395 - Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival

Jim Henson's Muppet Adventure, Chaos at the Carnival. Jump, leap, hop, and charge into action. 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. Miss Piggy has been Pig-napped. Oh, no. It just feels like really dirty. Pig-napped. I wouldn't have thought pig-napped sounded dirty. I thought it was, like, too playful to be taken seriously. Like, oh, all right, she's been pig-napped. Yep. Great. She'll be back next episode? Like, what's going on? Do you get man-napped?

Is anybody going to care if she gets kidnapped too? I hate to be that guy, but I'm low on Miss Piggy. Isn't she kind of abusive? Absolutely. Is she not canceled yet? Even if she's, you know, kind of mean, like, that doesn't mean, like, nobody should care if she's been pignapped. I mean, I don't know. I would be worried if you guys got pignapped. And we're mean.

But I would be man-napped, right, to your point earlier? You would be man-napped, yes. Okay, and do you just become Sean-napped? Well, I don't know. She's being pig-napped because she's a pig, not because her name is Miss Piggy. Yeah, that's what I meant. I wasn't really sure where you were going with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not a man. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, are you a man or are you a Muppet?

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

Oh, God damn it. This will be my last episode, everybody. I was wondering if we just turned into a breaking news podcast. This is now current events.

Slash knock-knock jokes. Miss Piggy, pig-napped, been covered. Dr. Grump, anybody know if he's like a real? No, I have no idea. He's the one who did the pig-napping. Is he from the Muppets? I assumed he was. Have we not heard of him? Did we check the Muppet Wiki? The Muppet Wiki would know. So I feel like I owe it to everybody to just do like a quick...

Does he exist? And it seems like... Yeah, this podcast would be better if we did a little research. A little research would be great. It seems like there might be a Dr. Grumpy. I think that's probably it, right? Maybe they just couldn't get enough characters on screen. No, there is no Dr. Grump in the Muppets. There is a Grump.

But he doesn't look anything like this guy. Well, maybe he's a grump. Maybe he's just like a doctor for this game. Do you guys ever watch the show? I love the show. Don't get me wrong, but I feel like Grump, it seems like he was like a... weird one-off thing in the 60s and would not be referenced in this rather childish oh yeah yeah I wasn't trying to like like insult you because I have never really watched the show and

I was just checking to see if maybe you guys had a bit more historical experience with this franchise. I think when I was a kid, I watched like...

I would catch an episode here and there or something, but I never really watched it. I was more of a Muppet Babies guy as a little kid. Yeah, I remember Muppet Babies. I don't... remember anything about it i remember that i did watch it at least a few times when i was a kid but never muppets muppet babies is a very cozy show that's why you don't remember anything because you didn't have to it was just like you just watched it and you felt good oh okay yeah

Now, The Muppet Show is interesting because it was like trying to be a variety sketch show as if it was like live and being put together. You know, like, oh, we're the Muppets and we're trying to make this show. But, like, it's also all obviously scripted and filmed in advance and not live. But it's put on under that, like, guise. And I think that's a pretty unique hook about the show.

So I dig it. And I feel like the main hook of every episode was the guest stars. There were a lot of guest stars across many different seasons. And I think even off the show, we were talking about some of the guest stars who showed up and they got some like. really big names at the time so i feel like while we know of the muppets now they were never hotter than they were in the 70s like that was peak muppet time

for everybody, and the Muppets have only lost value over time. I thought they were having a little bit of a resurgence. They were having that resurgence with the movie, which did do well, but then they got that show, I believe, on NBC. which was also just called like the Muppets. And it was like same idea of like, now you're going to watch how they put together this live show and everything. And it was trying to be a little bit of SNL, a little bit of.

30 Rock and all that. A little bit of Jackass. Sure. But it was none of that really. And while I thought it was like an okay show, I didn't hate it by any means, it was canceled pretty quickly. Damn. So people were not coming back for the Muppets. Did they have any contemporary co-hosts, or was it like a single-camera sitcom thing? It was a single-camera sitcom-style thing, but there were still guests.

Oh, okay. So like Billie Eilish? It wasn't that recent. Oh, okay. That's too bad. Well, they still have enough, you know, they're still... big enough that Disney will bank on them for Disney World. You know, they're making like, aren't they making like a ride and like a section of Disney World that's going to be Muppet themed? I don't doubt that the Muppets can sell. Like, I'm sure there are toys and there's plenty of... I feel like just the...

The appetite for the Muppets as a TV show or a media thing is less than as a brand. It's kind of crazy, though. I would have thought that maybe, oh, they've had one there, and... It doesn't, like, the numbers just don't work out to replace it. Like, it's doing fine as it is. But, like, to think that they're actually putting resources into making it. Yeah. I mean, I...

I don't quote me on the fact that there's going to be a whole section. I think there might be like an area that's going to be like a Muppet area. I can't, not sure, but I'm positive. They are changing rock and roller coaster, the Aerosmith roller coaster into a Muppet roller coaster. That sounds fun. I never knew what Aerosmith was doing at Disney World anyway. Yeah, that just seems like, you know, as someone who's been to Disney World twice in my life.

like many years apart. That's like one that I've always heard of. You know, it just seems like I, like I knew what rock and roller coaster was before I went. I didn't know that for a Muppet thing. I didn't, I feel like I know that like, you know, there's.

There's all the Disney princesses and Steven Tyler is among them. But like, I just didn't think that that was ever a thing. Who is your favorite Muppet? Big Bird. Can it be from Sesame Street? They are Muppets. I'm not here to fight on the definition of a Muppet. Because as a kid, I was obsessed with Oscar the Grouch.

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

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

Kermit and Jim Henson were partners on the Muppets. Yeah, I heard they worked together pretty closely. And Mike, since you seem the most versed in the Muppets, can I ask you something about this back of the box? Yeah. First of all, can you read it again, the back of the box? Just the part I read on the show? Yeah, after the... Jump, leap, hop, and charge into action. Okay, so now are those all... First of all, jump, leap, hop.

All synonymous, really. I think they're all things Kermit does. They're all things Kermit does, but you don't do any of those things in this game. Well, you do if you're good. You do them if you're really good. Yeah. Oh, you don't know? I don't know. Oh, well, this is actually a good setup to finally talk about. It's good setup to talk about the actual game because so the game is.

a basically a compilation of four mini games that are disguised under this carnival theme but uh you have to uh you have four carnival rides that star kermit fozzy animal and gonzo

on a sort of a rescue of Miss Piggy. They have to play the stage long enough, clear a certain amount in order to clear the stage and get the... thing that will progress to to the end and basically once you do those four carnival rides the finale is with kermit in this sort of like i don't want to platformers being nice to it but like yeah that would be where the leaping and the hopping into action

comes into play. I would just like to make an argument against the idea of these being minigames because they do take a very long time. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, these are long games. Yes, long games. But long games with the substance of a minigame. Absolutely. And then I would also like to argue that there's any characters in this game aside from Kermit because...

Like, Kermit's the only one that has any actual, like, recognizable of the characters that you play. I thought I... distinctly recognized animal as the one I think in the car one yes yeah he kind of looks like Elmo if you're not trying but yeah that's clearly him in the maze okay you're right the maze and the Which isn't even like a carnival ride going down a river in an inner tube. Yeah, it's like a lazy river at a water park.

Okay, sure. Not a carnival. And you don't go to space at a carnival either. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm saying is that they could have done a better job using the sprites to signify that these are the characters from the show.

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

Not because this is made by the same people, High Tech Expressions, the guys who also made the Sesame Street games. So you immediately notice that there is no correct way to control. uh which game you want to play no matter what button you hit it just goes down and then up again in the menu like the sesame street games that's not the problem but it is like automatically a warning sign

The real warning was as soon as you select which minigame you want to go into, you just immediately get dumped into it. Like it had already been going and now it's just like it's still happening while you're like just, okay, and now you take the wheel as Kermit.

okay, like, what do I do? Like, what am I supposed to be doing? And it turns out the thing you're supposed to be doing is exactly what it looks like. Not much. I kept going back and forth in my head as to whether, like, I know that this is a kid's game. And I know that like, this is not designed for me. This is not for me, but like, I kept going back and forth. Like, is this just a kid's game or is this actual shovelware? Yeah. I think I would lean towards shovelware because like.

We say this is a kid's game for something like Sesame Street. And that's like, yeah, that's goal is to do something very different than like be a fun game. This is trying to be a fun game, even if it's for younger kids. It's trying to be a video game. So like.

for it you know mike what you were just talking about about it just throwing you into the levels i think the biggest at least for me the worst offender of this was the kermit ones where sometimes i'm i just i'm starting on top of a rock that's damaging me there are times where the the level spawns me on top of one of those logs that damages you and moves you and i just lose all my lives immediately before i get any agency as the player so like i think that shows that it's like

This was either not playtested or it was not polished enough. Yeah, well, certainly, even if it is for kids, which I'm not going to challenge. Like, I agree that the difficulty is not really there other than that. I mean, there is a difficulty to it because of how long it goes on for. Yeah, but that's more in your head. Yeah, exactly. It's in your head. The problem is that if it was four kids, they should take more time to like...

explain this like how Sesame Street games do you know the Sesame Street games might be guilty of holding your hand too much but at least they are education games that are designed to do something I get that these aren't education they're not teaching you anything they just have a clear or maybe not so clear goal because you do kind of just feel like you're drifting endlessly in these levels until they suddenly tell you that they've been cleared. But there's nothing really...

Like, there's no setup. Even the pig nap thing at the front of the thing, to Sean's point, these don't even feel like carnival games. I get the idea that, like, animals supposed to maybe be in, like, a bumper cars ride or something.

The closest we got, yeah. But it's not even like it's not in a bumper cars environment. It would be better if he had to do like a survival against Dr. Grump's henchmen in a bumper car style game where like, oh, don't hit the side of the walls or something. Instead, they just created. this these really long levels that auto scroll or or uh or you scroll depending on which level it is but like so if you're in the if you're in the car you control the speed but if you're in um

the space shuttle or the Kermit the Frog rowing game, you know, like those games auto scroll. And so you're just kind of drifting and you think like, Okay, is it multiple levels? When does this end? And it goes on for a really long time. I was at a point where I thought that I was... missing the point of the game like i was supposed to have been doing something and this was just going to keep going on forever until i did that uh but no i just had to wait for like eight or nine minutes

yeah and the the issue for me with the with this the go-kart one is that there's no incentive to go fast like yeah there's no time limit it's not a race there's a bunch of little obstacles that'll hurt you And you have limited lives. So you can really just take your time and go really slow and make it really boring. But like the only incentive to go fast is like because you're bored.

But if you want to play this game optimally, you should be just inching along on this, which is so stupid. This is the one time I would advocate for a time limit. I wonder if you just hugged the top or bottom of the screen and just tanked whatever damage. Could you just... Power right through it. I, for some reason, psychologically did not do that. I did try that. I tried. It doesn't work because eventually you will. So I think it actually is designed to have you slowly drift.

down on the screen so that you don't ever just stay in a perfect spot and slide through everything and so then eventually you'll hit one of those like oil spills that will just cause you to spin out and then you'll be completely out of control

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

There are things to watch out for and things to collect, but it's mostly just obstacles. The idea is just... Avoid everything and just keep moving on because you just want to get to the end as fast as possible. There's no real reward other than score.

But it's kind of weird when there's score in a game that also has story because the score doesn't affect the story. So I still just advocate for like... dodge everything because there's not even like cool power-ups that like oh collect this thing and it'll make you go really fast or this thing will launch you in the air so you don't have to worry about uh the obstacles on the ground there's nothing like that in the game so you basically just want to avoid everything

and rushed to the end of the stage. Was there anything more to the game that I missed? Were there any like, oh, that's a clever obstacle to throw in this game? That really took me for a spin. Well, the one thing that there is that still doesn't make sense to me is a bunch of barrels that don't hurt you and don't seem to give you anything unless they're giving you points and I wasn't noticing. But you hit the barrel and it lifts up.

So I was convinced after a while that the key was going to be under one of these barrels and I had to find it. But to my knowledge, those barrels are there for no reason. Yeah, I would say that my only note is... Like it's sort of in the same vein that I don't think that like the legibility makes a lot of sense. It almost seems like kind of reverse the kinds of things that you would, that you should be attracted to and the things that you want to avoid.

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

And I think that cherries as a thing that you want to collect has existed for a while, even at this point in video games. So, yeah, it was just odd. It was just a weird thing to do. And the things, I don't know if what you're talking about is the banana peels are these red flags. Are they flags? Yes. But even if you know that they're red flags, I think there's the term red flag.

It's like definitively something you want to avoid, a red flag. That's true. There's also like greens. They are flags. I'm looking at it now. They're just freaking flags. But to me, they look like banana peels. You know, it's funny, too. If you just take it as Animal, you know, went off the bumper cars course. Right. And now he's just riding around this car, which is something like Animal would do. He's he's nuts.

Right now he's just riding it around. This isn't like a course, you know, this isn't even like there's no clever turns or whatever. It's a straight line the whole way through. They couldn't even design like a racetrack for this. Every single. thing in this game is a straight line. There is no concept of turns in this game. You have to turn around the stuff that you don't want to hit.

No, I know that, but you know what I mean. There's no turns on the course that bothers me. This would have been a good chance for a real racing segment instead of what we got. And while it's... while the key does eventually show up or whatever, it is possible to also just fly by that. You can just pass it. Oh, I didn't even think that's a possibility, yeah. Oh, it's worse in the auto-scroller. So in the...

In the Kermit the Frog one, when you're in the rowboat, in that one, because it's an auto scroll and because of the way, so the way that game works is you use the D-pad, use the left and the right to steer. the boat and then you either hold down to speed up or hold up to kind of like slow down uh the pace of the boat but there's a very uh

There's a very tight track with a lot of obstacles and a lot of things to avoid. Very few things to pick up. But there is a reason to pick up things in this one because you're taking damage on everything you hit. So you do want to recover your health. If you miss the key at the end of this long adventure, it just resets you back to the beginning. You have to now play the entire stage again.

Like it just, it's just auto scrolls you right back to the start. And now you have to do the whole thing again before you get a chance to collect the key. So I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to have like one health left.

But the key be placed in a spot where like you probably would take a hit to get across because there is there is very little in the sense of momentum on this. Like you're either like in the correct spot and you're not going to take damage or you kind of have to just like. You know, in certain platformers or action games, we talk about sometimes you just want to take the damage hit to get the invincibility to move through it. That's kind of what happens in this river ride with Kermit as well.

There's also some problems with, I think, just hitboxes too. I feel like I have this complaint in most games, but... Especially in a game like this where there isn't really much else to do aside from avoid things. You would think that maybe having hitboxes that were tight to the actual sprite would be important. Yeah, or hitboxes and also detection of hits. Or not even detection, but feedback. Because if you run into a rock, it's just health draining.

There's no, like, you don't get pushed back or anything. Sometimes you can get stuck on a rock and just watch your health drain and, like, you can't move. So it just feels really weird.

The next ride, Gonzo's space ride. That's probably the closest we get to anything other, any other video game we've played where you can make the case that this is... you know asteroids or something i suppose uh it isn't it is an auto scroll shooter so in some ways it's even a shmup um but it's it's barely any of that you do you are

you're in the spaceship you can you can control again in the eight directions but this one with the thrust so that's what reminds me of asteroid where like you you have this momentum that powers through and you kind of have to if you're going too fast in one direction you gotta

turn the ship around and thrust in the other direction so there is a game here uh and the the slow scroll in this one, isn't as painful because I feel like it is necessary, especially if we're arguing that this game is somewhat for kids, that it gives younger players the chance to... choose which path they want to go in because there are sometimes branching paths with different and branching paths is being polite it's just uh

Oh, we're going to put a bar in the middle of the screen. Yeah, do you want to go up or down? But there are things in here, too. There are other enemies. There are drifting rocks. There are... Fuel canisters. Yeah, sure. The meatballs were the rocks, in my opinion. But at the end of the autoscroll, this one doesn't have like a key you can miss. It does have a... boss fight i guess you can call it where you do shoot at an enemy spaceship and then you're rewarded with the key so poops out the key

Very, very well said. All that to say, this one actually felt like they might have been onto something. If they just did this with the other Muppet games, it would have been okay. It's definitely the best one.

uh i think that there's still a little bit of like uh wait what am i doing like this just still needs a little bit of a setup but yeah i mean this this is definitely the it is the most like the execution was was the best here But it's a pretty low bar of just like, okay, at least it feels like Asteroids is the best we can do so far.

And then the last game of the four minigames with Fozzie Bear here, which first off, nobody likes Fozzie, right? I thought he was cool. I thought he was beloved. Waka Waka? yeah oh now that yeah now that you say that i love him right yeah now you know who he is um fozzy bear uh amaze is a carnival thing i think we can agree on that this is the one that takes place inside the carnival maybe

Maybe the other ones took place in the parking lot. I will grant that mazes exist in carnivals. Mazes where the walls are ice cream sundaes. They are. And it's just like, what could they have done? Like, they could have used literally anything to make these walls. And in order to make the walls look like... have any sense of like, oh, I can walk here but not walk there. They chose something that just sort of looks like a MS paintbrush. I don't know.

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

I just thought you were going to see this thing. That is actually a Fozzie Bear style joke, Sean. I don't know if you know that. You made it. Yeah, but you connected it. Also, real quick, is he being chased by like a mini Fozzie bear? No, there's a mouse Muppet, too, and I forget his name. Oh, okay. A little mouse. Oh, yeah. Rizzo. Rizzo the rat. Oh, okay. He's not a mouse. He's a rat.

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

Again, it's not really a maze. You see the entire... A maze is where you don't know where you're going. This would be like if the entirety of Metroid was on one screen, you know? What would you call this, then? This is like a walk in the park with Fozzie Bear. A walk in the park with Fozzie Bear. It's like a path. Yeah. And if that really is Rizzo the Rat, he's not a bad guy. So he's not in the show. He's like Gonzo's friend. Do people like Gonzo? Gonzo's my favorite Muppet.

Oh, okay. I don't know. Nobody asked me earlier, so I thought I'd just say that right. He always struck me as someone like that didn't, like he wasn't really considered part of the clique. That's why he's my favorite. Oh, okay. uh and then but i just wanted to you know once again you just have to do this there's nothing that indicates that you might be like halfway through or like near the end it all just sort of ends after like

Doing this for 8 to 10 minutes. Right. Screen 1 of 20 would have been nice to see, you know, as you're progressing along. Like, how many more times do I got to do this? Are there... Two Rizzos? Because there's two Rizzos in this game. There are not two Rizzos. Good. I don't know if Rizzo has cousins. Yeah. You know?

Plankton has, like, a million cousins, so maybe that's the same situation with Rizzo the Rat. Maybe. Plankton, famously not a Muppet, shouldn't have been mentioned in this episode, but... Well, we all kind of agreed that the... Gonzo space level was the best level. Do we agree that this is the worst level? This is barely a video game. There's nothing fun about it. You're just walking slowly around picking things up. I was going to say...

Go ahead. I've never seen a video game get walking in four directions wrong, but like it doesn't work. Sometimes I hit left and I'm like too close to something. It just takes me down or right. Like.

I don't know how that can happen. It's using the menu logic. Yeah, any button just takes you the next direction. The next direction, yeah. And you could argue that, again, they're going for... reference to a classic arcade game here with pac-man but they didn't do anything like that the rizzo the rats don't act like ghosts there's no like

There's no like, oh, collect every pellet on the screen or whatever. Collect these randomly spawning accessories. It's like bow ties and gift boxes, right? Yeah. Collect these things, which you were never told to collect, by the way, either.

It's never communicated that you have to collect these three things for the stage to end. It just happens to end after you collect those three things. And then you just say, well, I guess I'll do that again the next stage, right? For all you know, just to the point of the... length of all these games, there's something else you're supposed to be doing in order to secretly unlock the stage that gives you the key. The player has no involvement with the game, really, and that's going to be...

the argument against this game in general. But I feel like usually there are enough details in a game to warrant me like some follow-up questions with you guys or whatever. What am I going to ask? Does the maze overstay its welcome? Of course it does. Is it a change of pace? No. You're right. There's really no way to... to actually have any kind of critical conversation about this game beyond just the surface level bullshit that we've been talking about. There's nothing to it.

I guess we could talk about the mechanics of how to get by the cousins of Rizzo the rat. You can throw bones. Which is a famous Fozzie Bear thing to do. You ever just sort of emit love out of your chest? Do you have to have collected the hearts? to do that because hearts are collectible but they like are indistinguishable is that like what does it do that's your power but it doesn't replenish your hearts does it matter

You're right. It doesn't matter. It does bring up a good point, though, about the UI, if you can call it that, the bare-bones UI, which the placement of it is different across the games, but they all have the same thing. score, power, and rides. And rides is very interesting because that is maybe the most personality put into this game is the word rides instead of lives.

But you wouldn't even think that they were your lives, right? Like, there's so many of them. Like, do I really get 15 lives? But that's true. But calling them rides is fun because, of course, Muppets don't die. They don't have lives. It's just how many more times they get to go on the ride before Miss Piggy's pig-napped. And that's really cute. She's already pig-napped. They're doing this.

They're doing this to get her back? Yeah, before she's roasted. Yeah. We have to, like, Kermit was like, we have to save Miss Piggy, so we have to make this quick. Like, go on. Like, we can still go to the carnival, but just, like, do what you gotta do, and then we'll meet back here in, like, 20, 30 minutes, then we'll go save Miss Piggy. Like, is it, like, does the guy...

Who runs the carnival? Did he do it? It doesn't seem like Dr. Grump is... Am I saying that right? Yeah, Dr. Grump. It doesn't sound like he's behind it all. He's not behind it all. Oh, no, it is. Sorry, back of the box over here. Dr. Grump's Carnival of Clamorous Confusion. Got it. That was confusing just reading the title. We've got media literacy here.

Well, here we go. Dr. Grump's Carnival of Clamorous Confusion is a rollicking rollercoaster of thrills. We show these games for kids. There's a lot of big words. Thrills, spills, and chills. Join Kermit as he faces the fearsome challenge of the Raging River Ride. Help Fozzie lick the amazing ice cream race. There's no licking in that game. Is this a race? Yeah, right? But...

I guess there's just no explanation as to why they are interacting with carnival rides to, like, what, to get to Mr. Grumpy? Here's some interesting lore, though. All right. Fozzie's in that ice cream maze, right? That's not Rizzo the rat. Those are apparently dogs. And that's why you're throwing bones. Oh, that's why you're throwing bones. Those are almost like dogs at all. And we have a reference.

For what a dog should look like in the Muppets universe. Do we? Ralph? Yeah, Ralph, the dog, he's great. He's a good Muppet. He's a good boy. Okay, so I watched one.

A few clips of an episode of The Muppet Show, and they had what looked like the closest thing to a real animal. It was Muppie. Did they retire Muppie? Whoa. I'm not saying Muppie's like a... deep cut or whatever but i don't remember muppy you're saying muppy looked just like a regular dog it was basically just a dog with like yeah it looked like a regular dog that is so funny um

apparently muppy has had multiple appearances on the show so i just don't remember this guy but yeah he does look like he does look like a dog which is weird because then that's like but that's always like the thing with Pluto and Goofy, right? Aren't you guys both dogs but one of them is domesticated? What the hell is going on there?

And after you get all four keys, you get to go to the final level in the Grumposaurus cave with Kermit. It's like I said. platformers kind, but I guess that's mostly what you're doing. And in this stage, there are two boss fights, if you can believe it. Was anybody expecting that? No.

I wasn't expecting this stage to exist. This stage at all, right? But here's the interesting thing about this stage, and you'll notice it right away if you're watching the long play, but it catches you off guard when you get to the stage in the game, too. Finally, a good view of Kermit, and he does... He has an awkward stance, I would say. He kind of looks like he's standing... He's like fencing with a feather? Yes, with a feather, right. That is the thing that...

is very apparent right away is that why is he holding a feather? Like I get it. He's, he's all about peace and love. Kermit wouldn't have like a baseball bat as his main weapon, but he arguably didn't even need a weapon, right? It could have just been that he like, like slap things away, right? Like just swatted things with his hand or whatever. He didn't need a weapon. I don't think anybody was expecting him to hold a sword, but the feather is odd, but the feather comes into play.

Because you have to use the feather on Grumposaurus to tickle Grumposaurus's armpit to get him to move back. And in true fencing form, like once he moves back enough, he'll fall over. Huh. I just think that's really cute. I think that is like, that is actually like something that respects. the muppet world view and is also very playful and like of course you would tickle the boss like that's that's so funny it's kind of weird that gonzo um you know blew up

that spaceship in hindsight, right? Like, Kermit's got a much more peaceful method to this whole thing. Yeah, how many people were on that ship? Like, I don't know. Yeah, and he wasn't even at the carnival, so who knows? Gonzo's mission was completely separate from all this. Unless, like, they're all just on, like, a pretty high dosage of, like, hallucinogens and they, like, none of this is actually happening. Maybe Kermit actually does have, like, a bladed weapon.

But his weird LSD brain, he thinks he's just tickling people. I'm going to read it like that. Yeah, I'm thinking you're not even playing as Muppets. You're just a guy on LSD who thinks he's the Muppets. Most video games can be explained away like this, I think. Most media. Yeah. And unfortunately the creative tickle match isn't the end of the game. I think it should be. You actually do have to...

face Dr. Grump. And he is like on the top of a platform that you can't reach and you're below him. And he's throwing bombs down at you. And you're throwing hearts up at him. So like now it's now all, you know, like all metaphors are lost. And it's just truly the, the. Sesame people pushing their agenda on us in that war never triumphs over love or something like that. But Miss Piggy is also up there with him, and she's not exactly like...

She's not moving at all. We don't even know if she's breathing, I guess. I'm not trying to say she's not struggling, but she's just not moving at all. She barely looks like Miss Piggy on first glance, but then you realize that's her. And then when you free her... She still doesn't really, like, animate or come to life, and it's kind of creepy. Yeah, it's like she just kind of gets pulled down, but via, like, some kind of, like...

Like if you were dragging and dropping something in like Photoshop, but very slowly. And then, and then, uh, fricking, uh, Kermit. very slowly like very creepily like sidles up to her and kind of like goes behind her um but then they like stand up like you know face to face for again an uncomfortable amount of time

And then she thanks you for saving her. Right. The thank you is important because that's like proof of life. You know, I would have thought that like, you know, hey, we never saw her take a breath. Like all we know, she was strangled to death. Proof of life. It's important these days. It is. Now, I know you guys didn't play this because you were surprised that it even existed. I didn't say that. That was Joe.

Oh, okay. Sorry, Sean. We're the same. What's the difference? Sean, so let me ask you then, since Joe can't really speak to it. In a game where it has been so bare bones, is this a fair challenge or is this a... difficulty spike that kind of undoes the the the easiness of the rest of the game i've been so i would say that like you know by and large from from minigame to minigame it was Very easy. Except in like some parts that like it was just poorly designed that like you will just get shot.

From off screen or you will get stuck on like the geometry or like this like it'll spawn you into a Like into a death pit And then you have to get like respawned again and it might spawn you into something else that kills you until it moves you. Excuse me. It moves you. So, yeah, I was dying a lot. But again, I don't think that it was actually like.

It was challenge. I think it was jank. Oh, yeah. This game belongs in our jank folder. If that still capes around. I don't know if this is... I don't know if I have a case for this, but just like in general, didn't the tone of the game and just the color palette and a lot of other things about this just feel like a little darker than the Muppets?

Yeah, the music in this Kermit section, which I'm watching right now to my horror, is very dark. It's like Castlevania. Yeah, I agree with you. I guess just in general, though, too, right? The color palette is kind of... Gray. There's gray in every level. Yeah. There's grays and there's blacks and I just don't think of the Muppets like that. I think they should have went with more vibrant and cheery stuff. I get it. Miss Piggy's in danger, but...

She's in danger at a carnival. Make it a little fun. Make it a little bright. Where are the elephants, right? Come on, guys. Where are the elephants? There's elephants at a carnival. Okay, when I think of carnivals, I'm thinking like real side of the road. Like this is just a parking lot of an old Sears.

See, but I hear you. I agree. But I'm thinking Muppets Carnival, which should be like early 1900s carnival, Barnum and Bailey style. It's a circus. Yeah, but technically they offered up a circus. The back of the box gave it like a carnival of clamorous confusion. You know, I'm reading that as bigger than like. But did they say carnival, Mike? I just, I guess I'm just, yeah, it does say carnival, but I guess I'm reading that as. Circus.

No, they never said circus. But I guess I'm just not thinking about Ferris wheel in front of the local church. I'm going to give them a little more color than that. I suppose so. I would too.

Do you guys have a chance to pull up the box art for the game? Yes. Okay. Because that's probably the best thing about this game. Is the box art. It feels like it's like a comic book cover. I like it. It's alluring. Oh, yeah. I would buy this game in a heartbeat. Yeah, Miss Piggy looks like a lot more alive in this one. Yeah.

Yeah, she doesn't look like she's being completely tied up from her feet to her neck. No, she does look like that in the final stage. I mean, she looks pretty good in this, to be honest. Oh, okay. and I don't know about you I don't know about you guys but Grumpasaurus looks completely different than I imagined, because in the front of the box, he does look kind of terrifying. Do they say Grumpasaurus? Are you adding a-saurus? I feel like I got that. Grumpasaurus is a guy.

No, no, Dr. Grump is the guy. The guy behind Kermit on the box is Grumpasaurus. Oh, you mean like, okay, like the King Kong looking guy, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Donkey Kong. Yeah. He looks pretty chill. Great box art. Now, is Miss Piggy tied to a magic crystal? Yes. Yeah, because that doesn't show up at all. Yeah. I guess if it was just a lamp post, it wouldn't be quite as visually interesting.

You would think you would have to go to Superman's lair to save Miss Piggy based on this box art. Is it fair to call that Superman's lair? Lair is reserved for villains, right? Fortress? I mean, I would have a layer if I could afford it. Is it not the Fortress of Solitude? Yeah, it is. Oh, good, good. So we all know about Superman. We just don't know much about the Muppets.

Yes, I don't know how to tell you. They kind of exist in the same lane. You're either a Superman fan or a Muppet fan. There's not enough time for both. There is a lot of Muppets media, and I will just say this, and this is not to offend anyone who's in either, but there is a certain level of obsession needed for both of them. right? Like to be a super fan. You can say you like the Muppets, but to be a Muppets super fan, it requires like a...

Totally other kind of commitment that I'm not ready. I'm not ready to watch Dark Souls. I'm not ready for. I have known Muppet Superfans, and I agree that they are really into it. Like, I know about Fraggle Rock. Dark Crystal is kind of where they lose me. I'm like, I don't know if I ever want to see that. I don't even know what Dark Crystal is. That was a movie that the Henson Company made. It was directed by Jim Henson. Was that the one with David Bowie?

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

We've mentioned a lot that the levels are long, but just to prove it, the world record for this game is around the mid-20s. Minutes. Mid-20 minutes. While there is some kind of routing from level to level, there's no great glitch or anything that makes this any faster. You do just have to experience the entire level. So yeah, basically the speed run is just playing through the entire game and just collecting the key as soon as they show up. Huh.

And I guess we're just going to move on to what happens next in this episode, which is the Essential Games list. This game is more like the Muppet misadventure, if you know what I'm saying. And maybe that's just a thing I'll do going forward. I'll give new titles. We'll see how it goes. But, yeah, this is a total miss. This is barely a carnival theme. Barely any chaos for what it's worth either, though. Like, I never felt like things were so crazy or out of control.

It's kind of weird that in the Muppets world, this was kind of the zaniest stuff they could come up with. It's all kind of practical, and then there's just a lot of jank in the control of it all. I did not have a good time playing this from the moment I started playing it because of those menus and the way that you select them. But I knew I was almost in for some kind of...

computer game style of video game and i've tried to put my i've tried to say this before of like games that feel like computer games this one actually turned out to be that like it was already on apple 2 and commodore 64 and all that and sometimes those games you just have like a

a feel that they've been translated that way because they just they don't feel like other NES games and this certainly doesn't feel like it belongs as part of the larger catalog that we've been playing we have played some bad games but this is This is next level bad and feels very lazy. I do not like almost anything about this game other than the fact that Kermit tickles Grumposaurus off a ledge. Sean?

Yeah, I was trying to think about like, I've been kind of like, I've been angry during these episodes during some games. I just consider like... insultingly bad but I never really got angry with this game but it is probably the most like where I felt the most lost in like how I live my life uh, to, to have like the, this is like an assignment that I have to do. Like I had to play this game and it was the first time that I think the word shovelware actually crossed my mind.

And I'm sticking with it. I'm going to stick with that. This is a pretty terrible game. I'm pretty sure that the budget was probably 95% licensing. And then... like it's also weird too that we we played other games by this company and it was just the fact that they were education games that really hid how bad they are at this um and like once they finally have to like

have gameplay it's just like oh this is just like the guy that owns the company his cousin programs everything and like he never actually like he actually like he's self-taught he's only been doing it for a couple years This is some actual libelous shit, so I'm like, maybe I should be quiet. But yeah, no, this is a really, really bad non-essential game. Joe.

Yeah, I think that you're hitting something there. Like, I think that this is what they know how to do. And they didn't realize it's like when they made this game, they like forgot that they have to add game design to it.

Because they're like, well, yeah, the other ones like worked fine for, you know, kids trying to learn their letters or whatever. But it does feel like like a. really early first draft or something of of the game where it's like oh we forgot to actually put any like polish or or complete the game it just feels unfinished to me um so i i definitely think this is

No question about this, not essential. And since we're talking about high-tech expressions, who also made the other Sesame Street games, it's worth mentioning that they did make a few non-Sesame Street games for the NES. All of which we have said are pretty terrible. Are you ready to hear which other ones they've made? Okay, yeah. Orb 3D. Oh, wow. Remote control.

The game show. The game show. The MTV game show. That wasn't the worst. It wasn't the worst, but it really was just trivia, so they didn't screw it up either. Win, lose, or draw. Now, that one was bad. I don't know if you remember, but that one was bad. It was a long time ago. And then, interestingly enough, Chess Master, which was fine.

Probably stole someone's chess engine. So they are just a software company, and this was the first time they ever had to make, like, gameplay. Yeah, if you think about it, this is the first time that they've ever had, like, a platformer stage. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if we see them again. We won't see them anymore in 1990, but I think you guys said a lot of great things in your Essential Games list vote, too, for why this is disappointing, but...

It's really disappointing because of the IP attached to it, right? This might be the one shot. I don't know. I don't look at things. This might have been the one shot we get at a Muppets game on a Nintendo console.

The Muppets could have been up there in terms of mascot platformers as the Marios and the Mega Mans and everything. It would have been fun to play as like... kermit and the gang and like switch off on them and they have different abilities and everything and i get that they wouldn't fight necessarily but i don't know i don't think of mario as a particularly violent person either like there's a way to i was a way to skirt these things

Yeah, I would definitely play a Street Fighter style Muppets. Like a TMNT. Or that, yeah. I would do Streets of Rage, but Muppets. I would do a lot of things with Kermit. And his piggy, apparently. Outro Music

I have a little post-show suggestion here. Post-show. I've been talking, and it's been a long time since we've done the post-show, but I've been talking about... revisiting my backlog for a long time and I did this week play three games that I missed on the podcast and I think I'm going to slowly go through and try and just dabble, just barely dabble in each of these games that I missed.

Okay, okay. So I just want to give you guys my thoughts and see what you remember about these games. The first one is the one I have the least to say about I played. We played this a very long time ago. This is pro wrestling on the NES. Which is the Nintendo-developed wrestling game. Like the menu-based wrestling game? No, no, no. That was Tag Team Wrestling. Ah, okay. Yeah, which I believe I played that. Pro Wrestling is...

So I'll admit, I did not play this one for very long. But pro wrestling is just, I think there's like two buttons, two moves you could do. Maybe there's a couple of other... input combos but really just a very basic especially having played all these other terrible wrestling wrestling games on the nes a very basic wrestling like wwe style experience for me

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

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

So I started from the beginning of the games that I missed. Granted, the first one that I missed was Gumshoe, which I just didn't really feel like setting up my zapper and everything and digging on it. I'm not even sure if I have the cartridge right now, so I skipped Gumshoe. but started with pro wrestling. Uh, I don't have too much more to say about it because to be honest, I played for like maybe eight minutes of this game. I did play two player.

which was probably more fun than playing alone. If I could add to your thoughts, Joe, to give you more to talk about, two things. One, this is one of those surprising ones that the... People who grew up with the NES seemed to really love this game, especially because it was made by Nintendo. But I...

I believe we even said on the episode, like, I don't know. I thought it was kind of shallow. Like it didn't age well at the very least. But one thing that it had going for it was the roster of wrestlers. And they all felt like. wrestling personalities that you might see in the WWF or WCW did you have a favorite uh person to play as I'll be honest I don't even remember who I played okay that's fine so they didn't stand out to you then that's fine

Do they have, like, significant differences in gameplay, or is it just recognizability? My understanding is that there is very minimal, other than, like, maybe a... what their special technique is like their special move, uh, would be the only thing that's different. Otherwise they all have the same basic moves and then each one can kind of do this one special move that, um, is exclusive to them.

Because I played with a buddy of mine, John, friend of the show, and he and I, we were doing the same thing the whole time, pretty much. We were carving copies of each other, it seemed. I did notice a lot, you know, you can run at someone as if you're going to tackle them or clothesline them or something. You can kind of go off the ropes and run at them. But it's just so comically easy.

to take one step to the side if someone's coming at you, that that was like, most of the time was just trying to get a hold of the opponent, let alone like fight them. And I know this happens. Oh, go for it. In all fairness, I think, like, you know, that whole... What do you call that move? Is it a Russian twist? Or, like, when you bounce off the... Mike, you know what I'm talking about.

You bounce off the ropes and, like, run at them. Yeah. Lay them out. Like a clothesline? Sure. But, like, that is easy to, like, I feel like that would be easy to sidestep. Yeah, that's true. But, like, in a staged, like, WWF. WCW fight, they just don't. Yeah, exactly. But it's just funny that they allowed you to do that so easily. You have to manufacture your own K-5 or K-fabe or whatever the word is.

Joe, also when you, at least in the single player, after you win the match, there is a famous congratulations screen. Does that happen in two player as well? Did you get that a winner is you screen? Yes, we did. I didn't know you're talking about. We did get winner is you. I think that's right around the time we shut the game off. But I'm sure there's a lot more you can do with this. Again, I was just trying to like.

quickly dabble with certain ones. The ones that catch my interest, I'm going to play a little longer. So this one, you know, admittedly, I don't have too much to say about it. I just want the credit that I played it. Yeah, I understand that. It's kind of like, what was I going to say?

You wanted it to be like Mike Tyson's punch out for wrestling, but it wasn't that. I'm not even sure I wanted it to be Mike. Because Mike Tyson's punch out, like we always say, is more of like a rhythm game or maybe even like a puzzly game or, you know.

not quite but like i think i just wanted it to feel better like it just didn't feel good to play and i think none of these old wrestling games hit me like like they don't feel and like you know i grew up on the playstation one like WWF games and I'm sure those have aged very poorly too but like my inputs in these games and a lot of these wrestling games don't feel like I don't know if I want to say that it eats my inputs but it feels like

It doesn't feel super responsive. I don't feel like I ever know how I'm doing the things I'm doing and why sometimes it doesn't work. And I got that immediately from this game. So what were the other games? So game number two was Trojan.

on the nes so uh we're moving up a little bit in quality i think i don't know if you guys remember this at all it's kind of got like a kung fu style if you remember that game because i feel like that was a little more memorable but uh Kung Fu style, you're walking around like a post-apocalyptic city. Oh, yeah. You got your sword and your shield. And this one, you know, was a little more fun for me. It's a little, I think like the one flaw to it is it's a little too.

Hack and slash, again, not a ton of, like, feedback or reaction from enemies that you're hitting. But I love the vibe of it. It was pretty cool. And also got to play a little bit of... versus mode, which I'm not sure if you guys got to play at the time, but, uh, that, that held my interest for a little bit longer than this game normally would have. Um, it's definitely like becomes like a big slap fight.

because of how, um, I guess how, like, rapid you can just, like, swing your sword. There's no cooldown, there's no, there's no... uh like kickback from the enemies or anything so you you kind of just like both sitting there holding your shields up like rock them slap each other with your swords exactly yeah yeah and as soon as someone lets an opening lets their shield down for a second like you can very quickly drain your opponent's health

by just like mashing away on their weakness. I remember we did make a big deal about the Trojan multiplayer on the episode because it was like pre-Street Fighter, you know. combat and that idea of just 1v1 on a screen. But the actual game too, I definitely gave it a play it. I really liked the game.

From what I remember, the boss fights were pretty good too. It's Capcom, so I trust that it's still okay, but I haven't revisited it. Maybe I should. Yeah, I think it has like both... very satisfying like the the same thing that makes it sometimes feel a little jank to me is like that lack of feedback also makes it

very satisfying because I do feel like I could just kind of like run through and just like slice away at enemies and I mow them down very easily um and there is a satisfaction element too with the the shield like once you kind of get the timing down with your shield

being able to utilize a block button like this it's weird that it's not more common like i know like legend of zelda has a shield but it's not like it's not used in the same way it kind of just has more to do with like which way you're facing kind of thing but this felt

very it felt very good to to be able to defend yourself in that way you could even kind of crouch and defend and make yourself like a very small target and not to say that you're invincible in that way but it does feel like you have to use different strategy a little bit of like do i want to uh be more mobile do i want to kind of sit here and tank hits um but yeah it feels it feels good to play i i i don't know if i would give it

play it now after having played a bunch of others but like I'm teetering on the edge of that definitely not wouldn't say it's essential I just remember too Trojan was our first episode of season 3 1987 and it feels graphically like a leap from what we had been seeing in 85 and 86. It had more promise of like, oh, you can push this system more and games can look different.

than the black box games. Yeah. Alright, what else? The third and final one, and my favorite of the three, was Breakthrough. I don't know if you guys remember Breakthrough. I was assuming... breakthrough was going to be like an arcanoid type thing. It is very much not. This one I do actually have visual memories of.

unlike yeah i feel like it it sticks out a little bit right like it's uh it's different it looks nice uh i at first i was a little like okay this is gonna be just like a really janky just based on like the the the not the menu screen, but the, uh, like level intro screen, which looks literally like a, like blank VCR screen, you know, that like blue screen at the play button up there. Uh, but, uh,

As I started playing it, this one I really kind of got into. This is the game, if anyone listening doesn't remember, this is a game you're driving a car through a war, I guess, and you're trying to... Basically, you're just trying to get through all these defenses, all these enemy defenses. But you control your speed, so it's not like exactly an auto-scroller. I mean, it is technically auto-scrolling.

But and you have to avoid obstacles, shoot down enemies and you do die a lot. Like it's like one of those games where there's like a lot coming at you. But I think what makes this game for me so playable and so much more enjoyable than other games like this is that you basically have unlimited continues. Not that that's always a good thing, but I think in this case, it's like...

This almost gave me like the kind of satisfaction I get with Cuphead or, you know, or even Mike and I recently, Mike recently showed me Super Monkey Ball. where like and i've never played that before but like we're like hey if i could just keep playing this level over and over again like because i'm running into this challenge like i'm fine with progressing slowly in that way because there are a lot of obstacles in this game where i get

Or it's like, okay, I keep dying, I keep dying, and I can feel myself getting a little better at it because I have unlimited times that I can try it again. So I only got to like the third level in this, but there's like five levels. But um... It took a long time to do that. It took a long time to do that, but it didn't feel like I had to memorize so much because I didn't have to start back at the beginning after every like six deaths or something.

wasn't this the game too that actually had like a story reason for why you're apparently like this one guy going to war alone like it was like you you were tasked with like just sort of like scouting ahead or something like um I didn't read the manual, but I did listen to the original episode. And you guys sort of talked about that a little bit about like, and I think Sean, you said something like.

The only way that this could happen is if the other military was having a military-wide field day, and it was just a free day for them, and then you came driving in, and then they're all like, oh shit, there's an enemy here. That sounds like something I'd say, yeah. Joe, I can't remember, but the breakthrough also has your car can jump in the air. Yes. Go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say, and I remember that there are.

certain moments in the game where you have to jump because otherwise you will fall into a pitfall but that maybe a complaint was that like sometimes you don't know how long Like how high you have to jump and how long those pitfalls are. Is that a problem in this game? I think I had that complaint at first where... I would there would be it wasn't a pitfall the first one it was like a landslide I was trying to jump over and I would always not be at the right speed to get enough distance.

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

I mean, you can jump over the long end, but you have to be going full speed, which is admittedly tough on the first time you run across that obstacle because you don't know it's there. And sometimes you don't have enough time to get up to speed to make the jump.

But that was just the first one later. Second level has like bridges that have broken areas and you do have to make jumps like that. But I feel like by then I had gotten the hang of it where like I was dying much more from enemies than from falling. I'm glad you replayed these games. Or played them for the first time. I'm glad we got a chance to talk about them again.

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

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