386 - Orb-3D

Orb 3D, the fate of the universe is in your hands. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Sean, orb 3D. Are you ready for a 3D video game on the NES? I'm ready to ponder some orbs. We actually have had 3D video games on the NES already, and we've also had 3D video games on the NES that actually had 3D technology in them. So Orb 3D is coming a little late.

to the party. It's not introducing anything new here, but it did come with its own set of 3D glasses, and I feel like those 3D glasses, if you still have them, have to be the most valuable thing about this game. Yeah, when I was reading the manual, because this looked high concept enough to warrant it, and it described the glasses you were supposed to get.

I was kind of worried that, like, oh, am I going to be able to, like, play this game? Like, is it going to be in stereoscopic, like, red and blue stuff? And then they're like, oh, if you don't have it, you can still play it. They're like, okay. And then I played the game, and I'm like, I don't even know how the glasses would work. Cool. Yeah, I had the same thoughts, because I'm looking at it, and first off, the glasses are referred to as Greenovision glasses, with like capital G, capital V.

So clearly somebody trademarked this thing and was ready to put it. But it looks to me like it was just those normal red and blue glasses or whatever. But the game doesn't... Play like that. So I couldn't find an actual picture of Greenovision glasses because it doesn't have any strobing or red and blue effect on it. So. the way that describes in the manual was that you just have to like look past the screen and you will see objects that moves.

Is it like 3DS technology where it makes it look like? Yeah, that's what it sounded like. There's no way, though, right? But now I'm starting to think that it's kind of just bullshit. You were supposed to put the glasses on and then you would just get some placebo effect because there's different colors. Yeah, sure, sure. You put the glasses on, put your hand over your face, and then someone smacks your face. I can't believe you thought that was going to work.

Yes, yes. That's kind of what's going on here. This game originally released as, what was the name? Beyond the Black Hole. And it was made by the software Toolworks, which sounds incredibly boring because they made mostly incredibly boring games like Chessmaster and Cribbage King. Ooh, Cribbage King. Yeah, Cribbage King. They did the whole Chess Master series, though. If you recall, we did play Chess Master on the NES. That was also them. But, like...

Mavis Beacon teaches typing. That's them. They made some Mario fun games like Mario's Fun with Numbers and Mario's Preschool Fun. These are just like educational games. So they make educational games. Is Orb 3D educational at all? Like, is it teaching you about 3D? That's not something you need to learn, right? It is not educational, but I think it still sort of fits into this.

mold that you kind of the picture you painted them as more of like interested in the tech of video entertainment more so than video games

And I think that tracks with what we got here. And in Orb 3D, you control a floating orb. You control pong paddles. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. You are trying to get a... floating orb to hit objects, collide with them so that you can destroy all objects on the screen and progress to the next stage. You have these little paddles. on the side of the screen that you, that's what you really control. And they kind of direct

The movement of the orb in some kind of gravity fashion where they pull the direction of the orb towards them. They kind of act like the paddles in Breakout where you want to hit the... You want to have the paddle hit the ball on a specific curve, so this way it hits a specific area of the other part of the screen that it's flying towards.

That's very confusing to explain. We're going to do our best over the course of the next three hours to explain how World 3D works to you all. But that's really all you need, right, Sean? You just need...

The concept of a floating orb has to hit objects and you have these magnetic paddles on the side that kind of help guide the ball. You don't need a story, but the game decides to give you one anyway. Yeah. And I don't get it. I don't understand why. It's about wizards and stuff. But everything else about the visual language of this game is very sci-fi. Or at least futuristic in some way. So I... Yeah, I don't understand, but we got it.

Do you know the story? You're a space pilot who's been tasked with destroying, as Sean mentioned, an evil wizard named Kron who rules the galaxy from the Ortris Orbza Zerk. Ah, yes, Orbza Zerk. Orbs of Zerk. In order to defeat the wizard, though, you can't just merely get to his fortress. You have to get through 30 other... I don't know. Are we treating these like they're...

They're solar systems or something? What are they? Like fields? Like 30 space fields? They're just fields. They're fields, yes. Which is actually each like a room, you know, a level of itself that is a puzzle. You know, the first stage, you can kind of just hit the objects in any particular order and clear it. But as it's made abundantly. clear in the second level and really turns the game on its head.

every stage is kind of unique in how you clear the objects. And you can't just say, oh, well, I just have to hit everything on the screen and then they'll all disappear and I'll get a new level. That's not how it works. I will... I guess set it up with the second level because I think that's the most interesting one to get across the idea of like how these puzzles can be different in the first stage.

You are literally just dragging this orb through the power of your paddles to hit objects across a 3D space. Yeah, get it through some hoops. Yeah, exactly. In the second puzzle... It's now pins from a pinball alley, and you only get the two chances. to knock down all 10 pins. If you don't, the frame resets, and you have all 10 pins again, and you must knock down all 10. Fine, I'll just keep trying over and over again, right? Well...

You have limited energy. There is a fuel system on the right-hand side of the screen that's just a bar, and it's completely filled at the beginning of a level. And it slowly ticks down. If you manage to not catch your orbs with the paddles that are on the side of the screen, then that caused extra fuel. And once you run out of fuel, it's game over.

Unlike any NES game that I've talked about so far, I am going through great lengths to explain the concept of this game, and I still feel like anybody who's listening would have no idea what to picture in their head. If they didn't play the game. Do you get that feeling? No, yeah, I get that feeling. I'm trying to think of... It's kind of like WarioWare.

Except you're kind of doing the same thing in every one. Like, the rules of the game change in every level, but the way that you're interacting with it stays the same. Like, you're always just sort of hitting this orb. uh, back and forth between the two paddles with the other like actual control method being, uh, like sort of calling it back to you through, uh, like Z space. And everything else is just, it's a new game, different rules. But yeah, you're just using those same methods of control.

Here's a take two more concise read on everything I've said so far. It's a top down point of view of the space field where you can see the orb, the targets and the paddles, which are on the screen's edges. You bounce the orb into the targets on the screen, sort of like, you know, breakout meets pinball or something because you want to hit the bumpers. You use the D-pad.

to control the paddles to curve angle deflect whatever adjust the depth and trajectory of the of the orb because you can make it like swing around because it's kind of constantly moving in each room has a different thing. Like one is, one's targets, one's switches, one's war poles, one's pins, one's ducks. You never know. One's a bingo card. One's, uh, you're trying to play like a, like a golf.

like you would with uh with like throwing darts but instead it's like you're rolling dice and you have to hit the dice on the right number and yeah everything is different It's really weird. So how long did it take you to realize how to aim in 3D space? Like, obviously, you play around with the D-pad, you understand what does what, but how long did it take you to get good at hitting objects?

I wouldn't say that I was ever very good, but it only took me a few back and forths to understand what I was supposed to do. Like you can kind of loop it around in the middle of the field. For a while, you could play this game and not really end up using your paddles all that much if you know what you're doing. But I didn't always know what I was doing because...

Maybe I needed those 3D glasses because your depth perception is very important. Yeah. If this game was ported to, you know, like VR or something like. Would it finally make sense? Would it click better of where you are in space with the orb and the objects? Or is it more just like a controls issue? I think it's more so just your perspective. And just to bring it...

back to a more period appropriate piece of hardware, because I think if you ported this to like modern VR, it would be like, who would want to play that? But if it was a virtual boy game, maybe like, I think that that actually. would be what this game would be best on. I don't know if you agreed. Yeah, I would agree with that because if you recall, when we played on the Virtual Boy, we played Mario Tennis.

And that got the depth of a tennis ball pretty well. It was a little hard to know when to swing. But we were able to understand like, hey, that tennis ball is pretty far away. And now it's coming at me. I think that's what the orb is missing here. Like, yes. Pixel-wise, it gets smaller when it's behind all the objects and it then, you know, grows in size and as it wraps around. But it's a little like...

If you gamify it a little bit, like if you get good at this game, you almost have to start bending it inwards to angle it back, to come back closer to the player. The orb to do that you want to do it before it approaches the object that you want to hit so

You have to think about it like a giant oval, and as you're pulling the gravity back in, you want to get it right before it hits that object, not while it's under that object. Yeah, you got to start thinking about, like... vectors and ellipses and lots of mechanics like that which are a lot more intuitive than how we're describing it just because again this is a very

We've never had to talk about this kind of mechanic before. Does the energy system, you know, like the fuel or whatever you want to call it, I guess it must be fuel. It is fuel. Does that add tension or just make the game feel more punishing? I think it does. I think it's necessary. Because one thing that we didn't mention before is that after certain... targets are hit, they will release, uh, this kind of like thing you don't want to interact with, with your ball.

It's like a spiky thing. And if it touches your ball, you lose a lot of fuel. So I think it did need something to like, not just have this be a, you have unlimited time. I think it would be a lot more boring. And you would just have to, it would just be a war of attrition with this game of just like, would you get bored before you beat it? Right, right.

Yeah, because also then think about if they didn't have the fuel system, the other thing they could have done was treat it like breakout where you only have... like three orbs. And if you miss the orb with the paddles, you get two more chances. But once you miss three, then you're out. And that's like, that's not like, at least the fuel thing is like, well, you're going to lose a little more fuel now if you bounce out, but you're not like out of it.

And if they didn't contextualize it with fuel, how would we get the iconic, like, what did they call it? There's like a gas station that you can go to when you press select. Oh, yeah, that's right. And then that's almost like its own level. Yeah, it's much more difficult than the game itself. You have to be pixel perfect, threading the needle into these little holes.

And every time you get the ball into the hole, you get an amount of feel back. And then if you press select again, you can go back to the actual game. And I really don't know. Like, it's a very strange mechanic, especially because for some people, it could just be completely hidden. Yes, that's true, right. It is hidden behind, you know...

pressing that specific button, but also, so the gas station was named Vern's. Vern's, yeah. It's not iconic, but it's like, all right, that's interesting that they named it. No, it's iconic to us. Yeah, sure. It's weird that they named it at all. But also what's weird is like... You have to go to one of the fueling bays in order to get new fuel, but there's a chance that none of them are open, and so you have to hit the dollar sign icon.

at the bottom of Vern's service station to open up the fueling bays. But it's like, you don't collect money in the game. Well, there's also like bathroom signs. So I don't think there's a lot of rules with... The visual language here. And if you hit the bathroom sign, your orb gets flushed down the toilet. Is that true? No, that's not true. Oh, okay. So obviously... You know, the UI, it's minimal, but it's functional. Sure. Everything that's on screen...

Like, let me put it this way. You don't need to read the manual to understand this game. Maybe if you're like... A little slow, you would not be able to understand why the pins keep resetting. You might be like, well, what do I have to do? A little slow. You know what I mean, though? It's like the concept of the game is it's all communicated clearly. Oh, yeah. It's all intuitive tasks. Like when you get numbers that are jumbled up, it is clear that your task is to put them in order.

like it it's again like wario ware in that way where you you take half a second to internalize the concept that they're playing with in this level and then you just do it It's just not quite as easy as WarioWare. And if we're being honest, this is the kind of weird experiment on the NES that we're usually here for. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

It's just that that's what makes the show interesting is when we play weird games, but that doesn't mean that, like, we're going to like them. Yeah, I think, like, I did think it was neat. But I don't think that weird is shorthand for I'm going to love it. And would you really trust the galaxy to be saved by a bouncing ball? Especially not if it's a bouncing ball. They're using to take down an intergalactic wizard. Right, what's going on here? Like, did the...

Did the civilization or whatever that came up with this plan, did they not figure out space travel, but they figured out traveling by paddles? Maybe. Maybe this is all just in your... In your computer heads-up display, this is how you navigate interstellar space. We don't know. We don't. Could this be a Zen game?

A Zen game. You know, like, if you're good at it, like, could you reach, like, a Zen-like state of just, you know, this is actually, this game actually calms me down when I play it. I guess. I mean... I think that there's a high enough skill ceiling in just being able to manipulate the ball, like, perfectly. Right, when the ball curves just right. Yeah, maybe it could get to that point. I would have never thought of that.

That's an interesting question. So you don't think kids in the 90s were renting this at Blockbuster and being like, yeah, this is exactly what I wanted out of a space game. Oh, wow. I guess maybe it is like the... The cover, I wouldn't say it looks like a space game, but it definitely looks like a sci-fi game. I guess I don't know if I would have thought it was a space game.

Right, you know, like you might have thought you were getting another shmup, but a 3D shmup this time, and instead you get 3D Breakout. And last but not least, Sean, if this game came out now... On Steam. Cute little indie title. With neon colors and a synthwave soundtrack. Would it be a cult hit? Oh, and a synthwave soundtrack? And neon colors everywhere. And future retro. You could move ducks around. I think I'd be into it. Yeah, but it would be like...

You know, Mazda Miatas instead. No, it would have to be ducks. I think I would want a duck. Okay, they're ducks, but they're like neon ducks. Oh, yeah, for sure. I love the event. Yeah, and it's all secretly takes place in the back rooms of a Miami bar. Okay, for sure. No, I'd be down for that.

Great. So that's what you guys need to do. Anybody out there making a video game right now, cancel that game. It's probably too expensive anyway. And make Orb 3D 2. Orb 2D. Make Orb 2D. Miami Vice Edition. Isn't it weird they went right to 3D? We didn't even get Orb 2D. We didn't even get Orb 1D, dude. I'm still impressed you played Expedition 33 without playing the first 32 entries. Shut the fuck up.

I might shut up, but not before we do the Essential Games list. The funny thing about Orb 3D is that I respect it. I didn't enjoy it when I was playing it. And it does make it feel like I do a few times on this podcast. It makes it feel like I'm just doing like QA testing for nobody.

Like, when I play some of these games, it's like, I'm just making sure that they work. And like, yep, that's the game. And like, cool. Time to go review it on a podcast. Like, that's what wound up happening here with Orb 3D. I just felt like I was reporting into nobody to report that, yep, this game can release. And it did. And people bought it numerous times because they put it onto a bunch of different things.

But it's not the kind of game that I'm ever going to seek out again. Or probably this could be one that I wind up forgetting too. Because while it is something unique, it's not necessarily memorable. uh so orb 3d is getting a no for me what about you sean um yeah it's not essential but i will say that i i think that the developers of this game are super clever like the fact that each each level

is its own idea, and the mechanics stay the same, but the rules change every time you boot it up, basically. I think that's really cool. I think maybe I do wonder what they made later. If we're going to play another game by them that maybe isn't as super high concept, but still. allowed this kind of creativity again. But as of right now, it's just not super fun, but it's impressive. I welcome Orb 4D.

Which probably came out on Atari Jaguar or something. Just something where it's like, yeah, we don't have 4D. Hypercubes everywhere. Yeah, but we just don't have it. We're just going to shamelessly call it 4D. But nobody really cares if it is or isn't. Because Orb 4D, you know, I'm not up to date on the latest, like, what dimensions or what. But, like, that would be, like, you would just see everywhere the Orb ever was and will be.

I think... Because it's time, right? Sometimes people say that it's time, but it could also be a spatial dimension, and that's where you get hypercubes from. Oh, right, the hypercube, yeah. Yeah, I'm not... Uh, I'm not a quantum mechanist. I'm not a quantum machinist. Outro Music