Press B 235: Friday the 13th (NES) an Atlus classic? - podcast episode cover

Press B 235: Friday the 13th (NES) an Atlus classic?

Dec 16, 202452 min
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Episode description

Released in 1989 exclusively in North America, the Friday the 13th video game for the NES has gained a reputation over the years—but not necessarily a good one. Published by LJN, a company infamous for its poor-quality licensed games, it’s easy to dismiss this title outright. However, what if we told you it was developed by Atlus? Could there be more to this game than meets the eye? Is it a hidden gem worth revisiting, or does it deserve to be condemned to retro gaming purgatory?

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Transcript

Gentlemen, do you know what day it is? Friday. Today on. I thought it was Halloween. I thought so, too, but I was wrong. No, It's Friday the 13th. I'm wrong. Over the intro. Don't fuck up your horror movies. Over the intro. Over the intro. All right, welcome, everybody, to another episode of Press B to cancel your favorite podcast on Friday the 13th. It's a killer show.

Yeah, if you can't tell. We're talking Friday the 13th. But no, we are not talking the day. We are not talking the movie series. We are talking the absolutely, epically wonderful, lovely nes game from 1989. Friday the 13th. I was going to say we're talking about Friday 13th, the good version of the game, because there are two. But then I realize maybe it's not a good version. I don't know if that exists.

Look, look, don't spoil the show yet. I'm trying to lead people down the path of excitement before we dash. This could be as good as Circus Charlie. What am I thinking? This could be a fantastic retro hidden gem. It sure is. It sure is. If there's any game that this correlates, the best to is definitely Circus Charlie can confirm.

Second only to balloon fight. But I'm not alone, everybody. I'm never alone. So alone. I'm joined by three of my friends, fellow podcast hosts, and lovely human beings. Werewolf, how are you today? I am well, like Jason, I am back again. Ah. And Chardmonk, how are you? I'm okay. It was a long day today, but I'm happy to talk about a terrible game. The one game that I will not gush about this year, probably. All right. And I'm joining my Canadian friend wearing my toque Sick Jason.

Is that what we're doing? Okay. All right. There you go. I got some bedhead. I can cover it up. I'm doing great. But what's that first rule of horror movies? Never go out alone. I'll make sure I never go out alone. You ride back. Isn't it don't have sex. Isn't that the first. I am married, so that doesn't happen anymore. Right. That's how that works. Wow. Okay. Well, he might not be married after this episode. He doesn't watch our show. All right. None of our spouses watch this show.

Mine might be in chat right now, actually. Cheers. My wife does tune in for our bracket episodes. Only those. Okay. She likes. She likes the infighting, does she? She likes the anger. Yeah, she does. Are we all Canadian now? Yeah, she's all those. Get heated. I Watch those ones. Nice. All right, so we are talking a game released in 1989 by LGN, developed by Atlus. Friday the 13th, a video game on the NES, not the one that came.

Out in 2017, which actually shuts down this month. I just saw that today. It ends at. Servers shut down at the end of December, which is kind of interesting. So the NES version continues on. Were you guys surprised to hear that it was developed by Atlas? I had no idea that Atlas is the one who created this game. I kind of was. I was actually. Yeah. And Atlas Japan, and then it was never released in Japan. Is this the same Atlas that did everybody's favorite RPGs, Persona? Yes.

Yes, this is Atlas. One of the testers on the Friday 13th NES game ended up being one of the guys who created Shin Megani Tensei, which is what led to Persona. Yeah. So totally the same company. It's wild. Apparently the producer of this one was one of the founders of Atlas, and he was working on eight games at the same time or something, so just his workload was full. Well, he certainly wasn't working on this one. Well, I wanted to. A side project I kind of wanted.

To start because we start from a place of lgn. And lgn, to my recollection, only has one game that I would probably call a pass, and that. That, to me would be Jaws. If GP is what is playing. I was gonna say Jaws. Jaws is. Jaws is not a bad game. It's just criminally short for the money that you would have paid for it. But I think Jaws is a fine game. You get to fly away in a biplane.

Well, Friday the 13th brings back some of that Jaws mechanic in that you're constantly fighting the final boss of the game. That's fair. Yeah, yeah. And you only bring him down chunk by chunk, and he runs off. Yeah. You have to defeat him. Spoiler, everybody. You have to defeat him three times, and sometimes he runs away before you can defeat him. Sometimes. Like most of the time. Well, yeah, most of the time. Yeah. Okay.

If you were coming at me with a knife, I'd probably run from you too. So Hockey Mask or no. Right, right. So now, lgn, I watched a few videos. I don't have quite the experience with the NES that you all do, but it appears that lgn, from my understanding, actually didn't develop any games of their own. They actually worked with other studios, in this case Atlas, to produce games, and then they just published them.

Yeah, it's always been nebulous. I thought they developed a handful of These again. Maybe that's why I'm so surprised to see Atlas's name attached to this one because it's, it's a, it's a video game. But I think you're, I think they kind of obscured who was developing some of these titles to try and take, you know, full credit of it. I do know that LGM was pushing hard and bringing licensed games to North America. That was kind of their jam for the, for the period. Right. So you had, was a Jaws and Feather Teeth and what else do they have? They, they had a few, I think, licensed properties.

Roger Rabbit. Yes, Roger. Roger Rabbit. I thought they did Roger Rabbit. Which is also a God awful game. Yeah, they did Back to the Future Pictionary. So bad. The Karate Kid. Actually, you know, Karate Kid was not that bad. I, I, well, maybe it's bad. It's, it's better than their other ones. I felt like, I felt like LGN was highly like into the movie. It was. Oh yeah, it was very much licensed games. Yeah. That they started out with licensed action figures. Right?

Oh really? Is that what they did? One of their earlier licensed games was just called NFL. That's my favorite. My favorite. Yeah. What, what aspect do you play? Yeah, that's the Rob Low meme. Are you the, are you the commissioner of, of the NFL? I mean, what, what's your favorite team? NFL. Oh, their toys are bad. I like them all. They're like, they're like bad knockoff toys. I didn't, I didn't realize they made toys. I thought they just did games. Yeah. Oh, wow.

No, that's actually, I think where they started. Make bad stuff. That's just, that's just, that's what they do. Have to pull some of this up. That's crazy. Yeah. Bad toys that are probably worth gargantuan amounts of money for sure. Yeah, no, sure, sure.

Yeah. Okay. So we know, we know LJN has a, has a, a history and, and yeah, so this was developed by Atlas in Japan, notably has a, like the intro screen to this game sets a, sets a theme that makes you think it might be your good game because it is. The Jason mask. A knife comes and jams itself into the eye. You feel like. Okay, okay, this is legit.

Can I mention something real quick? Most of the time when I first fire up Friday the 13th for the NES, I forget that it does that. So it jump scares me because it's completely quiet. And then you hear the, as the knife flies into the mask. Yep. I mean it starts with a jump scare. Right. It jump scared me when I was watching a video about it today.

And then you enter the remainder of this. Of this quality product. All right, so, Chard Monk, I know you've played this. You've played this on stream. Do you want to talk a little bit about this?

I played this a long time ago. I was. I was trying to get set up for some kind of charity event, and it was on a Friday the 13th. So I was like, what a better game to play than Friday 13th. On Friday the 13th. Boy, was I wrong. This game is awful. It's you. You are represented by, I think, six of the camp counselors. Six camp counselors.

And your job is to find Jason and save the children. Find the children that are hidden amongst the cabins and. And then kill Jason or at least kill him off to do that. But while you're side scrolling and each camp counselor has different, like a different attribute, really noticeable in the jump or in the speed of the character. It's really. The only difference is one, some of them are faster and some of them jump higher. You chase it to this ungodly repetitive music that makes Mario RPG soundtrack sound phenomenal. And then once a child is in danger, you get this really annoying beeping sound.

The Jason. The Jason siren. Yeah, it's. It's like. It's almost as bad as when Link is almost out of hearts in Legend of Zelda. But instead of being a constant beep, it's a bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. And you're like, yeah, like your phone's going off or you have an alarm that's going off, and it's just terrible. And so all you want to do is find where this. Where Jason is to shut the sound up. You don't even care if. You don't care if you save the. Children at this point.

You just want them to stop screaming. Just want to stop it. Just want the sound to stop. So are the lamb still screaming, Clarice? And the map is huge. It's a big circle, right? You go around the circle and then there's a forest. But what I don't comprehend in this particular game is why is there. It's zombies or zombies. I always thought that they were wolf zombies. They look like Wolfman. They look like Shaggy wolf zombies.

So I have. You want the lore behind these enemies? I have the lore. I actually have the manual pulled up. Hit me. Okay, so here's. Here's some of the enemies you can face in Friday 13th on the NES. An LGS LGN classic. There are zombies, which are the mindless undead who are the past victims of one of Jason's murderous rampages. Torch them and you will lose some life energy. But watch out because zombies can appear on land or from underwater. Okay.

Why? Now wait, hold on, hold on. When did Jason become a necromancer? Well, it's, it's, it's absolutely lore from the movies. We all remember the zombies and the counselors, I guess. Clearly he can bring the dead back to life. He does it to himself dozens of times across the movie franchise. You don't recognize the camp counselor characters. He's just, he's just sharing such notable. Counselor characters as George and Chrissy. My favorite, my favorite counselors from the franchise. Laura all.

Yeah, like. Sounds like a fucking. Can we continue that onto the. Another character just down and to the right from the zombie. Jason's mother. More, more proof that he's a necromancer. Jason's mother. Poor Jason can't bear to part with his mother, even if she has been dead for years. He keeps her ghostly head in the same room where he stores his weapons. A frightening watchdog against anyone fool enough to seek out a secret hideaway. What is this? Jason Voorhees Bates. Like what?

My favorite movies, right? How many? Yeah, so one thing I want to point out also is when you like one of the first entries of text that you see says that you need to use the torches to light the fireplace. Fireplaces, which is wrong. The game tells you the wrong information. You actually use the lighters. Yep. So torch is also slang for a lighter, I think. I think it's a UK slang word. Well, but there are torches in the game. Yeah, you get torches. They help you see in the caves.

And then there's also flashlights too.

It is something you torch his. So his argument is valid because it's used for something else. Not used for the gate. So. Oh. Anyways, so you're doing the side scrolling, you're jumping over zombies or you're throwing knives or rocks or whatever you have at them. Notable camp counselor Debbie is apparently proficient with knife and dodging. And then you can enter each room and then it turns into like almost a dungeon crawler type thing where you are pressing forward or left and right to look around the room. You find notes, you find weapons, you find lighters, you find items, you find final stuff. Or you find Jason lying in wait to pummel your ass into the ground. Now when you get into a fight, a one on one fight with Jason in the cabins, not in the side scrolling part, you have to dodge, duck, dick, dodge, dive.

That's exactly what that phrase is. It's just stupid. And so you have to time your dodge from when he punches at you. And then you have to find a window to throw rocks or knives or whatever weapon you have at him. And it is lengthy, it's annoying, and it's tiresome. And then when you finally get the rhythm down, you fall asleep doing it because it's the most boring encounter you could possibly do. Well. And he runs away, and then he.

Runs away after so many hits. So. And then when you finally kill him, they're like, oh, but Jason's coming back. You're like. And then he changes his tactics. He actually moves faster on the second day and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, he's like, he's like, Jesus has written. And on the second day, Jason was faster.

It's. It's almost like punch out controls kind of. But in order to dodge, you have to do down, down, left, down, right. And on a normal D pad, that never feels right. Like when I played it on, I have an all button stick behind me when I play on that. It's actually not so bad. But trying to play this on a D pad sucks to try and dodge. I kept losing counselors, like when one dies and you have to pick another one and go back to where you were. And I went through like four or five counselors dying this way. And I really wanted to give up until I realized the best way to beat them is you have to get an upgraded weapon, which you get by just standing outside and killing zombies. It's an infinite loop. You just sit there chucking your stones at the zombies for 10 minutes until you have the best gear and then you can usually take down Jason. It's. It's a weird game.

Yep. Weird is a nice way of putting shit. It's not a good game. It's not good. It's. You easily get lost on the map. You'll pull up the map and you'll be like, I need to go to this cabin because that's where the kids screaming from. And in the other side of the map and you're like, how the hell did I get here? In the side scrolling pieces, if you go left, it actually moves you right. Yeah. On the map, completely back.

That is bizarre. Yeah. Because you clockwise. If you go left, it's stupid. But you know what? I give it credit for the ambition though, in this, because you do have six counselors and all six are on the map at any given time, and they do move around a little bit. So the idea is you would pick. You would switch to the one that is fast moving and use him to, like, explore the map and search for houses. And then when a child's in danger, you look at where the house is on the map and you would flip to a council that's close to it to go to go after Jason. But you get a little bit strategic with it because if you. If you take too many hits and you have a guy who's low on health, you go to a house which has another counselor, and you give your items to them and you switch to them. So there is some, like, tactical stuff. I mean, it's not saying heavy duty, but the idea of passing items and. Or healing your other counselors and using them to kind of like, scatter on the map, that's pretty ambassador. Ambitious for an NES title.

I just need my counselors to be more qualified. Look, Mark has plenty of credentials. And in the fighting the undead, he can do basket weaving while making. Mark was a summer lifeguard. That's it. Mark. Mark may have credentials, but George is a pile of. As I say, George doesn't even know cpr. And he probably. He probably died.

Like, the ones that can jump 10ft in the air are the good ones because then you can dodge everything no problem. But there are a couple counselors who can barely hop over a zombie's are the worst to try and explore the map with. They don't get you anywhere. I took more damage jumping, landing on zombies than I did from Jason with those characters. So there's definitely some that suck.

Well, and then you. And then the game trains you to jump over the zombies or over the wolves or whatever. And then you get a good weapon and you're used to jumping over these things and a weapon drops and you jump into it and you lose your good weapon. Yep. It's the Fester's quest item down like syndrome. Yes. Yeah. At least you aren't shooting walls and it's just terminating your bullet. Yep.

I want to talk a moment about the end game, the death game screen. So this is nes. This is NES that was notorious for not killing people. They were, you know, sleepy or they were retired or they were, you know, subdued or they were whatever. And this, the game over screen, literally is one of the best ever. You and your friends are dead. Game over. I mean, it's not wrong. That's what it is. Not to mention, at least. At least it doesn't call out that you Killed all the children.

Yeah, you gotta save. Like, I forget how many. You have to get, like 15 kids. There's 15. There's 15. But you have to have one alive at the end. What? You have to. They have to all be not. You have to just need one paying customer to keep the camp alive. Hey, you know what? You know, it's a good summer camp if you manage to save one child out of 15. That's. That was my goal as a camp. Yeah, that was my goal.

Like, I've sent my kids to summer camp a few years now. As long as I get one back, I'm good. I don't. I don't need both to come back. It's okay. Only needs one. Fight and conquer. Okay, Talk Jason. Jason is purple with a blue face and hands. Yes.

So just like movies, right? Yeah. Well, I watched a video that actually talked about this and there was a poster for Friday the 13th three in Japan, and only in Japan, that he has a purple suit. And because of the lighting of the poster, his face and hands look blue. And since this was Atlas developing a game in Japan, they went with it.

I mean, design group member Jason Voorhees, who plays the beer bong. I don't know what the hell he would play as the blue man group, but this game makes no sense. Yeah. So also, one of my favorite with the. The icons in this game is the five camp counselors that you have on the screen. The one above children, they are all frowning because they clearly love their job, but in their portrait, they are ecstatic. So it's almost like. And their outward expression of it.

I always thought that was weird. Yeah, well, and when you see them in the. In the cabins, they have no face. Yeah, but you know, I've seen those movies and the counselors are usually getting laid. So I mean, that's probably why they're happy. It's either getting drunk, getting laid, getting high, and then dealing with Jason. That's okay. We all know the rules. We all know the rules. You don't have sex if you're in a horror movie. And you don't say you'll be right back.

Yeah, yeah. I want to mention one thing. There's actually two game over screens in this game. Oh, okay. The other one is if you don't save the children, if the kids all get wiped out, it says, Jason wiped out the kids, game over. It's like Genesis. Kids are wiped out. So there is a screen that talks about how kids died.

Yes. Also, I want to mention in the manual, I Just looked over it. The manual says absolutely nothing about you have three days to do this. It also doesn't say you have to kill Jason three times. Right. It's a short summer. Both of those win conditions are left out of the manual, conveniently.

Yeah. It just says, watch out, Jason's still alive and stronger than before. And he repeats. But you're right since early when you mentioned earlier. He does come back with. He's faster, stronger. I want to say he has a machete in his hand for the second round and I think something else in the third round as well. So he. That's. But that's the loop, right? All right, You. You find Jason, kill him, and do repeat it three times and then eventually you get a weapon. I think that can take him down for good.

It's. It's the torch, the fire. Torch or pit for pitchfork do the same amount of damage. Is that a common thing on a campground? Pitchfork? Really? No. What camp did you go to? It's farmers camp. Gotta learn how to build ye olde barn. Yeah. Oh, I want to mention something that I just saw in the video playing in the background, lighting the fireplaces. If you light all the fireplaces with the same character, you get a flashlight. Oh, wow. I didn't know that. I don't know.

Flashlight lets you see the secret passages hidden in the background, right in the cave. You don't need the flashlight to use them. You can just wander through the cave and hit up and you'll find your way through the cave, which is how I did it as a kid. I didn't know you could get a flashlight in this. I was like, why am I wandering the darkness in a cave? And the cave is entirely obvious. What is the point of the cave? What does that get you? Is that where Jason's mother is?

It's. That's Jason's mother. And you can get. You can get the sweater. If you kill Jason's mother, you can get the sweater. But the problem with the sweater is, well, you still have to. Why would you have a fucking sweater in the summer? That's the problem.

And the real problem. Yes. And the problem with the sweater also is, I mean, your point is to kill Jason three times. And so the sweater makes it so that Jason won't attack. So basically you're just going to take damage from the zombies and the wolves and the bats. Is Jason allergic to wool? Is this why he wanted. Well, it's, it's. It's his mother's sweater. So he, you know, does it make.

It so that he won't attack at all. Or does it just make it so that he doesn't. It might make it so you can't run into him on the. When you're running around. That might be one of them. Just in the houses. Yeah. Which. It is easier to kill him on the side scrolling than it is in the houses so he does less damage. Somebody wearing a sweater in the middle of summer. Also, you can only. I looked it up. You can only get the sweater on day two.

That's when it gets chilly out. It says that you wear the sweater and when you wear the sweater, Jason doesn't attack you. So it's not that he wears it and has a, you know, allergic reaction or something. Right, right, right, right. No, he thinks you're his mom. He's like, mommy, you know, when I. Put on a sweater, I look exactly like my mother, so. Well, yeah, I've seen. I can see it.

Yeah. He's a very nice lady. I don't. This, none of this makes sense. This is. This. I, I sometimes wonder if this is the Batman treatment where it was going to be another game and then they were like, yo, we got to put an IP on this. So let's throw Jason in there. You're like, okay, cool. Oh. I looked up what the sweater does. Okay. It increases your defense. Jason won't deal as much damage to the counselor that's wearing it. I thought it was notable. Strong fibered sweater.

Kevlar from the 80s. That was a thing still, right? That goes back. Yeah. It's made out of Unobtainium. That's right. This game. Yeah. I don't know. Oh, and you fight. You fight Jason's mom's head. I forgot. Like, you actually fight it. It's not just chilling. You actually have to fight it. It looks like Medusa from. Before looking in the manual as a kid. I thought it was Medusa when I found her.

Yeah. I mean, you're not gonna. You're not gonna have your hair did if you're a head in a jar. So, I mean, unless you're Futurama, then you probably have a hair dead specialist. Imagine if you rented this game and there was no manual. Imagine if you didn't have the manual and you just had to figure this out. Yeah, that was me when I first played it. I don't. I didn't know anything about this other than movie.

That was a conscious decision a lot of times back then after the whole rental debacle with any. With Nintendo that I think it was probably A conscious decision. Don't put important information in the game. Put it in the manual. Because most rental places don't give out the manual with it. Or if they do, it gets destroyed pretty quick or lost or whatever. Other kids, other people who rent it don't get that information. Sucks for them. More money for us.

This is definitely a game that is not long. Like, once you know the loop and how to beat it, I think you can beat it within less than two hours. I saw some crazy short speed runs. I think it was Arcus was under three hours. You have to. Right? Yeah, you have to do within a certain time limit, but it's faster if you know what to do. So it's not a long game. So if you did rent it and you managed to figure it out, that's kind of a. It's a pretty short time. I'd be kind of upset. Right.

I think the last couple playthroughs that I've seen of this are like 20 minutes. Yeah. Like, no damage playthroughs early 20 minutes. Imagine if you rented this. You got good, but you ran out of your. You ran out of your rental time and your parents made you take it back, and the next weekend you rented it. But you've become good at this game and you beat it in 20 minutes on your next rental. Imagine how you would feel as bad.

As I did coming back to play it again. Because I'll tell you what, if I had rented this once, it would have been once. For Those watching the YouTube video, I have to pull up a clip. This game since that day in the rowboat section where you're going to the cabin, Jason is in the lake and he's like motorboarding across the water. Yeah, motorboating. Yeah. He's got a jet ski. An underwater jet ski Again.

That's my favorite part of the movies. Jason on the jet ski. That's such a great classic movie. Well, if you do look at Friday the 13th number one, he does kind of motorboat out of the lake right at the end. Spoiler. Gosh, I don't know. I think this was not based. This is definitely a Bowden here.

To your question, Chard, like, was this based on. Was this a different game and they slapped an IP on it? I don't think so. I think this was made. I think Atlas sat down, they watched part of a movie and said, okay, we got this, and they made something custom to the lore. How many of the films were out by 89 minutes of it? They're like people we're good. Three. Well, three came out in 82. Okay. So probably more than that. Okay. Number four was the last one until number five.

Yeah, that's how it works. And then five was the last one until what, six? That's usually how that works. Yeah, well, but they called it the final something or other. What are we up to now? The final. Looks like seven came out in 88 and eight came out in 89. Jason almost done. Well, they went to at least 10 because they had Jason. Remember that one? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Friday the 13th four is called the Final Chapter. The final chapter was number four. Yeah. Five was a new beginning.

They should have called five. They should have called five. Jason Takes Manhattan. That's not a joke. Yeah, that was a joke. Yeah, no, no, that's. Yeah, they should have called. They should have called five. You fucked up and read the last chapter first. So now get the actual story. I thought Jason Takes Manhattan was a gag. Notable press B to cancel listener Paul Rudd was also Jason X. No, there is a. There is a. There is a diner scene worth watching from Jason Takes Manhattan.

I might have to watch these. I have not seen any Friday the 13th movies since the early 90s. Right. Wow. So the final Friday Jason. Yeah, no, I'm good. And then Freddy versus Jason. I remember watching that one. And then there's a. I guess a Reboot Friday the 13th in 2009. I forgot all about that one. Well, and. And Jason X was in space.

I think it was a whole other kind of awful. I remember that one. I like the sci fi take on the mask, though. I thought that was interesting. But yeah, that was a pretty awful. Gosh. So I mean, I was thinking there was like one or two movies and they made this game, but no, there's a. There's a full on franchise run into the ground. And then they decided, you know what? LJN's here and they're got a bucket full of money. Let them make the game and not even pick a plot from the movie.

Gonna dive into the same thing. They. They made thundercats figurines. Obviously they'll go to. I had a lot of Friday the 13th just let him have it. Fucking ridiculous. You know they remade a Friday the 13th the game later in years. I think it was. Yeah, yeah, it was like. Yeah, they actually made. Yeah, they made the retro Jason outfit for that game. So you can wear blue mask with the purple. Purple. There's a fun. There's a funko pop as well.

The 2017 game did that as an apology for all the Technical issues during. The release because that game is supposed to be like a Dead by Daylight kind of kind of game. Right, right. The asymmetrical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's weird. Yeah. So apparently Funko Jason Voorhees057 is purple and blue.

I appreciate the nostalgia hit, but I wonder how many people actually would get that reference. How many people actually played this game back in the day? I never rented this one. I never touched it. Right. Kind of glad I didn't. I never rented it either. I had it. Oh, gifted. Or did you buy this one? You just went out and bought it? It was a Christmas gift. Real quick. There's actually an 8 bit style Funko Jason from this. Interesting. Yeah. If you want to pull this up. Sure. Send me the link.

I am. It is in. It is in the chat. That is actually pretty cool. I may have to add that to my wish list. I gotta see this. Why does it give me a captcha? Oh, it's Amazon. You're in Canada. That must be one. Yeah. I got a captcha too. Yeah. Okay. That's pretty freaking cool. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I may have to. I may have to wish list that. You'Re like, after the episode. I'm gonna pick one of these up. Well, you know, sometimes you pick up those. It's so bad. It's good.

Well, because there is Amiibos. Right? I mean everybody loves Amiibos from Nintendo. But they did a couple 8 bit pixel ones. There's one for Lincoln, one for Mario and I have those. And those are the two that I wanted because they're. They're fun. Right. Like a 2D sprite in a 3D form is kind of interesting. And that's what this reminds me of. But yeah, the purple outfit though is definitely iconic. I do appreciate it. I just. Such a bizarre one. Yeah.

Do you think this is one of the worst NES games? It can't be the worst. Like it's not bottom tier. No, no. The Circus Charlie exists. Mr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So that's. Yes, that's the. In truth. And, and, and which is worse? This or. Or Roger Rabbit? Yeah, probably this. This. Yeah. You think so you can progress with Robert Roger Rabbit. This one is just like I was. Able to beat Roger Rabbit as a child. Yeah. All right. How. You're too good. That's.

Well, okay. Not able to beat it. But I was able to get to the final boss. Like you do all that. And that's. Yeah. Doom lining up to punch him in. The fucking head there's guides that tell you how to beat Judge Doom. I can't do it. I don't understand. We're not talking about Roger Rabbit, but yeah, it's impossible. I don't know how people do it. Yeah. LJN stands for let's just not. That's exactly what I was gonna say. That's exactly what I was gonna fucking.

There was a Dick Tracy video game. I'm just double checking, but I don't think it was lgn. Yeah, that was not them. I think the Dick Tracy game is way worse than this. Yeah, it's worse than this, but it wasn't. Okay. Okay. Gosh, there's a lot of bad video game movies or movies or games based on video games. I'm tired. I'm not sure there's. I mean, with Batman being probably one of the few, like, movie games on the NES that trans.

But it's not even the movie, though. It's just. I mean, it's the Batmobile from the movie, but the bosses are different stuff from the movie. Yeah, I mean, the Joker, I guess. So we have Firefly and all the other crazy villains. I don't know.

I know. I just can't think of a single game that was an IP that was a TV show or a movie that we played that wasn't hot trash. I love Knight Rider. It's one of my favorite shows growing up as a kid. The game garbage. It's awful. Except I found out there's a Knight rider game for PlayStation 2, which I'm going to have to go and check out. Chip and Dale. Chip and Dale. Not based on a movie. That's Disney, though. Disney. The Disney morning game. Disney afternoon games were solid. Oh, tales.

The Goonies 2. Does that count as a movie base game? You know, for everybody's favorite sequel to Goonies? Just looking at a list. I never played it, but I've seen it played through. It doesn't seem terrible, but it doesn't make sense. Just like, as a standpoint of being a sequel to Goonies. Like, it's really bizarre. The Gremlins. There's the Gremlins video game sequel to the movie or Gremlins video game is actually really good. Gremlins 2. Yeah, I like that one.

Sunsoft had jamming music and that was a fun game. So there's a few. There's fun. That game. Yeah, I know that game. Actually, that game, the Gremlins 2 game, made use of, like, all the new Gremlins from Gremlins 2. Yeah. And made them bosses. Yeah. That's a great idea. That was a cool game. I mean, a broken clock is right twice a day, right, guys? I mean, you're going to throw enough shit at the wall, something's going to stick. So your Gremlins and your Chippendales are going to hang out. But.

So. So I found. I found a ranking on IMDb of movie NES games, and the winners are. RoboCop gets a 6.5, Die Hard gets a 6.5, RoboCop 2 gets a 6.3. Untouchables gets a 6.1. But everything else is like, fives. I'd love to see the Untouchables game. Like, I wonder if it has Sean Connery in it. It's. It's got to. Right? Is a digital Sean Connery in that game. That could be interesting. As long as some things don't react too well to bullets in the game, I'm good. Wow. All right. I know. Yeah, Yeah.

I never played. Well, no, I did. I played Mad Max on the nes, but I don't remember much of it. I remember you ran out of gas a lot in that game. And that was basically. That's true to the movie, but it. Was an overhead driving game. Wow. Now, that said the modern Mad Max game. Yeah, that looks solid. I watched Murph play that here and there. That game was. That game was like a dollar. I was half tempted to pick it up.

I feel movie games today, there's certainly cash grabs, but there are some solid ones. Right. There was, gosh, Vin Diesel pitch black. Right? There's that pitch black. Maybe an original story of a Butcher Bay or whatever it was it was called. That one's supposed to be a really great game that came out 10 years ago or so. So they do exist. So for every cash grab, there's usually at least one good one.

Yeah, yeah. Although I think the best ones are like, movie adjacent, like the Lord of the Rings games, the, you know, Shadow of War. Yeah, those are great. But our shadow mortar. But they're. But they're not like the movie. Right? They're right, right. They're tied to the ip. They're not the movie. Right. So which Mad Max is the same. It's not the movie. It's tied to the ip. I think you can get away with using the name of the franchise and then making your own shit out of it.

Like, and, you know, last of us from that TV show is fantastic. That game that came from the TV show and Fallout is also fantastic from. The tv, but they were already games, so they were just taking the damn it out of the game. Look, you missed my joke. I don't care. I'm here to correct. I'm here to correct this. Listen, guys, I opened and closed today, okay? I'm tired. Leave me alone.

All right, well, we have. We have tangented, which is what we do best. Do we want to keep tangenting or should we? I. I do want to make one point about Friday the 13th. I would say this game almost qualifies as a survival horror, even though it doesn't seem to make any survival horror lists. There's. There's an ambition there. No, because it's not.

You're right, it does. It brings up the tension with Jason randomly attacking the map and you have to hunt him down and say what you want, but the music being awful, but it is, it is suspenseful for what it is for the nes. I. All that intro is pretty suspenseful, but it's definitely ambitious for an NES title. Right. You have the side scrolling bits and platforming and jumping over zombies. That's one part of the game. Then you have that exploring of cabins and boss fights there with a punch out vibe. It's ambitious. I mean, I was glad I played it this week a little bit to try it out because I never really gave this game a fair shake. That said, it's still awful, but it's different than I was expecting. I didn't expect there to be this idea of like six counselors on the map that move around and you can swap bodies. That is pretty ambitious for an NES game. And that's pretty neat how each one has different stats. Right. Whether it's jumping, throwing, all that kind of stuff. Does it matter a whole lot? No. But it's an NES game. But the idea that they took the time to craft as a system I think was pretty, pretty neat.

And I need to go back to 1989 when this was released and we didn't have things like Visage and, and Dead Space and all those actual survivor horror games. So maybe give this one a little bit more credit Chart maybe. And it has a jump scare right at the beginning. It does. It has a knife. Yeah, knife. Stab in the face.

I'm looking at games that came out that year and there were a lot of good games that year. So I think we can hold it against Friday the 13th. That's the year we got Tetris, Ninja Gaiden, Dragon Warrior, Mega Man 2 Ninja Turtles. I'm just trying to be devil's advocate here. I think Lolo Super Dodge, a Lot. Of good games this game is. It was when it came out. It's now. And it was when it came out. Sorry. I got a question for you. Friday the 13th and that's. Which one would you rather play? Really?

I hate that game. I cannot stand that game. Jake, you don't like good games. It's just confusing. The manual doesn't tell you jack shits. You know, do with the jelly beans. As. As far as sidekicks go in a video game. Knuckles or Jason Voorhees. Wait, how is Jason a sidekick? You make him your bitch. But I'll tell you this. Knuckles is not afraid of his mother's sweater. So I. I think you got to go. Knuckles. Yeah, Knuckles also likes Pretty Woman. So walking down the street.

Yeah, the. The movie. How come that's not a video game? How come we didn't get a Richard Gere Pretty Woman video game? We got cool world. Like, you have to go shopping. You have to go convince pompous shopping people that, like, you're not a prostitute. When you are going to say, you. Got to hook your way into fucking fame. The final boss is when you get to go back into the store. Be like, big mistake. Huge.

If you like fashion and video games. I've been trying to get charged to play a game all week called you are not fucking. We're not talking about that shit on a 1989 Friday the 13th inspired game. You're not Infinity Nikki is gonna be game of the year next year. I'm telling you now, we're not doing. This episode on Infinite Nikki. Oh, you're doing it by yourself. It's got whimsy. Oh, dear Lord. All right. Don't even know what whimsy is. Sounds like Canadian magic. Now Whimsy's a side character.

Yeah. Who's your favorite side character? Knuckle or whimsy? Awesome. Anything else to say about this amazingly wonderful?

Only thing I'm going to say is when I was researching this episode, as we do the depth research, we do usually type in the YouTube to look up videos. And I did catch AVGN's video on this from 18 freaking years ago. Does that not make you feel ancient online? 18 years ago, a YouTube video existed on this game that was interesting to watch. I'm not the hugest fan of avgn, but God damn, he's been doing this for a long time.

Saying that doesn't make me feel as ancient as saying 18 years ago was 2006. That's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you put a number on the. Number that Hits a little harder, but I see where you're going with this. Yeah. Okay. Gentlemen, I have a 26 year old son. Awesome. All right, well, I'm just gonna say to everyone, I highly suggest you go back to this game. That's what I'm gonna say. God, is there chivos for this game? Don't do it. Yes. Oh, yeah, probably.

Yeah. No. Okay. Well, I appreciate everybody being here. I appreciate you all taking the time on a Friday the 13th to have one of our rare just shit on a video game episodes. We do need them every once in a while. It's a little cathartic. Right. Yeah. Coming up for the rest of the year, I think we are going to be doing a recorded episode next week, I believe. So we may not be live next week, that next week being the 20th. And then we are also definitely not live on the 27th. We will be spending time with our families, but we will have an episode that will air on the 27th. While you're here, if you're watching on YouTube, like and subscribe, tell your friends otherwise for everybody out there, including our audio listeners, come join us in the discord. Come chat with us. Come tell us what we got right, what we got wrong. You can find all of our info@press betacancel.com or press b.org and yeah, any. Anything from y'all that you want to say, anything you're doing, anything you want to call out.

Well, we should also call out Super Pot network dot com. Super Pod Network. Not Super Pot Network. I'm sorry. It'S been four weeks where you fucked this up. I pronounced it incorrectly. I'm gonna get it right next week, I promise. Well, not next week because it might be recorded. I was already. I just mispronounced it on the pre recorded one. I have to add it to my end, like, list. Right. I got to get it plugged in there.

We are loosely affiliated with a handful of podcasts through the Super Pod Network. So go check out the website. I'm actually gonna be guessing I'm one of them. Can I just go play Where's Waldo now? Yes, you should do. Yes, I'm. I'm gonna go play Mario is missing. Jake and I might go play Path of Exile too. Yeah, I came out in early access. Oh, you go play. Good, Jake.

I'm playing quite a bit of it, so I think him and I are going to do an episode in the near future on that one just to kind of touch base on Path of Exile. You don't need to buy it. Today if you don't want to pay money for it, just wait for the. When it comes out fully next year. But it's, it's. It's like the third. It's the best version of Diablo 2 I've ever played and I've said that a few times now for games that aren't made by Blizzard. It's kind of interesting. So I definitely look forward to talking about that one in depth. I really dig that one.

Game of the year. Infinite Nicki is hitting pretty strong. I hate this. It's got biking, it's got BMX tricks, diva fashion battles, costumes, gliding, exploration. Guys, this, this hits all the the keynotes of a perfect video game. I know. What was it called in the discord? A farming fashion game, I think. Farming fishing. Fashion game.

Farming fishing game. Which is my favorite genre. I don't know about you guys, but when I saw the trailer during the game awards last night, I was pretty stoked. Apparently it's a franchise. There's multiple of these games. Look, I'm not going to stop talking about it until we do an episode on this. So get used to playing it. It's free, it's on phone, it's on windows. Jared's like distancing from the camera. He's just, he's had enough. Repelled trying to leave.

I'm trying to leave conversation. All right, dark holes on that. Well, I think I'm gonna put a button on this right there. This seems like a good time to finish this up everybody. Thank you. We appreciate you being here. Happy whatever holidays you celebrate. Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa, Ramadan. I don't know enough but any of these we wish you a happy holidays. And yeah, we will see you live probably in a couple, two, three weeks. I'll be.

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