431 - Zombie Nation

Zombie Nation! I don't know why I said it like that. I'm gonna try that again. I was like being shaken. Zombie. 1999. What appeared to be a harmless meteorite crashing in the Nevada Desert has turned out to be Darkseed, an evil alien creature with horrible powers. And welcome to Nestalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean, and I'm Joe. Difference. As far as they know, they don't know which one of us is talking right now.

That's true actually, because nobody's ever taken the time in four hundred plus episodes to differentiate our voices. Well, I'll I'll leave it to them to figure out who I really am, and we can go on with the episode. What are you expecting out of a game that calls itself Zombie Nation? You know, I'm glad you asked that. Because b uh I I'll say like you know, I may be expecting like a um

a side scrolling beat'em up s sort of thing. But when I read the uh opening passage of this game, I was like, okay, there's like a story there, told the story. I I I absorbed it pretty well. I think I have a pretty good idea of what's good to come in this game. And boy did the first frame of this game prove me wrong. I had no clue what I was in for. Yeah, I think I was expecting something more like zombies ate my neighbors.

uh on the Super Nintendo that game. Like I I just think like This game, barely about zombies. Yeah, I mean I guess maybe everything you are fighting is a zombie. 'Cause they're kinda like people, so like I are they just like zombified every enemy is zombified and like wouldn't be attacking you otherwise. Well yeah, the whole nation is zombies. So like

It's like yeah, there's nothing that like looks like oh that's a zombie. It's a depiction of a zombie. It's just like the word zombie is just a justification of to like why you're killing everybody. And from a plot perspective, uh, that was a pretty long back of the box, but just to recap what happened there, a meteorite has crashed into the Nevada Desert.

Only it's not a meteorite, it's an alien called Darkseed, which is a pretty cool name except for the the s it's dark with a C instead of a K. Like Oh yeah, yeah. Why? Why do that? It's Flare? Yeah. Anyway, so uh using magnetic rays, Darkseed has zombified the entire United States. And apparently one of the powers of zombifying things is that you can also bring inanimate objects to life because now the Statue of Liberty uh is uh is a zombie as well.

And I guess that also means that there's now a collection of NES games where the Statue of Liberty comes to life and you fight her. Uh so that's interesting. And then um The last thing Darkseed does is uh seizes a legendary samurai sword called Shura. And sounds like all hope's lost. I mean the entire United States is zombies. Usually it's like um in these zombie things.

the outbreak happens and then we watch like the few people who, you know, Walking Dead style like set up camps or whatever and try to fend themselves with the zombies. This time it's already too late. Everyone is zombies.

So the only force capable of stopping this is a giant, levitating, disembodied samurai head named Namakubi, which translates literally to severed head in Japanese. And I guess b yeah, go for it, John. Was was this made clear in the story and I missed it that you were going to be playing as a severed floating head? Because I was just like, What the heck is this? And and I thought at first like, oh, like this is really interesting.

They just gave us this whole story about Darkseed taking over and everything, and I'm playing as the bad guy, and I'm the one taking over.'Cause that's what it looks like at first, until you realize that like, okay, I guess this is the hero that's coming to save us all. Yeah, Namakubi looks evil even as he's do'cause like think about it. Your task is essentially you came from Japan as a giant severed head, cross the Pacific Ocean and start

like shooting fireballs at all buildings i across various cities in the United States. It's like you're that that's like that's J Japan doing that is like a reverse Godzilla, right?'Cause like technically the atom bomb created Godzilla and then like wrecked havoc on Japan a second time. It's like now The gyp the the the severed head is coming over to America and destroying it, but it's actually helping us.

Yeah, I I this was this was definitely like threw me for a loop and it and and definitely gave my um it it it helped delay my rage when I found out this game is a schmup because I was so surprised that like my rage didn't kick in for a few minutes.

Yeah, I feel like we didn't even talk about that, but you're you're absolutely right. The this game is a schmup, and I'm not sure that like anything from the plot gave that away, other than the fact that you're a floating head, but you could be a floating head in an action style game too. But yeah, this is a This is a very traditional um schmup, i but it's also it's also like the weirdest schmup we've ever played, and we've played some weird ones.

Yeah. Yeah, it it it feels different. It feels very different than the way other shrubs control. Yeah, and it's like very chaotic to look at because again the destruction of the buildings is I mean, like look. In in some respects the game is pretty metal too. Like this is a pretty sick game. And uh I could definitely see, you know, you blast some uh some Metallica behind this. and uh, you know, with the with like a bag of Doritos, this could be a pretty good time. But um

But like it it makes it all like harder to read and harder to actually play. But maybe that's not even the goal here. Is this just like is this just supposed to be like a a visually intense game with a ridiculous plot and everything is just so absurd that like This is the natural conclusion for video games?

Yeah, I mean I think I don't know. I I I I don't know I cannot get into the heads of these developers. But I mean yeah, I I do agree with you. I mean just looking at this, some v some very beautiful like design work. With like I am looking at right now the second the second stage where you got like the dark clouds up above and you've got this like what looks like some kind of military facility below, mountains in the background and like kinda like the the

the remnants of a sunset corsorta on the horizon. Like it it's very It looks very intense. Yeah, and uh the game itself developed by uh it I think it's pronounced Case.

um which was headed up by a uh a former record firm turned game publisher And uh the head of development was previously a composer at Namco, so I guess that's how the record firm works in but it's basically like a bunch of music people who I guess have the ability to program wind up making uh this game and I don't know if this is just like a clerical error or whatever, but the studio

was founded one month before the Japanese release of this game. So I don't know if that means that they like were working on it for a little bit and then incorporated the the company, but it it it be it I don't think it's out of line to say that this game could be made in a month. Yeah, I don't know. I I don't know how these timelines uh worked, but yeah, it seems like this is

Like there's there's some weirdness in this game for sure, some jank for sure. But all that aside, like This is it's a pretty robust. At least design and like there's enough in it where like yeah, I don't think this is like oh yeah, we just pumped this out like real quick. And uh once again, you are just a head, not a character with a head, not a character who lost their head, a giant floating orange samurai head drifting through the skies above American cities.

firing like are those eyeballs like what is it fireballs or eyeballs? Because they're coming out of his eyes. Oh I saw uh I thought that they were fireballs, but you have two projectiles. There's yeah, there's like one coming out of your eyes. And they kind of look to me like the uh fireflower fireballs. But like they don't bounce, they just like go up. And then you're like vomiting flames out of your mouth that go down.

Well the g and that and that's helpful, right? Like the ones that the the ones coming out of your eyes like shoot across and then you have the ones shooting out of your mouth which um drop down to the ground so this way you can attack both like things below you end on the same plane as you. So I I think that that is a good call to have. It is a messy call though because it's all like the same color sprite and so like, yeah, there is some like

Subtle differences, but it is just it's just like a mess to read this game. And I I know I've said that, but Uh uh the reason why I brought up the head again is because apparently there is a connection to a historical um real samurai whose uh and I dunno I don't know how to pronounce the name, it looks like it Tyra no Masakado, who's a real samurai whose decapitated head is said to have become a vengeful spirit searching for its body after it was buried separately from its head.

And that is like what this character is based after. All all this stuff is lost on the American audience though, right? Ye yeah. I that's why like when I booted this up I was like, Oh, I definitely am missing some context. It feels like they just expected me to know that this was going to be happening. Um So I just was like, you know what, I'm along for the ride. Let's let's do it. We're floating head, we shoot fire out of our eyes and mouths.

And here's what here's where it gets weirder. The Japanese version of the game, the original version, didn't have the samurai head. Instead, it was a giant floating tengu mask from like Japanese folklore. And so you don't even have that samurai connection. you know, t to the original game or whatever. It's not like, oh, it's just poorly translated. It's like they had the opportunity to change this to anything else and they chose Floating Head.

Do you think that they like picked this head because it because like you said, it looks so metal and they were just like, Yeah, American audiences they want like they want grunge, they want like something that looks like you know me. Yeah,'cause it does look like his head's been like freshly ripped off too. Like you still see the uh the neck and like he's unshaven and stuff. But like he's not hurt, he's pissed.

Yeah yeah. Right. You'd be pissed too if you were a giant head disturbed from your slumber. Um but I yeah, I do wanna just touch on what you said about the uh about the projectiles looking messy. I I thought that was one of the many things that made I think like the the best way I can describe the feeling of actually Playing this game with the way you're shooting things and the way enemies are coming out of you is chaos.

Because like I it is hard to know what's going on. I mean the enemies are kind of like the same color as your projectile. It's just like this spew of orange and red across this cityscape.

Yeah, and and everything is always animating too. So it's even like if you destroyed the building and then the building like fell or something, so it was out of the way, that would probably be better here, but instead Awesomely so, it just stays on fire and now you just have to like like you don't get a f you don't get hurt by it, but you have to like just deal with the consequences of like more animation on your screen and trying to like read through it. Yeah. Yeah.

I just don't see how this is helping the zombie uh problem. Like I don't see how destroying all this all these cities helps us. and you know like Canon of the universe. That's why I thought that like The the word zombie was just in there to justify like we're killing.'Cause like right now it's like, okay, it's like we're fighting

The military, we're attacking the city and fighting all the people in the city. It seems like we're the bad guy, unless all the people i in the world or in the United States are the bad guys because they're zombies. So it's yeah, I don't know what you do once you've killed all the zombies and there's just nobody left, but maybe you just need to kill all the zombies in order to get to the to the final threat.

And as you're destroying all these buildings, occasionally a person will like fall out of them and start screaming for help. And I don't know zombies to have ever used the English language, so we can presume that your destruction has turn these zombies back to humans, or maybe these were the ones that didn't get turned yet, uh, which I thought didn't happen. But uh either way, you could

You can collect those guys and those power up your attacks as you collect um more of the um the falling humans who are screaming for help. And they fall kind of funny. Like they first They're always like doing flips, but then they like g launch up in the air really high and then like kinda slowly descend against the r laws of physics back down. Like you have plenty of time to collect them. And it's kinda like they're jumping. Like they're not falling. Like they're jumping

Exactly. Right, right. Like they saw the explosion and they were like, I gotta get out of here. Yeah.

The life bar. This is a pretty good use of a life bar. You have uh what is it? Yeah, like nine uh nine heads. And I guess those are like your nine lives. And anytime you take damage, the head t turns into a skull. But it still does like this. chomping animation that the heads are doing. Yeah. So you can keep track of like how many you've lost. It's it's so much better than just like a bar, you know. Uh this is th there's some good personality here.

I think I like yeah, this is where I might disagree a little bit where uh at the s sense that it's better. Because it is like unique and interesting. They're all like you said, they're all moving, they're all doing this chomping animation. I have no idea what causes one to go away. I feel like sometimes I'm hitting things and they're not going away and other times I hit things and like five of them go

I unless there's some kind of hidden value in there of like oh once you lose this much health you lose one head in which case it's It almost seems arbitrary'cause I can't read how much health I'm actually losing. But then also I think that just th this style, these moving heads, there's the looping animation, they're all looping at the same time, so it's just like

You know, it's nine heads doing exactly the same thing at the exact same time. And that coupled with the fact that you're this weird severed head that doesn't look like it should be flying, there's all this chaos going on on the screen, a lot of it's coming from the same color sprites, it m gives me the vibe that this is a ROM hat.

This whole game feels very rom hacky. Like there's another game and somebody hacked it to be like, Ha, look how funny this is. Like I made it look like this guy's head is like the main focal point of the game, not just the what you're controlling, but like literally your health bar is a bunch of this guy's heads. And it just like it looks janky to me.

And Joe, you know, you're probably experiencing so much damage because you might have forgotten you are a giant head, so you have a giant hitbox. Like it is really hard to not take damage in this game. Right, but sometimes I'm getting hit by things in my health part doesn't go down. And then other times like six of them will go down in like and I think I did kind of figure this out eventually where it felt like six he six heads would go down in like one hit.

But I think what's happening there's certain things that like they don't have they don't have a um like a grace period after you get hit. It's just like if you're touching it, every instant that you're touching it counts as like one lost piece of life, so if I touching it for like A full second. It's like, oh how many frames did you touch it for? Yeah, yeah. Twenty four, you know, bars of health or whatever. Um, but like it just was hard to read for me.

Well, if you are taking too much damage, interestingly the uh Konami code uh if you put that in during gameplay refills your life bar. But this isn't a Konami game. So why is this in the game? Is this the beginning of like everybody just using the con Konami code?'Cause I'd like Yes so. The first I learned the Konami code on PlayStation one on Crash Bandicoot.

And I was like, Oh, and then when I would see it another thing, I was like, Wow, they're using the Crash Bandicoot code. It wasn't until I was older that I realized like, oh, that like Crash Bandicoot didn't invent that code. I think it was maybe a CTR, I can't remember, but it was one of the Crash games. It is obviously like the most famous uh sequence of imp of arbitrary inputs to put in any game. Like you should always try it. Yeah, it's the most famous combination of directions and letters.

Right, right. In yeah, in human history. Yeah. Now, we talked about the Statue of Liberty coming to life and that is the um the boss fight of of the first very first stage. Uh uh they didn't just like bring her to life though and and she's just a giant statue. She did like as part of the zombification, she became a little bit like Medusa. She has like snake hair now. Uh and her torch is she's able to like move it around and it fire like a beam. That I mean it it all is it's all great.

That stuff is is so much like the boss fights in general are so much more interesting than the actual game because of just how like larger than life the sprites are and finally the head feels like it's met a f like a fair battle. Uh you know what I mean? Like you you're you now feel smaller than your enemies. But I have a question about the second stage. Mm-hmm. Joe, who do you think is the boss at the end of the second stage throwing those axes at you and leaping all over the screen?

You know, I didn't think about it at all. So I'm gonna just take like a wild random guess that like I'm I'm gonna go a little off base. I'm gonna say it's Zeus of Greek myth. I I appreciate your guess, uh, for Zeo for Zeus, and I guess you're doing that because of the Statue of Liberty turning into Medusa a little bit. Yeah. So it says for in the manual, uh, Darkseed has brought this legendary figure to life to carry out his wicked plan.

This legendary figure is all we get. But people online seem to believe that this is none other than Paul Bundy Paul Bunyal. Yeah. Zombified Paul Bunyan, of course, but He he has tur he has t came to life and he is the second boss. So between fighting the Statue of Liberty and then Paul Bunyan, uh fighting Darkseed at the end is gonna i it's not gonna feel as epic by that point.

But I I guess like Paul Bunyan makes sense'cause it's like this this whole thing kinda feels like it Mm it's fantasizing north you know, the United States. Yes. Where it's like you know, you're a Japanese hero and you have to travel to this distant land of the United States and fight the Statue of Liberty and then like our lumberjack I don't even know what Ball Bunny and Lumberjack like Full of Paul Bunyan, yeah. Yeah. Right.

American Canadian. But like so it's like yeah, it's like I guess trying to like I guess mystify if that's the right word. kinda like almost like what Star Tropics claimed to be doing as well, where it's like, oh we're like making an American version of of a of an RPG. This is like, oh uh s America the schmuck. Joe, do you know who the boss of the third stage is? I don't. It's a battleship. So that's just like another thing that the Japanese have to try to overcome.

A battleship. Oh wow. See that's that got like a lot more real. Yeah, that got very dark all of a sudden, right? Yeah. Like, oh man, uh yeah, we they w well think about it. So Statue of Liberty is like, you know, d ear early eighteen hundreds, Paul Bunyan late eighteen hundreds, battleship is like nineteen forty one. And then and then uh Darkseed. Uh Dark Seed eighty seven. That's yeah, the future. Darkseed hasn't happened yet. Yeah, two dirty.

They had no idea what to make of Darkseed. I don't know if you even watched a video of this final boss fight, but like I don't know if I could tell you other than that Darkseed's an alien. I'm not sure I could tell you what the final boss fight is. I'm uh looking at it for the first time right now and I'll tell you it's terrifying. Uh a way scarier than it could be if they had like an animated thing attacking you.

Yeah, it I and like the way that they're the way you're in like a black void and then there's all these like faces that some of them move s after you kill them they stop moving, but then the other ones like they move like how snake moves in the um in the mobile game where you eat the food uh not not solid steak. Uh and then like you think that's the boss fight and then all of a sudden you're fighting

The who came up with this design? I w I should have looked that up, but like The the stereotypical idea of an alien. Bye. Right, but he he's unable to attack you. Yeah, is he like controlling these things around him psychically or something? I would hope so,'cause otherwise he's just trying to defend himself and you're just angry and you're just shooting at him.

But like the imagery of it though is that like he is yeah, he's laying completely on his back, completely horizontally, surrounded by what looked like I mean orbs or planets or moons or something, but they're like half or you know, they're like quarter moons or crescent moons if they're moons. But like surrounded by them like a dense layer of them. So it's not like oh look at space. There's a few planets in the background. It's like almost like he's like

just like recharging or something or powering up or or something. Like him laying down and his eyes just slowly blinking and he's like not reacting to you shooting at him and other things are attacking around him is like really unsettling to me. Right, but maybe it's not even that we are, you know, going further out into space. Maybe those are like molecules and we are like deep. Atomic level now. Like yeah, we have to get rid of the virus, which is an alien.

And he's just sitting there like breathing in, uh just like living like uh living off our not symbiotic, uh what do you call it, uh the parasitic relationship?

Yep. We talked so much about the weirdness of the game and the stage and everything that I just wanted to talk about one weird game design decision, and that was that the game allows you to you know, kinda like just in the Mega Man series, to select any stage at will at the beginning of the game. But once a stage is selected, the following stages play sequentially. So you you could play stage two And then you'll go to stage three, and then you'll go to stage four and then you'll go to stage one.

Oh. But you like, why wouldn't you be able to like finish stage two and then go back to the menu and choose from the other three? I mean, yeah, I could see it going that way or it just being you start at stage two and you play to stage four and you beat the game. But like so this do you not does it not consider you having beaten the game until you've looped back to the ones you missed? Now that's an interesting question. I don't know the answer unfortunately because I didn't

beat the game and I didn't test like, you know, going f from stage two. So I don't know if your theory is correct that if you start at stage four, you just play stage four and then that counts as you beating the game. Um, but that would suck. Well, I mean, I think that's like it's like a chapter select in you know, even like a modern game where I feel like you're like, Oh yeah, w if it's like a game I am thinking of like a game, I mean maybe it's not as modern anymore, but like

I'm thinking of a game like Uncharted, where it's like a linear experience. I can select a chapter and then I believe I can just like continue playing the game from that chapter. It doesn't take me back out of it. It's just like, yeah, beat the game from here. if I wanna like skip over earlier chapters that I've already beaten or something. So the manual seems to imply that you do have to beat all four rounds to d uh to face that final what we were talking about with the stereotypical alien.

Still won't the the the final alien will appear after you've beaten all four no matter. I thought it was gonna you beat the final area alien and you still gotta do stage one. Right, right, right, right. No, you have to you have to beat'em in in any order, so you could end on the Medusa fight and then go to Darksea. Currently loose cartridge prices sit at around a hundred and fifty dollars, so I mean it's not stadium events, but that's that's a pretty p penny.

Yeah, that's surprising. I mean maybe it was My only guess here is that it was not particularly popular when it came out and then it become like this it became like this niche thing later, so there's maybe not as many copies. I don't know. Why would this be so uh so expensive? Can't imagine it have sold well, so like Maybe that's what happens. It's like it it's just it's harder to find.

Yeah. The developer Kay's went on to become a pinball and pachinko game specialist, so maybe that's why the Konami code is in the game. Well that's a joke because Konami uh left the video game industry for a while to just make pachinko machine. Yeah. There was like Metal Gear Solid Pachinko and people just wanted a new Metal Gear Solid game, period. In uh

October of twenty twenty one this game uh was released on Nintendo Switch and PC uh and it released uh both the Japanese and American versions together for the first time. I don't know Who the audience was for this, hopefully it was just an easy port, but pretty amazing that uh this NES game could sit around a hundred and fifty dollars when you can get it on Switch pretty readily.

Yeah, and I yeah, like you said, like w where people calling for the and this is almost like the uh Konami making pachinko machines. Like maybe people wanted I feel like there's like so many other things that people would want on switch than this.

You know, if w it's just uh maybe maybe not. Maybe there's you know a enough of an appetite from people who just want to explore retro games, but I mean I'd never heard of this game before. Um, I don't know if there's a if there's a big uh desire for it out there or not. Well I'm just thinking about like we did Parodius on um on our nostalgia bite. uh show which um just a reminder patreon dot com slash nostalgia five dollars a month you get access to the bites uh podcast which is basically

Uh, at this point, fifty episodes, so that's pretty cool. Fifty free episodes, except for they're not free, they're five dollars. Not each, but uh lump sum. Is this a good pitch, Joe? Yeah, this is I'm I'm signing up right now. Right, right. The math is checking out. The math is mathing. Yeah. And uh when we played Parodius, like that was like a very silly schmup and was leaning into maybe some more absurd stuff. I feel like

I'm not saying that they that they were purposely doing that, but I think fans of Parodius and then there uh there's another series, uh Cho Niki, uh which I hope I'm saying that right. I've never said that out loud before, but um Between Perodius' absurdism and Choaniki. shares a commitment to the a little bit more of the grotesque nature uh that Zombie Nation has. There's like

There are spiritual cousins to this game. Uh, even if they came out like uh before or after the game. Like there is this line of just like absurd schmup. not just World War Two as a schmuck. I mean to to to find a way to connect that to the Essential Games list would have been my hardest transition yet, right? Like I you could have done it. You're not giving yourself enough credit.

Yeah, and we're gonna Give this game credit. Oh, okay, good. Yeah, we're gonna give this game its credit on the Essential Games list. Tchau. Yeah, I don't think uh I don't think that I'm gonna be able to like

keep anyone on the edge of their seat of whether or not this essential. It's not essential. Uh definitely an interesting game. Uh I'm already not a schmupp fan. Um and this didn't really do it for me. It was a little too chaotic and a little messy. Also is as cool and like In like uh metal as we keep putting it, as this game was.

Even like if this were like a good game, that like metal like grungy, like hardcore style game, it's really just like not my like it doesn't hold my interest like it does a lot of other people. So That wasn't even like too much of a point in its favor for me. Um and then overall it was just It was just a messy schmup that like if it wasn't for the fact that it was a floating head with like this this crazy lore would completely blend into the background for me. Uh so I'm gonna say not essential.

Yeah, I think that's the right call, Joe. I it's interesting that we talked about how weird the game is from like the sprite work and the uh and the story, but it's actually not a weird game. It's a very like straightforward game and I think that they missed an opportunity to lean into like more weird things happening in the game. And I get it. Destroying buildings and having people fly out of them and having that be what you collect.

is pretty absurd. But when I think of like weird games, I think of like Katamari Damasi, right? Like that is a game that also looks very strange and has a crazy plot, but also just plays in a way that is so weird that it winds up being complementary and like m it because it's all it's weird on all fronts, it's more like cohesive than what's going on here where it's like, yeah, this is Just a schmup, uh, with some new set dressing. Yeah.

And and it's not that competent of a schmupp. It it has some has some like things to remember, sure. Like I don't think I'll forget this one soon. But in a medium that now celebrates the indie weirdness, you know, uh I'd referenced Katamari Damasi, but even more indie, like think Undertale. Uh if just to name those two. It's Zombie Nation wasn't necessarily like thirty years ahead of the curve uh on those games with with this.

it was just doing something at the time that was just so radically different than what we were being exposed to. So it's cool to see that even back then you could make Uh weird looking stuff like just the it kind of follow your design document and be like, yep, we're gonna ship it no matter what. This is what we want. But it doesn't mean that people want it. And I think it's a no for me.

Next week we have uh what do we have? Let me scroll down this chart. Do you know it takes like uh twenty five seconds now to scroll down the chart because we've recorded so many episodes? That's fun. Yeah. I mean it's pretty soon it's gonna take you know it's gonna take The length of an episode just to get down to the bottom So the episodes are gonna get shorter or the list is gonna get longer? Pretty soon we're our episodes are going to be twenty five seconds.

Right. Venture Island two, beach it. Yes. Adventure island too. Now the scary thing is that the last time we recorded an Adventure Island episode, COVID happened. So it's been that long, but maybe we should try to like, you know, just keep an eye out on the news, make sure not to. I hope there's not a correlation there. Yeah, before we record this the sequel.