Roller Games. Stop the most barbaric crime wave on ball bearings. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. And roller games for the uninformed, which would have included myself. I don't know about you, Sean. Were you informed about this before? This is just an amazing...
Amazing discovery I think we've made here. Okay, great. Because I think everybody who was alive for it probably buried it in their subconscious as well. So we're all going to awaken and remind ourselves that roller game. was an actual television sport that debuted in 1989. Sport entertainment. Well, yeah, don't bury the lead. It was a televised sport with a more theatrical... on roller derby uh there was a
a figure eight track and modified rules. And there were, uh, teams, uh, the T birds, the violators, the maniacs, uh, a team just called bad attitude. That's not like, it's not really. vibe uh the rockers and Again, should have been like the hot flashes, but here we are. The show lasted one season due to... Not that that doesn't surprise anybody, but more importantly, as Sean said, this was sports entertainment. Sean, what is sports entertainment? I mean, I feel like our show has a big crossover.
with wrestling fans. I know you like wrestling. What are you saying about wrestling right now? I like stories about wrestling. I don't particularly like wrestling. What are you implying about wrestling right now? Nothing. Good. It's just sports entertainment, but I think that if I was introduced to sports entertainment in this fact
This is my new favorite TV show. This isn't about the video game anymore, Mike. Right, yeah. This is actually now a Roller Games podcast. Going forward, we're going to watch every episode and review it, and we're going to be like Dave Metzer and give... about each roller derby team's matches. I don't know if you know that Sean, but there's a guy who reviews like every single.
wrestling and has been doing so for like 40 years and he gives him a score out of five and it's just like it's just like it's something that like either you know that it's done and you're like a religious follower of it or you know that it's being done and you're like why is somebody doing this like i can form my own opinion on what i thought I mean, I think you kind of do something like that, but I'm not going to throw you under the bus.
Well, I do something like that for almost anything, but it's always, keep in mind, not something that I share mostly with other people. I guess you could argue the essential games list. We're not giving a score, right? We're not. At the end of the episode, should we give a score? A binary opinion.
At the end of the episode? We'll just give like a score? Out of a thousand? Out of whatever you want. Out of a thousand seems fair. You can do out of a thousand. I'll do out of something else. Okay, cool. Yeah, that way they'll know. You know, like, oh, that's the Sean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's funny is as I was looking up stuff about roller games, obviously I start with the video game because I don't think it's basic.
Then I find out it's based on this sport, and I'm just reading about the sport, and this caught my eye. Bill Griffith Sr. So I'm looking at the list of the teams and their managers, and Bill Griffith Jr. is the manager of the Los Angeles T-Birds. And I say, wait a minute. That sounds like a conflict of interest. And all of that. All of those fears were put to rest when I finally just said, well, I just need to see how this show even went down.
And man, am I glad that we have the Griffiths to save us from the likes of the violators led by the evil skull. Mr. Mean. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
This is so much. This is peak 80s. I know that there's also American Gladiator to think about the shows like this, but when I turned this TV show on... i it was just like you are immersed in it like i thought that if i looked out my window Like I would see like Marlboro ads everywhere and just every every Person walking down the sidewalk to have some really like hair sprayed out Like feathered shit going on like I thought I was there like this is so good
And you mentioned wrestling as another form of sports entertainment, and you just brought up American Gladiator. Those two, and specifically wrestling, like wrestling will have, you know, funny characters, right? either a quirky personality to them or kind of a a gimmick about them, but for the most part, like the really strong macho guy. is usually the one fighting the other really strong macho guy for the world championship, the thing that has it all on.
That is not true in roller games, and I knew that the second I saw the teams come out. These people, first off, there are people on the team that are like 70 years old. Those are the OGs. Those are the OGs. Apparently, roller games is also a thing. those people would have had to been playing in the thirties. But no, I just mean like they don't look the most at, they don't look like they got the cream of the. Yeah, just to keep going on the show, this looks like a sport that...
they just pulled people off the street to play. Like it, I think regardless of whether you follow hockey or football or soccer, like you can, there's like an, There's a subconscious like, oh wow, these people... make the bodily movements that they're doing look good and measured and graceful in some capacity. Like it looks like they are executing something athletically.
That doesn't it is not what's happening here when you watch these people Is this even roller derby like I've never seen roller derby, but this is some sort of offshoot of roller derby. It's so funny Yeah, this is definitely different than roller derby because remember roller derby. The real stuff doesn't traditionally have a wall of death or an alligator pit. Well, yeah, the alligator pit for sure. Well, you know, I wouldn't be surprised, but actually I did go see.
um a all women's roller derby last time I was up in Buffalo and uh it was it was it was just like spontaneously done like I didn't prepare I didn't buy tickets for it or anything I was just like open space to drink. You were at Riverworks. Riverworks. Yeah. I didn't want to like, you know, I didn't want to like dock. the bar but that's a joke but um you know and i was watching it just like casually and i was like wow this is really exciting
It's kind of weird that they saw roller derby and were like, we need to amp this up. We need to definitely dial everything. Yeah, that was my thought. I thought roller derby was already amped up. Yeah, it's aggressive too. It's very physical. There are like, you know, hip checks and like little tricks you can do to wipe out your opponent and stuff. So it's there. They just felt the need to take everything. to the next level, including the personalities. These are like cartoonish.
levels of acting but yeah but you know it's also like they're just not they're not convincing me the same way that macho man randy savage right who like now is cartoonish by like the wrestlers we have right like he was clear you know, just overdoing everything. But like back then that was like, yeah, I want to be macho man. I still want to be macho man. Well, yeah, I would love to just wake up tomorrow and be macho man. Yeah. Mostly for the Slim Jim endorsement.
But, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, and this is probably true in many sports, but like the cheerleader. look like they are in better shape than everyone on the field. That's true. That's true. And I do like that they all get their themed cheerleaders, even though I think you called one of the teams the Los Angeles T-Birds. I think they're all Los Angeles, by the way. Yeah, I don't know why I did that. I think that was from, that was a Wikipedia lesson.
But I appreciate that they are so themed that, like, even the cheerleaders will, like, get into the fights on the court, the field, the track. Their managers are like... Like a heartless entertainment lawyer and some kind of weird Biker gang, I guess not even just a biker gang leader, but he's a Okay He worships a head in a box
of some long-dead god. Did you see this in the... Yeah, I mean, we're still in the same episode, but I don't know. I wouldn't know the word for that. I guess pagan. Pagan. There we go. But, you know, with all of these... All of these, like, not only are they so hyped up and everything, but it's also like, it's just assumed.
on episode one right of this brand new sport that like you would know the ins and outs and the storylines and the play like they don't do a lot of like Set up I think they're trying to sell that there is more history to this than there is right Like, oh, there's something about, oh, he'll be in the Hall of Fame. Or he's a 19-year vet. Like, has this written...
There's no way that anyone has been playing this sport for 19 years as it is right now. They're making up a world for you to buy into that they would hopefully... This is just me guessing. That they would then hopefully be able to... play off of For many seasons, but we only got the one OK, so and then like, you know, most of the rules still kind of are in relation to roller derby in the sense of. Pass are worth a certain amount of points. Oh, so that's real.
That's real. Yeah. Okay. Cause I was like, how do you even score in this game? Like they kept showing the score. I'm like, where, when did they score? Like, yeah. And you know, I don't know the ins and outs of this particular, like I think. The exciting thing about roller games is it's kind of like, and you know, maybe you didn't have this. like when I was a kid no one ever like sat down and explained the rules to me so like I would watch people watch
basketball or football or whatever. And I would just have to like learn the rules. after watching like game after game and be like, Oh, that's what causes a first down. And I was like, nobody ever like explained to me like, yeah, they got to get 10 yards. Like all of a sudden I'm just like, Oh, it's the first down. Oh, because of the 10 yards. Got it. Like I'm five years old.
And that's kind of like what roller games is like, right? You're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. And you all of a sudden you become an expert. You're just like, I think, okay, aside from the lines that they have to get up to. to score like six points as opposed to two points on the wall of death um it is it is not
it is not cogent with how it explains the rules. Like with something like, basketball or hockey or football it is displayed in a way that you can see most of the action where it's like needed to be seen and you can That that kind of like allows you to form that context and and see like oh that makes sense Whereas this is just like going from action shot to action shot to action shot
At no point are you able to situate yourself. And I don't think that's the point. The point of the show is to just be a spectacle. But... If it were shot like a regular league sport... Yeah, it needs that bird's eye view. Yeah, then maybe, but it doesn't do that. Yeah. Well, the good news is that like every other sport that I... the team with the most points at the end wins. Yes. So that's good. You just have to follow the points. However, if they tie...
Then, unlike most sports, they open up the alligator pit and you go to sudden death. And my favorite thing about the alligator pit isn't even the alligators. It's the alligator handler model. What was his name? Animal? Animal. He's like some Tarzan bodybuilder dude. that they interview and like every interview was just like anger. And even, even like the alligator handlers, like angry, like, I don't know why people don't want the alligators. They belong here just as much as us. What?
So with all of this lore, right, between all the different teams and this whole new way of playing roller. We're getting a sports game, right? Yeah. Right. Wouldn't we just get a faithful translation of this, you know, crazy roller derby game that they've came up with and televised. And now it's going to be you could play it at home, kids, on your NES. I could see the commercial. But it's not that. It's a side-scrolling action platformer featuring the teams.
from the show, but it's completely unrelated to the actual sport other than the fact that, like, they use the... you know the teams and the managers to kind of like tell the bosses or something yeah yeah And then, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't even, I would describe it as like a beat, excuse me, a beat-em-up, almost. Like, you've got the same kind of...
Combo systems at times like I mean you kind of go between that and the standard platforming but always on roller roller skates yeah it's it's like it's the odds and even levels right so the odd levels are the beat-em-ups and then the even levels are like the uh platformer like you know dodge these things and Like the Battletoads.
Hey, how could you talk about that if we haven't done that episode yet? Oh, well... No, I'm teasing. It's fine. No, you're right. Let me get back in the character of someone that's never played Battletoads. I've never seen it done before. There you go. Thank you. And, you know. Since there is a lot of apparently history to roller games and there are feuds between the good teams like the T-Birds and the bad teams like the Violators. Yeah, the baby faces and the heels of roller games.
It would make sense that we could do just a simple plot around that idea, right? Of just like, the violators are up to no good and it's up to the T-Birds to take them down. But instead, the plot revolves around a mysterious alien. aiding the eastern empire teams that's the violators the maniacs and bad attitude for the
Right, right. And they are sabotaging the sport and get a load of this. They have kidnapped Commissioner Bill Griffith. I really wish that there was like a football version of this where like... The underground people have captured Roger Goodell and your party of Pat Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Joe Burrow have to go and... You have to go and save him, but it's like a rhythm game, and you have to get a DDR pad to play him. I say this sincerely. I don't wish ill on anybody.
but like if you're if you're a kid or you're even you sean right it's 2025 i am me sean yep you're you in this scenario And you find out that the whole game revolves around saving Roger Goodell. Are you going to see it through? I mean, no. That was like where I started with the joke. And then I kind of went off the rails. Just like this game? Yeah, no, I think... No, the game was never on the rails.
Yeah, you should have skated on rails. Should have been like a rail shooter with a game skateboarding. Not skateboarding, rollerblading. Skateboarding's next. So you get to choose between the three teams. You get the T-Birds, the Hot Flash, and the Rockers. You get to play as one particular character from each of them. And there's no difference. There's no like, there's no stat boost or whatever. It's just like you're just picking.
What do you think the reason is for that? Right? Like, that's weird. I mean, I could have sworn that hot flash girl was, uh, was fast. She's just great at everything.
does sean that's true that's that was my main character but yeah that's the only character in the game as far as i'm concerned but like i was fighting this this is as far as i got in the game I was fighting a jetpack, not jetpack, a jetski boss, which I think is... level five um you were so close yeah yeah and i just i i hit the jet ski almost every time it jumped over And it just wasn't happening. Like it would not.
finish the fight for me and i have to imagine like oh she seems faster but maybe she also doesn't hit as hard and like i have to play this level as one of the like the rocker or the or the t-bird to do it right like i thought it was just a I thought that was the difference, but maybe I'm completely wrong and that was all placebo. Apparently it's placebo. Uh, I didn't do enough play testing to confirm because again,
If you don't pick the hot flash, what are you doing? But here we are. And you beat it. Apparently, yeah, it's just. It's just that they have different attack animations, which helps, like, sell the difference, right? Like, oh, you know, like, I think, I don't know if this is exclusive to the hot flash, but there's this one move. lock into play when the screen locks into place and the enemies just keep flying out where you can like grab them and start
bashing them with your knee. You hold them by their backs and you bring them into your knee. like four times. That's a, that's a, I, you know, I buy that move. I'm like, Ooh, that's doing some damage. They do that with the other characters too. Okay. But the other animations and like the other punches and stuff, they could do a better job selling. Yeah, I think...
A lot of it too is like what they got the movement, right? I think that they it feels like I'm on so no complaints there but the between like the hit detection and like just because you can only like when you're in the when you're in the more beat-em-up mode you can only punch to the left or the right I know that's like a normal thing with beat-em-ups but it especially with how kind of difficult this game can be too like there's a there's a lot to be desired in how that version of the game
Yeah, and you can also do the jump as well during the beat-em-up stages. Oh, yeah, jump kicks. Yeah, jump kicks and stuff. You know, it's not a huge variety, but also like... I don't know. You're not necessarily overwhelmed by enemies, right? This isn't the kind of game where like the solution. by the game to make things harder is just give you more enemies. It just becomes like, it becomes more.
it becomes trickier to bullshit around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we should talk about the bosses separately, but I guess I'm just, I'm saying like the beat them up stuff. It's not very complex, right? No. It doesn't overstay its welcome at any point. These aren't incredibly long stages. Yeah, this is a short game. Yeah, you just... Again, this isn't praise for it, but it is just kind of like...
You do it. And then thankfully you get to like, you know, you switch it up with the even numbered stages where, you know, essentially you're just avoiding whether it's barrels, flamethrowers, helicopter bombs, like you're just are dodging all these things.
instead and uh that becomes more of like i guess what i wanted to see out of like if we're gonna like leave the sport just a more focus on like rollerblading and like using that to your advantage like i know it sounds weird but i don't really understand like why we're just throwing punches when we could be doing you know like skate at the person and then like toss a leg out and trip them and that would deal damage you know like i guess yeah well you're getting tactics you would use in the game
Yeah, you're getting to like the real core of what's wrong with this game. And it's that it doesn't it should not exist. That the fact that you're like, yeah, if we're going from. The roller derby-esque sport to this. And we don't even really have that much. There was only the one season. There's really not even that much like... star power here um but they're they're selling it as that because that's all it has
to put to tie it to the show is that, Oh, these are the characters. If they did have things that like tied it more into roller rollerblading, like all we get. For that tie-in is the fact that If you actually have a little bit of momentum and you need to build momentum when you're platforming. Or when you're trying to fight somebody like it almost kind of goes away in the fighting sections and it's more so When you're trying to navigate like in the more like platforming areas
But the game doesn't have any real connection to its namesake. Yeah, yeah. But even just anything to spice up. the the video game portion of it too like obviously they have made it now this like fantastical adventure but you know again like
If you're playing as the rockers, right? Like maybe they're, maybe they're a little faster, but they take more damage, but you'd be able to clear stages faster. So you don't have to worry about fighting everybody. Like there's, there's really no, like there's nothing to. differentiate the gameplay other than the forced like this level is this and the next level is something completely different and then we just keep rotating those two ideas uh
There's obviously not a lot to even do with rollerblading here. Forget about roller games, right? But just even like you could be seen with like skate or die, which we're going to do skate or die too. we saw that like you know that had a huge emphasis on like
skateboarding and like the momentum and physics of that and everything. And it wasn't like realistic or anything, but it took into consideration being on a skateboard. I feel like being on these rollerblades doesn't matter. You might as well have just been running.
It's a little slippery, but it's just so inconsequential aside from when it turns into real... frustration in platforming because like you do need to get that momentum it's there it's just not executed well and so do the bosses make up Absolutely not. I don't think so either. Again, it's nice to just not have the bosses just be like, and here's 10 enemies, right?
It's nice to have something to switch it up again. It's just like it doesn't change anything about the combat. It doesn't make you like think outside the box. It is just deal damage now to this larger enemy that. Yeah, and it doesn't even seem like these... If they tied them more into the supposed other teams that are fighting against you, and it felt like...
Like, oh, this is like, is that kind of ostensibly what's happening? Like, are these the managers of the other teams? I believe those are the managers of the other teams, which we might as well say their name.
Skull, Miss Georgia Hayes. Miss Georgia Hayes. And Guru Drew. Guru, yes. I guess they're there, but it doesn't really feel like... there's any thematic connection to them it's just like they're they're also on screen um But I think if we're going to talk about the bosses, I seem to describe my least favorite boss, which is... Um, I, I guess this is miss.
miss what's your face but miss georgia hayes georgia hayes or me i don't know who it is but you are underground or like in a factory and you're just fighting a dude um on this like on a top level of a catwalk Then one level below this catwalk is this purple person who may or may not be Miss Georgia Hayes. Oh, I thought it was, I thought that was Guru Drew. Maybe, or may or may not be Guru Drew. Um, like with a, with like a trident.
Or like a glaive or something. Poking through. And this like. Just the fact that the whole fight. Is this guy jumping at you. And this. This thing poking up at you from below It's probably the most annoying boss of the whole game probably the most annoying part of the whole game
Just because there isn't really much more to the game. How do you think? I do like that you get to give it to him, though, after you clear out the other enemies. That's true. That's true. It would suck if it was just like... Beat my 10 minions while I poke a stick at you through the grates. And then, you know, the ending is the ending. You save the commissioner. Great. Roller games can go on. Yeah. And then you just sort of.
We just rollerblade off into the sunset. Yeah, yeah, right? See you on the next season of roller games. After that, like, SportsCenter knockoff guy says, like, you did it. Are you talking about halftime commentator Wally George? Maybe that's his name. I think so. I think it is. He was probably one of my favorite moments in the actual show, which is like...
It almost felt like it was trying to sell like, oh, this is like a serious sports show. And then I think Miss Georgia Hayes comes on and he just leans into her. You know, I don't want to talk about this show so much, but I'm going to do it. Yeah, that's all right. At the beginning of the episode, there's a song. that's being sung about roller games. Rock, rock, rock and roller games? Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. I never got the impression that that was being performed live.
but then they cut to that guy in the crowd who's singing it like in the leopard print suit. Yeah. Yeah. As if he's singing it with the crowd or whatever, but it's clearly not live. Like he's lip syncing at the very least, but like, what is the audience? at that moment. I think that the audience has been coached.
There's the reactions that these people have the signs that these people carry with with the product episode in the bank yeah uh so i think that they they've all been told like this is like going to a late night show which If you've ever done that, they have very small crowds that are easy to manage. They're easier to say, hey, clap here, please.
Yada, yada. But they're doing this at like a stadium scale or at least the lower bowl of an arena, which is impressive. But I do still think it's this like. This coaching behavior. Yeah. See, the problem is that they didn't... They had to do it in like on like a sound stage, right? They didn't have the ability to take this thing on the road, but it would have been a bigger deal if they would have done like the Monday Night Nitro.
and just put this inside the Mall of America. People are just shopping, and then like, oh yeah, this is going on. That would be great. But they do have a lot of people in attendance for this. No, I know. I think literally they told everybody who works grip and everybody who, you know, they're like, bring your whole family. There's a lot of kids, yeah.
oh man the guy in the leopard print sings another song around halftime too but like that's kind of exhausting to think that there's gonna be oh no wait he sings the whole thing again yeah he looked really exhausted too like but you know what's crazy is like the idea that there's gonna be a halftime show after in the middle of every episode like do you think that like okay so again a little bit of backstory for the show
At the very beginning of the episode, two teams have already been eliminated. We see them come out and be introduced. Just like for the character of the team like I think some of like whether they be the maniac And one is, I think just these people. Oh, the Hot Flash is actually the team that wasn't even, that was already eliminated before the show really started.
Do you think that they were ever, like they actually performed earlier and it'd be like, this has just been cut for time? Or do you think that these are just actors that didn't even learn how to play the game? If I'm shooting roller games, it's expensive. I'm shooting multiple episodes.
Okay. So I think they brought everybody out and then they were just like, okay, cool. That's a wrap on episode one. Everybody get lunch and we're doing episode two right after. These people are not part of a union or anything. They are being worked to death. So you do think that they were never supposed to, there wasn't a game that eliminated them. Sean it's it's scripted right so there's no reason Right. Like they're, they're, they're already coming up with the results, right? It's just.
It's just a matter of like how deep. I wasn't playing with the mask. I was, I was just, I know that it's scripted. No, I know. So I'm saying like, I don't think that they had to be there for that episode to help like build in the story. they're you know they obviously aren't like out for the entire season Okay, okay. You're right. I only watched the first episode, but it was like a two-hour episode. Yeah, these things are long.
And one thing that at least the version I watched on YouTube and the video game have in common. What's that? They both run at 60 FPS. For whatever reason, the episode was in 60 FPS. And I was like, oh, this is great. It looks very good. I mean, it's videotape, so it really doesn't need to be. like locked to anything it's not like they filmed it yeah it's just pretty pretty great that like all nes games run at 60 fps that is good but again it's like you know
It's hard to tell on CRT. Yeah, yeah. And it's also... Not entirely true. I mean, I'm sure it's still running at 60 frames or whatever, but like Gradius, you know, clearly wasn't if you loaded enough. Yeah. The clock, if there isn't any stress on the processor, then it'll run 60 FPS. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, games were just better back then is what...
Do you think we should have games that run at 48 frames per second to kind of get between that 30 and 60 thing? Oh, wow. I forgot about that whole conversation. That was a nuts thing that happened. Yeah. I'm glad it petered out. Yeah. Oh, wow. Very, very smart, Sean. That was an accident. You know what else is very smart? Roller Games also made another video game for the arcades that is a video game version of the sport. Wow, why couldn't we have just gotten that?
I don't know why we... Maybe they just figured, like, eh, the NES is for kids. Let's give them something more, like, exciting. Isn't the whole thing for kids? Maybe not the whole thing. Okay, so was the XFL for kids? You're right. You're right. He hate me. It was very PG-13. Everybody can name one player on the XFL. That's he hate me. Yeah, exactly. I don't know why that.
with everybody, but that's me as well. That's the only XFL player I could name. I think Tommy Maddox was in there too, but that could be Mandela shit. Now, I'm not going to say anything about the Roller Games arcade game because I didn't play it. But I did watch like a pretty extensive long play of it. And the graphics are great first off.
It does this thing where like it still doesn't go for the and rightfully so it doesn't go for like the bird's eye view thing of like seeing the whole track. You just kind of are like locked into the action part where essentially it's.
You're probably playing as just one of these guys on your team, but there are, like, other computer assists. And then there are a bunch of the opposing team. There's four at a time as well. And you're, like, it's moving really fast. Like, I don't know if you're watching. For the arcade game, it has a great sense of speed. It follows the rules of the game. It feels like... it is a complicated sport to grasp but because it still embraces like the beat-em-up style of arcade video
Like the way more interesting thing. This is actually the one where I'm like, wait a minute. Now I actually like joking aside about the fact that we got. totally random uh adventure game from roller games like i kind of wish we did get this on the nes even if it didn't look this good because it still looks like it This is so weird. I just pulled it up. And like it literally is like if you were to boil this down to.
like remove all of the effects yeah yada yada it's it's just like a single screen beat-em-up but the background is just spinning at an insane rate to make it look like. So that's your sense of speed there. Is there any moment where you score? Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, here it is.
Yeah, yeah, okay. But what's funny is, yes, Sean, to your point about that's the only sense of speed, it's like, yeah, it makes it look like the track is turning, but nothing is actually turning. There's no bends in the actual track.
that like affect gameplay you are essentially like on just a different plane than the background yeah it's very i i would like to play this game you can also get into fights in this game with the other uh team like you know like one-on-one like you would in uh hockey or something uh but like it's actual like It's weird to say Street Fighter because Street Fighter 2 didn't come out yet, but it's like that style of fighting game combat. And that's like, wow, that's pretty early for this. Wow.
Okay. Yeah, now we definitely got to play this. Yeah, I got to find out who still has a cabinet for this. Yeah. I know that there's a website for that for pinball machines where you can just type in the pinball machine you want to play and it'll show you. in the united states uh of where those are there should be like something that games that are just like obviously we have meme right we can play whatever we
but you can't really play it the same way as the arcade games. Like for instance, they all had custom controls and yeah, custom. Yeah, exactly. If they even like sometimes like light gun games, right. It's like, yeah, you can play it with like, a wee zapper or with your own like gun but like some of those had like really fancy guns that had like multiple different ways to like use them and stuff and i just think like that's all lost or even like um
what are those those um buck hunting games like oh yeah there's a lot of like technology going on between the gun and the screen and the scope that you just can't do at home and so i would love to find a website that could tell me where i could play Well, I can tell you one thing at least. You'll never have trouble finding Big Buck Hunter. Yes. Something like Roller Games. Yeah. If there's somewhere in the tri-state area that someone can shout out, please do.
In 1999, TNN debuted Roller Jam. TNN. TNN, Roller Jam. It used the classic rules. of roller derby including the banked oval track not the figure eight track from roller games uh but it allowed um Inline skates. Ooh, this is more for me. Yeah, no more of the quads. So now the speed was going on. Although, is that a known thing? You can always go faster with inline versus quad, or is that more of a skill? I mean, you can't really like bank or anything on quad because there's nothing to bank on.
So I would imagine that I've never roller skated. I've only roller bladed. So I really don't know the, like the mechanical difference, but I just know that you, you would have to slow down to turn. On skates. Just mechanically. Yeah. But I didn't watch any of Roller Jam, so we can't do another 30 minutes on that. But my understanding is Roller Jam is not sports entertainment. It's a sport.
Well, at least it kept up the facade of being a sport. Unlike the NFL, which the curtain has fallen. Clearly scripted. Clearly scripted. Why would the Buffalo Bills do that? Well, I can tell you one thing that's not scripted, Mike. And what's that? I don't know. You told me. The Essential Games List. Roller Games is very interesting because if you play the video game now, like in 2025, and you don't do any...
You wouldn't necessarily know from this NES game that it is licensed in relation to anything. You would just think, wow, they created this whole like roller derby world where like everything is on skates and. You know, that's not going to cut it here. That's not going to be enough of an intrigue. Yes, it's of note to me. Like, I got a lot of enjoyment out of this just between the...
wacky disparity between, uh, the game and the game show. But, uh, ultimately roller games, the video game is offering like just a. uh baseline video game experience if that It qualifies for being a functional video game. It doesn't go really anything beyond. The game said in the manual that I should get ready to be rocked, rattled, and rolled, and I didn't feel...
Yeah, this is one of those games that like sometimes they'll get into the headspace of like, what if... some future civilization found this single piece of media and this was it like this was this was all that was left And I think that this would probably be one of the more confusing entries just because of how many... uh degrees of separation the this is from one what it's based on two what what it's based on is based on
And three, just like the whole concept of roller derby as a sport that really that popular, not really that like well known. It's, it's so weird. And the fact that they turned. what ostensibly would be a cool idea for a sports title into... Basically, double dragon on skates is just beyond me. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they had like something in the works already and just decided to brand it this way.
That's what I have to think about because the game itself really doesn't have much going on like I did I did mention that some of the the movement felt cool It kind of felt skatey, but that lasted maybe 10 seconds And then the game just sort of like turned into what Mike said, just like that baseline video game experience. So yeah, not essential. But Roller Games is not my favorite show.
Oh, yeah. Roller Games is an essential TV show. It should be on the top 50 list of any sports entertainment TV list. Of which there are at least 50 entries, I'm sure. Hopefully. Now, it's funny, you mentioned Double Dragon with skates, but, like, that's really, like, if...
The game Double Dragon just had Billy and Jimmy on skates. It would be... still better than this game oh absolutely yeah and we wouldn't even talk that much about like oh why aren't they like skating right like why why don't why aren't they slippery or whatever it's like who cares like the rest of the game's great that's what the problem They put these people on skates, barely did anything about it, and then also didn't make a good beat-em-up on top of that. It's true.
As I mentioned a few times this episode, because it's on my mind, we will be reviewing review. Oh, we didn't give our scores. Oh, that's so right. Forget what I was about to say because it was a flub anyway. And let's talk about our scores. Mine's going to be out of 1,000. And so I'm going to give roller games a score. 416. Okay. Out of a thousand.
So my score it's more of an adversarial score in the same scoring pattern Roller games itself So imagine that this video game roller games is playing against roller games the show This is what the score would be. It would be 38 to 13. Roller Games the show wins. Yeah, well, absolutely. We know your bias. Yeah, I think for what it's worth, I think that like more things. Should be scripted.
More things in life should just be scripted, right? Our show could benefit from being scripted. The stock market. The government and politics. The stock market is scripted. It's all been priced in since the beginning of time, Sean. Geological activity. Basically, determinism in general should just be how we go about things. The dinosaurs were scripted.