407 - Dirty Harry

Dirty Harry, it's an all-out war of good versus bad. Go ahead, make your day. 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. Dirty Harry. Forget the video game for a second. Let's talk about the films. Let's talk about the man who is Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood. What are your familiarities with this? I never saw one. Not one of them? Not one of them. Nope. Yeah, up until this, I think like...

I had no exposure to Dirty Harry aside from the clips. And most of my exposure to Clint Eastwood was that, like, gif. His character from Gran Torino kind of looking disapprovingly and sort of looking away Like how you would react to the kids doing something you don't approve of Okay Then I watched the movie two nights ago, and it's pretty good. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. So you watched the first one, Dirty Harry. Right, Dirty Harry, because there's a ton, obviously.

And not like a ton, I guess I shouldn't say, right? Five is a lot. Five is a lot, but it's like nowadays a ton could be like Fast and the Furious 10, you know? Yeah, but that's too much. Yes, that's way too much.

But the first Dirty Harry wasn't directed by Clint. And I believe, at least according to my... box set thing that i have he did go on to eventually become the director as well as the actor in the movie uh in the movie series so that's kind of a funny thing and so my first exposure was not the original dirty harry it was

sudden impact uh which is a dirty harry movie even though it doesn't see back then you didn't need the subtitle to tell you the fucking movie you were watching they would just call movies sudden impact You'd be watching, you'd be like, wait, it's Dirty Harry? Oh, it's a Dirty Harry movie. Yeah, right. You know, it's like you didn't need like sudden impact, a Dirty Harry.

But is that really true? I mean, I feel like most other movies still had the title, like Die Hard. I think it was definitely of the time. The sequel to Mad Max wasn't originally Mad Max 2. It was... It was the Road Warrior. It was only retconned to being Mad Max 2 after the fact. Yeah, I guess you got Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and all that before they actually just changed them all to Star Wars. But it's kind of funny because...

Dirty Harry is like 1971. And so Clint's not too far away from the cowboy stuff that I feel like his career is like most known for. Right. Those. Yeah. You know what? I definitely. I definitely omitted my, uh, exposure to like, you know, uh, good, bad, the ugly stuff like that. Right. Right. For me, Clint Eastwood is mostly just, uh, it's just, um,

What's his name? Marty McFly pretending to be Clint Eastwood in Back to the Future Part 3. Wonderful. Of course. And yeah, so that trilogy, I think it's called the Man with No Name trilogy, right? I believe so. The Spaghetti Westerns, yeah. It's kind of interesting. They never reveal his name. He's just Clint Eastwood, if you ask me. But obviously, I just don't think of it. It's kind of funny that...

The kind of character he was playing in the cowboy movies would have fucking hated cops. But Dirty Harry's not that kind of cop. No, he's the loose cannon cop that doesn't play by the rules. Right, right. But he's also maybe the original loose cannon cop who doesn't play by the rules. Yeah, I think you're right. I can't say that. I'm not a... historian. But this isn't like a, at this point in 1971, it's not like a well-established trope of like,

I offend everybody. And I'm just here to, of course, I'm going to kill that guy. He looks like he's raping that girl. But the law says it's like, you know, it's like now that's like a known thing in movies. But back then it was kind of like novel of like, oh, yeah. He's Dirty Harry because he plays dirty. There were a lot more of the hero, the Captain America type. I'm going to do the right thing no matter what it is. Yes. Follow the rules.

And to be fair to these movies, I mean, Sean, you could say about the first one, but I think that this is a very fun franchise. Obviously, it kind of gets worse as time goes on, just like any good franchise. But, like, it's a fun watch, and I think Dirty Harry is a fun character. Not necessarily like, oh, make sure he gets an 8-bit NES game. But like as a film series, like definitely holds up. Well, because the Dirty Harry movies were directed at like.

kids in the 80s, right? That was their main audience. Yeah, for sure. They definitely wanted to see how many seven-year-olds would grow up to become policemen. Yeah, I'm definitely going to... to continue watching these i i don't know how often i will but i did i definitely got i did not expect them to be as sort of

I don't know. I feel like they're pretty relevant today as well. And just to confirm, for you, Mike, he did direct Sudden Impact. That's the only one of the five. Right, right, right. So that was part of my... I had my Blu-ray collection of Clint Eastwood directorial things because it was on sale for like 80% off. And I was like, sure.

I don't know if I want to watch Invictus, but I'll watch some of the stuff. You don't have to justify why you bought this. Invictus. There was way worse stuff on there than Invictus for what it's worth. Yeah, exactly. But I'm actually surprised, and I remember it being a reference in Zodiac, but I don't remember this being about the Zodiac killer. Like, this is just some kind of...

Like, you know, after you've seen Zodiac, everything feels kind of like cartoony after the fact. But it's basically the same setup, except from the police point of view, of... of the 2007 David Fincher classic. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Because it's even referenced in the film, right? Like he's at the movie theater or something. Yeah, they go. Yeah, they end up seeing. They're already making movies about it. Like, yeah. Right.

Another funny thing about this movie, which, by the way, even though the movie, the first movie is called Dirty Harry and the game is called Dirty Harry, they don't share. No, nothing about it. Nothing about them. They just both obviously lean on the iconic character. The movie also has like a small Mandela effect where like that quote of the do you feel lucky punk? That's not what he says. It's do I feel lucky?

But he's not talking about himself. Yeah, you got to ask yourself, right? So it's like, do you feel lucky is like a good way to like re-say the quote. Yeah. Because do I feel lucky sounds like Clint's a gambling man. Well, I mean, I think challenging the, uh, they're, they're really just in this, in this movie, just referencing the, the, the Google search option. So, I mean, however you say it, it's basically just feeling lucky.

Yeah, you're just sort of, it's a remix of a remix. Sean, that is a great idea. You know, Google always does like fun web pages for anniversaries or specific dates and stuff. You should pitch. For like the 50th anniversary, probably now it's past that. The 60th anniversary of Dirty Harry, it should have like when you press the I'm feeling lucky button, it has like a punk option. I wonder, do they already do that?

But you should pitch it anyway. They'll be like, yeah, we did it. Thank you. All right. On to the game. It's a side-scrolling action game where you play as Dirty Harry cleaning up San Francisco. You have to navigate a city. And I mean that for real. It's not like stage one, you're in the street. Stage two, you're in an alley. Stage three, you're in a building. You really have to navigate this little city that they have here.

The basic plot of the game, as I understand it, anybody feel free to chime in and let me know if this isn't true. A Colombian kingpin called the Anaconda has basically created a... A few like he's gathered a few of the San Francisco drug gangs together. And now Harry has to like go and take each one of them down individually first. And then it all leads up to.

This guy who calls himself the Anaconda as his like final showdown. Yeah. It's like basically he made a super gang. Yeah. You can't make super gang crimes, which really, it really worked out because like this is. Like the worst city in America. Right. The super gangs won. The police have given up. Right. It's just Harry now. There's no there's no like assist. There should be assist characters. You should be able to call on the other departments to help you out. But instead.

This is the kind of game where it's like, who starts a game like this? The level immediately starts. Three guys are beating you up. There's more on the way. You have to press A and B at the same time to jump. You fall into a manhole. It's pitch black. Things are attacking you. Things are shocking you. And there's an invisible wall in the sewer. So you can't even progress further. You have to leave the manhole. So having not seen any Dirty Harry movie.

I just assumed based on this that Dirty Harry was like a Mr. Bean-like. We're just always getting into crazy situations. He gets caught in a net. He falls into a manhole. It's all dark. He's stumbling around. That's just what happens in all these games. They're always just like, oh, was there a scene where he went into the sewer and had to fight RC cars?

The RC cars I think was from one of the movies. They are from one of the movies, but they are not in the sewer and they aren't something that will take three points of health away from you. There's snakes everywhere. Was that in the movies, Mike? Yeah, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, like, laser floors.

yeah is this like so joe if you didn't joe if you didn't yeah i was gonna make that shot if you didn't watch dirty hair you might think he's also like a 007 kind of character like a spy but he doesn't do that stuff like just sort of like knowing

of Dirty Harry through like the culture of growing up, you know, in the time that I grew up in, I'm like, I don't think this is what happened in the movies, but, but I, you know, I couldn't know for sure until, uh, until I get it confirmed from people who have seen it.

I want to say the only thing that makes this character Dirty Harry, because the sprite is pretty nondescript. He could be, I thought like, it's basically just like a more structurally... human like like double dragon character in a way um i don't know i don't know why i i went there with it but but then there's also like you could get a

You can get like a white suit, which I don't think Dirty Harry has. I think the only thing that actually makes it him is the gun and the line at the beginning. Yeah. Well, but what a gun it is, though. It is quite the gun. Yeah, I think this is one of the cooler-looking animations for shooting a gun in an NES game we've had, where it looks very adult. It's just like a real gun.

like you are killing someone one hit no matter what and he and he just like points it and fires it there's not like a there's not any like video gamey animation i don't know if that makes any sense but it feels like you can aim and fire and it's like very Swift and effective. Very masculine. It's the way that you also press A to draw the gun and he just holds it out there.

But then, then again to fire, you know, and it's like you can fire it at multiple angles, too. So I agree, especially because they're leaning into, you know, like.

that line about the do i you know do you feel lucky punk and all that like it makes sense right right it makes sense but here's the here's the thing just to go back to the beginning of the game i don't want to recap everything i said but

There is some kind of cardinal sin about a level starting immediately. That's a jank feeling of why am I just being thrown into something that feels like it was already happening? But why are two enemies literally... punching you at the start like are you are you waking up from something are you waking up from the previous game over yeah it's just like this is where no this is just like where you pick up the story

But like moments before was like exactly the same part of the story. They're just like, yeah, we'll start you here. Right, right. You could have just started a couple frames over to the left and just started beating them up instead. But they chose you to be in the middle of them. Yeah, if this was a more modern game, maybe it would start with a cut scene of like, I don't know, something completely unrelated to Dirty Harry because he never got himself into these situations like all willy nilly.

It really is strange. Like, you'd think that, like, if you wanted to at least even add to the fact that maybe this is the character that you remember from in the movies, maybe just have him leave a police station and walk out onto the street. Or is it really that important to immediately say to everyone, like, no, this is an action game. You're going to have to be really good at this. I don't know. It felt like a very strange decision. I agree.

Getting around in the city, sometimes it's like, where the hell do I go? But it's because streets are not simple left to right side scrolling levels. You can. You can not only walk throughout the streets, but you can walk into alleys or through doors to side areas. You can go down into the sewers via the manholes. It's easy. You can climb power lines. Right. It's easy to kind of get like lost in this larger like what am I what's my objective? You know, like you're kind of just exploring.

But you don't have like a quest thing to be like, well, first you should go into this building and do this. Then you should go into this alleyway. You kind of just have to figure it all out. So while it is a pretty impressive city. to walk around in for NES days, like compared to, I guess like we've had some other ones where it's more like top down and you're driving around in a city and then you go to levels. This, this feels.

okay but it's the controls that make it so tough to get around that uh that really like limit the amount of exploration you want to do before you're just like okay where the hell do I go yeah what's impressive to me about it on paper

is that it's not that top-down style we're used to sitting in other games. And it is a side-scroller. It's like a beat-em-up side-scroller like any other one that we've played. But you can go into a bunch of the buildings, and you can go into all the buildings. You hear that, GTA?

um but like you can go into all the buildings and you can like there is a city but it's in a side scrolling style and that is a really cool like design idea for me and i love that idea for games i just don't know uh if like each of the parts of this work together or like if it just gets kind of frustrating actually in practice or maybe it's just the way this game pulled it off the the controls really are a mystery

And I I think this I'm gonna answer this in two parts. I think that the biggest the bigger sin here is At least specifically in this level is the lack of direction because this is kind of Like a, it's a huge riddle. You're supposed to like progress in this game. Like, are you supposed to go in the sewers? Is that like, like the end goal is to get.

to the bottom of the sewers or is there like a uh or is there like a building you're supposed to gain access to one you end up figuring out that yes it's the sewers because you've you've pressed every other option And I guess like the the main progression point there is to get like a flashlight But yeah, the controls are so strange though that

I would say that I know that, Mike, I know you don't like up as jump. I'm okay with up as jump, but even you, I think, can agree that up is better as jump than A and B. 100%. Yes. You know what? I'm going to play Crazy Devil's Advocate here. I would have agreed with you when I read the manual of this and I saw A and B was jump. But in practice, in this game, I think I like it better than Up. I don't think it's great.

but I think up is just more annoying because I can't keep moving forward. Like it's just not as fluid to me. Okay, Joe, then let me just, let me, let me press you there though. Let's say, let's say that like, okay.

uh a and b is jump and you're okay with that now do you think maybe up should be how you interact with people or should it be you jump like a weirdo in front of them and that's how you get any kind of like pick up from that person because there's nothing weirder to me than like finding that room with the girl that gives you the extra lives past like the big dude that's bulletproof than having to like

jump clear over her head and then land again and that's how you like get the lives it's so goofy i mean i that i don't feel like that's pressing me i mean i think that those can be those are not like those are like very exclusive two different things where like i think a and b

is better than up for me, but also what you just described is really stupid and I hate it. So like, I don't want both of those things to be true, but like, I don't think A and B is ideal, but I just, it just didn't bother me as much as I thought when I read it in the manual.

I was like, well, that's going to be awful. And then I kind of forgot about it. I got used to it pretty quickly. And even if the control isn't bad, we can agree that the jump itself is just bad. It's just a bad jump. It's very stiff. Yeah. He's quite...

He can gallop, though. He's a good jumper. Oh, yeah. Great jumper from no momentum. And I assume he does a lot of acrobatics in the movie and stuff. He does jump from a bridge onto a bus in the first movie. Oh, okay. You've got to be a good jumper for that.

So that might be based on the movie. We were talking about getting around in the city. And, you know, I guess in one way they're trying to encourage exploration. But they're really not because that door closes as soon as you enter the... ha ha ha room did you guys get come across this i i heard about it yeah thankfully i didn't come across it okay so this room when you enter it

from the door. You're just in a room where the letters ha ha ha are on the wall and you're soft locked. You have to reset the game. Can I do my essential games vote right now actually? How the hell did he get in that room? There's no more door? Like, what happened? Yeah, it's a one-time use. There's nothing off-screen, you know? If it's on-screen, it says exit, and in real life, things will say exit in a place that you can see it.

I don't know. Fourth wall joke. I don't understand. Fourth wall joke that makes you have to reset your game and just start over. No, it's bad. It's very bad. I don't know what they were thinking, why they think that this would be acceptable. way to treat the player like it's actually insulting and it's like far into that first level too it's not like like you if you get there you you make some you made some progress that you lost there

I should go back to the jump, though, because the jump is important for two other things. Jumping on snakes is how you kill them, just like in real life. That's true. If you want to take care of a snake, just jump on it. You jump on boxes, you jump on snakes. Jumping is also how you change clothes. Yep. You have to jump on the guy with the white clothes. Specifically in front of Michael Jackson.

Yeah, you jump on the guy with the white clothes, Michael Jackson, and then you become Michael Jackson as a result. But it's also like how you interact with other people in the game, too. Like you just jump in front of them and that like like there's that woman. Yeah, the girl in the red dress, that's how you get lives, I guess. Which also, every time you pick up an item by either jumping on a box or kicking a piece of furniture, which again, I don't remember from the movie.

as being his main interaction with the environment, but it will just give you the briefest flash of the thing that you supposedly picked up. You're supposed to kind of just understand, like sometimes you'll know, oh, that was a crowbar, but then there's just other shapes.

I don't know. Yeah, and there's, like, there aren't all bad ideas. Like, I feel like we're talking a lot about the funny things, but, like, there was that interesting bodyguard thing, even though they won't tell you in the game what you need to do. he he's like the bouncer who uh will attack you and you can't attack him if you're trying to get through the door until you change suits and then it's like oh right right this way come through

I'm not saying that's genius, right? But, like, that is at least, like, they have the idea of gating progress besides just being, like, the door's locked. Go find the gate. I did not. realize that it was my clothes that made that happen I thought that I just I thought I jumped past him in the right way but I guess I had the suit on at that point and I just I tricked myself

Before we move on, one other thing about just the controls and Harry. So he's able to draw the gun, but not shoot it. And we talked about how that looks cool and all. Shouldn't he have been able to, like... Shouldn't there have been like something where he can threaten or the enemies could feel threatened by just him drawing the gun and kind of like nope out of the situation? Like, wouldn't that have been interesting? That would have been more Dirty Harry.

Right. You know, like he's more like in your face. Like, is this guy really going to shoot me? He's a cop. He shouldn't shoot me, but he looks kind of crazy. Maybe he will. But they don't give a shit. Like they're just like coming at you. Yeah. I mean, was this game. I mean, not to get ahead of whatever developer notes, but was this game designed to be a Dirty Harry game? Or was this just a game that didn't have anything to do with Dirty Harry? I think that it definitely was.

It had to have been. There's too many, like, just Clint Eastwood references and everything. Well, yeah, but I mean, like, originally, like, you know, they just slapped that stuff in at the end after they were like, all right, yeah, let's just make it Clint Eastwood. Let's make it. To the best of my knowledge. This was always a dirty Harry game. Well, then weird decisions. Yeah. Weird decisions all around because keep in mind the.

Dirty Harry series ended in 1988. So it's not like, it's not gone like real old news or whatever, but there's not like in promotion of some new movie. Yeah, but all things considered, it's this being like ending in 1988. is like, that's like pretty, compared to like half the other games, like that's just happening right now. Like we've had games that were like from properties from like the 60s only. Yeah, this isn't like three stooges in Jaws. Yeah.

This is much more in vogue than I expected it to be. I didn't realize that it was up to 1988, actually. That's pretty recent. Yeah, you think about 71 to 88, but it's five films. So it's like they really knew how to draw them out back then.

And going through probably like I'm just going to skip through like most of the rest of this game. Harry's arsenal expands. Obviously, we get more enemies and everything. We go to two different stages. We have the docks and we have Alcatraz Island as our final stages. So there's only three stages and the game does make that clear.

They just don't make it clear how big those things are. They make it seem like it's just level one, level two, level three. But they ask you for that when you start the game. Do you put in a password for level two or three? And you're kind of like, only three levels? That's kind of interesting.

level one is pretty huge though but i like you think that with the whole sort of i guess the big city like the big like complex city arrangement you expect that to be the norm and it really isn't that like the city is only like half of level one and then the other i want to say like 55 of it is in the sewers which is much less fun uh

And much less interesting. I mean, not to say that the city was perfect execution on everything, but at least, like, it felt more like an interesting environment to explore.

Whereas the sewers are just, you know, another video game sewer. I don't know. But does it ever feel like the stakes are getting larger as the game goes on, as you're taking down this larger... uh super gang that we discussed you you do have access to some pretty cool stuff as the game goes on you get the um there's rockets there's a harpoon um and the rc cars Yes, the RC cars. No better way to raise the stakes. The RC explosive cars, keep in mind. Did he go to Q for those? What's happening?

Health, though, is refilled by eating hot dogs that you find on the streets. And I hope nobody, and I mean nobody, put ketchup on those hot dogs. Okay. Are you trying to make a statement right now? It's a reference from the film. Wait, from the first one? I don't actually know if it's from the first one. I just know he does indeed eat a hot dog in the first movie.

There are hot dog references, but the one I think specifically that they're going for is he sees another police officer eating a hot dog, and he says, nobody, and I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog. Well, that's one thing that me and Clint disagree. I've really never heard of ketchup on a hot dog. It is a weird thing. What are you talking about? Ketchup and mustard on a hot dog.

I've never heard of ketchup on a hot dog. You're really just fucking with me right now. Yeah, of course I'm fucking with you. Of course I've heard of ketchup on a hot dog. But I have heard the opinion. Only mustard on a hot dog, which I think is a little bit of a hot take impersonal. If you only got mustard, I'm okay with having only mustard on a hot dog. Yeah, sure, I like it. But also, there's nothing wrong with ketchup on a hot dog.

I am sorry to say that it took me 32 years. I am 33 years old. So I found out last year that ketchup is like the lowest. of the lows on a hot dog like there are so many better things like i will i almost never put ketchup on a hot dog now it's like i if there's only ketchup i'll do it But I have, like, so many other options before I go to. Well, yeah, but most of the other things I put on it go with ketchup. I would put ketchup, mustard.

I would put crab rangoon on there before I put ketchup back on. Just like cream cheese on your hot dog?

No, I never said cream cheese. The Cram Ragoon has cream cheese in it. Right, but there's other ingredients. You said it, Mike. Right, that's true, but there's other ingredients. It wasn't implied. There still is cream cheese on your hot dog. You know what's actually a really good thing for a hot dog? And you guys are going to... probably say that this isn't a problem and you're just going to agree so I don't know why I'm making it a big deal but it's really really good to put a sliced pickle

in the hot dog bun with your hot dog yeah welcome to the 21st century that's like it's just as normal as putting ketchup on a hot dog i know but i didn't know about like the sliced pickle i know about relish obviously but i'm talking about like just a nice sliced

Yeah. Do you guys know of Piccadilly or is it? Well, Sean, you might. It's like a Western New York thing, maybe, or maybe it's outside of Western New York, but I feel like it might be a local thing. I don't know about Piccadilly. It's like a hot... pickley peppery relish but it's just the perfect combination that's my favorite thing on a hot dog I've definitely had that I don't remember the brand name though but yeah it's good it's good

I feel like, you know, the full dill pickle is more of like a Chicago thing, but I think we just all accepted it in the last... Yeah, it's kind of like the chili dog thing, too. At first, I was like, well, that's just a mess. But then you have one, and you're like, well, this is delicious. It is a mess, though. It can be both.

Nobody Puts Ketchup on a Hot Dog happened in Sudden Impact. So that's why I remember it. That was the one that Clint directed. So clearly, Clint feels very strongly about the anti-ketchup measures. Oh yeah, about a lot of things, does he? You want to get into that?

No. Okay. Coming up. Coming up. What is it? Part two? Are we doing part two of the episode? To be continued in the next Dirty Harry movie. No, at the end of the game. the anaconda guy like and i'm am i the only person that thinks he looks like kingpin

You know, you're the only one that got here, so just to scrap him to us. Yeah, I'm frantically scrubbing the YouTube video to the end of the game right now so I can act like I know what you're talking about. I can barely get out of the first level, Mike. He's absolutely gigantic, wears that white suit with the white shoes, has a big gun. He's bald. It's like we just saw this sprite in the Punisher. Really? Oh, wow. I see it. Yeah, this is Kingpin.

Yeah, so I just think that's funny. And then after that, that's when you get the... The other infamous quote, the first one is, go ahead, make my day at the beginning of the game. And then there's another digitized, do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? Right before the end of the game.

They got both in there, and that's pretty cool. Honestly, if they could get those two, they should have got more. They should have had the ketchup on a hot dog line digitizing. The whole movie. Why not? Why stop there? This is a 32 cartridge melodrama. Bye. The composers of the game, Stephen Samler and Elliot Delmon, are credited, and this is why I listed them, not just in the game or on the manual. They're on the back of the box.

When have you ever seen like, you know, a composer get that kind of like, who are they? Well, one thing I was going to note, and I'm not even saying that I like the music because I think a lot of the music is just sort of cacophonous and not really that interesting, but there's a lot of music. Like, I feel like there's different...

There's different variations of each track based on how at least at least in level one I'll say this because that's my most exposure But there's like different variations of the same track depending on like how far into the level you are I might be wrong. There's a lot of resetting of the music. So whether you go like into a building or if you're just outside. So maybe that isn't the case. And I was just tricking myself, but.

It seems like there was more of a connection between progress and what track you were listening to, but I could be hallucinating. And then for the password screen... There are a lot of fun passwords that you can put in that are references to other Clint Eastwood movies that will give you different... different rewards. If you put in Clyde, which was his character in Every Which Way But Loose, you get the infinite lives code. I think that there was Misty.

Play Misty for me. Level two, right? Yep. Is there one that's a reference to Space Cowboys? There is no reference to Space Cowboys, but I have it on Blu-ray. Thanks to playing that box set. You got the classics Invictus in Space Cowboys. Yep. And J. Edgar, a movie I fell asleep like seven times trying to watch in film class.

Love it. Well, I guess it's time to find out whether this game feels lucky. Let's find out as we put Dirty Harry up against the Essential Games list. I know what you're thinking. He voted no the last five, maybe six games. Maybe he's out. Maybe he's not going to vote no again. I ask you, do you feel lucky? Do you, punk?

You shouldn't because I'm obviously putting this no. This game can't go on the essential games list. There's so much wrong with it. It's really fun to talk about. And I don't even know how much we talked about it. Probably talked more about hot dogs. But... I think that this game hit all sorts of frustrated frustration points where I basically had to play the game in an emulator with cheats activated to just basically take infinite hits so that I could explore the freaking thing.

I feel like if you want to commit enough time to learn it, probably not that bad, but why? There's so many games that control better than this. This is a mess. Sean? Much like a Texas Red Hot. with chili and cheese on it. Um, sorry, this is not, this is not a hot dog level or sorry, hot dog episode. This is dirty Harry. Um, yeah, I still don't think that there's aside from the beginning.

like sound clip and the, the way that he holds his gun, I guess, like if there's not, there really isn't a lot of dirty Harry here, at least from watching the one movies. And I think if we're talking about inexplicable, Video game adaptations of movies that probably Don't need an NES game Because like this is this is a kids This is a kids system that has like a very rated R game or like movie port happening right now. I don't know. I don't know why the game was made.

it didn't really feel very dirty Harry. It didn't really feel like an action video game. Like the controls are so inexplicable as to like, just, you could have an entire podcast about that. Not, it's not essential. I did not capture Anaconda. I did not save San Francisco. But hey, you know, the more you can talk about hot dogs, the better. Joe. Well, this was definitely going on my essential gun points.

list where the way he points his gun is probably the best of uh of any that we've played uh that we've seen on the nes um but outside of that i didn't find too much to be impressed with with this game uh i think yeah you guys kind of said it all it was a little bit of a slug for me to try and even get through the first level which shockingly takes up like two-thirds of the game and there's only two more levels left kind of weird but uh

Yeah, did not have a good time with this, did not control super well. And one thing we didn't talk about, there's like no heads up display at all. You have to, like, keep pausing the game. Cinematic, Joe. It's cinematic. Yeah, I guess it is, like, it really is very immersive that way. But, yeah, just another little annoyance to add to the many others. Not essential for Joe.

I feel like the game needed more morally gray objectives. Just things that are badass to do, but you're like, huh, he's kind of a piece of shit for doing that. He should be more confused after however many years on the force that all these things that he did completely excludes all of that from evidence. He should know less about the idea.

of due process, having worked that long. Or just even the idea that he did five films worth of work and it led to the creation of a super gang. Maybe he should stand down. Whatever he's doing isn't fucking working.

You got me there. Well, before we go, I know we talked a lot about catch up this game, but I've been trying to catch up on my missed games in the past. And I know it's been several weeks since I did this the first time where I... revisited some games that I missed, but, uh, I did not forget. I, this week played, um, Mighty Bomb Jack. Do you guys remember this game? Mighty Bomb Jack? That is a very old one. Of course I do. All right. Sean remembers it. Confirmed.

And I'll ask for more evidence than that. Why don't you describe your experience with it? I'm so interested. To remind you, in case you have some gray areas in your memory, Sean, you're playing as this little... like superhero looking character this little caped masked guy that jumps really really high and collects bombs um and do that and your your whole like

The whole level is kind of collecting bombs and opening chests by jumping on them and jumping off of them. You get all these little power-ups. In my opinion, I think it's a pretty charming arcade experience where...

um i i think like the the jump is a little off-putting at first because you you cannot control the height of your jump you're just going to jump like basically to the top of the screen you're pretty small sprite too every time you jump but after a while it's like oh this is kind of unique and uh make you know kind of puts Jumpman to shame because of how much he jumps. But there's some interesting quirks about it that I don't know if you guys remember that I found kind of neat. One being that...

There are these rooms at the end of each level. Instead of a boss, you jump through these levels and then you go to a room where you have to collect a bunch of bombs in a space where you have no attack in this whole game. You have to collect a bunch of bombs in a space with a bunch of enemies, and your whole name of the game is dodging the enemies. If you die, you go back to the beginning of the whole level, not just this room you're in, but the whole level.

But if you collect the bombs in a certain order, you skip the entire next level. So there's like this really high risk, high reward.

element to it that I found kind of interesting is this bringing any bells it is but I can't remember how you figure out the order do you so you you select the first bomb and then based on which first bomb you picked another bomb starts uh oh yeah sparking like the the wick starts going off and now i say oh yeah as somebody that remembers but as somebody that's currently watching it happen okay yes but now you remember the video you're watching

yes yes um but i thought that was like a really like we'd never seen anything like that where it's like yeah you can just skip a whole level and i i didn't experiment enough with it but it feels like you can like chain this together and skip like most of the game or a lot of the game if you keep doing this properly um which is like a little bit of a ballsy thing that for a developer to do but uh

I mean, I guess Mario does that, too. Yeah, Mario did it. Yeah, your whole game. Now, what I'm interested in, Joe, is that this is an episode that you missed in our 1987 season. Yeah. It's funny because when I was mentioning this to Mike earlier too, he was surprised at that too because that was so long ago. But the first three games that I replayed several weeks ago...

were all from before this game. Wow, those felt so much more recent. Right? But this game also just feels like a 1987 game. Yeah. And last week, it's funny because last week when we played Digger T Rock, that kind of felt like one of these games. Like it felt like a game that we were too far ahead of.

Or, you know, like that, like we've probably we got past that style of game, which this kind of feels like it's in the same vein, even though it's like totally opposite where it's all about jumping in height where the other one was about digging. But, you know, I don't think I would have voted this essential.

but i it stands out to me um one other interesting thing that i noticed is that if you you get all these coins that you can then like use as power-ups that give you like these kind of lackluster powers but um there's a few powers you can cycle through but if you get too many of the coin power-ups you get like a message that says too greedy to the torture chamber and you die or like i remember you die or you get punished though um

Kind of a strange decision. Wow, so that's... I feel like this is in the same vein as the ha-ha-ha room in a way. Yeah, like you couldn't know this was coming. Yeah, what are you doing playing a game if you're not going to try and do that? Yeah, exactly. And I'm not sure that you actually die, but something that you could hurt, you know, you lose a life or something. I much prefer the simplicity.

of games like mighty bomb jack where it's like you very clearly just have to do like a specific thing in a room with specific controls whether they're good or not like those are the controls

And then you just keep doing that stage after stage after stage. Like you said, it's clearly 1987. They needed to move on from this kind of thing by 1990. But we're seeing a lot more like... failed games as a result because the develop the developers just aren't there yet you know whereas like this kind of thing is it was like more achievable because arcade games had been around for seven plus years by that point right

But yeah, that's, you know, I just wanted to share my progress and trying to slowly catch up with all the games I missed so that by the end of this, I will also, along with you guys, have played every NES game released in North America. Tease what's next. Let me look. All right, so next time, in the next couple of times, because I don't know how many I'll play per episode. It kind of just depends. But I'll be playing Ring King next, followed by Rad Racer and Cobra Command.

Oh, yeah. It's funny because all three of those sound like games that I feel like I played, but I must just remember not being on those episodes. And some of them I might play and find out, oh, I did play and then like something came up and I couldn't make the recording. But most of them I probably didn't play. I was a Rad Racer. What are your thoughts? Spoil it for me. No, you wouldn't like me to say that. You should probably play by yourself.

But it looked better than most racing games back then. Yeah, get the 3D glasses, Joe. I'll pull them out of my drawer. Bye.