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What’s a Jon Tron? I’m being serious here I have no clue who that is.

😚

This has to be someone's life goal

yeah. 2024. haha.

4:08 that looks less like horns and more like the lower jaw of a T. rex

you had me until you pronounced ys wrong

Since I'm not a fan of JonTron and never watched his video, my first exposure to this game was Chrontendo, where Dr. Sparkle gave up at the karaoke part and just described the rest of the game based on what he understood of it from other sources. This makes sense, given that his project's a chronological overview of the entire Famicom library and at that point (episode 13) he was still packing 15 games into each episode (he's since cut back to 10). But since I had very little to go on from there, it's nice to see a comprehensive take on the subject!

Holy shit there was a mobile phone release where you meet Donald Trump. Honestly I would be kind of irritated by this except the game's a shitpost already, so it's like...just another meme for the pile. Amazing. I was kind of wanting to play this game just to experiment since it looked like there was a lot of options to mess with, but this answers pretty much all of my questions. Good video, thank you!

What if you try punching the wall after climbing the tower?

I knew Takeshis Challenge thru Jontron and didnt think much of it other than an obscure difficult NES game, I was completely unaware it had a mobile port with "added content (+Trump)". The fact it was originally an April fool’s joke that became real reminds me when the Yakuza series did the something similar. Its strange because most companies wouldnt praise a game like this nowadays, especially celebrity tie-in games. That’d be like if they rereleased Spice Girls or those Mary-Kate & Ashley games on modern systems

I'm so so glad this video essay exists, ive been wanting to see someone dissect takeshi's challenge for so long, i was so fascinated by its deliberate diabolical design and malice kaizo vibes and just all the extraneous dead ends. I'm so glad i finally got to see it happen, and much more!! I never even knew about the mobile port!!! Your essay's divisions into sections are also super great, and makes the video much easier to watch and understand!! Thank you so much for taking this gargantuan archaic journey lmao

I always did wonder what all of those extra options could've meant like flying to the "Wrong" country, like maybe it'd mean there were extra areas that'd offer ways to get back on track, or in an extreme case that there'd be multiple paths to victory? Nah. Game's a troll game that basically only exists for a contest, I think. Though I guess a figure getting to make and publish his own game like that could've only really happened in those days, so that's pretty cool on it's own. Also the Daikon Root thing strikes me as some vague hint towards maybe a health-restoring item somewhere being affordable? But I would assume people would already have torn the game apart looking for it by now so maybe it was just never implemented but they didn't take the hint out of the game because no one remembered.

Sega should buy the rights to this game and remake it with the dragon engine.

Vinesauce Joel could've just pressed A on the second controller a bunch of times instead of singing the actual song over and over, but it wouldn't have been as funny.

Nice video bro, good luck on your job arc

Honestly its just peak fact that most popular playthrough on this game that "you shouldn"t take seriously" (as in-game Takeshi tells you personally) is how about one man did not took this game seriously so he had hard time beating it, while making a video on how not serious this game is. I don't know the man much, but i have a feeling it's what Takeshi would want to happen honestly.

"Poker Tower" might be named that because playing cards in Japanese are called trumps.

39:33 We are under attack by the CommieNazis.

Ah yes, because Donald Trump is exactly what this game needed.

What's funny is that this game could've actually been the best NES game of the console because it has a lot of the vibe that yakuza games have, but because the creator hated video games and wanted to make it as tedious as possible because he hated gamers it'll never happen.

painted nails? you aren’t going to survive trump’s america

Gr8 vid, very nice job 👍

The deep dive was nice, then I realized you just yap about jontron (whoever that is).. I feel scammed, I thought your channel will be full of deep dives and not full desperation..

From experience, Takeshi's Challenge is totally riffing on the japanese (action-)adventure games of the time which are evil like this in many ways but maybe without all the dead ends and not AS evil. La Mulana is a more modern play on them too. Check out Atlantis no Nazo or Meikuu Kyumikyoku (two much less evil games). Hell, you mention Ys in the video and that has the mandatory mask of eyes and hammer secrets right at the end of the game lol

So what you're saying is, this was the worlds first ARG?

WHEN WILL GET GET TANAKA-KENNY LIKE WE'VE ALWAYS DREAMED OF?!?!?!

on the topic of figuring the game out without a guide: the likely answer is you're intended to wonder aimlessly, taking note of anything you discover along the way. Every failure gives you new insight and you're supposed to play through the game over and over until you quite enough info to be able to put the pieces together and get to the end. A valid gameplay loop, and one that can be quite a lot of fun if pulled off well and you're the right type of player. Though, this game didn't quite have the means to pull off this concept. The result being something that would be interesting to get through if you had nothing better to do. Not quite something that can stand on it's own as worthy experience for most, especially if you take today's gaming landscape into account.

god this is just the perfect TH-cam video. really thorough, clean, n entertaining! i was so happy to see this in my feed, keep up the great work bro!!! :]

Amazing that you scrubbed through everything, even the mobile game! Amazing!

"I'm so pissed about the election. I'm gonna go play the Japanese mobile port of Takeshi's Challenge to relax." [70 floors later] "You gotta be fucking kidding me."

Jontron's playthroughs are so wildly inconsistant. On one hand, he'll slog through all of Monster Party and Dino City, and on the other, he'll give up on the second level of Monster Bash even though he claims he "loves" it. He'll pretend to play games on original hardware (even fan translated ones like Takeshi's Challenge), but he assumed Pepsiman had no music because his emulator wasn't configured correctly.

What a horrible game. Jon was 100% right. People buying this game didn't have a guide.

Poker Burger? I hardly know 'er!

The "Set" on the hamburgers in America are supposed to be "Meals" like in McDonalds. "Happy Set" is how the Happy Meal is called in Japan.

The A+B revive is totally a developer cheat they forgot to take off, right? It cannot be intended.

Oh Takeshi no Chousenjou, truly one of the bottom tier Famicom releases in Japan, but at least its playable unlike some other infamously bad Famicom games (Hoshi wo Miru Hito has it beat). Surprisingly I have beaten this game once, albeit I did the 20k punch method on the title screen which took about 3 hours of non-stop punching. I have the original Famicom cartridge and attempted to follow the steps on StrategyWiki but I gave up after realizing the amount of trial and error it was going to take hence why I cheesed my way to the end. I do appreciate that the controller microphone is technically optional, since otherwise this game would be impossible to play as intended on consoles without that mic such as the AV Famicom. It does make me wonder if this is how players had to overcome this section in the Wii Virtual Console re-issue but I can't know for sure.

I first knew of this game from PanAnning, who played in the original Japanese. He didn't really explain why he did such random things beyond "because we're going on an adventure." Later, I would see Deceased Crab and Vinesauce Joel would play with an English patch. So, I had plenty of sources before ever looking into JonTron, and the fact that he cuts off the ending was rather disappointing. Thanks for the most comprehensive deep dive to date!

42:33 The reason you didn't find anything is because you search for a ROM, while the correct search term for Android apps is APK. Googling "Takeshi's Challenge APK" takes you to an apk download site with the Japanese android app. Which you can then install on Android phone or emulator.

28:49 Maybe there was a cut feature where you could buy vegetables to heal? But since it was redundant with Bar Gold drinks, it was removed?

As someone who actually plays these kind of oldschool adventure games - you miss that by and large, they are definitely meant to be played over and over through trial and error. It is 100% normal to not beat the game on the first try. It's not 'cruel joke', it is 100% how these games used to work before around 1990 and release of Secret of Monkey Island rewrote rules on how to design adventure games. It is not uncommon in games like King's Quest or Maniac Mansion to softlock you if you didn't grab an item earlier that you can't get anymore. Normal gamer would find the hint dialogue by just repeatedly talking to every NPC with every possible tone, since you get a new dialogue each time. Similarly, you don't need logic to understand what's happening if you have trial and error. You drink twice and reject third... because nothing happens if you do anything else, and obviously the karaoke bar is important. Player will just repeat that until something works. Similarly after karaoke if you choose Apologize, I guess nothing happens... so player will repeat the action chain, and choose the second possible option at the end - because there are only two. We know to travel to South Pacific... because plane explodes if you go anywhere else, so game prevents you from wasting time on these options. Same with the languages - first three options don't make sense in South Pacific, so only Chnatara and Hintabo make sense - and that's only two options to try, so it's one or the other. The divorce is definitely the most obtuse puzzle in here, but there is a hint - the boss! If you just somehow would go on to South Pacific without quitting your job (which you might not know to do), your boss will show up to drag you back. So now you know to quit your job at the beginning, since that's an option. So logically, if you do that and now your wife shows up - you can assume you need to do the same and divorce her. Considering the fact that so far, most important place has been the bar, getting drunk isn't THAT huge of a leap of logic. Regarding the secret stash, it's more that player in these old games is expected to search everywhere for hidden goodies - like how in Zelda if you want to be 100% upgraded, you need to bomb every wall and burn every bush, or how in Metroid you shoot every wall. So trying to duck and interact by any supsicious piece of scenery makes sense. The hang glider, again, is basically a trial and error joke aimed at the player. Realizing that only hang gliding will work is the punchline, Trying to jump while crouch is not that crazy, it's definitely something players will figure out eventually just by messing with the controls. I mean, I figured out running mechanics in Super Mario Bros without reading the manual as a kid. Waiting five minutes on the end screen... I mean, you have nothing else to do. Player will try to mess with treasure for a bit, and then just leave the game alone after a while. Nobody in their right mind would turn off their Famicom on the *final screen of the game.* Similarly, the old man stealing your treasure is basically a minor annoyance - if you managed to guess all that, it's pretty obvious at what point in the sequence you fucked up (since you only see the old man once). All you need to do is to repeat all the steps, and THEN get the ending.

This game seems to me a lot like Hitchiker's Guide To Galaxy text adventure - puzzle adventure game designed by an established artist, with the entire joke being that it's insanely hard on purpose as a joke about how obtuse adventure games of the time were.

13:27 Yeah so I learned it from people who know their way around NES/FC hardware - Famicom microphone has ONE BIT OUTPUT. There either is a sound, or there isn't. There's no information for volume, pitch, nothing. There either is sound or there isn't. That's why you can bind it to a single button, because it effectively IS a glorified digital button.

Just like his politics, Jon did his own research and came to the worst conclusion.

9:54 "This is why entering the pachinko parlor, wasting 100 balls, spamming the mic when you get low on them, beating up the Yakuza that enter-" Whoa, whoa, whoa!! Back up! I think we missed a few steps here!

Jontron’s video ? Nah man, I know this game from Joueur Du Grenier 😎

I think in order to pass the wall in the desert you must become trump again

Actually gunning down random people was popular in certain atari games from the 70s

Actually spamming buttons after dieing is fairly common for the time

We need to get this mobile rom And make the most updated version of the original famicom