403 - The Adventures of Rad Gravity

The Adventures of Rad Gravity. Get upside down in the greatest space adventure ever. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Sean, Adventures of Rad Gravity.

starts off with probably the most unhinged music I've ever heard on an NES game. But before we get into that, I'm seeing on my notes that you have a note. I do. I just thought it was important to note, just to put into perspective, just the time difference. When we're recording this and when these games came out as of the release of this game in December of 1990 I am now born

Which I think is, you know, it's worth noting because, you know, we've done 400 and something episodes. And for all those games, I hadn't been born yet. So that's fun. I'm still chilling in the womb.

Yeah, you are still chilling, aren't you? But let me ask you, don't count this like an essential games list vote, but like these December 1990 games are like your birth month games. Are you... pleased with the results like looking at the list i haven't looked too deep into it uh yeah but i guess it's gonna be sort of like this is like a like an astrology thing like what was your birth game

Right. You always struck me as a Digger T-Rock guy. Whoa. Whoa. You're not supposed to say that on the air. I guess I've never tried it out. So we'll see. Yeah. And as for The Adventure of Rad Gravity, it's a sci-fi platform adventure game where our spacer, who his name is actually Rad Gravity. He's not just like on a gravity odyssey.

He is, he's, I mean, like, I guess I'd do the story here a little bit, but he's, he's got one of these like AI computer things that's like left or compu minds, they call them in the game. And I, again, I'm just going to butcher this name here, but it's Kakos. K-A-K-O-S. Did you get that read? Kakos sounds about right. Yeah, I like Kakos better. It's like he's Greek. Yes. So...

Caicos and Rad Gravity have to reactivate the galaxy's other CompuMines or just AI robots, right? So this is like the reverse of the usual sci-fi story where AI bad. and uh we have to turn them off i was gathering from like how they describe the deep lore of this game is that these are sort of like actual living beings that are also kind of mind melded into robots and we just sort of take advantage of them to be like like walkie talkies um so it's very it's very exploitative um it's very strange

But at least it's fun. Yeah, so chat GPT. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But if chat GPT was also half made of meat. Right, right. Got it. uh there's there's quite a bit of lore here too not even just in the game but there is a like several i mean we saw this in silver surfer too but there are like 13 pages of a comic book story like

That's basically the best part of the manual is like this comic book story. But I think what's funny is like when you do it as a comic book, it's your chance to like have a different art style than the game. And they totally went there. Yeah, the unhinged shit. Right. They totally went there with like some of this stuff. And then rad gravity looks exactly the same as he does in the game.

Like, they needed to make it clear, like, yeah, that's the guy from the video game you're playing. Like, everything else doesn't look like that, but he looks, you know, like 1-1 with his sprite. I think that part of the... We talked about the music, the crazy music. Well, I want to talk about the music for even a second longer because, sure, it's crazy.

But I think it needs to be understood that it's not even that it's like, oh, it's just a song I don't like or something. It's like they're not even using the right sounds. It sounds like something is broken. Is the TV working, guys? Is the cartridge a little glitchy? It doesn't sound like it's composed. It's if I slammed my hand on the keyboard over and over. It's pretty intense.

But that's also sort of, you know, you're mixing that with the close-up version. Like, Rad Gravity doesn't just have, like, the sprites that you play the normal game in. There's also, like, the... high fidelity version that you see when he's in his ship and it's actually unnerving uh the the weird like profile view that you get of him

With the giant chin, it's kind of how I, this sounds weird, but it's how I used to draw. It's so very strange. The problem with rad gravity as an individual. or as a character design here, is that they drew the body. And the body makes sense to me. It's all like rightly proportioned. And then they drew the head the same size as the rest of his body and placed it on top of that. And so he I get it. Like he's supposed to be this like.

you know, Flash Gordon, you know, Saturday morning space opera. It was giving me Thunderbirds vibes. Okay, Thunderbirds too, but like, you know, some kind of like Saturday morning cartoon, but like from like a different time period, you know, not from the 90s, from the 50s. And I get that, but you said unnerving. I agree with that, but it also just feels wrong. It feels like he has too much head. Very much is too much head.

I think that's where the unnerving characteristics came from. In the comic book manual, we also learned that there was a guy named Agathos who... was once a human, now a giant brain, and he rules over the galaxy. He turned all those other CompuMines off, except for Keiko's, and that's where the game picks up, is like, all that shit's already happened.

And now it's your job to go to these planets, find these CompuMines, turn them back on, and take down Agathos. And it's like, geez, that's a lot. How are we going to do it?

But before we get into the gameplay and the loop and everything, I wanted to talk about beyond the character model of Rad Gravity. This is a Western-made NES game. With big ideas, the planet hopping, the concept of playing with gravity, the hub ship where you put in the coordinates. But this doesn't look- like an NES game. And we've seen this with other, you know, like Western developed NES games, Boy and His Blob, Maniac Mansion. I think those ones kind of adhered more to the NES look.

but definitely like the idea of feeling a little different than how normal NES games play. Rad Gravity is doing both. It doesn't quite feel like how we're used to NES games playing. And then at the same time, it doesn't quite look like other NES games.

No, are you tracking? I do track this and and one thing that it's a little it's a little tangential But I just wanted to point out that the designer of this game is the same designer as wasteland like from like interplay's very early days insane yeah and and i think like once you sort of square that circle it makes a bit more sense like this game doesn't really

Pay pay attention to a lot of the the rules and norms that we've seen There's a lot of like sub objectives happening while you're playing the game There's so much text, like there's text boxes that just pop up. There's actual like set piece, like story driven moments that are happening in gameplay. Like they're trying to make. a much more, at least in my opinion, like modern design here with pretty like primitive tech, like technical work. I don't know if that's sort of how you're seeing it.

Yeah, I think that is how I'm seeing it. And I think you kind of are blown away at first by being in that spaceship and even just like the higher fidelity of the graphics there than eventually like the bare bones game you get put into. The like what's possible at first seems limitless. Like you're in this ship and there's other planets and like.

you can you can you can like select from them on the map it's not like oh maybe when they'll be like you could kind of see them but you can't go there yet because you don't know the coordinates um it feels like the game is very open And then you kind of figure out like, oh, I'm locked into this. Actually, this is pretty small. Actually, this is just like kind of a stage by stage platforming game. But they figured out like a new way.

to get me between the levels rather than just like reach the end of the stage i i feel like the first the biggest problem with the game right away is is again a design thing Because it doesn't happen always, and especially not once you get into, as you go further into the game. But when I first... got to the first planet and landed and then I'm like dropped in on their world and everything. The enemies are completely inconsequential.

You there's no reason to attack them. You're better off like going around them and being like, sorry, I'm here. I know you don't like me, but I don't like you. And let's just leave each other alone. And then you're like trying to get around them. And it's like, huh. I didn't land on anything. I could have sworn those were all platforms. Or, huh, this isn't a wall. I thought this was a wall. And then all of a sudden, wait, this is a platform? This block looks the same as the other block.

It's funny because I feel like I know what they were going for, at least with, like, the enemy, like, the philosophy behind these enemies. Like, they don't act like... a lot of the other side scrolling platformer enemies that we're used to where they just have a loop. They don't really care that you're there until you actually like, but like if it were.

like castlevania they would actually have like attack patterns but in like you know mario they just sort of they just happen in front of you and whereas in this game that it's kind of like a mix between the two like they're They're just sort of there until you get close to them and then they actually go after you So you you you sort of want to just avoid them Because you don't want them to seek you out, which is what they will do

And then, yeah, there's that whole thing about just not knowing what is traversable or not, because like it ends up feeling that moments that you're just walking through walls and you have to be really, it's kind of tricky. You have to. Really pay attention to like when you're gonna be holding down when you jump so you can get because otherwise you're just gonna get stuck near the top of the screen sometimes and so yeah a lot of this traversal is

It feels off, but that's sort of where I was feeling. The loop is you pick from a world on your ship. You grab the coordinates or parts or what have you. Go reactivate that world's CompuMind and then go back to the ship and go to the next place. What's the actual player agency like? Can you discover, can you route this yourself? Like, can you go to different planets? Can you do, like, is everything just mandatory and linear? Or is there actually some kind of like...

And I have to go back to this planet now because I have to go do this thing. Now, I didn't beat the game. So I don't know for certain whether there's like a prescribed order of things. But like the way I was playing. because the game has like sort of like each each planet has some kind of mini puzzle in there

You can just sort of go back and forth because you do have a device that if you go to the pause screen, you can just sort of teleport back to your ship and go somewhere else if you want. You just sort of prod and poke. and see like oh do i get this one yet uh because there are moments that i would just get stuck because i'm like i am i soft locked do i not have like a key item uh do i not have a weapon that'll like like for for example like

break this like power barrier. Um, and it turns out like, no, I just didn't do like, like a mini puzzle beforehand or like, Oh, how do I get past this? Uh, how do I get through this tunnel? That is.

half the size of my sprite and i just didn't know how to do that either um so from what i could see it's more so it's kind of you can take it at whatever rhythm you want and and it's just you're going to get it or not get it and the whole changing of uh like which level you go to first like maybe that's more so whichever one you feel like doing

What were your thoughts on this? Yeah, it's not Metroid-like where you unlock something and now you can go back and go to other planets and do things that you previously couldn't do.

or um or like sequence break right like oh you know if you if you take it this order you can skip this whole section entirely like it doesn't exist but you don't have to follow a prescribed order other than uh starting on siberia and siberia like not yeah it's so close to the actual country but it's cyber yeah right right um

So you have to start there and you do have to end on Telos, but everything else in the middle is kind of like, you know, there's no like no set order. I'm sure there's a speed run order and what have you. But those things also like.

As exciting as that could be, right? Like, oh, man, NES No Man's Sky, like find coordinates for new planets and go to them. That's really funny. Right. It's not that because the order that you go them in doesn't... uh doesn't change anything about the game uh it just changes about like the order that you see them uh in your gameplay file so

There's a bunch of different planets to go to, and what they essentially did was they made the feel of all of them, and maybe even the puzzle mechanic, if there is such a thing, on all of these.

uh different so it's not like you're just going to a re-skinned planet with like just a slightly different map like they actually do feel different there's there's a jungle planet uh there's a whole like underground maze section there's a cloud city planet there's um there's like a trash planet yes yes all these all these things to say that like well wait a minute it's the adventures of rad gravity

Where's the rag gravity? And there's like one level, one planet, Tervia, where the entire planet is just drawn upside down. So gravity is reversed. uh okay so that's one of two the other one being there is the planet where you're well it's not so much a planet as it is like an area of space where you just sort of float around and you have to

You have to push yourself forward or backwards with your weapons, which is also, I think, gravity. I think it's a better version of the gravity than just making the whole screen upside down. Because that's not how gravity works. Your vision would then just be right side up, right? But that's not what we're here for. We're not here for that. So yeah, they definitely over-promised on the gravity.

I would agree. Yeah. So there's not enough gravity manipulation to warrant the gravity in the title. But that was before I put that in the notes before I learned that his name was Rad Gravity, which like. What's up with everybody having rad in their names? That was also a Silver Surfer thing, remember? That's the 90s, man. Yeah. But now here's the question. Is there enough rad?

To warrant the title. I mean, that chin is pretty rad. Right, right. Rad is like you said, a 1990s word, right? But like... In practice, I feel like this whole game is more like pulpy, like maybe goofy pulp. I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that. I think that they were still just trying to make it like this isn't. Your dad's 50s pulp sci-fi. This is rad pulp sci-fi. Oh, cool. I like that. So before cyberpunk, there was radpunk. Yes, yes. And then like...

That's the gameplay loop, and we could go into, like... the stage by stage of it all. I don't think that there's enough there that I would really want to talk about. I just want to talk about the moment in this game that surprised me the most. And I'm sure I'm stealing this from you. Like you're going to say, Oh yeah, I clocked that as well. But like,

The fact that the enemies have friendly fire and can kill each other was like the most welcome surprise in this otherwise kind of glitchy game where I was like, wow, I didn't think they would program that. That was really funny. And the fact that they affect the other enemies more than they affect you is pretty funny, too. You just end up... Having these giant robots that you're like trying to

It takes like five or six hits to kill these giant robots in the first level. And then if you just keep walking and let their projectile hit another one, they just explode. it's pretty funny um and so and pretty satisfying actually so that's fun Yeah, especially in those more like narrow sections of like when you're getting closer to the compu mines in the planets. The friendly fire helps a lot because you don't want to be like.

Like I was using because he has a great duck and not the animal like he himself can duck. And so when a projectile is coming straight at you.

and there's an enemy on the other side. You just duck, and the projectile winds up hitting the other enemy, clears the path for you, and you move on. But then the game immediately disappointed me because the enemies all respawn infinitely. So there's, once again, no incentive to take care of anybody if they're just going to come back instantly. So just move on with your life. But that became difficult in those more narrow sections where you just really wish.

That they would have, I don't know, when I see enemies respawn and it's not part of some puzzle, that makes me just feel like it's lazy game design. Now, I definitely agree with that. But there are just too many examples of neat ideas in the game design that I can fully like just toss that at the feet of the designers here. Like there's a moment in this game where.

you sort of approach this large green thing that looks very poorly drawn. And as you get closer, you start to realize that it's a giant... dinosaur and then you've got like this sort of mini again like set piece where the design the giant dinosaur tries and stomps on you and you gotta get around it and and i think that while

Yeah, where the regular enemies might be placed and the fact that they just respawn, like, it's kind of, we're kind of over that and hope that that doesn't continue to happen. But then, like, you've got these cool ideas that just happen. So I just think that their priorities were a little different. And I think maybe they were ahead of their time in some ways.

I mentioned that Cloud City too that's on the planet Vernia and that has another like NES trope. that we don't see too often, but we've seen it now in both Ninja Gaiden 2 and in our Bites episode, we covered it on the Lost Levels for Super Mario Brothers.

The wind levels, where all of a sudden there's a gust of wind that forces, especially in platformers, makes it harder to traverse. Where do you feel on those? What's your read on those? Is that the kind of... difficulty edit in platforming that you don't like to see or is that like well you know I guess both of them are compromises but do you personally enjoy when the game changes I guess we'll keep it with the tone of the game, the gravity of a platformer. I think that it...

Like all these questions, it really depends on the execution. I think at the base level of this game, the platforming just is not tight enough to really make it work. Again, all the ideas that I'm talking about all are are clever and and funny in some instances, but we never really got to. how rad gravity feels on a baseline to play and his jump is a little is pretty weird um the it just feels kind of jank like if

If this is one of Sam's jink folder games, or if we were still keeping track of them, this would be one of them. So once you have that as a baseline, and then you add in the whole... win dynamic like i think that you're it's just gonna feel wrong and we mentioned how the music uh at the start of the game on the title screen is terrible the the track inside the game isn't as bad but it's like the only track like you just keep you just keep getting fed that over and over again and so

This is one of those rare instances where I bring up the music. I don't usually do that, but I'm bringing it up specifically because I don't like it. Not to applaud it. Usually that's why we bring up the music. Here, I really felt like it was... Time to mute very quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think just the novelty of how unlistenable a lot of it is. It kept me from muting it because it really is just that bad.

Outside of Rad's platforming, his jump, if you will, he does have a kit that expands as the game goes on. You start with a... I guess I would call it a sword, but I guess it's cool. It's like a saber. And then you get a blaster, and then you get some bombs. You get a blaster that shoots up. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Do these small expansions, like, do they change the feel of Rad, or is it just, like, now he has a new way to attack? Well, I think not only does he have a new way to attack, but, like, they also... place enemies in ways that you need them to attack them. So it's not just, oh, I can use these bombs to lob.

somebody that could just as easily shoot or stab but the new enemy that they're or at least like the placement of the enemy that they're introducing in that level requires you to use it if you want to be any effective in any way so i i don't think like it's not like a cool it's not like a ratchet and clank thing where it's like oh this is just fun to play around with it's

It's more so like, oh, they're making you engage more with the combat by making it necessary to use that weapon. So I guess it's not the worst.

It's not the worst version of this, but it's also not the best. Say it wasn't a video game and instead it was like, you know, a sci-fi novella, you know, can't be too long, but like. 150 pages of this same story. You in? You reading this? You know what? Why the hell not?

Right. Why not? I actually think like, I think there is something here. I just worry that like the book would get caught up in the same stuff that the game's getting caught up in, which is like these large labyrinth levels of trying to find.

uh the the compu mines and coordinates in each planet so do you do you think that the actual prose of the story would be and then i turned left and then i turned right and then i turned not like that but just in the sense of like overstaying your welcome on each of these planets as an attempt to like how do you explain this otherwise it's like you land the ship

And then you land so far away from, like, where the CompuMind is. Like, surely you're not just, like, guessing where it is, right? Well, I mean, that's where the parking spot was. Got it. Got it. Okay. Yeah, you can't just land willy-nilly. These are giant ships, Mike. I don't want these levels to just be like go to the right and take on enemies because I just don't think that's how this game was designed.

But I don't love that like each of these planets as they go on just gets bigger and more like. And if you know the route, you could be out of here in no time. But if you don't know the route. uh you're screwed like have fun going through like hallways that don't matter and backtracking through things because now you found out that not that it's like a dead end but like it wasn't where you needed to be and it well this is

This is why every time we played one of those, like, first-person maze, like, sections of a game, I just immediately would slump my shoulders and be like, oh, here we fucking go. Because it... I don't particularly like mazes for mazes sake. So I agree. At least in this, you're engaging with some gameplay instead of just navigating a really low...

Fidelity, like 3D-ish room. But I get where you're coming from. A second week in a row where we've had a game that has a idle animation if you don't do anything. Oh, what's he doing? He kind of, I was almost doing like the Mr. Burns, like, you know, putting his fingers together, like excellent. But it's not that. He kind of just like puts them together.

And kind of like twiddles his thumbs, you know, like, what am I doing here? Like, you know, like waiting for you to pick back up the controller. So he's preceding the sort of catty. Sonic the Hedgehog tap the foot. Yes. What do you think is better? Sonic tapping the foot or Mario falling asleep in Super Mario 64? I think Mario falling asleep is less insulting.

Yeah, right? And Sonic's impatient. Mario takes a while for him to fall asleep. At first, I think he sits down. Yeah, exactly. It's been a long journey. Yeah, we don't know how old Mario is. He's probably... Do we know how old he is? We don't know how old he is, and we also don't know what kind of toll it takes on the body to go through paintings. Paintings and pipes? Well, I guess they both. Yeah. No Japanese release for this game.

So I mentioned this was a Western-made game, but they didn't even try to bring it to the Famicom. They were like, nah, they're going to hate this. I don't doubt their decision there.

All right, well, now that we've orbited every planet, we're going to find out if this one lands on the Essential Games list. This is sad gravity. It's not rad. It's not rad at all, actually. I think rad could have been interesting. Could have been fun to see a tubular take on the, you know, I mentioned Flash Gordon. I also wanted to mention Galaxy Rangers because it feels...

very influenced by that. But like, I don't know if there's enough personality here outside of a guy with a giant head and the comic book that they gave us in the manual. And I'm not even sure that should count. The game itself gives me a weird vibe on the NES. It really does feel like it was made for the... The microcomputers of the day, the Atari 800s and the Commodore 64s and the like. And maybe that's just me having a bias against it here. But then when I think about like the actual game.

Not terrible controls, but kind of a miserable gameplay loop. It's not particularly rewarding to get to the end of these stages because your prompt is basically like, great, you got the coordinates, now go do this again at the next stage. There are some things that break it up, and I do like the planets that really change things, not just like, and this one's in a jungle. Like, okay, fine. It's in a jungle. Great. I like when they actually change up the gameplay.

Overall, though, I think this whole game, while competent, isn't offering anything I haven't seen before. And so I'm going to give it a no. Sean? Yeah, I think I had a more positive view of this game than you. More so just because it had, like, I think... There are so many weird ideas going on here that every level does feel super different. Whether it's something super obvious, like now it's upside down, which is also not a fun experience.

Or just the more like hunting down keys and moving around and like sort of, uh, the environment being used as a weapon in some cases, including other enemies. And like every episode, not episode, every level kind of had a different theme. I like that. I don't think it really worked out that well, but I appreciated that they had ideas and it wasn't just a move to the right.

And maybe sometimes move to the left with like, oh, maybe this one's made of ice. Like the episode that I keep saying episodes, the levels had more personality to them and more unique elements to them. But yeah, not particularly well executed, but still kind of a, if you're very curious about... The idea of ignoring every piece of Game design rules that it seems to have to have established on the NES up to now Then play it but yeah, definitely not essential

One thing I really enjoy in the manual for the comic book story is that they get into all the different planets you'll go to. And they're mostly like describing like the types of enemies you'll see and the like the environment.

And then they just kind of like, I don't know, they break the fourth wall for a minute on the one section where you're going to be outside in the asteroid field. And they're just like... to move in one direction a space cadet must fire his weapon the other direction to push him along like they had to make sure that like they gave that tip somewhere in the manual and they just included it in his

In his story comic book thing here. The concept of propulsion. Right, right, right. Like, kids are not going to know what to do, and we need to figure out a way to, like, enter it into the manual. Because otherwise, like, you know, what do you do instead? Call the Toys R Us helpline? Who's going to answer? I will Cue the Ghostbusters theme song you