419 - Thunder and Lightning

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Thunder and Lightning! The Thunder Warrior is not pleased with Mr. Chin's meal chasing escapade. And welcome to Nestalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Did you know that this breakout game had a story? I I I was gonna ask what you meant by meal meal chasing? Like he's Meal chasing escapades.

So the manual positions this as another one of Mr. Chin's misadventures. Like as like as if we're all familiar with Mr. Chin and his crazy antics and this is like the seventh NES game in the Mr. Chin franchise. But that's not true. There's just there there was a Game Boy game that came out before this called Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise.

Uh and what's weird about that is that's it that's not a breakout or I guess like this maybe Arcanoid's better here. It's not a Arcanoid clone. It's a puzzle platformer. It's like a completely different game. But in that one it at least is more Food oriented. So I guess Mr. Chin is is like maybe a chef or maybe he's just loves to eat or something, but that's where this all comes into. But I don't think You can just brain this around Mr Chin if you don't know him.

I I know there's turtles and um and anemones, but I don't know about food and Like are we calling them our so wait, I don't really know much about Arcanoid. Like is is that like actually notably different than Breakout? Because I was thinking breakout clone.

Yeah, I guess I'm I'm I'm struggling to remember now like why I wrote down Arcanoid instead of breakout, so I'll need to just look at a quick visual. But for me, breakout is always like the simplest version of that. And and then like Arcanoid I feel like added The power ups? Mmm. Okay. I get that. You know, like like breakout was just like you keep hitting. It's like it's just paddling. Breakout is like single player pump.

Yes, yes. And and and then they were like, Well wait a minute, hold on, we can we can go somewhere with this and so Arcanoid introduced like the power ups and stuff, but then Uh Thunder and lightning here. Uh, is like, well hold on a minute. What if instead of it being a'cause I believe in Arcanoid the paddle is actually supposed to be a ship, even though it's a very long board. Mm-hmm. Um, it's supposed to be like a an alien craft or whatever.

Here they're like, What if it's just Mr. Chin holding up a board? And he just runs across the screen. And what if there were turtles? Well, the turtles, listen. Uh here's one thing I'll say about this game. Especially if you're just joining us and you're like Arcanoid clone, I'm out. Like what what can we say that we haven't said? They find a lot of ways to like reinvent

d uh or or or spruce up the genre here. You can you agree with that at least? I'm not gonna go so far as to say reinvent, but I am going to agree that there are lots of fun little uh spins on 'Cause you mentioned the turtles and I think that's that's like the fourth level or whatever. A and

That one to me is like, Oh well, this place this this game could go places. Like that was like one of the first like I already thought the power ups were pretty good. But then I was like, Well now there's turtles coming down the screen adding new blocks like That that's devious. How am I supposed to clear them faster than the turtles? And they don't stop coming. And they don't stop coming. They just keep coming. The turtles. So I guess like

What's the big hook though of the game? I you know,'cause it is just a paddle game with some new power ups and stuff. Like it's not Mr. Chin, I think we've agreed on that. There aren't like cute cutscenes or anything.

So is it is it like fans of you have to be a fan of Breakout and Arcanoid to even want to play this game? Like can this game bring in an audience that Either one of those didn't? Oh, I mean, I guess so. I uh I'm kinda getting uh comparisons to like Tetris Effect or something. Even though like Tetris Effect didn't change Tetris beyond making it like cool to take drugs to, but it is

Like a an enhancement of breakout slash I guess Arcanoid b with lots of fun ideas. It's it's a classic game with fun ideas. And a lot of new ideas too. There are uh there are enemies on the screen that can um affect your ball. There are solid platform uh solid blocks that you can't break.

There are um other types of enemies that will mess with your board. There's like uh one level with a squid who will like suction onto your board and make it so that you have to walk really slow and most likely you're not gonna recover your ball. Uh so is this Breakout with personality or breakout with distractions? I'd say with personality. I think that I have never played breakout for longer than fifteen minutes.

Because I get bored of breakout. And this I uh you know, I I played this for longer than that. And there is actually a a story here where uh Mr. Chin's endless search for delicacies puts him in trouble with the Thunder Warrior, who I don't know, like is that Is th is the Thunder Warrior something other than Zeus? Like

You don't know the Thunder Warrior, Mike? I don't know the Thunder Warrior, I guess I I know the Thunder Dome. Then you would have you would have known. Right, I would have met it. Yep. So the Thunder Warrior is upset with him and traps him in the thirty walls of regret. But if we're gonna do the sent the seven deadly sins thing, shouldn't it be the thirty walls of gluttony?

Were we doing searching for food and Were we doing a seven deadly sins thing? No, I'm saying it regret is one of the sins, no? Um I totally made that up. No, that's not that's not real. Alright. I just have I just have You've got to watch seven out loud then. Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay, so then never mind. But still, regret for what? Like he doesn't have regret.

Well he did he eat everything that he could in the pr in the past games? It's the only thing I can think of. No. It's'cause he's he's searching for the I guess like I guess he should have regret for entering the Thunder Warriors uh zone. Yeah. Domain. I would also regret uh sort of Intruding.

Sounds like it was a private area. These characters though, Mr. Chin and the Thunder Warrior, it just feels like a bad like Scooby-Doo crossover. You know, like Scooby-Doo meets like and then insert like something way too serious, like Scooby-Doo meets the Texas chainsaw mascot. Right? Like technically they could go together. Yeah. Because they're both horror, but like one is is way scarier than the other one ever dreamt. I would watch that.

I think I think they could actually achieve it today where they where like they couldn't do that in like ninety matters earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. We're just like so desensitized to it that they could probably show Scooby getting, you know, like Chainsawed apart or whatever, and Shaggy being like, like Zoinks, man, they just chopped up my dog, you know? And it's like no one's gonna care. I I think you're right. Yeah.

People wanna see that actually now. I wanna see that's a whole new yeah. Mm-hmm That's what the Terrifier series is, right? Oh, is it It's just like well, I that was Scooby Doo. Well sure I guess it just meant like people just want to see terrible things happen on screen, like the most violent possible things you could imagine. Yep. I mean, I guess that's not totally new. I I mean uh Hostel came out like twenty years ago or something, so

Maybe it was longer than that. And that that I think is a movie without any kind of r uh reason to exist. So I w we're we're we've been there. We've been there.

Right, and we've been here with Mr. Chin and Breakout and everything. Um, so I wanna talk about these unique power ups because there are some there are some really cool ones. Uh I think we've seen At least in Arcanoid we had the the long power up which makes your paddle just longer and we had the it wasn't an actual baseball glove like this one, the it comes down and it's a mitig cool.

Yeah, I think it was a magnet, but still it works the same. It every time you touch the ball it glues onto your paddle and you choose when to release it, which feels incredibly powerful, but is only really like useful in my opinion, like towards the end of the stage. Yeah, like when you know that you have to hit like a very specific thing.'Cause otherwise it just makes things really slow. Well the one I think of is also a slow ball.

That's true. That's true. And that's not the one I really like, although that one is a good power up because that one uh k i uh stacks. There are some things, like if you have the long paddle you can't use the glove and vice versa, like the it switches. So that is weird. But The slow and the multi ball, uh, they work together. And that's really useful because now all of a sudden tracking three or get this, there's even a larger multi ball for six.

Uh, that helps because now you can keep track of them all and and juggle them appropriately. Whereas like when you get the six, yeah, they're gonna do a bunch of damage while they're up there, but chances are they're all gonna fall back down at the same time and you're gonna get maybe two and then you're only gonna have one after that. The one thing though, John, did you notice this or did you expect this maybe?

When you have one ball and you collect the um the either the three arrow or the six arrow and it becomes the appropriate multi ball based on the number of directions. Did you expect it to happen again if you had a bunch of multi balls active and then you got another three arrow? Did you expect those like remaining balls to then again split off into three? Um I I did, yes. Uh well at least one of them. It wasn't just like one that would re-split.

Yeah, the main the main ball, I guess, like then does split. So you still can can continue to extend your multi ball, but I thought for true chaos they should have made it so that if you had six balls in play And collect all the eight another three arrow. Right. It's like now you have eighteen. That would be kind of I feel like that would break the system. Yes, I agree. Uh would it be would it be eighteen? Uh would be. Wait, six and six? Six and three. Oh, eighteen.

Yeah, cool. Uh that's probably also like just a uh a an NES limitation, right? I don't think they could have that many balls. We'll go with that. I don't I I I have I really don't know, but that sounds it sounds like you shouldn't. It's really hard to juggle these balls in the first place, right? Yeah.

Uh you gotta look at a lot of balls. It is very it is very satisfying though. Like uh like the the combination of getting a multi ball and also uh getting your ball stuck into a crevasse so that like you don't really need to like really worry about it for a while. Like th there are fewer like primally satisfying things in video games than just just getting it right in there. And when you have the the longer paddle or the glove or the slowing the balls or the multi-ball, like all that stuff.

is the kind of power ups that I feel like you put us in a brainstorm and we're gonna come up with them, right? Like we're in a m we're in a developer's meeting conference thing that probably never happened back then, but like probably happens nowadays.

And we could probably come up with some things that happen to the ball. Uh even the big ball, the one we didn't talk about yet, which is awesome, where the ball goes through um the blocks and continues to smash through the blocks. Even the ones that you shouldn't be able to break.

Right, right, exactly. It breaks every block in its way and truly goes all the way back up to the top of the screen, or if it hits an enemy, that makes it come down as well. But otherwise it can hit a lot of blocks and clear a lot of blocks at once.

All those things feel somewhat um predictable, um, but novel. The missile one is just like, whoa. Like now they're thinking. Now they're really talking my language because now the game becomes a little bit of a schmup where you can also simultaneously shoot missiles at the blocks while you still have to balance uh, you know, hitting the um you know, using your reflexes to catch the bl the ball that is in the air. You're able to shoot missiles and the missile power up stack

So that you can have two missiles at once, too? But It only I get that it would be able to clear two next to each other, but I guess I was hoping for more of like a a spray. missile, you know, like a a three way where it uh shoots one two diagonally and one uh straight up. Oh, okay. That would have been a little better. I get that. I I mean I it's it's so incredibly useful. I it it's almost a game breaking thing. Like it's Like if you had

the option to throw a grenade and Madden in a way. Like you're not supposed to be able to to shoot directly the things you're breaking out with your ball. Uh but I think it's fun. It it's it's cool that it's there. I agree and I think if this was a uh a normal game of breakout, that would be completely defeating the purpose. The only way that this ki these kinds of power ups are allowed in the first place,'cause I'm sure we're making the game sound pretty easy

is because of the hazards on the stages. Uh, you have the um The C anemone that captures the ball and splits it into two smaller balls. You have the octopus as I mentioned. I think it's a squid, but I have it my own. I I think it's an octopus. I wasn't gonna say anything. Okay, great. So well then my notes are read at least. The octopus, which uh grabs onto your paddle and slows you down. Uh the turtles, as we mentioned, uh probably the most memorable of the batch that uh

I do like turtles. Yeah. Uh they scroll down from the top of the screen and they drop new blocks, so you have to clear faster than they keep laying down blocks. Uh and then there's the the bird. I love the bird. Bird's my favorite. Yeah. Yeah. And uh it smashes through some of the blocks though too. So it's kinda like uh well there's also some positive I I was very surprised by the bird um actually helping and I think that it sort of sets a precedent for other

quote unquote enemies that actually kind of help. Like there's also one where well maybe it is like a god of thunder or god of fire or something that if you hit him with the ball No it is thunder. Then he Yeah, he's the Thunder Warriors. Is that the Thunder Warriors? He's the embodiment the living embodiment of the Thunder Warrior. Yeah. Uh he will shock you, but he will also clear out lots of blocks around him. Almost all of them, to be honest. So Uh I I did like the interplay between

the the whatever you want to call the obstacles, whether they're enemies or just things. I think yeah, I think they could just be treated as like hazards in general because they all also have this uh even though even the um Whether it's a aircraft or a spacecraft, um, they these things wander on the screen and give you your power ups if you hit them. Though all of those things are hard surfaces. So whether it's a

Right, whether it's an enemy or uh something that rewards you, they snap the ball back uh towards your direction, so you have to be ready with the reflexes. And w you know, one thing I'll say about uh even the designs of the levels here is the It it's hard to think about these being like new designs. Like I have no idea how I cause I just don't play Breakout and Arcanoid long enough outside of like the initial levels to see how things change up.

But these feel at certain points like particularly low to the ground. Uh you know, like in most of these games it's usually like intricate patterns, but they require you to bounce the ball pretty like high up to hit it before it comes back down. pretty early on in these stages, the blocks that you have to clear, which will again re I'll remind you, mean that the ball's gonna come back down to you, can be as

It can be as low as like two tiles away from your paddle. And so that requires some crazy fast reflexes uh to be ready for Yeah, the one that I really didn't appreciate the most was I I wanna I I wanna say was level eleven or twelve.

uh where you haven't seen you haven't seen the turtles in a while and you're like, oh thank god the turtles they just keep coming, they don't stop coming. And now this one has v lots of unbreakable tiles, uh and a very thin sort of corridor that you it's you can't really get one of those satisfying bounce throughs to clear it all out. Um but you also have these turtles coming, so it it should be pretty simple to get there, but they just keep

uh you cannot make any progress unless you have the missiles or something, which I did not have, and then it ends up like almost becoming a reverse Tetris where you have no room to work with on the front end. Um but that was But that that was my least favorite level. I think. Yeah, and I think you you know, you bring up another good point about the turtles there that we probably didn't discuss is that they lay down new blocks, but they do it based on uh like it

Based on the chain of blocks from the line that they crawl down. So if you have no blocks on the column that they are cascading down, they will just put it at the very top of the screen. But this particular level has like eight columns of uh no, not eight, four columns of unbreakable blocks. And so if the turtle just happens to spawn on those unbreakable blocks, it will spawn a new block at the end of all of that, which will be very close to your paddle. Yeah. Not not my favorite.

Yeah. Uh and I I guess I never really thought about it in terms of like columns and rows, but that is what's happening here. That it's just blocks in different columns and different rows and there is sort of a uh There is a strategy for people to like clear these things faster than just like aimlessly just hitting the ball. back to the corners every time. Do you do you have a particular strategy with even with these power ups in mind of like

Clearing a level faster? Well, I think each of them requires a different strategy, but like if there is If you can kinda see a back entrance so that you could just let it do its thing for a while, I'll always try and do that. But again, I don't think that that's like like tactical thinking. I think that's just like I want to scratch that particular itch in my brain. Um

When it comes to using the power ups though, like if if I can find big, I'm gonna use big. Big is just brute forcing it, like you're not really thinking about a strategy, you just clear it out as fast as possible. Yeah,'cause I think even in the the turtle stages too, with how uh three of them come down at a time, the multi ball feels like it would be helpful, but if it's not hitting the exact uh

the exact blocks that you need it to, then the turtle's just gonna keep coming down. But the big takes care of that by just wiping through everything in its direction. So especially for those columns in that stage you didn't like. uh they would get rid of those columns and so you'd have a much easier time. Absolutely. Should they have weighted power ups based on that, or is it fine to just like sometimes you just have to fish out for a while and hope you get the big?

I don't know, th it there definitely is a hierarchy though. Like you getting the long paddle is kind of a disappointment if you're i if if you're farming for power ups. Uh but I I think it's fine. I like I don't think that this is it's not a particularly strategic game. Like I think it is just sort of like a a fun time. Even though I'm sure that there's power users out there. So I think it's the balance is fine. I kinda wanna watch like a speed run. Yeah. I'm sure it's all tasks.

And if you don't read the manual then you're not really paying attention to this Thunder Warrior stuff anyway. But is it weird he's just like another enemy like the turtles and the um Yeah, that was weird the octopuses. Like there's not even the game just ends. Retroactively it's weird because I did not read the manual and you were the first time I heard about the Thunder War.

Right, but even just like thinking about what what the game could end on, it could end on like a fight between you and the Thunder Warrior where you have to like use the ball to hit him a certain amount of times, right? To defeat him while he's throwing those lightning projectiles down at you and trying to paralyze you. That could have been.

An idea for a boss fight at the end of the game, but instead you just clear the thirtieth stage and Mr. Chin just kinda like warps up to the top of the screen and then you just get greeted with a game over screen and it's like, Well wait a minute. You don't even get to see him eat anything. No, exactly. But also like game over. That that means I lost. Like don't don't give me game over as my congratulations.

And is that there's not even any like score to sort of be the the replacement uh for your like sense of Accomplishing the You get the score at you get to score at the end of every stage though, right? Oh that is true. That is true. And that's stacking, I believe. That's not just like, you know, these stages continuously get worth more and more. Yeah, I that is just like your overall But does it at least give you a readout of your final score during the game over? But I didn't get there.

Uh no, that's a good question. And no, I don't think it does. Wow. I think you have to clear to see because the game over screen is just a game over screen. It's pretty silly. Pretty silly stuff. Now Joe's not here, but there is one other mode in this game, uh, and uh there's two versions of it. It's called two player. Uh you might have heard of it if you had a friend in your life. And uh the the first one is two player type A and the second one is two player type B. And I think

Uh they could have figured out better ways to phrase this than just like, oh, type A, look it up in the manual if you want to know what it is, or play for two seconds, I guess. But like Type A and type B is so boring. Uh to to to put that on your game menu. Type A is a competition, you know, two players alternating, so once one makes a mistake, then the other one uh can go and you just watch each other play gas. Riveting riveting stuff. Yeah. And and then type B. Is it two at the same time?

Two at the same time. Two player simultaneous game. Um and uh that is uh like Interesting because you can also bump into each other. Like your So player one is a is a person with a paddle on the left and player two is on the right with a paddle. So you you can't like

You could dominate the side of the screen, you know, and like you can block the other side. Like Well, there's no reason to do that, you know,'cause you're playing together. But I guess what I'm saying is like so it does involve communication of like, you know make sure you know how like uh when you play um

Even a a tennis video game, right? And you're like, Okay, you're gonna be in the front, I'm gonna be in the back and then like all of a sudden you don't trust the other player and you just like run up to the front and it's like, Well, what the hell? I thought I was in the front, you know? The that's what could happen sounds like you have some some trauma from the

I think that just happens even in real life, Sean. I think there are times where you know it's like, you know, okay, I'm in center field and then the guy in right field just runs over to center field to catch my ball and it's like, Well, hold on a minute. Why why'd you put me in center field? Also, if you're ever but put in the outfield, that's just cause you suck. Well yeah. I I mean I knew that. I was always outfield. Yeah, me too, buddy. We'll join the club. We suck.

However, you gotta admit that's a pretty cool idea. Two player simultaneous rather than the alternating one. Sure, but is it fun in practice? I actually think it's more fun to play alone. Cool. This is this is what I said. This is this is single player pump. At the end of the day that's what that's what the that's what this scratches.

And uh people just still wanna like you said, you wanna get it up the back and watch it clear a bunch of things before it comes back down. The worst version of this game is where you just keep hitting one block at a time and just having to keep Juggling the ball, right? Like nobody wants that to happen. Yeah, that that's kind of I feel like that might be somebody's version of hell. Right. Not mine. Uh I've got more vivid dreams than that.

Lately I've been feeling a little lost. Yeah, is everything okay, Mike? Oh, in my dreams I met you. Do you do you want to talk to the to the listeners about it? No, not necessarily. Okay. Um, but if anybody else uh has dreams where they don't recognize been, just yeah, just know that I've been there, buddy, for a while.

Should anything else have happened in this game? Uh from the like, should there have been cutscenes? Should there have been uh more enemies? Uh are we getting greedy now? Is this is this doing enough? I I if anything, I I I think that this is this is totally fine as is. But if they really wanted to have the story in the manual mean anything at all, maybe some like Miss Pacman style cutscenes between some of the levels

would have been welcome. But I'm not complaining about that because it's not like I was actually aware that there was a story. So Yeah. Here's an idea I don't have fully fleshed out, but one I've thought of in in the last two seconds. So bear with me. Could it have been other shapes besides a square for the entire uh entirety of the board? Like obviously where the blocks are placed is different, but did it always have to be in a square? Could it have been like Weird voids

To make it a little more interesting too like things that's like different like shapes that these squares make, but are you talking about like a little bit of a little bit more? The entire board is a square. Could it have ever been anything I mean maybe if like this if if TVs were circular Maybe Yeah. I I realize that that is the limitation, but I guess I meant like you could also just like cut out the like you could make it an even more narrow screen, right? Like it it only has half the

information or the or it's uh i the the the ceiling is coming down on you uh uh after a certain amount of time and the blocks move down with it, you know? Like that kind of idea. Just from that dream you've been having? This is the the dreams I've been having, I've fan figured out I can't place it. It's because I'm in Mr. Chin's thirty levels of regret. Yeah.

It wasn't levels, it was thirty walls. He has thirty walls of regret. Pretty thirty walls of regret and only gets his game over when it's over? I guess he does regret the experience.

Thunder and Lightning was a uh an arcade game first, but this is the kind of thing that like it's literally the same. Like you you you wouldn't even notice, right? Like sure if the graphics are even nicer, who cares? It is what it is. But Thunder and Lightning Two which also go uh is known as Block Carnival

Uh it it's uh I couldn't really find much about it, but I was able to eventually find some visuals. But it's one of those things where it's like it was an arcade game and I guess it is still like part of this Mr. Chin continuity thing? The Mr. Chin expanded universe. Yeah, that Mr. Chen expanded the universe'cause you get a better I'm gonna share this with you.

Uh and listeners I guess you could look this up on your own time, but like it still has Block Carnival as the title instead of Thunder and Lightning too, but you get uh you get a better i idea of what Mr. Chin looks like and uh in this. And I I'm assuming he's the one on yeah. He's the one on the left, right? Yeah, gotta be. With the corset.

And is b is the guy on the right, like his boss also the Thunder Warrior? Yeah. I'm not True I don't really understand what any of this means, but I'm sure uh it's very funny in a in a Japanese comic. Yeah, like, you know, it's just your boss. Yeah. You hate him, but you gotta work for him for the rest of your life. I I think that the the one thing I would complain about this is that like the the name the title of this game is

It it I mean it's generic in one way, but it just is not descriptive of what happens here. Like this should be I thought we were gonna be playing a schmuck. Like maybe y yeah. But even Like this block carnival makes so much more sense. Like make this like uh block ocean or or break block. I I Well you know what's crazy about Block Carnival? What's that? You're not destroying blocks. You're destroying food.

So that's the thing. So it actually like even has the the food comes into play exactly. Like you like technically it's built out into blocks but they don't look like squares. But it's like sushi and then another level has cakes and it you know, it's very um It's very fun with like what you're destroying. So I suppose that is what this game was missing was like a little more personality if they wanted to lean into the whole Mr. Chin

uh you know, loves food angle because we're just not getting that here. No. I just know that he does not like turn. Also weird in Thunder and Lightning too, um, Mr. Chin isn't holding a paddle anymore. He's just like he's just stretching out his body as if he's like, you know, doing um

doing like a standing press with a barbell and he's just hitting the balls back up to the food. Like there's an animation of him slamming it back up. No, no, no. I wish there was an animation. It just kinda like bounces off of him. Hmm. Well, regardless, it sounds like the this the sequel is is more cohesive than this one, but Yeah, but it looks ugly. But yes, more thematically cohesive. And instead of ending on game over, it ends on the end. Which is I guess more appropriate.

It gives more clue. Would you believe it? Would you believe it? It actually says game over right after the end. So it's just like a thing that they do. It's a th they psyched me out there. They had the end and then game over like barn doors in on the job.

I guess they just want you to know that you could never no matter what you could do, I mean the person who was doing this long play finished with the high score. Like numb like first off, here's another interesting thing. Now this became a Thunder and Lightning two episode. It has rank, right? And it shows you like tenth place, ninth place, eighth place. And it says those numbers. Tenth, ninth, eighth. For first place, they don't give a one with an S T. They just say top.

Huh. I don't like that. I don't like being being the top. I want to be the first. I I think I'm okay with being the top. Well yeah, you don't want to be bottom. N not when you have to juggle that many balls.

Here we go. And I guess we'll juggle some balls of our own in the essential games list. Okay, so look, on the one hand I I gotta give him credit for d you know, first off I didn't know what this game was gonna be, so when I found out it was a breakout Arcanoid game, I was like, All right, well, sure, this'll be an easy playthrough. I'll play for a couple minutes, figure out what it is, and then, you know, get to my notes.

And it wound up being something where I was like, All right, you know, I'm s I'll stick around for a little bit. The power ups are interesting, the enemies are interesting. Uh a and the game does, you know Like just like any of these games, it relies on your reflexes and so, you know, you screw up or whatever and

Uh you lose you run out of balls eventually and you're like, you know what, let's run it back. And if you can say let's run it back, then you've got yourself a pretty good game on your hands. So I do like the fact that this provided a a a spin on breakout I hadn't seen before and power ups that were interesting. However, I don't think I would say let's run this back. I think I experienced it, and I'm putting it in my bucket of video games I experienced along with 419 others.

So it's definitely not a bad game by any means. It's completely serviceable. It has some original ideas, but original ideas aren't part of the checklist for the Essential Games list. And so this just gets a nice thumbs up from What about you, Sean? Yeah, I think this is more hypnotic than it is engaging. Um like it you know, Flappy Bird was

was uh addictive, but I don't think anybody was calling it a great game. I think that anything breakout, Arcanoid, adjacent is gonna kinda fall into the same uh the the same vein. Uh I had fun with it, but I I can't say that I couldn't have found something more thoughtful to do with my time. And so yeah, it's it's fun but not essential. I would like to find out

What is the ultimate breakout game? Like what is the Tetris effect of breakout games? I don't think I've played enough to even know where to start. Can we get like the guy who made Rez to make a breakout game where it's like the music is created as you break the blocks? That'd be pretty cool. I feel like that's somewhat possible.

Maybe it's like a meaty file, you know. Is am I saying that right? Meaty? I say midy. Midy? Midy? Okay. I think I I like that better'cause mit meaty sounds like like you know, like a steak. Really meaty stuff. Meaty Yeah, give me a nice meaty song there. Uh okay, so midy. Uh, you could do that, right? Like and you're like hitting the blocks but then Maybe it's like the song is moving along. Like so the the track is moving but you're still breaking parts of the MIDI file?

Well now now we're getting into some some stuff that I don't truly understand because I don't have actual like skills. But it sounds like somebody that that knows what they're doing could probably make something like what It sounds like they could make a lot of money if they do it too. Will you be needing some royalties for this?

Uh I would be expecting them. I won't reach out directly, but I would be expecting them to just like show up in your account. Just show up in my mailbox as you know, in a check for thirty four cents. 'Cause I assume that's how this all works. Uh I I'm looking just now'cause I thought about it, and apparently there is uh a game called Revenge of Doe. Like D O H, like how Homer says it. And apparently that is um That's the ultimate breakup.

That's an Arcanoid game that people are fond of. Does it have a subreddit? I thought this game might of might be coming to the NES, but it doesn't look like it looks like it came to the Famicom. Oh should we make this a Bytes episode? Maybe. If you really want to. Uh just remember that the Bytes episodes are for Patreon users only, so subscribe at uh nest patreon.com slash nostalgia. Uh that's all the time we have for today's episode.

Which means that we are one episode. Whoa one episode. First top episode away from uh the best of nineteen ninety. And it should just be a nice four hour conversation of Ultima Four Quest of the Avatar.