These last few episodes have been riveting. It's like hearing an album that was never released outside the home country of a band right on the cusp of their big international breakthrough. All the flavor is there, but the songs are new to me.
Hey, Jeremy. Just wanted to say I really admire your content and it's helped me navigate through playing some of these older games for the first time. Thanks for posting!
That breakdown of the vertically scrolling shooter evolution was beautiful. As someone who knew all of those titles by name but not the order in which they evolved the genre: Thank you.
unsurprisingly, the NES port for Pac-Man is still my most favorite of all time, I just love the sound design and also the better saturated color scheme of that port, it really felt like the apex of the first Pac-Man game.
I saw a bootleg console that had six "versions" of it. Each one was just the ROM modified to start on a later track. These made up half of the console's 12 games.
I had a couple multicarts as a kid and they tended to have one "big" game on them (like Contra). The other games were multiple variations of Mario Bros, Nuts & Milk, Clu Clu Land, Goonies, F1 Race, Donkey Kong, Battle City, etc.
The early genealogy of shooter design is pretty fascinating. New concepts are constantly added on to the framework, some unique deviations happen, but it's generally one moment of punctuated equilibrium with a Xevious or Gradius that changes everything.
Lol!!! So no joke I sent a screen shot to a buddy as a joke with the last Mahjong episode with the wang bone shaped Japanese character. “What do you think ol’ Parrish is getting into this episode?” I can’t believe you blurred it out. I know you have a lot of amazing fans, but I love your work and demeanor very much. Great job as always!
Japanese wikipedia lists the Famicom port of Xevious as the second home port of the game, being beaten to the punch by Dempa Shimbun's Sharp X1 port, which made it to the market May 25th. There were also an FM-7 port listed as released "November 1984" and European ports for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit listed as released in just "1984" - these are listed after the Famicom port on that list, but could potentially have been released before it.
Ah, I should have been more clear, but I always try to treat consoles and computers as separate considerations since one cost about 10 times as much as the other. No kids were buying an X1 with their allowance in 1984. (The MSX and ADAM do get grandfathered in, since they were basically just fancy consoles and have a lot of direct overlap with the console market.)
@@JeremyParish That's fair. Still think it's worth noting there were earlier ports of the game though, especially considering the Famicom port is considerably better than the X1 port.
Also that article left out "Tiny Xevious" for the PC-6001 and "Tiny Xevious MkII" for the PC-6001 MkII due to their different names, at least the first of those predated the X1 port and is the ACTUAL first port of the game. Though calling it a "port" may be a bit generous.
I always assumed when Namco called themselves ‘Namcot’ the T was meant to be silent, like they were pretending to be French. That being said, Pac-Man wasn’t renamed Pac-Homme so I guess not.
No, the t is pronounced, Jeremy says it right. It's ナムコット in Japanese. There's all kinds of sort of conflicting explanations related to it - someone said they asked Endo about it and he said the T stands for "mascoT" or "peT" to imply something small you have at home, a Japanese video game history book says it's short for "Tomorrow", there's something about how they created a differently named home division because they had already licensed out the rights to making Pac-Man toys and didn't want their main company to take the hit if Japanese courts ruled that console games counted as toys and Namco thus didn't actually have the right to release home ports of Pac-man... it's all abit of a mess.
@@Pikachu132 yeah, the "home division" one is the explanation I've heard most. I've only ever seen it on Japanese works, like PC Engine or Japanese PS1 games released by them.
@@LorenHelgeson No, we KNOW it was Namco's home division, that's not a mystery or something that's up for debate. The things that are a bit unclear is WHY they had a differently-named home diviion at all, and WHAT that T is supposed to stand for.
First and foremost, your videos are the highlight of my week. Thank you for making them! Second... what happened to that awesome outro song you used to play? I miss it
iirc as the series grew bigger, he doesn't want to deal with copyright of the song (as that was from Neon Genesis Evangelion) so he decided to stop using it.
I consider the 2D Pseudo-3D racing games on 8-bit and 16-bit systems to be an entirely different genre to modern racing games. Because they play SO differently. Most of the time, you're not trying to get into first place. There's just random other racers dotted around that aren't really racing against you, they're simply obstacles that move. Instead the goal is usually to cross a checkpoint in time before time runs out. But yeah they just feel so different. They're great in their own way. I love these kinda "racing" games, and I love modern racing games, for different reasons. I still go back and play Lotus Turbo Challenge on the mega drive. A game I loved as a kid but was always very bad at it. Thank god for save states. I can finally beat the game because of save states. I don't care that its cheating Also, the top down racing games, like Micro Machines, I consider to be an entirely different genre as well. So there's 3 separate distinct racing genres Micro Machines I absolutely adore, too. I always did. But it's balls to the wall difficult. So again, I'm using save states, meaning I've got much much further in the game than I ever did 25 years ago. Yet even with save states, the game gets SO hard that I still can't beat it. But at least with save states it gives me unlimited tries and continues. I'll beat it eventually, one day I really want the micro machines style of racing game to come back to the fore. There are a fair few indie games like this, using that top down view point. And the somehow very intuitive controls of micro machines, where if your car was point down, if you pressed right, it'd go to the _car's_ right, which would be your left, because the car is facing downwards. That sounds like it'd be really difficult to get used to, but yeah there's something very intuitive about those controls, you just get it instantly But none of these indie games I tried that are the micro machines style ever really come close to how good micro machines was And there's a few games I've bought and loved, modern indie games that are in the genre of 2D racing games, like F1 Race, or Lotus Turbo Challenge, or Outrun etc. All of them seem to be going for a vaporwave A E S T H E T I C style. Which is cool. But it makes them all indistinguishable from each other. But they're a bit of fun, at least, if not mind blowingly good or anything. But in that situation I'd rather just play Outrun, cos I've got the arcade version of outrun on my Switch
I agree. But I think the “arcade” style of racer didn’t die in the 16 bit era. It lived on in Cruisn USA and, I would argue, still exists in games like Need For Speed and games like that Fast sand Furious Arcade title.
It’s a real shame we didn’t get Xevious with the US NES launch lineup. It really would have stood out. It holds up very well for such an early famicom title. I was coincidentally playing both the NES and 7800 ports last night. I have to say NES blows the 7800 out of the water overall.
MSX Pac-Man absolutely made it to Japan! It was an early NAMCOT release, developed in-house. Part of their "Game Center" series, along with games like Galaga, Galaxian, Warpman and Bosconian.
Really appreciating the close of each segment with a death in the game. Is this an intentional nod to Game Center CX's game history segments, or just a happy coincidence?
Crazy to think all the 8 bit games you found on every bootleg 99 in 1 console at the mall as a kid had full retail releases at one point Next you'll tell me field combat was sold as a standalone title
It can be interesting to see how sports games evolved, going from Nintendo's Baseball to Baseball Stars, or from 10-Yard Fight to Tecmo Bowl. Mahjong video games, on the other hand, have held little appeal to western audiences, with the exception of Shanghai (which was mahjong solitaire instead of multiplayer mahjong).
@@Ginormousaurus Depends on your definition of "interesting," I suppose. As a longtime Chrontendo viewer, I realized you could make a drinking game out of having a shot whenever the host has to grudgingly cover some completely generic and tedious Japanese baseball or golf game.
@@willmistretta I like how Jeremy Parish provides historical context to old video games and analyzes their design choices. It can be interesting to compare how video game developers approached adapting sports in different ways and dealt with technical limitations. Of course there were plenty of dull and clunky sports games, but there were also some that stood out from the crowd (e.g. Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel, Tecmo Bowl, Baseball Stars, Baseball Simulator 1.000, Super Dodge Ball, Punch-Out!!).
Here in 2021, I've got the Pac-Man Fever and that's thanks to Pac-Man 99. (Also that Nin character in Yon Nin Uchi Mahjong makes me snicker for obvious reasons)
I'm gonna fake it to the left, and move to the right; 'Cause Pokey's too slow, and Blinky's out of sight. Now I've got them on the run, and I'm looking for the high score; So it's once around the block, And I'll slide back out the side door.
I own every console version of Xevious, and honestly I prefer the NES/Famicom version over the original arcade. I can't explain the reason why, but there's something who makes it really attracting for me.
I was always curious if Namco people had seen Atari's 1978 Sky Raiders coin op...which is the first overhead view scrolling shooter as far as I know. Beats Xevious by 4 years. But doesn't really have a player ship, you move a crosshair and shoot air and land targets over a scrolling background. Really ahead of its time.
Never really paid much attention to shooters, but I get it: Xevious did for the shooter what SMB did for the sidescrolling platformer; Massive Hit that set the mold for everything that came after. E: maybe that’s over stating it a bit, Scramble is also an ur-shooter. but ... Xevious was ported to everything and took a bigger slice of the public consciousness.
All love for Scramble, but it's pretty clunky compared to Xevious. The dazzling patterns of aerial enemies and unpredictable movement of ground-based foes was really something, and they were only a year apart!
Does that makes Scramble the Pac-Land of horizontal shooters next to Gradius' Super Mario Bros., then? And how does Vanguard fit in? Talk about a prescient title there....
Pole Position was coded by a single British teenager over a few weeks. Because he skipped school to do so, he was expelled. He later moved to America and made The 7th Guest with a small team in a small town in Oregon.
@@JeremyParish My bad....Devine was responsible for the C64, ZX Spektrum, and Apple ports of Pole Position as a teenager and later did the 7th Guest. I've been telling this story wrong for years now, DOH!
1. Very funny, blurring out that penis-like character on the Mai-Jongg screen! 2. Something I discovered myself, playing NES Pac-Man on Wii-U Virtual Console, is it seems to have a significant bug! Around the 8th Key level, there's a ghost state bug that causes them to stay in "scatter" mode for far longer than they should! I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that on the internet. My personal favorite non-emulation conversions, in case anyone is curious (I bet you're _on edge_ wondering), would be Atari's for Atari 5200 and Atarisoft's for Atari 8-bit computers and C64.
1:01 *dies* well I guess if that's what it takes to avoid a 'inapproriate content' flag on youtube... I'm pretty sure I played a ROM of F-1 Race at some point it was kinda fun.
I remember Pacman for the 2600 when it came out...it was the cringest of the cringe of video game ports during that time I have no idea who greenlighted it for release at Atari but I hope that person went into seclusion in shame.
To this day, I have no memory of Xevious existing at all and still suspect you might just have made up this game in an amazing Polybius-style hoax that you're just not tipping your hand on, Andy Kaufman style.
I just want to point out that the red and white car on the box of F1 Race is very clearly sponsored by Marlboro, and that the only red and white car in the game is the player's. Does this mean Japanese kids in 1984 were racing a car sponsored by a cigarette company? Because that's pretty funny. I have a hard time imagining that flying here, even in the mid 80s. Also, I wonder if the late arrival of a good Xevious home conversion might have something to do with the difference between the popularity of shooters in Japan versus the west. Missing out on the one-two punch of arcade and home Xevious to keep the fires of the genre stoked in the hearts and minds of enthusiats, we would have had to wait until Gradius (I think?) in december 1986 to get a decent home console shooter. Im sure there are other cultural factors as well, but it's food for thought 🤔
A couple of the original Transformers toys were based on race cars sponsored by cigarette companies. Mirage's car form was based on the Ligier JS11 Formula One car sponsored by Gitanes cigarettes, although "Gitanes" was changed to "Citanes" on the toy. The Japanese Diaclone toy line that many of the Transformers were based on had a variant of the Lancia Stratos Turbo that resembled Wheeljack. It was in Marlboro cigarettes' red and white colours and came with deliberately misspelled "Marlboor" decals.
Japanese media took a VERY loose approach to featuring brands and likenesses throughout the ’80s. I've just been watching Megazone 23 and it's wild how many trademarks that show straight-up infringed on-McDonald's, Thundercats, and even a character named Dump who straight-up looks like pro wrestler Dump Matsumoto. So the presence of Marlboro branding on box art here is no surprise.
@@JeremyParish So they hadn't yet gotten to the era of WcDonalds and M Burger, eh? That's very interesting! I saw a thread on twitter recently of someone cataloguing every cameo in Urusei Yatsura and it was... not a short list. At the time I assumed they were mostly background knockoffs, like "Pekora"'s recent appearance in Demon Lord, but that show ran from 81-86 so maybe not lol
@@JeremyParish have they gone up? I haven’t really paid attention to Famicom accessories in years. I turned down a pair of SMS 3D goggles for $20 at a skeevy comic shop that closed the next day
i nearly spit out my water glass upon seeing the blurred title screen to mahjong, holy shit
never change, jeremy. never change
This channel has worked 56 days without a Heiankyo alien reference. Pac Man always leaves me nervous, but your resolve is commendable!
**snickers** Forget "Nuts and Milk", the misshapen 人 in the title 4 Nin Uchi Mahjong is the real winner here.
Honestly, the mosaic makes it look even filthier.
I thought the SAME THING 😂
Notice that it was blurred out at first, then clear second, right after the NUTS screen. He wants us to notice, it's intentional but understated.
Thank you Hudson!
These last few episodes have been riveting. It's like hearing an album that was never released outside the home country of a band right on the cusp of their big international breakthrough. All the flavor is there, but the songs are new to me.
Now now, there are probably more broken Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments in the landfills from those times than Wii Remote peripherals.
There's a bit of overlap if you consider Guitar Hero Wii controllers.
My thoughts exactly, but only due to bulk.
0:59 Haha, I love how you censored the phallic character on the title screen this time around. 😂
It was a treat to see uncensored in an older video.
2:08 He shows it uncensored just a minute later.
Hey, Jeremy. Just wanted to say I really admire your content and it's helped me navigate through playing some of these older games for the first time. Thanks for posting!
That breakdown of the vertically scrolling shooter evolution was beautiful. As someone who knew all of those titles by name but not the order in which they evolved the genre: Thank you.
unsurprisingly, the NES port for Pac-Man is still my most favorite of all time, I just love the sound design and also the better saturated color scheme of that port, it really felt like the apex of the first Pac-Man game.
I always have the biggest smile while watching your videos
The censored "人" kanji in the 4 Nin Uchi Mahjong title is sending me right now xD
That F-1 Race is so very common in bootleg multicarts, just like other early Famicom games.
I saw a bootleg console that had six "versions" of it. Each one was just the ROM modified to start on a later track. These made up half of the console's 12 games.
Early Famicom games have extremely low filesizes, which means it's easier to just fill bootlegs with the same stuff over and over.
I had a couple multicarts as a kid and they tended to have one "big" game on them (like Contra). The other games were multiple variations of Mario Bros, Nuts & Milk, Clu Clu Land, Goonies, F1 Race, Donkey Kong, Battle City, etc.
MSX version PAC Man was published by Namco (Namcot) in 1984 Japan. You can look it up on Generation MSX
The early genealogy of shooter design is pretty fascinating. New concepts are constantly added on to the framework, some unique deviations happen, but it's generally one moment of punctuated equilibrium with a Xevious or Gradius that changes everything.
BugByte were a pretty well known publisher in the UK at the time, famous for releasing Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy.
Lol!!!
So no joke I sent a screen shot to a buddy as a joke with the last Mahjong episode with the wang bone shaped Japanese character. “What do you think ol’ Parrish is getting into this episode?”
I can’t believe you blurred it out.
I know you have a lot of amazing fans, but I love your work and demeanor very much. Great job as always!
Another great video Jeremy. I love those early pictures of the NES with wireless controllers. I wonder if any prototypes exist.
Of the AVS? Nintendo has (had?) one on display in their NYC store.
@@JeremyParish Apparently that's not there anymore. God knows what happened to it
I have to tip my hat to the subtle "you have to know to get the joke" on the 4 Nin Uchi Mahjong title screen.
Japanese wikipedia lists the Famicom port of Xevious as the second home port of the game, being beaten to the punch by Dempa Shimbun's Sharp X1 port, which made it to the market May 25th.
There were also an FM-7 port listed as released "November 1984" and European ports for the Apple II and Atari 8-bit listed as released in just "1984" - these are listed after the Famicom port on that list, but could potentially have been released before it.
The X1 is not a console, which is the space under discussion in this series.
@@JeremyParish ...yes, but you said "home debut", not "console debut"?
Ah, I should have been more clear, but I always try to treat consoles and computers as separate considerations since one cost about 10 times as much as the other. No kids were buying an X1 with their allowance in 1984. (The MSX and ADAM do get grandfathered in, since they were basically just fancy consoles and have a lot of direct overlap with the console market.)
@@JeremyParish That's fair. Still think it's worth noting there were earlier ports of the game though, especially considering the Famicom port is considerably better than the X1 port.
Also that article left out "Tiny Xevious" for the PC-6001 and "Tiny Xevious MkII" for the PC-6001 MkII due to their different names, at least the first of those predated the X1 port and is the ACTUAL first port of the game. Though calling it a "port" may be a bit generous.
A new, well researched video of you is a great birthday gift. Thanks a lot for your soothing channel.
I always assumed when Namco called themselves ‘Namcot’ the T was meant to be silent, like they were pretending to be French. That being said, Pac-Man wasn’t renamed Pac-Homme so I guess not.
No, the t is pronounced, Jeremy says it right. It's ナムコット in Japanese.
There's all kinds of sort of conflicting explanations related to it - someone said they asked Endo about it and he said the T stands for "mascoT" or "peT" to imply something small you have at home, a Japanese video game history book says it's short for "Tomorrow", there's something about how they created a differently named home division because they had already licensed out the rights to making Pac-Man toys and didn't want their main company to take the hit if Japanese courts ruled that console games counted as toys and Namco thus didn't actually have the right to release home ports of Pac-man... it's all abit of a mess.
@@Pikachu132 yeah, the "home division" one is the explanation I've heard most. I've only ever seen it on Japanese works, like PC Engine or Japanese PS1 games released by them.
@@LorenHelgeson No, we KNOW it was Namco's home division, that's not a mystery or something that's up for debate. The things that are a bit unclear is WHY they had a differently-named home diviion at all, and WHAT that T is supposed to stand for.
Pac Homme sound like a Pac Man branded cologne.
F1 Race is one of my childhood games. Those sound bytes are itched in my memories.
First and foremost, your videos are the highlight of my week. Thank you for making them!
Second... what happened to that awesome outro song you used to play? I miss it
iirc as the series grew bigger, he doesn't want to deal with copyright of the song (as that was from Neon Genesis Evangelion) so he decided to stop using it.
@@PScoopYT oh my... it is NGE... I never noticed! Thank you for the explanation
I consider the 2D Pseudo-3D racing games on 8-bit and 16-bit systems to be an entirely different genre to modern racing games. Because they play SO differently. Most of the time, you're not trying to get into first place. There's just random other racers dotted around that aren't really racing against you, they're simply obstacles that move.
Instead the goal is usually to cross a checkpoint in time before time runs out.
But yeah they just feel so different. They're great in their own way. I love these kinda "racing" games, and I love modern racing games, for different reasons.
I still go back and play Lotus Turbo Challenge on the mega drive. A game I loved as a kid but was always very bad at it. Thank god for save states. I can finally beat the game because of save states. I don't care that its cheating
Also, the top down racing games, like Micro Machines, I consider to be an entirely different genre as well. So there's 3 separate distinct racing genres
Micro Machines I absolutely adore, too. I always did. But it's balls to the wall difficult. So again, I'm using save states, meaning I've got much much further in the game than I ever did 25 years ago. Yet even with save states, the game gets SO hard that I still can't beat it. But at least with save states it gives me unlimited tries and continues. I'll beat it eventually, one day
I really want the micro machines style of racing game to come back to the fore. There are a fair few indie games like this, using that top down view point. And the somehow very intuitive controls of micro machines, where if your car was point down, if you pressed right, it'd go to the _car's_ right, which would be your left, because the car is facing downwards. That sounds like it'd be really difficult to get used to, but yeah there's something very intuitive about those controls, you just get it instantly
But none of these indie games I tried that are the micro machines style ever really come close to how good micro machines was
And there's a few games I've bought and loved, modern indie games that are in the genre of 2D racing games, like F1 Race, or Lotus Turbo Challenge, or Outrun etc. All of them seem to be going for a vaporwave A E S T H E T I C style. Which is cool. But it makes them all indistinguishable from each other. But they're a bit of fun, at least, if not mind blowingly good or anything. But in that situation I'd rather just play Outrun, cos I've got the arcade version of outrun on my Switch
I agree. But I think the “arcade” style of racer didn’t die in the 16 bit era. It lived on in Cruisn USA and, I would argue, still exists in games like Need For Speed and games like that Fast sand Furious Arcade title.
It’s a real shame we didn’t get Xevious with the US NES launch lineup. It really would have stood out.
It holds up very well for such an early famicom title. I was coincidentally playing both the NES and 7800 ports last night. I have to say NES blows the 7800 out of the water overall.
MSX Pac-Man absolutely made it to Japan! It was an early NAMCOT release, developed in-house. Part of their "Game Center" series, along with games like Galaga, Galaxian, Warpman and Bosconian.
Really appreciating the close of each segment with a death in the game. Is this an intentional nod to Game Center CX's game history segments, or just a happy coincidence?
No I just die a lot
Censoring 人 killed me.
EDIT: Comments from a few weeks ago?
Patreon supporters get videos two weeks early.
@@absolutezeronow7928 Thanks, I forgot about that. I'm a patreon supporter, but usually wait it out for some reason.
@@chamchamtrigger Same. I think he pays more attention to wide release comments.
As always, just exceptional quality.
Crazy to think all the 8 bit games you found on every bootleg 99 in 1 console at the mall as a kid had full retail releases at one point
Next you'll tell me field combat was sold as a standalone title
Complete with manga style box art instagram.com/p/COMVWsnpSY8/?igshid=7p04aoj6vch0
@@JeremyParishjaleco, huh? that explains a lot
It must be so tempting when doing one of these chronological game review series to just tack on a blanket "no mahjong/sports" clause.
It can be interesting to see how sports games evolved, going from Nintendo's Baseball to Baseball Stars, or from 10-Yard Fight to Tecmo Bowl. Mahjong video games, on the other hand, have held little appeal to western audiences, with the exception of Shanghai (which was mahjong solitaire instead of multiplayer mahjong).
@@Ginormousaurus Depends on your definition of "interesting," I suppose. As a longtime Chrontendo viewer, I realized you could make a drinking game out of having a shot whenever the host has to grudgingly cover some completely generic and tedious Japanese baseball or golf game.
@@willmistretta I like how Jeremy Parish provides historical context to old video games and analyzes their design choices. It can be interesting to compare how video game developers approached adapting sports in different ways and dealt with technical limitations. Of course there were plenty of dull and clunky sports games, but there were also some that stood out from the crowd (e.g. Ice Hockey, Blades of Steel, Tecmo Bowl, Baseball Stars, Baseball Simulator 1.000, Super Dodge Ball, Punch-Out!!).
Here in 2021, I've got the Pac-Man Fever and that's thanks to Pac-Man 99. (Also that Nin character in Yon Nin Uchi Mahjong makes me snicker for obvious reasons)
I love that u had to censored the beginning of the mahjong game because it’s too hot for TH-cam
Jeremy, I love you you’re terrific
I'm gonna fake it to the left, and move to the right;
'Cause Pokey's too slow, and Blinky's out of sight.
Now I've got them on the run, and I'm looking for the high score;
So it's once around the block, And I'll slide back out the side door.
Nice, loved pac man fever
9:14 why is this song actually sick
I own every console version of Xevious, and honestly I prefer the NES/Famicom version over the original arcade.
I can't explain the reason why, but there's something who makes it really attracting for me.
I was absolutely addicted to Xevious as a kid
That's because it's great
I was always curious if Namco people had seen Atari's 1978 Sky Raiders coin op...which is the first overhead view scrolling shooter as far as I know. Beats Xevious by 4 years. But doesn't really have a player ship, you move a crosshair and shoot air and land targets over a scrolling background. Really ahead of its time.
Namco was the distributor of Atari's arcade games in Japan at the time, so they had definitely seen it.
Never really paid much attention to shooters, but I get it: Xevious did for the shooter what SMB did for the sidescrolling platformer; Massive Hit that set the mold for everything that came after.
E:
maybe that’s over stating it a bit, Scramble is also an ur-shooter. but ... Xevious was ported to everything and took a bigger slice of the public consciousness.
All love for Scramble, but it's pretty clunky compared to Xevious. The dazzling patterns of aerial enemies and unpredictable movement of ground-based foes was really something, and they were only a year apart!
The horizontal viewpoint of Scramble was really popularised in Japan by Gradius, which also had a deep impact on the shooter genre.
Does that makes Scramble the Pac-Land of horizontal shooters next to Gradius' Super Mario Bros., then?
And how does Vanguard fit in? Talk about a prescient title there....
Pole Position was coded by a single British teenager over a few weeks. Because he skipped school to do so, he was expelled. He later moved to America and made The 7th Guest with a small team in a small town in Oregon.
Pole Position was created by a small team of seasoned Japanese designers at Namco over the course of several months...
@@JeremyParish My bad....Devine was responsible for the C64, ZX Spektrum, and Apple ports of Pole Position as a teenager and later did the 7th Guest. I've been telling this story wrong for years now, DOH!
Oh, now some British kid handling a port is something I can definitely see. The UK produced some wild game dev savants back in the day.
@@JeremyParish Yeah, we Americans have never had such success stories as that.
I wish that mahjong game would get released. 😀👍🎮
That pac-man port is decent compared to all the bad ones that came before it
I like your hat.
Mr. Parish, I want to ask: would you consider doing some episodes on the most interesting/best unlicensed games for NES/Famicom?
I'm afraid I only tackle stuff like that via patron request.
I keep on hearing how xavious was good I remember hating it as a kid.....
I wish you had connected F1 and FZero just because a lot of people don’t know that connection.
I did that in my F-Zero video.
@@JeremyParish ah, brilliant.
1. Very funny, blurring out that penis-like character on the Mai-Jongg screen!
2. Something I discovered myself, playing NES Pac-Man on Wii-U Virtual Console, is it seems to have a significant bug! Around the 8th Key level, there's a ghost state bug that causes them to stay in "scatter" mode for far longer than they should! I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about that on the internet. My personal favorite non-emulation conversions, in case anyone is curious (I bet you're _on edge_ wondering), would be Atari's for Atari 5200 and Atarisoft's for Atari 8-bit computers and C64.
1:01 *dies* well I guess if that's what it takes to avoid a 'inapproriate content' flag on youtube... I'm pretty sure I played a ROM of F-1 Race at some point it was kinda fun.
I remember Pacman for the 2600 when it came out...it was the cringest of the cringe of video game ports during that time I have no idea who greenlighted it for release at Atari but I hope that person went into seclusion in shame.
To this day, I have no memory of Xevious existing at all and still suspect you might just have made up this game in an amazing Polybius-style hoax that you're just not tipping your hand on, Andy Kaufman style.
I just want to point out that the red and white car on the box of F1 Race is very clearly sponsored by Marlboro, and that the only red and white car in the game is the player's. Does this mean Japanese kids in 1984 were racing a car sponsored by a cigarette company? Because that's pretty funny. I have a hard time imagining that flying here, even in the mid 80s.
Also, I wonder if the late arrival of a good Xevious home conversion might have something to do with the difference between the popularity of shooters in Japan versus the west. Missing out on the one-two punch of arcade and home Xevious to keep the fires of the genre stoked in the hearts and minds of enthusiats, we would have had to wait until Gradius (I think?) in december 1986 to get a decent home console shooter. Im sure there are other cultural factors as well, but it's food for thought 🤔
A couple of the original Transformers toys were based on race cars sponsored by cigarette companies. Mirage's car form was based on the Ligier JS11 Formula One car sponsored by Gitanes cigarettes, although "Gitanes" was changed to "Citanes" on the toy. The Japanese Diaclone toy line that many of the Transformers were based on had a variant of the Lancia Stratos Turbo that resembled Wheeljack. It was in Marlboro cigarettes' red and white colours and came with deliberately misspelled "Marlboor" decals.
Japanese media took a VERY loose approach to featuring brands and likenesses throughout the ’80s. I've just been watching Megazone 23 and it's wild how many trademarks that show straight-up infringed on-McDonald's, Thundercats, and even a character named Dump who straight-up looks like pro wrestler Dump Matsumoto. So the presence of Marlboro branding on box art here is no surprise.
@@JeremyParish So they hadn't yet gotten to the era of WcDonalds and M Burger, eh? That's very interesting! I saw a thread on twitter recently of someone cataloguing every cameo in Urusei Yatsura and it was... not a short list. At the time I assumed they were mostly background knockoffs, like "Pekora"'s recent appearance in Demon Lord, but that show ran from 81-86 so maybe not lol
I see that you have entered the ranks of "men who dare and plan" by purchasing a Famicom 3D system
Thank god I bought it before prices went mad
@@JeremyParish have they gone up? I haven’t really paid attention to Famicom accessories in years. I turned down a pair of SMS 3D goggles for $20 at a skeevy comic shop that closed the next day