428 - Qix

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And welcome to Nestalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Joe. Uh this is a this is an interesting one. kicks here because I feel like I know a lot about like early arcade games. Usually you go to an arcade enough, you'll see like all the classics, you'll see Frogger, you'll see Q Bird, obviously Pac-Man and Space Invaders.

Uh Kix is early, it's nineteen eighty one. Uh and it seems like it was rather popular, but I st I'm being completely serious when I say I'd never even heard of Kix. one week before we recorded this episode. Oh, same. This was popular? I when I was playing this I was thinking like, oh, we're gonna like we're gonna open some we're gonna blow some people's minds that this game exists. We're gonna be like, yeah, check out this game you've never heard of.

It's funny that you say that because I that was my like before doing any research, that was my uh thinking as well, was like, Oh, this is kind of uh an obscure arcade game. It is not. It has many sequels. It has a long legacy. Uh, it was, again, an early arcade game published or rather released. By uh Taito, so it it's it's definitely well known by uh at least our audience, right? Our audience tends to know way more than us. Yeah, 100%.

And so rather than uh you know, be funny or anything about kicks and uh the the w the name there, uh I think it's just worth mentioning that it was called kick. because the uh husband-wife duo that made the game, uh it was named after uh their license plate, which was just for kicks, spelled J-U-S for the number four kick. Pronounced just for kicks, obviously. So uh there's no like deeper meaning to the word there or anything. It was just kind of like

Hey, like remember that thing from my license plate that was an abbreviation? Like what if we made that the name of the game? Well, they sure did expound on that with like ton more lore than like some like full adventure games have as to like what kicks is and what each thing like names of different things and stuff. So like it's funny that this came from just like their license plate.

Right, right, because the game is is very abstract and has nothing to do with driving, although I guess you could say if you know, if you wanted to make it like a a Tron thing that you are driving some kind of thing across a infinite space, but The the pitch is essentially you control this diamond shaped marker on the edge of a empty rectangle or s square. Is it square or a rectangle? It's a little longer, right? I mean I guess both a square and rectangle,'cause it does look square to me, but

Okay. Yeah, it looks like a square to me now, but I wrote rectangle, so uh Dealer's choice. Anyway, your job is to draw lines into uh the void of this um parallelogram. And is that right? Is that the right term? I think so. Cool. I don't know. Uh and you carve out uh you carve out your territory and that gets filled in uh with this cool design and now you have to you know, like you get like essentially a claim percentage. So like out of that square you just filled

Five percent. And there's a claim percentage, there's a threshold percentage, and the level you're on. And so the threshold is what you have to at least meet.

So if it says threshold seventy five percent, you have to claim at least seventy five percent of the screen. Sounds easy. Sounds like I'm just drawing around an empty square. What's the big deal? Well, there's a couple things stopping you, and the biggest thing is kick. uh very, very abstract, kind of scary concept if it was to be visualized by man. But it is a colorful geometric figure

that uh essentially is a bunch of lines moving very randomly throughout the open space. And I emphasize the randomness because it truly feels random as a co as opposed to the Pac-Man ghost Which a as uh most people know, like there it is possible to play a perfect game of Pac-Man, that is because the ghosts move very predictably, even though it seems random, as long as you move in the same exact movements. Kicks this

thing i it moves in a way that uh is truly unpredictable and makes it scary to be near it because at any moment any one of its lines could um go towards your line and that it that is the problem is that Uh the kicks, if it touches your line before you complete the space, you are dead.

And it's it's hard to explain what Kix looks like exactly, but if you're listening, I do recog recommend that you just look it up real quick, uh like a video of it just to see what this thing is. Like I I have to give them praise that Just by like this is this whole game is one of the like there's one of the more simple designed Like art elements like involved in this game are are they're very

basic. But like kicks being literally just what, like five lines moving around with like two different colors is does such a good job of being like chaotic and very scary. Like it just feels like uh I we might have mentioned this on the podcast before, but Mike Sean and I actually went and saw the movie is it called Life? Yeah. Yeah, okay. The movie Life uh with I believe Jake Gyllenhaal It is. Jake Gillenhall and yep. This the the monster in life

reminds me of Kix or vice versa, where it's just this like chaotic, so alien thing that it's just i i it's funny that I'm describing this and it's just like lines on a screen. But like yeah, it does feel like this Scary thing where it's like, ah, this thing can get me at any second, and like it's not thinking the way I'm thinking. It's just fucking moving around.

Yeah, a and eventually there's two of them and that and so like, you know, they they find ways to up the stakes here. And in addition to the kicks, there is also uh the sparks, which are like uh they patrol the border of um

first the the square, but then eventually your uh, you know, filled in areas too, so that you have to also not just be like hugging the walls, uh, while you anticipate the kicks moving away. You have to kind of continuously uh dodge both, you know, your your created space and the uh the void space that you're trying to fill.

All the while you have two options uh of speed to fill in, and at first I just couldn't figure out a reason for why you would ever use the slow one. There's a slow speed and a uh faster speed. The slower speed rewards more points. So if you don't care about points, um then g have I got great news for you. There's an easier version of this game. But if you do care about the points, Yeah.

you know, you'll you'll use the slower one t in order to accumulate more points. Uh granted you'll be filling in the screen a little slower. I think The game itself, even though Kix feels like it moves randomly, does have Kix be way more forgiving. at the beginning of the game in the way that like when you're playing it, you feel like you can start by just filling in like at least forty percent, if not more, of the screen on the first stage.

yeah that is behavior that is bad to take with you throughout the game because you will be punished for trying to make giant spaces and it looks like really good players just focus on making like very small like two to five percent clears at a time before they uh go back to their larger area because you want to just continue to confine the space that kicks is in rather than try to make one big pull. You're not rewarded necessarily for your speed.

Yeah. And I and I I I do think that in the fur at least the first level, I think the Kix AI is actually designed to avoid contact with you. Maybe just a teaching. So it's a sentient being. It's i it's learning. Yeah yeah, exactly. Even scarier. Yeah, it gets scarier by the moment.

I was s I am surprised. Well, also I'm also watching a playthrough right now, which I'm sure you are. I didn't know this strategy of making these tiny little little boxes of yeah, like two percent, two percent, two percent until you're able to suddenly block off kicks and then like fill off like the

you know, suddenly another eighty percent of the screen at once. Um, until I'm watching this guy. This is this is definitely the way to do it. I was I was I was taking all kinds of risks that were sometimes paying off and sometimes getting me killed. Um and I I I I worry that this episode is gonna be very hard to follow if you don't see what we're talking about, but like

I think it makes sense. We're if you're filling a space, you know, and it's like your your space is the the space is the void at first is large and a as you fill it in it gets smaller, but so is the You know, you're now confining the kicks to a smaller area too, so as it's moving around you have more chance to make contact with it. Because the kicks can't pass by anything you've drawn.

So like yeah, you're you're kind of walling it in. But like I I also like I had a hard time I I like understanding like I I could intuit it, but understanding like which section will be filled in when I make a box. Because like Sometimes you're not just making a little box, sometimes you're dividing the whole screen or you're making this crazy geometric shape that goes from like the top left corner to like halfway down the bottom right.

area and sometimes the bigger space gets filled in, sometimes the smaller space gets filled in. And I'm thinking it like just fills in the space that Kix is not in. Yes, that's what I was gonna say. I feel like that's the rule because you can't crush kick Right. But then eventually when there's two or three kicks, I kicks The plural. Okay. Okay. Good to know. Um Then does it just choose the the biggest or the smallest area?

You've just no, you've just introduced a uh an amazing uh additional mechanic that they did think of, and that is that when there are two kicks If you are able to split them up, you uh all your points are worth double going forward and then triple and so on. So not fill in one of those spaces when you split them up? It does! Okay. So do you know how it picks which space?

No, that sorry, yes. I I now get what you're saying too. Uh I was getting excited to introduce No, I mean that is a cool mechanic. Yeah yeah, but you're right that like Theoretically the game does have some rules beyond just don't crush kicks.

yeah um But yeah, I mean it's like we I mean we haven't even talked about like the look of this game and the vibe of this game and an everything, but like it's just there's a l uh as we're talking about it now I'm realizing there's there is a lot to this very simple game. that like when on the surface looks like it's just yeah, just draw these lines and and split it up.

You know what's the easiest way to describe this game to somebody who's not looking at it and maybe is learning about it for the first time? It's it's like an etch a sketch. It that's a good that's a very good call. That's what your drawings look like exactly. Right even to the point of like the the point that is drawing it, you can always see that little like tip of the needle in the etch a sketch. Like that's kind of what your cursor looks like.

Yeah. Um and I I I I just uh the way that your lines look, you can make Such thin one pixel wide boxes. The the the line is one pixel wide. It fills in with this like pattern. It looks like things that in like the least impressive looking way seemed impossible on the NES. Like I just like I didn't know I could draw such a thin line and it could fill in this like

pattern behind it where it like it just looks like a Microsoft paint painting but like I don't know. It just doesn't look like pixel art to me. It looks too Too fine, like fine as in like small I I I know what you're saying with with the line itself. Like the line itself is too thin.

Yeah. And and and it should be like a uh one inch thicker or something like that, just because you didn't know pixels could get that thin. So presumably it's just drawing a bunch of like black pixels as well that because the void is black you're just not seeing them. But that's me making up how video games work, so don't take that for but the actual backgrounds that it generates when it fills in, uh you know, that that looks like NES art.

To me it looks like wallpaper. Like some of them some of them just like I I don't know how to describe it because yeah, like when I look and I'm like, yeah, that could definitely be NESR, but some of it's just like, well, that's I think what it is is because the way you contain it in these boxes. It just looks like You're somehow like breaking it through the NES to like this background that's behind it. Which is just I know what you mean. Because the the walls stay there that you drew.

Yes. And every level it just picks a different random pattern to be filled in by like the boxes you make, like I just like, wow, they didn't have to do that. Yeah, and the a lot of the backgrounds, not all of them, but a lot of them did remind me of like backgrounds you would see in like Mega Man or something like that. So that that that's what I'm saying. Like it doesn't it doesn't look like impossible on the NAS or anything, whereas like kicks kinda does feel impossible, like just too chaotic.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like no sprite behaves like that. That's kinda like you know, the interesting thing w worth worth uh resurfacing here is that the game it's a game with no characters, no narrative, no world.

It's just geometry. But somehow like the the tension of kicks kicks the sparks and um whatever those uh what are those like What are those like little star things too that like also dance around in the void with kick? Yeah, there aren't those Oh, I forget what they're called. I there was a name for'em. It was like Snowflake or something. But like It they those are the ones that only appear when your time runs out, right? Yeah, yeah. I th or or just over time they appear.

Yeah, but you have the timer at the top, the red bar. Oh Yeah, when that res that red bar is shrinking, I think if you are still on the level and that red bar disappears. I believe that's when it starts like shooting projectiles at you, although I'm looking at it right now and maybe that's wrong. But there it there was definitely a consequence like that when your red bar appears and I thought it was like then those snowflakes or whatever they're called

Okay, but but you have all of that stuff, you know, that that's the that's the tension, right? That stuff chasing you. And then you have your own greed. Yeah to balance. Of like, you know, like how risky do I play it? Do like the game is not going to be fun if you just keep making little one inch

lines. Like you do have to kinda go for it too, especially because uh the sparks, like, you know, can get close to you if you can find the space enough and if you touch them, you're just as out as you were if you were in the void. So There is this just like risk and reward system that's very satisfying because it's all defined by the player. The game never forces you to like.

You must make uh squares bigger than thirty percent, you know, like you know like there's no r extra rules. It's just fill the space however you choose to do it. Yeah. And I you know, I I it I I'm interested to hear like what your strategy was'cause I I'm again I'm

surprised by this strategy I'm seeing on this playthrough, but it it looks like the maybe optimal strategy where they're making these tiny little boxes. My strategy eventually became like at first I was trying to like, yeah, take big swings and see like

what I could get away with. But my strategy eventually became taking big s swings that were like kind of hugging close to the perimeter of the square. So then like if kicks ever ended up kind of near me, I could always cut to the edge of the perimeter and close up that box. And it's still making a pretty big box because it's like, you know, imagine I'm just like filling in like the I'm turning the the box into like a picture frame.

Slowly and like filling things in that way and then like kind of m working my way inward became my strategy. But I'm curious what you were what you were up to. Uh definitely in the beginning I was just being greedy and covering like fifty percent at a time and I was just like, Wow, this is this is gonna be an easy fun game. Like the kick

fixes just avoid it and everything'll be good. And then eventually it's like, oh wait, this thing's kind of aggressive. Like uh I I need to figure out what my move is here. And so I wasn't making you know, like what you're seeing in in the long play you're watching. I wasn't making like micro movements, but basically you're kind of forced to like make smaller uh squares as you go. And I was kind of

just building on where I was and just continuously building out. So I wasn't really like going back to the larger square. I was hanging out in like whatever I had made and kind of building like little skyscrapers, if that may like tears off of that. Yeah, that makes sense. How how far did uh that take you, you think? I think I was able to get to level eight. Maybe maybe I was or maybe I died in level nine. Yeah,'cause I I I wanna say I got maybe to level five.

Oh, okay. And I played like over and over again, like trying to see like how well I could do, but I I I would always end up out of lives by like by at the latest level six. So I think like five was maybe the the last one that I beat. I feel like nine is when you still have two kicks, but like they also just start to get like

so much faster. It's not even like they're more aggressive. They're just faster. So it's really hard to to be greedy at all because you if you just put yourself out there, they're more than likely going to touch your line. Yeah. And that's I is that something we even mentioned? Like you are this little point and yeah, if one of those uh whatever things r roaming the perimeter touch that point, you die. But Kix only has to touch the the line that you're drawing.

If you haven't filled it in yet. So like y if you draw a big line, you're a huge target. I'm not sure if we even mentioned that. That like it's not just you that kicks can touch. It's the line that you're drawing before you've completed it that it can touch. And that's what makes it so dangerous. It's a good point, yeah. I I I I thought we did, but I agree that it's worth restating because that's what makes it so much harder to be greedy.

Yeah. Kix is definitely the star of the show and everything, but it's not like I I I don't think it has like programmable AI where it actually knows where you are and and comes for you. It is it is still like it's weather, you know? It's like it's just like Yeah. It has no recognizable pattern or anything, no AI to exploit. It's just this chaos around you. And so because the kicks is what I believe to be random

you know, no no level plays the same way. It's not like, oh, just fill in like from the bottom left and, you know, uh he sticks around this pattern here. It's like you have to You know, y you're built on not pattern recognition, not memorization, but just on uh uh you know, how Want to tackle. Yeah, exactly. Um yeah, and that that that does make it like interesting where it's like

you have to always be able to you you can't just take someone through step by step. You have to always be able to adapt to like what's happening to you. And that I mean I think that's just like any good arcade game, I mean that's what makes this like a skill based game rather than like Just memorize.

And the two kicks is when they come out at uh You told me that the plural of kicks was kicks. Oh right, sorry, yeah. And when the two kicks uh are on screen, if you draw a line that divides them, we mentioned that now you have a score multiplier, but it also e ends the level immediately. It's not like you killed one kick so now you get to move on. It's just uh oh or sorry, you killed one kick so now you have to fill the other space.

it does um it does end the the level, which is important to mention from a score perspective, which is probably one of the reasons that you would be playing kicks is for high score. Uh the way that it works is not based on time Uh, although it seems like there is a time uh repercussion in in the in the design of the enemies.

It works based on how over the threshold you go. So if the threshold is seventy-five percent and you claim seventy-five percent, the level ends and you get a zero bonus because you cleared exactly seventy-five. If you Uh got seventy-six, you would get uh the multiplier for one of so if it's a thousand points, it would be one thousand points. But if it was

uh one thousand points and you went five percent over, now you get five thousand extra points. So it is worth for high level play not just meeting the threshold either, but going like as close to above it as you can. Yeah, and that that's I you we always talk about how like we don't j generally care about um high scores and stuff. I mean this is a game you almost have to care about it. I mean I guess you could just see like how many levels you can get through, but like

some of the satisfaction comes from like yeah getting those points by taking those risks and everything. So like I I uh Like it like this is one of the rare exceptions where I'm like at least moderately interested in the score. It's still not my m my primary fork focus.

And now Kix came out in nineteen eighty one and so the NES version of the game basically looks like Kix, you know, uh in the arcade version. It it is one of those where it now like it it it doesn't it doesn't need a audio visual polish, right? Like as long as it has the design uh the game like remains the same. I think I think this version of it holds up just as well as its arcade counterpart because it plays the same way. They didn't have to make a compromise on gameplay. And so even if

mm maybe kicks you know, like the backgrounds, the wallpapers, as Joe was saying, like look better in the arcade. It's like it's not a noticeable downgrade in this NES version. Yeah. I mean I I haven't seen the arcade version, but I just I I can imagine it looking cooler, but otherwise like I I'll tell you what I can imagine being a a an improvement. And this is this is both a compliment and a complaint about the game. The menu screen or the menu screen music?

Phenomenal. Like I would just download this. I mean this is it this really gets me pumped and it like feels like the vibe of what this game is. Like you're a computer you're trying to fight a rogue computer virus, but it's like fun and it's you know and then the game, silent. Give me this music. I wanna hear this music the whole game. I wanna hear it the whole time I'm playing. There's no it's not they're gonna be distracting. It's very like rhythmic and like it feels it feels like

Some kind of like weird like techno, you know, there's like this percussion in there that that just like it it gets you grooving. But like it's just it's just until you press start. So I I was able to check out the arcade version while you were talking about that and uh two things. One, the arcade version is also silent during gameplay, so that stays. But even more interestingly

Uh y this might be one of those rare ones where the NES version might be preferred because the arcade game came out so early. I'm looking at it and It looks like with the exception of kicks being bigger itself, like which is kind of scary that it's even bigger than it was in the in the NES game, the there is no wallpaper fill. It is a solid color fill.

Yeah, that's interesting. I'm seeing that now too for the first time. Um yeah, I mean the wall the the graphics Phenomenal wallpaper color fill instead of uh solid color. It got the upgrade! Yeah. Yeah, it's next gen. Yes, exactly.

Now, is there more that you want from Kix though? Like is there anything that uh uh uh a a Kix two could have delivered on? Like that kicks Okay, go for it. There's more than then more than I want and you know, secretly uh you and I actually talked about this shortly before we started recording. I should have saved it for the podcast, but uh just like last week's game, I played this game with friend of the show, Mark Pascalato. We played two player.

Um, and you know, it's like yeah, like that classic arcade two player where it's like I play, then he plays, then I play, then he plays. We s we see each other score, and then for some reason um when I die, he can keep going and I can sit there for no reason. But there's I I think there was potential to turn kicks.

into an actual two player experience where you are both fighting for real estate on the screen. Maybe there's still a kick's flying around and maybe each of you have like one shot of one of those snowflakes to shoot at the other person or something.

I think I think that that would have been a very cool this is me asking for like a different game. But I'm just like if you're gonna put a two player in there, it would have been cool to have that as a mode as well. So that's what I want out of Kix 2. Now, Joe, are you ready for this? That's what kicks to it. No, uh that is with the Game Boy version, which was released a year earlier. That's so funny. 1990 Worst way to play two player of any you see you need a uh link cable.

You need the link cable. Yep. You need the link cable but you can play uh it's not necessarily competing as each other, it's co op. And you can complete together to fill in the void to take on um kicks, you know, and and uh fill it in together. So you have your area and they have their area.

It's kind of crazy, but there is one crazier thing in the Game Boy version of Kix, which uh it it was published by Nintendo, so it's it's not like somebody went rogue here. Kix clearly um at least on the Game Boy, was seen as a a main attraction for Nintendo and for this link cable, but also for the inclusion of Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach are all in Uh the k the the version of this game, which is crazy. It's like What what do they do? What are they doing?

You have Mario and Luigi are the teams when you do the co op. So one person's Mario and one person's Luigi. So there's that. But more interestingly, in between levels, there are um like, you know, little cutscenes to just break up the gameplay, not like story wise or anything, just like here's Nintendo visuals to help break up the gameplay. And one of them has uh Mario in a desert wearing a sombrero and some Mexican clothing, playing a guitar.

And That wouldn't be something that would be worth commenting on if we didn't have Super Mario Odyssey. Was was that whole world like a reference to to kicks too? Now saying the whole world is kinda crazy, but the outfit is the same. He gets the costume he gets in that stage in Super Mario Odyssey is the outfit that he was wearing in that One inconsequential cutscene on kicks on Game Boy.

Do you think they just have like a library of everything that like Mario has ever worn or like done and they're just like, What can we reference that like nobody has thought about in in twenty five years whenever they make a

One of my one of my favorite sites growing up was a website called the Mushroom Kingdom, and they had just a section of like All wi with with screenshots to accompany it, like all cameo appearances of Mario in anything, whether it was arcade, game and watch, like you name it. And uh I d I don't know if that site's still up, but like they definitely have things to tap into that they still have not. So um I think that that's just

It's just silly. It's like a neat piece of trivia and it also just kinda shows that like This game that we didn't know about, even like Nintendo was taking it seriously enough to be like, yeah, we'll publish that on the Game Boy. Like we'll we'll make sure that comes to our system. It must have been big in Japan. Yeah, or maybe it was just big before we were big enough. Yeah. We didn't even grow up. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Great great callback to last week's episode. Please go listen to it if you haven't.

Uh we talked about the husband and wife thing because of their um license plate, but uh they they made this game uh sorry, Randy and Sandy. That's interesting. Wow. That's like a big Yeah, Randy and Sandy, and they said that their Eureka moment for the game came in a jacuzzi with a bottle of vintage champagne. What does that mean? Like why do they ha why is that like why is that solidified now in history?

Yeah, th like the Eureka moment where they were like, Let's make this game or like the Eureka moment of like, Oh, this is what we call it or like This is how it plays or like what was the Eureka moment? Was there something they were trying to solve before they could finish this game? I think I think kicks came first, like the idea of the entity. through a programming demo that Randy was that Randy made and then Sandy suggested the etch a sketch portion of it, like the filling in and stuff.

And she must have done that in the jacuzzi, because that's gotta be the Eureka moment, right? It's like there's no other there's no other moment other than like how do we turn it into the game. But it's just kinda like did they say that in an interview? Like i is this verified information? Like

I like the idea that like Randy just had like a program that would just display kicks just like flipping around the screen and there was nothing else to it. And he was like, Ah, like I just don't know how how to play it. Yeah, right, right. But they didn't go on to like become prolific game designers. They pretty much vanished from the scene after that. Well I mean how you can only go down from kick.

Yeah, that's true, I guess. Uh, but Joe, this is the part where I now have to do like sequels and spin-offs and tell you that there are many uh kicks spin-off games. Spinoffs, not even just sequels. Not even just sequels, cause there is the sequel Kicks to Tournament. Should be like kicks to the tournament, but it's just kickstwood tournament and uh it's just got a new color scheme and has some different bonuses, but for the most part it's the same exact game, so it's just like

more stages. Then Super Kicks was released in nineteen eighty seven. But still just kind of like kicks again. The real change came with this uh game which is I I'm calling it a spin-off, but it basically is the embodiment of kicks, it's like a successor to kicks called Volfeed. And Volfeed is uh it was known as Ultimate Kicks on Genesis and Kicks Neo on PlayStation. Uh and those games, they added the idea now that you could also capture blocks

And by capturing these blocks, they they have power ups inside them that can like stop time or uh shoot sparks, you know, and and stuff like that. So uh the idea the idea of like kicks style games is is not just limited to Volfeed. Like there are other games that I don't have the titles for here, but like are just essentially reskins of kicks with like

You know, this one's got anime characters, this one's got uh like, you know, schmupp things, th i it it's all just that kind of approach to it, but it's basically just kicks. But this the only like major change to kick uh that's notable is the capturing of other boxes that contain power-ups that like help enhance the game. Some of those clones being uh gals panic.

Which is a uh i it apparently it started the subgenre of adult themed uncover the image games, if you know what I'm talking about, Joe. Uh yeah, d wasn't there uh End of episode. Bubble bath babes. Um yeah, you're you're basically playing kicks, but then the wallpaper is revealing a uh naked Japanese woman or at at the very least her in her bikini. Uh and Uh there's an there are some friendly ones as well. There was Dancing Eyes.

Which now that I'm looking at the box art, I'm not sure I want to say that that's friendly. Uh okay, here's one. This is the one I was thinking of. Kakoma Night in Busyland. And this came out on the Super Nintendo. was not uh developed by that husband and wife duo, nor was it uh published by Nintendo or Taito or anybody else. So it's just basically a clone. And it's the same idea but with like

Pretty cool visuals, but then the visuals wind up becoming like too much. Like there's no black void. There's like this, there's this. area that you're in and then there's this area you're filling and that creates another wallpaper. So there's something to be said too about just the minimalist nature of kicks being in its favor. Like it didn't need extra things being in it. Yeah. I think that gives it that vibe of like, Oh yeah, you're like really inside the computer right now.

Now, there is one other version of kicks that I Uh after playing this version of Kicks, I said, I have to get my hands on this. And it is called Kicks Plus Plus, like literally the symbol, the plus sign symbol.

Uh, Kix Plus Plus, and it came out on Xbox Live Arcade, so I have no idea how I'm going to get a hold of it. And Playstation Portable, but it is basically part of that line of like Pac-Man Championship Edition and Space Invaders Extreme where it's like, How do we take these old arcade games and plus them up in a way that like is going to excite that old fanbase, not like

Not like oh it's Pac-Man for like Pac-Man World was trying to do. Like Pac-Man's now a platformer and he goes to different places. It's like that that's not what these games are doing. And Kix Plus Plus is just such a stylish uh oh it says it it says the PSP version is exclusively in Japan so it's gonna be really hard to get a hold of It's just such a it's such a cool thing and also like the kicks themselves aren't like they become different types of monsters.

uh footage of it right now and it's like yeah it's interesting. Like they they do evolve it enough but they keep the the vi they keep the uh the core there. Yeah, so I definitely want to check this out after checking all this out. Um Oh, and it's it's interesting too because of watching it, like they really make the animation makes it look like you're cutting s like something away. Yeah, so maybe we're the antagonist. Yeah, yeah. Maybe Kix is just trying to live its life.

I I thought maybe we were cutting away like a virus or something. Yeah. Yeah, so kicks again is the antagonist, thank goodness. I c I couldn't I couldn't live with myself if it was me. Right.

But I also couldn't live with myself if we didn't do the essential games list. Ciao. You know what, like I'm tempted. to throw this a vote. But uh what stops me is actually a conversation we had on our best of ninety episode when I brought up To the Earth. And you guys kinda mentioned to me, like I I think to the Earth for you, Joe, is just kind of like Scratching an itch for you that you really, really like. And I and I think that's true.

And I think it's true for kicks too, where I'm like I think it's just like it do it it it scratches my brain in a way where I'm like, Oh, this is like I really like this and I think people who like this kind of game definitely give it a try. I I don't know if I could say it's essential. Like I I don't know if it's if it's

If it's gonna be widespread beloved enough to be essential. I'm not even sure I'm gonna love it as much as I do right now with the recency bias I have, but I was just like, Oh, this is really cool and I kinda got a little addicted to it for a little bit while I was playing it. Um, but I think it's a definite play it, especially if you're like to like this kind of game. But I don't know if I can go f as far as to say it's an essential game.

It's a really smart game. It it's it's a it's a it's somehow an early arcade game that while it did obviously get clones, we talked about quite a few of them. It didn't go into anybody else's lane at the time and and not too many things like iterate on this idea of like filling the void in a satisfying way while also having a terrifying enemy.

You know, there's there is no ending in kicks. There's no final boss, there's no credit roll, there's no conclusion. You you just play until you die and the whole point is for a high score. And video games today Most I would say like ninety five percent of video games today Narrative completion is table stakes. Like uh most people play a game and they wanna just see the credits roll and that's how they define beating a video game.

Is there is there still room for a game like Kix that presumably uh you know, nobody will nobody will be able to claim that they perfected it, but also nobody will not too many people will be able to even just clear the levels uh that are within the game itself. Is there still room for something like that? I think so. And I think it's the same reason why I like um

uh why I like all these uh arcade games that that didn't have things that iterated on them or like that started something. It was like the the fun is just that it's a pure video game. You know, you're just The like all I'm doing is just filling in lines and there's no like there's no special trick moves. There's no like uh you know, Street Fighter 2 quarter circle this and input these options. There's it's always just like

Do the do the two instructions and you can pick up and play this game whenever you want. It reminds me of how I feel about gyrus in that way. And gyrus I try to get on the Essential Games list several times. Uh And I think like the it's for the same reason that w when we talked about Shadowgate and stuff like that, like it's okay that they're not necessarily the best version, but that they should still be on the Essential Games list.

It does make me want to put kicks on the Essential Games list, because I think if it isn't just open up to like the NES version, which to me by all means seems superior than the arcade version I I haven't played. I do think that this is great. Is there room for improvement like multiplayer having co-op and the power up stuff?

Sure, but like the game they put here has very little to actually critique. It just makes you want more of it. And so I think that's a pretty good sign. So I am gonna vote it on the essential games list. But unfortunately, since there's only two of us, That means that it will not get on because we always you always need more than half. And so fifty percent of the vote We need we need Sean now in the best of ninety one in like If you're But see now

It's a bummer that it has to be a unanimous vote in the best of ninety one. Uh not that I will like am so opposed to ever changing my vote on this one, but it's like I would like to know where Sean would have voted to see if it would have gotten on or not uh before the best of

Oh and you know, we don't have that long till uh the best of nineteen ninety one. We just have to wait until March of twenty twenty eight. So plenty of time. Yeah. Uh we'll be able to figure it all out by then. I'm sure s you and Sean will be playing it every week until then to make sure that you're Yeah. So stay fresh on it. Yeah. Yep. Now next week we will be playing the Untouchables. Um Can you can you touch this? Uh the only one way to find out.