Caveman Games, make your own headlines! And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Caveman Games, originally with the subtitle, Caveman Games, the Ugglympics. I saw that. That's so much better. Yeah, I wonder if, like, the Olympics got involved. Because, like, aren't there, like, isn't there, like, kind of like the Super Bowl? You can only call it the big game or something.
Yeah, I guess that's true, but the Olympics, the Ugglympics, feels like it's parody enough. Yeah, that's true. But you bring up a good point because Mario and Sonic are just getting away with fraud, right? Yeah, do you think they have a deal?
Yeah, they do. They absolutely do. But I think it'd be funny to pretend like Nintendo just like wants everyone to assume they have a deal. So they just like blatantly putting it in there. Like, yeah, it's Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Like, we talk to them. We're good. Cool.
Yeah, Caveman Games, the Ugglympics. You guys like it. I don't know how I feel about it. It's fine. It's colorful, at least. But there's actually a lot of color in this game. The manual refers to all of the athletes as... Cave athletes. It's not really like a pun there. It's just another way to get cavemen in there. Just a qualifier. It's a qualifier. Are NFL players mansion athletes?
That's good. Thank you. Okay, I'll be here all night. Or as long as you'll continue to not hit pause on the podcast, fellow listeners. We've got a few more jokes. Let me get it out of my system. You know, they never let poor Rudy join in on any of these caveman games. Oh, we lost them. Yeah, we are out of control now. No, realistically, though, the bios for these characters in the game that you can play as...
I ain't reading all that. Like, that's a lot of stuff. You think you're in an RPG or something. I like Gronk. There's Gronk, and then I played as Uga, the Eastern European one. Because they all are from a different location, but I only read the Eastern European one and the North American one, and then I was like, okay, I can't read any more of these. I'm here to play video games. Is it actually Gronk is his name?
I'm pretty sure it's Gronk. I think it's Rob. Gronk is his last name. Yeah, it's like, Rob Gronkowski's in the game? Anyway, let's see. We should talk about the game or the games, I should say, because, you know, we all thought the Olympics started in ancient Greece, but it was actually, what, 10,000 BC? And so you get to compete in longstanding sports like mate toss, where you swing your wife or the one out of six chance to swing your husband.
Like a hammer throw would. Or the fire making competition where whoever can create the fire the fastest wins the game. There's races. just like track and field, except for this time, there's the Sabretooth Tiger race, where it doesn't really matter who crosses the finish line, just who doesn't get eaten by the Sabretooth Tiger first.
Then there's the dinosaur race, which is not the same thing just with a dinosaur. Now you're on dinosaurs, so it's kind of like horse racing. Those are your dinosaurs. There's also obstacles on the course. Clubbing, which is like... Street Fighter. It's like Jousting, or Sumo, or Street Fighter, or any of these, yeah. These are great games. And last but not least, the Dino Vault, which is not like some Indiana Jones, you know...
Search for some dino treasure thing. You are pole vaulting over a dinosaur. Just make sure you get fully over or else the dinosaur will eat you alive. I guess my first question here is if you were tasked with, you know, coming up with a game concept that was playing with the long... beloved franchise the long beloved genre of you know track and field olympic stuff uh this kind of like what it had to be high concept like where would you go with it cavemen
Like, that is the first thing that comes to your mind, huh? Cavemen, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go back to where it all began. This is the most thematically dense window dressing that we can think of for... I'm trying to think, because if you're... If you're going for, like, the humor of it, I get it. Okay, caveman. But, like, have we run out of real things? Like, we had, like, winter games, Olympic games.
And then, like, Snoopy. But, like, aren't there other real games? Like, come on. I can't think of any, though. No, I think I go straight to Caveman 2. You have to give them credit, though, because it wasn't just, like... okay, we drew all this caveman stuff and now we've got to make a game. Have all these assets from that other caveman game you're working on. Right, but the fire making...
one is probably like the best of like the caveman motif. Like the mate toss is a little strange. The mate toss out there. Like that's domestic abuse. I like the, the saber tooth brace. Cause like that is different. That one works. Yeah. That's not just a reskin of like, Oh, it's another race. You know, it's no, it's a, it's, it's not get to the finish line. It's like avoid the thing chasing you. I kind of like that. It's like the whole.
I don't have to outrun the Sabertooth, I just have to outrun you. And that's kind of, you even, they even amplify that with, like, you can throw each other behind a little bit and, like, throw each other to the Sabertooth. I appreciate the ones of these that are doing something that's not just a reskin of other games.
I like the may toss because it's probably like the most Mel Brooks of them. Like if we were watching like the history of the world, like I'm pretty sure that this is just like, they just got the idea from like the first marriage and. I don't know. It gave me that vibe, and I like that in terms of caveman stuff. Yeah, I think that's what I was going to say about all the games, though, too. I think the caveman thing, whether that's the most obvious conclusion to go to for a collection of...
sports minigames. It's the comedic and satirical tone that the game takes that makes it all work. But only for the actual gameplay. I think this whole like... crude language stuff and like these bios and even like the way you know you know like there's like like they're actually doing like on the back of the box and stuff like
me do dino activity you know it's like okay they don't have to talk like that like they didn't speak English anyway you know I will say I will say that during the mate toss when I when I first threw it and it said like you know it said like 91 foots I laughed out loud. That was pretty funny. I also like that the way it gives a thumbs down. He didn't like that. When Mike sees one of those Geico commercials where the...
That caveman is just upset about being profiled. He's nodding along. He's like, yeah, why don't you treat him with some respect? I guess what I'm saying is that that stuff wasn't as funny. They could have done more with that, but instead it just feels like it's just there.
and it's not actually working in its favor. Like, it's not additive, whereas the games themselves, you know, we'll talk about the actual quality of the controls or the replayability, but, like, the games themselves, like, when I saw the Dino Vault, I was like...
It's a pretty freaking big dinosaur. Like, I'm really going to vault over that thing? Like, I'm impressed. Yeah, I'm not sure if this is agreeing with you or not, because I'm not exactly sure where you're landing here. But I will say that I think...
I think my favorite thing about this game is the theme. I think that they did it. I think they made it charming. We're agreeing. Okay. Rest easy tonight. We're agreeing. We always agree. So let's get into the events. What do you guys want to start with?
Hmm. Well, we already kind of went over clubbing. Great. So clubbing is done. No. Well, there's one thing we got to talk about. There's one really funny thing about clubbing. You have to. Well, I'm not sure if this is. I'm not sure if we're agreeing here. You have to intimidate.
first. There's an intimidating portion of the round where you have to intimidate your opponent. I do appreciate that there's an intimidation phase. But I don't understand how it works. I don't either. The one time that I ended up gaining ground, I was just sort of... wrote like kind of hitting the d-pad in a circular motion and then just smashing a and b i don't know if any of that but what any of that was doing but i did end up past the middle point
The computer found that very intimidating, Sean, that you were spamming all those buttons. It was like, I don't really know what he's up to here. Whatever you do, you just have to do with confidence. Right, exactly. But yeah, I was talking about the Looney Tunes fall at the end. I think that's very important. I think that's a great addition. And that's additive. And notice how it has no flavor text to it. It doesn't say like, me go uh-oh.
That can't be the only way to win, though, because you also have a health bar. Yeah, just beat your opponent over with a club until they fucking bleed to death. Is there blood? There's no blood. Presumably, there's blood clots going on. You're fucking hitting them in the brain with a club. But also, like...
To get onto a controls level, you guys said that you weren't even sure about gaining intimidation ground or whatever. I didn't actually find the actual combat all that interesting either, though. I was joking that I was comparing it to Street Fighter. It's not that kind of game. It's just...
move and and attack with a club and for the most part the computer seems to be a lot better at doing this than i am well and this is This is where, you know, I jump the gun here and talk about how I think all of these games, these mini game collections that we've had, Olympic games, winter games.
uh, you know, the Snoopy one, whatever that's called. And then like, they are just, they spectacular sports, sports, something like that. It's sports spectacular. Yeah. But like, none of them feel good to play. None of these games. Like there are some that feel better than others, but like,
I don't think that necessarily this clubbing thing is a poorly designed game. Like I think I see how it works and like the kind of rock, paper, scissors of it. Like when they go high, you go, you got to go low or whatever, but. It just doesn't feel good to play. I don't feel like my input is being recognized frequently. I feel like it's not being recognized, or I feel like there's lag. It's not smooth.
And that makes it like, yeah, this one particularly, like the clubbing version, I'm just like, this feels, this is very frustrating. Yeah, I don't, there isn't too much complexity to any of them. And this one... You really just have to time out getting overhead hits, so you're going to get some backward stagger, and I think he's going to be stunned for a minute.
And then when they try to do like the overhead hit on you, you just get some body shots in and that kind of that'll stun them there. And you just don't want to let that happen to you. Otherwise, you got to step backwards. It's just it's. It's simple enough, and yeah, I did feel like my inputs got eaten a few times, but I was able to win. I won once, but I lost most of the time. Well, another weird thing about...
This game, as opposed to the other ones you mentioned, Joe, whether it's Snoopy or Winter Games, whether it's set in reality or in the cartoon world, none of these games so far have had an actual, like... character advantage, like a skill set, this game introduces that via those long bios. It kind of tells you what they're good at and what they're not. And so there are like...
There are better characters to be per event, and that kind of, like... makes things weird when you're not just doing practice with whoever it's best to play as, and you're actually doing the full gauntlet of all the events because there's only like... two that each character is good at and then you could face another character who is just you know has has the better suit to deal with the clubbing or to you know faster on their feet for the saber-toothed tiger race i
I it's weird to say that like stats aren't welcomed in a game like this but this game is mostly relying on like your skill as the player to put the you know to put the inputs down at the right time and then to add like Well, you just weren't playing as Vincent this time, which is such a weird name for a caveman, right? Is there a joke I'm missing there? You got Krog, Glunk, Gronk, Thag.
Maybe that's the joke. Yeah, I think that is the joke. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I just, by random chance, when selecting Gronk, in that description... It said, he's just average at everything. I'm like, oh, perfect. I'm getting the whole thing. I don't have to play as a second character. Perfect, yeah. Average at everything. Don't we all want to be? Yeah. So that's clubbing.
Mate toss, okay? Sean, you like this one. Why don't you take it away? I mean, excuse me. It's just a typical, like, what do you call that? What's the actual thing? Hammer throw? Hammer throw. It's that. You kind of just got to get in a rhythm as you spin and try and keep that at a high rate while you're also... holding down a face button or i guess like the a button one of those um to actually adjust the angle and then yeah i would imagine you're trying to hit 45 degrees uh and
Then you throw your wife as far as you can, and then she'll land, bounce a bit. Yeah, there's a lot of... domestic violence associations here but when she gets up she does like a weird like worm dance so she's down yeah she's in on it yeah well she's you know she gets some of the prize money
She gets to take home some of that big dinosaur meat. Is there dinosaur meat? I'm assuming that those are what the prizes are back then since there's no monetary value back then. I would have assumed it was just some big rock. Yeah, it's like, you get to sleep by the fire tonight. The big rock sounds really cool, though. Actually, Sean, we're still chasing big rocks, right? Depends on who you are, I guess. But some women still chasing big rocks. I just like jumping off of big rocks into water.
I wanted to jump off a big rock into water when I was in Hawaii, but my body wouldn't let me. I'm sorry. Made toss, though, one thing I did want to say about it, though, is the way that you have to, like, build up the momentum is by, like, you know, going in a circle on the D-pad, you know, so up, left, down, right. Or just hitting left, right, left, right, left, right.
Oh, you can do that? Yeah. I thought you had to do the whole thing. Wow. Nah. It's like manual doesn't say that. Yeah. You got to kind of match like what way you're spinning at that moment and then switch. At the apex or whatever. It would have been better. Going the whole circle actually made it a bit challenging. Kind of reminded me of Super Mario 64 when you grab Bowser by the tail and then you're spinning him around.
And make a hole in your hand? Yeah, you make a little hole in your hand and then Nintendo's like, we're sorry, have a glove. They sent everybody a glove. Which is funny. But, no, what I was going to say was is that...
So you're building up the momentum, and that part's tricky enough, but then it's not like in golf where you've locked in a certain stat. No, you've got to keep that up. Yeah, you don't have to move into the next one. It's like now you have to change the arc while you're doing the spinning. And I got to say, I liked the difficulty there. There have been times, Joe mentioned winter games, there have been times where some of these things are like...
The things that I'm doing don't even feel like I'm doing anything. Like the ice skating in winter games. Like I don't know how to land. I've never successfully landed a trick in the ice skating game. But here, even though it was challenging.
I felt good about it, and I wanted to like, oh, I know, I could just release that A button just a little bit more, get a little more arc on there. I could throw her a couple more feet or feet. Yeah, it feels a little bit like... tapping your stomach and rubbing your head or vice versa yeah i think that this one as much as it tires my thumb out because at least the way i was doing it uh this one feels it's the the least
of a culprit of what I said before about it feeling like the inputs don't function as smoothly as you want. This one felt the most like a regular video game to me. And I think... Yeah, this one was, like, the easiest to just get in there and, like, understand and do. So let's go over to the races. The Sabretooth Tiger Race, we talked about what's interesting about it, where you're getting chased by the Sabretooth, but how is the actual, like...
racing mechanics and there's that one funny thing where like if you're close enough to your opponent uh and they can do it to you too but like you can kind of like push them back uh towards the saber tube hey this is your problem buddy
I appreciate something like that because, again, you're not expecting much from these little mini games, right? Everything is just kind of like, all right, these are the buttons on the controller. How can we get across this idea? But that's like another part of the like. silly nature of the game. It's actually being, this game in general, it's being more silly than Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular. Yeah, I'd say so. But yeah, I liked the concept of this.
I don't love... And I get it because it's supposed to, like... I don't know. It might be harder to have a race like this if you're just holding the button, the right button. But, like... come on button mashing like just you just gotta mash a as quickly as you can to move and not to mention that's gonna be like the next three games are like that they're like this just i don't know it doesn't do it for me that level of gameplay like that is that
made me not like this this version or i'm sorry this game as much um as some of the other ones but like it's there's some interesting things about it but like having to mash the button and then jump using b at the same time it just doesn't feel good i don't know i maybe that's what they're going for they want it to be complicated and frustrating but like i don't know just let me hold right and give me some obstacles to slow me down so it so it's like intuitive
Yeah, I agree. A lot of the games in the genre do just the button mash. Sometimes they throw a little alternate button mash to keep things fresh. But this is just, I think, yeah, hitting the one button to run forward, hit the other to jump, or I guess to sabotage your opponent. Like you, I appreciate the sabotaging, but yeah, there's just not much else going on here. Yeah, I was for a moment.
convinced that like you had to at least mash the a button to the beat of the drum beat in the soundtrack and i was like well that's interesting but it was uh i was imagining it next up is the fire making Which is like the only one that I can think of that's not like analogous to another sport that's actually still around, right? Yeah. No, it's a round. It's the Final Four Immunity Challenge in Survivor for the past 10 seasons. There you go. That's real? That's real, yeah.
They were working off of Survivor, which was around season negative 12. You know what I mean, though? The other ones aren't really that great, but we can make a case that... This is a tiger race. There's no race where you have to not get passed by somebody.
but it's still just another version of track and field. The fire making thing is just like, that's really leaning in on the caveman thing, which is almost like then you're expecting another one where you have to like... draw on a on the wall of a cave right and you have to like you know stick figure battle or play hangman or something because that would be like oh you know another thing cavemen did back then it's like the fire making thing feels like a weak connection
But I like this one probably the best out of all of these. It was simple input. There's still the... idea of interfering with your opponent and smacking them on the head with the stick that you're trying to like kindle uh and it's like there's two phases of it You've got to do different things depending on what phase you're in, whether it's smoking yet. You can hyperventilate and go kind of crazy if you try to do it too fast and not match the rhythm.
If we're going to make like a semi-rhythm portion of this game, I think it's a cool concept and probably one of the, at least the more unique games here.
I like the concept too, and I do like watching my opponent make fire. My confession is I have not made fire. I don't get it. What am I doing wrong? I'm rubbing the sticks together. I'm getting the... kindling uh and then i'm blowing on it but like i'm not i never get any smoke you gotta start fast with the blows and then end more like slow and steady when do you switch
To blowing on it, though. Once you see, like, multiple sparks just sort of resting on the wood. Yeah, that's what I was doing, but I guess, I don't know. Maybe I didn't have the rhythm down. Gotta get that rhythm down. You do have to alternate between the two, though, too. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's not like, oh, now it's time to start blowing. You know, it's like you have to kind of go back and forth between rubbing the sticks.
Well, once it gets into the red, you've got to start blowing. Yeah, but then you might want to alternate between the stick rubbing and the blowing. See, there's different strategies. This is so fucking sexual. Yeah, we're talking a lot about stick rubbing and blowing. I know. Yeah, see, the problem is you were rubbing your stick when you should have been blowing it. Oh, I gotcha.
And the last one, arguably, for me at least, the hardest one to do, I never got over this fucking dinosaur, the dinosaur vault. It's just challenging. There's not really a large window of opportunity here. I appreciate it, both visually and as a concept. And it doesn't ever look like you're... You know, in pole vaulting, you have a huge pole. Yeah, we're coming back. You rub that huge pole. The Olympics make me so horny. You've got this large pole, and you're going to go over the, you know...
What, the other poles? I don't even know what they fucking call it. Yeah, I don't know. The beating pole. Yeah, you're going to go over the other one, so no problem, right? Because you can see it. It's like you have to use that very large pole to bolt yourself over. I get it. This doesn't look like it's big enough to vault over a dinosaur. It's a bit of a stretch as it is. Well, this is a spring-loaded ancient stick. Oh, yeah. Lost technology.
Yeah, actually, yeah. Lost technology, extinct plant life. Bamboo back in the day used to have much more thrust. They were like springs. Yeah. Yeah. And any like explanation, you guys can come up with one on your own, but any explanation why the dinosaur looks like that? Why does he have that human-shaped head? I don't know. I think that's what they looked like. They had whole neocortex craniums back there.
The whole argument has always been about whether they had feathers or not, but turns out the real argument is whether they had a cranium. And they don't eat you. They don't eat you alive. They just give you a nice little chew and then throw you into the ocean. Oh yeah, they toss you out. I'll be honest, I barely did this one. I feel like I put in my time with the Snoopy pole vaulting.
And I felt like I deserved a break. Oh, right, you did. I like that you could, or how, like, I guess your partner would adjust the height of the dinosaur, whether... You were trying to get it to go down by putting meat in front of it. No, go down by jumping on the dinosaur. I guess this is sort of a tame dinosaur. That's why he doesn't eat you.
and there's a risk-reward for going higher. I also like that there are multiple fail states, too. He could eat you if you're... trajectory goes like straight into his mouth but if you kind of miss even that he'll he'll uh he'll grab you by the loincloth and then you'll you He'll swing you naked into the water. So there's different ways to fail. Do the events all having different control schemes help or hurt the cohesion of this game? I mean, I don't know.
Like, in a vacuum, I don't think there's a problem with events like that. I mean, think of Mario Party. There's different control schemes in each of those things. I think it's just how they're handled. I mean, I think the cohesion is hurt because each time I pick up a new game...
I'm like frustrated from scratch again, you know, to varying degrees. There are some that aren't as frustrating as others, but I just, I think that like, if you're going to have different control schemes for five different games. They need to all be good and they need to all be somewhat intuitive or very clearly explained. Yeah, they do explain it in the manual. I had to open it up for a couple of them.
But no, a game like this has to have variety, or why make a game about a bunch of minigames if they're all going to control the same? Unless, I mean, I could see it being like... mini games of of goals you know where it's like yeah you just play like mario but in this one you got to collect a bunch of things in this one you got to run from something and in this one it's an obstacle course or whatever like i get that but yeah i know that's not what they're trying to do Thank you.
Yeah, the note about the manual and learning how to play each of the different control schemes brings up a good point about just how they went about doing it in the manual. There isn't like... a simplified version of like, and here's the controller again. And here's what each button does. It's like, you really do have to read a lot of text to understand. And granted, you know,
It's probably the clearest way to make sure everybody gets it, but there's no like quick reference thing. It is like, for instance, fire making. Press A button quickly and repeatedly to rub your sticks together. The faster you rub, the faster the bar at the bottom of the screen will reach the red zone, at which point you'll begin throwing sparks onto the kindling. As sparks reach the kindling, press control pad down a few quick times to puff on the sparks.
You may need to alternate between stick rubs and short quick puffs to get the kindling smoking. Once you see smoke, press control pad up to inhale and then down to blow on the fire. Up and down in a steady manner will ignite the fire. If you inhale or exhale too fast, you'll hyperventilate and become temporarily immobilized, indicated by stars over your head. It's like, Jesus Christ, anything else? Am I supposed to be blind? Is this just for... Yeah, there's like...
There's not a way to be like, oh, how do you inhale again? It's like, well, it's somewhere in this paragraph it tells me that. That's exactly what I'm getting at. I guess it would have been better if there was a shoulder button that you could press so that it would show the mini controls like Mario Party. But we just, you know, we're not there yet. We're not there yet. We need that extra button, guys.
And like Mario Party, okay, there are times where you want to play the board game. And there are mostly times where you just want to play like... bumper balls you know i just want to go to that one mini game and play it and mario party allows you to do that this isn't just exclusive to party games they're you know like think about like any baseball game that has a full season right that's like that's the main attraction but it's not
really what people wind up playing the most actually they just like go into an exhibition with a friend or something caveman games i i don't think i'm saying anything controversial here but it's the kind of thing where it's like it's kind of unnecessary to go through The entire, like I'm glad they're there for somebody who's skilled enough at this game. But if I ever pick this back up again, I'll just be jumping right to the practice mode and showing off.
you know, the, the dinosaur vault or the saber tooth tiger race, whichever one I think is. You're showing it off. Yeah. You know, like to, uh, the alien, like a dinner party. Yeah. When the aliens come visit, I gotta let them know like, Hey, just so you know,
This is where we started. Mike, did you play this with, or both of you, did you play this with anybody? I don't think you need to, but go ahead. I mean, that's, I think, where the fun would have been. I didn't either, but I can imagine it would be there. I didn't, but I think that, yes, I think it would be more fun than it is if you played with someone instead of against the computer. I'll play with somebody, but only if they agree to talk like the cavemen do.
Okay, real question. Is this just a better game immediately if this is the Flintstones franchise instead of just cavemen? Like you pick your character, you get to choose between... Fred and Barney and Mr. Slade and Wilma and Betty and Dino. You think Mr. Slate would be a playable character? No, he's an unlockable. You have to win the Olympics and then you unlock Mr. Slate. The Martian guy. What's his name again?
Marty. It's not Marv. That's the Looney Tunes guy. I think that it would be a different game. I think that it could be better for IP recognition. But, yeah, I think you actually, oddly enough, would have to lose a lot of the caveman, like, language and Ugg puns and foots and stuff, because they don't talk like that in the Flintstones. Yeah, there'd also be, like, a car.
a car race thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, more machine jokes about little pterodactyls running your TV or something. And someone would have to go, eh, it's a living. That's what the wife would say in the mate talks. Yeah, honestly, it's perfect. And then, what was the last thing I had on this? Oh, Joe, I did look it up. It's the Great Gazoo.
Oh, that's right, yeah. Everybody loves The Great Gazoo. No one's ever said anything controversial about him or his inclusion in the Flintstones franchise, so he's welcome at these races. Do people... actually have an issue with him the great kazoo killed the flintstone there's a jump the shark moment yeah oh wow i didn't realize that a cartoon could do that oh yeah it's insane
Speaking of which, the Jump the Shark thing comes from Happy Days. Everybody knows that, Mike. But did you know Happy Days had a cartoon as well? That feels like the Jump the Shark moment. You had an animated cartoon about... The freaking live-action sitcom? Was the shark in the cartoon? You know what? That's a great question. Did the shark have a speaking role in the cartoon? I didn't ask a speaking role. No, I am. Oh, okay. You got to take it to the next level.
And we're going to take this show to the next level by doing the Essential Games list. Yeah, so I mean, like, look, there's some great humor in presentation here. I like... I do, you know, contrary to what I was saying about the actual like way cavemen talk of which, of course, I'm a caveman apologist. You know, like the actual theming of the events and everything is fantastic.
The over-the-top animations and the various reactions that you can have by failing or winning these events is great. The replayability of it all is probably limited into how much... enjoyment you get out of this i think that's what i was also trying to get out of with like the the main mode being doing the entire ugglympics but realistically the actual replayability is just well i'm really good at the um
you know, at the saber tooth tiger race. So I'm just going to do that, which is actually kind of funny to be good at that one, because that's the one that's like the least, like I could improve upon. Like at least the other ones are like measuring something of like how many, uh, foots. You got across or how high you vaulted. All that to say, it's not that I think that they even made a bad game here. I think I was like thinking that.
when i first started playing this game just like wow i really don't have any appetite to play this kind of game uh i've seen a lot of these track and field style games already on the nes and now this one's just caveman themed which is like for me Never go back to the past. Always go to the future. I'd rather have, like, some cyberpunk games or something. But the actual just downfall of the game for me was just in how little I'm going to think about this game again.
After the fact, like these, all these things, whether they're good mini games or not, just takes like very little, like to, to enjoy.
and therefore it was not like even though i was joking about like yeah i'm gonna show people this it's like yeah i'm realistically never gonna show anybody this and i can't put a game on the essential games list that i don't even like think is like worth showing off so no caveman games not for me how about you sean uh real quick there was one game that we forgot to talk about but it's basically just like a horse race but there's a dinosaur instead um
So not really worth getting into. But what I'll say about this game is it's preposterous to even suggest this might be on the essential games list. But of the Olympic... slash winter slash whatever track and field genre this is this is my favorite of them uh because at least it's like funny and has like an identity and it's uh
I don't know. It's having fun with it. Whereas the other ones I felt were kind of the worst. Maybe I don't say that on those episodes, but right now, thinking back, they're the worst. But I think it's also just to sort of comment on what Mike said, I think it's a little weird to only play, to actually focus on one of these. I think the only value that this game has is that there is...
all these different ones. And if you're playing with people, it only really makes sense to like, let's see how we do it. All of them. But yeah, no, not essential. Yeah. Joe? I also had... more fun with this game than I think I usually do with these track and field style games. But I didn't have that much fun with this game. So I think that tells you where I stand with this style game in general.
I agree with you, Sean, that I think that everything good about this game to me is about the presentation and the humor that it has. But even the stuff that I appreciated in some of the minigames isn't enough to make me think that these are really fun to play. in any way so like I don't know maybe I'm just like really negative on this style game but I just don't I don't get why we're still making these I just don't have fun with them really at all but yeah it's a pretty game
You know, there's good presentation, there's fun stuff, and I'm looking right now at the one that we forgot to talk about, the dinosaur race. Beautiful sky in that... part so i have i have nice things to say but not essential and while we're praising the presentation of it all uh you know i i just don't like the way this
these games these kinds of games look on the nes like i i'm i'm adam animation is great here and you know reads funny slash i can understand what's going on at all times but like i just don't like the way that the game looks. And I wonder why that is. And it's not like, it's not universal either. Like for some reason, like your characters are more detailed in the fire making than they are in the mate toss. Like, do you know what I mean?
Well, I mean, you're kind of zoomed in on the fire making, you know? No, I know, but yeah, there's not like a uniform look to this game, even in the various, you know, mini games. Like, there's not like, there's not a way to describe this, because sometimes even like the backgrounds are very detailed.
and other times it's just like two colors. Yeah, I mean, it does in some way feel like maybe like a different person worked on each minigame, and they didn't share assets for some of them or something. You know, the foyer making, yeah, you're right, the background of the foyer making looks like, like a contra background, it's like textured, and then some, like, then the other one is like all these like weird gradient lines, and I think they both look great, but like they, they do look different.
I'm just not sure how to describe that, but I know in the past we've said it looks like it was drawn in MS Paint, which is more of a reference point for us, but I wonder if there's an actual... term used to describe that kind of thing because it's just like there are certain times where it just like doesn't look as good as we've seen nes games look but not because of like a fidelity kind of standpoint or like oh they just had to they weren't able to
uh, you know, use the sprites because they were using too much of the palette. It's like, it's not that kind of thing. It's just a weird, awkward, like I think about the dinosaur race one, the one we didn't cover. And it's like, You just totally like the art direction. Yeah, but the background in that is fantastic. It's really cool with the sun and the various lines, and it's pretty simple when you think about it, but it comes off well for the NES. It looks like other NES things.
And then, like, the dinosaur in the dinosaur vault just doesn't look like it belongs on an NES. I mean, I do think... I agree with you that, like, they look weirdly, like, disjointed from each other. But I think, like, pretty much...
I like the way all the games look. I think they all have a good look. I don't get that Microsoft Paint thing that I've gotten with a lot of other games for most of this. I guess the closest one that makes me think of that is like... the way your characters themselves look in the mate toss, but like, or maybe the pole vaulting too a little bit, but like, yeah, I don't, I, I, I think that they look not like congruent with each other, but they do.
still look good to me. Maybe that's like a new top-tier insult. You just tell people, you know, you look like you were drawn in MS Paint. I love it. You don't look congruent to me. . . . Outro Music