscles. He definitely needs to look a little bigger, right? He probably looks exactly like that teenage boy in the Commodore 64 game. They probably didn't even change that much for him. Yeah, I think his bicep's a little bigger, but that's not enough.

20:38 I don't think any human gets a face in this game now that I think about it. Yeah, even like... Oh, okay, wait a minute. There's a... I just saw this happen. There's like a guy... I'm on that like green stage with like the tree. It's like a forest. The green stage. I know what you're talking about. Didn't get there. There's a guy who comes at you. He's kind of bigger. He does not have a face. But when you kill him, he falls to his side and then has a very distinct looking face. Looks like Mr. Ben. Yeah. It's Rowan Atkinson.

21:08 He actually... And when he goes on his side, he looks like he's in like the fetal position either crying or sleeping. Yeah. Like you hit him enough that he's like... Wow, you found that guy really quick. Yeah, he's just... You found the green stage in that guy. That's how good we are, Joe. We're in sync. No. There's just something about him that is... That's just weird that like he chose to like fall asleep. Like, you know, I'm just gonna stop fighting. I'm just gonna go like this and do a ball. You can't hurt me anymore. Yeah. Yeah, that is what it looks like. He's like, I'm not playing anymore. Right, right. Now, the other thing that we were talking about that affects the combat is all these hidden weapons that you have to find.

21:45 And there is no way to like... The start button doesn't do anything, right? The start button is not pause. I don't think so. I think select just brings you to a menu which ostensibly pauses. Right, which is technically the pause, but is really more of the weapon select screen. But the start button doesn't do anything. I'm looking at the manual now. And thankfully, start says starts the game. That's all it's used for. So even start could have been the jump button. It could have been.

22:08 Mike, you did say that you wanted to talk about finding weapons. But I think that's part of a larger thing here, which is just like, what kind of game this actually is? Like, we've been getting into some details.

22:23 But this is actually a puzzle game? It is. There are definitely... And add that too. Puzzles that might... They might sound interesting when we talk about them. Yes. But you need to understand that your ears deceive you. Right. I think that's what I'm getting at too. Is that there are some interesting things in this game that... I'll take the second stage here when you're in the desert. There is this woman who's calling you over.

22:59 And if you pass her rather than kill her, which I think to kill her, you have to hit her 20 times or something like that. It's not 20. But if you pass her... It's more than one, which I guess makes it feel wrong to hit her at all. Yeah. But if you pass her and didn't kill her, she turns into a snake, which basically you automatically die when you pass her. And you might not even know why you died. Right. Exactly. Can you really infer that that's what happened?

23:33 Maybe. Well, I'll be honest, this is where my playthrough ended. I know this is very early, but I died a couple times and I was just like, you know what? I'm just going to watch a video of the rest of this because that is to death. I mean, that was clearly like a troll, right? Like they want you to think this is an innocent person. She's not attacking. And then you just die instantly. I think it's all a troll. So, I mean, I think I would like to explore this woman enemy as well. As well as the thing that happens after that or that you need to do after that. But I want to take a step back to level one. Sure. Which is, yeah, you get the sword. You have to find the sword. It's a random drop.

24:17 And you'd think that like, okay, just an item that you use to fight enemies and go to the right and win the game. No, you have to get the sword to then cut down a skull or like a skeleton. Which, you know, one might think is just a cool little piece of like flavor to the game. That, oh, you can interact with this background element.

24:44 But it's not really that important. There's like a big like Cerberus in front of you that you have to kill. And so you might run over there and start using your newfound sword or maybe like the fireballs that you picked up instead. To shoot at this Cerberus thing or dragon, chimera, whatever it is. And you just realize that it's not doing any damage. You're getting ganged up on by like random goblins and skeletons while you're trying to kill this thing. And it's just not working out.

25:16 Well, what you had to do was you first had to cut down that skeleton. Then go down to the skeleton and then fight a devil. And the devil will give you his little pitchfork. And that pitchfork is not a melee weapon. That is a single use ranged weapon that you have to fire at the dragon, chimera, Cerberus thing. And then it disappears. It's a one hit kill. And then you can keep going. And then the level goes on for way longer than you think after you like beat whatever like mini boss or whatever obstacle it is. And then you move on. To this like ancient Greek desert thing. Right. Which is a worse puzzle. Because it's not even.

26:05 It's not telling you like, oh, you don't have the right weapon. Like go find the right weapon. And it turns out to be this one time use pitchfork. Right. Like at least I think the reason why I went for the woman in the second level is because she's like telling you she's waving you on. So like just with her. She's just like kind of motioning with her hand. So you could assume that she's like telling you to come to her or maybe keep going, like go past her. Come hither. Yeah, exactly. You could maybe infer that like, okay, I shouldn't pass her or I should try to interact with her or something. So there's something a little more there. And I agree with you.

26:45 I'll say Cerberus. The Cerberus thing is just like it's such a it's such a chain of things that have to happen that it's kind of incredible that the game expects you to do that with zero. No, just even with zero, like walking you through even like, you know, like find first even just finding the sword. Like, again, it is it is a hidden object. It's not like, oh, get down here and claim the sword because you naturally go to this platform. You have to find that first just to be able to poke that skeleton. And like, I don't know, I guess like interesting. But but at the same time, like I think you're you you told a great story and in game it doesn't play fun at all. It just feels like you read a game fact.

27:30 And yeah, I think that like we are we are really, really generously using the word puzzle for both of these things. I think it literally is just like it's just a trial and error. It's just like get lucky. You know, there's there's no there's no information that makes you think, oh, what if I did this or like I have to solve this? It's like just try everything you possibly can, including this thing that's a one time use object that you could maybe find. Like it's just it's just random. And there's no like, you know, maybe if you were developing the game, you might be thinking, oh, yeah, this goes here and this goes there. And you're like, OK, that's how like you forgot to give any of the information to make it solvable by a player.

28:10 And I think, you know, again, this is you would have to just bang your head against the wall for long enough to solve it because they don't give you any kind of hint. There are hints in the manual, but they are hints in the most nebulous way.

28:25 And if I played this game like I play most games on this podcast, which is I don't go to an FAQ because then I'm just I'm basically holding somebody's hand that did play the game. Then I would have stopped here like I would have stopped dying in front of the Cerberus thing over and over and being like, this is what I'm going to use to talk about the video game. But I was so befuddled by this that I had to look up what you're supposed to do. And then I did it. And it's just every level is like this.

29:03 It's it's it's just no feedback. Solve this random puzzle that you have to bang your head against the wall if you're an actual if you're a kid when this game came out. It's wild.

29:16 Yeah, and I don't like that, you know, to Joe's point about shouldn't you just automatically pick up these items like the the things that are useful in a stage are are not even like things that you acquire like earlier on in that stage and think of like, oh, how should I use this? It's like the the third stage is against Medusa and the second stage is where you get the mirror. So if you don't have the mirror, that's going to be a huge problem against Medusa because you're supposed to use that mirror to fire her lasers, which I didn't know she had that ability.

29:51 But you fire these lasers back at her and that makes it this way you can grab her head and then you take her head to the Hydra fight and you use that because think about like you're not gonna be able to attack the Hydra with your sword. I guess you could try. I don't even know if it would take the damage, but you need the the high the Medusa head in order to shoot the projectile to attack each of the three Hydra heads.

30:17 See, I this is where I stopped. I stopped at Medusa because I OK, before we even get here, I need I also need to just explain this this shield mirror shield, which I know is a thing from actual mythology. But there's also like, yes, there's mythology, but then there's also just like video game expectations and grammar. The thing that you have to interact with to grab to get this item is a background element. Like it is very clearly part of like set dressing or in any other video game. It would be like if you it would be like trying to jump on top of a mountain that has a face written on it in a in a Mario game. It'd be like trying to interact with that.

31:15 And you have to basically attack this this sculpture or statue of a guy holding a shield. However, many times it took me a few hits. I've seen it take more hits in Let's Plays like more than you would think because there's no feedback again. And then eventually the whole thing falls down and then you get this shield like I don't know how you're supposed to get that. I don't even think if I rent if I played this game all weekend, I would just again bang my head against the wall in the Medusa level, not knowing that you had to interact with some random background element for however long to it's crazy.

31:59 Yeah, it is like such a shame that it all is kind of like this because like the aesthetic design of these levels make me like want them to be so good. You know, like I want this to be so fun. There are some really cool backgrounds and aesthetics and like just the I mean, the one level looks really cool until you have a seizure when you're on that boat and there's lightning striking twice a second. Yeah, but like otherwise, it's pretty cool looking and there's like, you know, the castle level where there's like draw bridges.

32:28 That's like a dragon's mouth that's opening and closing like a lot of thought went into these things. And it's just a shame that they all like just induce pure frustration rather than like the kind of coolness that should go along with them. And I think it's also one of those things where it's compoundingly frustrating where, you know, it's one thing for the combat to suck. It's one thing for the down button to be mapped to jump. It's another thing for like the whole game to just be a reskin of a different game that very has very little to do with the actual Conan franchise. And then you add in all these like just mindfuck puzzles and it's like, OK, what what did this game want to be?

33:09 And it sounds like it just did it. It wanted to be anything but a Conan game because I'm sorry, but like shouldn't a Conan the Barbarian game be like a Contra like without guns? Like shouldn't Conan just be like steamrolling people and like almost like a beat them up and you're just going through with like crazy awesome melee combat. And instead, like this game, he just feels stiff. Yeah, it's almost like it's like a pitfall like in certain points. And yeah, the whole like canned animation thing rubs me the wrong way with the actions you're supposed to undertake in combat.

33:51 Yeah, I'm just going to repeat myself if I go on. Yeah, I understand. Well, I thought for a while like it kept making me think it was trying to be like somehow a little bit like Prince of Persia. I could see that. Yeah, like it was something about I think something about that forward jump. It has like an almost like a set distance that it is. So like which is very Prince of Persia. Yeah, but like it didn't feel like it was pulling it off. I guess I meant Prince of Persia than pitfall. Well, no, because I can see the pitfall thing, too, though, because Prince of Persia is a very like deliberate platformer.

34:27 Whereas like this, this is like there's a heavy emphasis on the action part of it all, too, at the same time. And so you can't be as careful as you might like, you know, if you take a jump and get hit by an enemy, you just immediately you're just stunned. You just you stop your jump and that's not that's the way they're taking a jump or or like going a couple of times. I would jump and I landed right in like a one pixel long pit. Yeah. And then I would fall straight down. There'd be a platform like one inch to the left of me, but I can't move at all. I just have to watch myself like slowly fall straight down. I'm like, yeah, maybe that's more realistic, but like it does not feel like other video games. It feels like I'm just like helpless.

35:10 Now, every professional review of this game seems to reach the same conclusion, which is that one critic called it the worst NES title ever made. Another described it as platforming at its worst. And GamePro, who in the past has given some questionable scores on these NES games that we look back on, it gave it a perfect score for challenge, which I mean, I guess like technically, right? It is pretty damn difficult.

35:43 Like a challenge of any kind, then sure. Yeah, it's a challenge. Right. But should that really like give it like if that gets a five out of five and everything else is also getting out of fives and so that gets it like five out of 20 just on challenge alone? Is that the right way to score something? Yeah, that's more of a question of like there's something wrong with your rating system.

36:02 Right. If you're giving points that could cumulatively make something sound better than it is. And then I think like when we just look at like Conan as a property, I know we're all like underexposed to it and everything. But certainly like the 80s and 90s seem to be like peak Conan stuff. And it doesn't seem like there's anything happening right now for the character, certainly that I'm aware of.

36:28 I know there is a like weird survival game that has some audience that gets advertised to me on Steam once in a while. But other than that, I have no exposure to Conan. Well, that's pretty cool. Do you play just like in that universe that we can't figure out the name of the planet? Or do you play as Conan? I have no idea. As far as I know, it's like Rust or I don't know.

37:00 PUBG? I can't tell. Yeah. It looks like Conan comics might still be in the works here, just not through Marvel. It's now through Titan. So Marvel had a long run from the 70s all the way until 1993. And then it looks like you got a second revival with Dark Horse for like 50 issues or whatever. And now is with Titan. I'm not familiar with Titan, the publisher. So I have to check out what else they do. But I guess he won't be in the MCU then. No, they won't be in the game.

37:35 Avengers 2. Oh, Titan does the Simpsons comics too. I should have known that. Never mind. Fake fan. And I think we should all know that when you start talking about Simpsons comics and which, if the cross button is the cross button or the X button, that the episode's probably over and it's time for the Essential Games List.

37:58 Joe. I think the most praise I was going to give this game, I've already given it, which is that the aesthetics of the levels looked like they could have been promising. So if that's the highest praise I can give it, I mean, like, it's a frustrating experience. I even just just from the first like the first moment of trying to control this character. It's frustrating. I don't know what my goal is because I thought there was like something else I had to do before I fought that chimera thing or whatever. It's just it's a mess. It doesn't feel good to fight. It doesn't feel good to move.

38:31 I'm going to say certainly not essential. Sean. Yeah, I'm not sure which publications at the time were saying those things, but I'm going to agree that like this might be one of the worst video games I've ever played. Like it and part of it is because it's so uneven. Like I do like the visual style to an extent. Like we were talking about like the lighting and some of the backgrounds look cool and like the music isn't bad and like the even like the ideas for some of these puzzles are OK.

39:09 But playing everything that we've said about how you actually interact with this game feels terrible. And so, yeah, I think this is this is one of the worst games on the system. Yes, and it's kind of like I feel like I could have been a lot harsher if we didn't just play Advanced Dungeons and Dragons also this year, which is like, in my opinion, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons might be even worse than Conan. But they're definitely like they're they're competing for the spot and they are definitely bottom of the barrel NES games.

39:44 We talked about some some of the deeper levels in this game. I don't want to lead anyone on and think that they should try to get there like I did not get there. This is like me using like emulator cheat codes. This way I can continue to progress to at least have stuff to talk about. This game is frustratingly hard, terrible to control.

40:05 And, you know, even if you are a fan of Conan the Barbarian, I would still recommend to absolutely do not check this out because they it's just a reskin of a different game. It has very little to do with Conan. So read the manual, I suppose, if you're a fan of the of the Pulp Fiction stories, because at least there's something there. At least they went for it in the manual because they didn't go for it at all in this game. Thankfully, next week, it looks like we will be playing Double Dragon 3.

40:36 And we we like the Double Dragon series. So it doesn't look like we'll have another Conan. I mean, maybe Double Dragon will take us there. Maybe they will completely fuck it up. But I'm looking forward to that one because games like Conan and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons so close to each other in 1991 make me worried that we're going to get a lot more of these as the year continues. Say something, Joe. Something, Joe. Something, Joe.