Lode Runner / Galaxian / Devil World retrospective: Famicom ’84 some more | NES Works Gaiden
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Another step along the Road to NES Works this week as we look again at the next round of software releases for Nintendo Famicom. Unlike last time, only one of these games made its way to the U.S. on NES, the other two (Galaxian and Devil World) seemingly being skipped over due to datedness and, uh, satanism? What was this, 2021?
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That's quite a lot of description for Galaxian and especially some things I never noticed before and started appreciating now.
I had Galaxian for the Atari 800XL, and I don’t remember the stuff about the tiered scoring. I do vaguely remember that destroying a flagship rewarded a moratorium on enemies firing on the player, but only with my memory being jogged.
From the technical point of view Galaxian is the smallest licensed Famicom/NES game, as it's the only game on the platform which fits into 16KB of ROM. Every other game is at least 24KB in size. One and a half decade after the release Galaxian surprisingly became a thorn in the side of emulator developers and game dumpers because the header format for NES rom files was created under incorrect assumption that 24KB is the minimum rom size.
This the sort of trivium I live for, thanks!
I'll just add my voice to the chorus here: we REALLY appreciate your work, from the point of view of both historical- and entertainment-value.
Namco really is one of my favorite eastern developers. You put it nicely when talking about how they preserve and respect their company history.
we must see an Outfoxies release before we give them too much praise
Except when it comes to Splatterhouse.
incredible restraint here for Jeremy to not say the words Heiankyo Alien in this episode
Sometimes I like to trust the audience to connect the dots on their own!
It's just so weird seeing devils and bibles in a Nintendo game. Especially since that devil looks more like he'd be at home in Ghosts & Goblins.
To be fair, The Legend of Zelda also had a bible (called "Magic Book" in the US instruction manual, but still with a blatant cross on the cover), and the manual describes Vire as "a devil that controls the Keeses".
I mean kid icarus was based on religion, though at that point most people didn't view Greek deities as gods.
@@justinkolata6252 Yeah, the entire "Nintendo of America's list of things you can't have in games" thing didn't exist until a year or so into the NES' American life. The manual for Super Mario Bros is full of references to Mario killing his enemies too, a word Nintendo would soon stop approving of.
Galaxian, the first home-release of a Namco game to bear an extra T in Namco’s name (I think).
a strange quirk of Famicom and Super Famicom era gaming for which I have yet to hear a convincing explanation.
It think it was just their home publishing label. Nothing elaborate.
@@JeremyParish I know it was their home label. I'm just asking "Why a T?"
@@DaneeBound According to Norio Nakagata, a former Namco musician, the T stands for "tomorrow". It is based on the tagline "namco tomorrow" used on japanese namco ads at the time : twitter.com/nkgt5/status/1077574679202656262?s=20
There's something charming about Devil World despite it being difficult and weird
For me it'd have to be Tamagon. He's such an adorably dopey character and when I started playing for the first time and saw all of the religious imagery, I wasn't too surprised as Nintendo of Japan is more open to using religious imagery compared to the United States, that was predominantly Christian back in the 80's and Nintendo didn't want to offend anyone back then. However, outside of the game's title and the usage of religious items, it's completely inoffensive and fun to play.
These early 80s videos are my favorite. Always nice to see super I'm depth coverage of games I used to skip over after 3 minutes on bootleg multi ROM consoles I bought at a kiosk in a mall
Awesome video. Three really interesting games to talk about. But any chance you could talk a bit more about the Space Invaders 100-yen coin shortage? You are the first serious game historian I’ve heard confirm the story rather than claim it a myth.
Wow. You talked about Devil World without mentioning the Game & Watch title Squish.
Fair enough. Not many people have heard of that one.
There are a few early NES/ Famicom games that got ported to Game & Watch, I guess Squish is unusual though for being more of a "spiritual port" with no IP connection to the original, although there were a few of those too, such as Climber.
Mostly an algorithm comment, adore the work put into all these vids and hearin' on this was no different.
The quality of journalism is outstanding you do proper citations omg
My wife is in graduate school at the moment and she always is losing a point or two for citations
Devil World was one of my “must haves” when I started importing Famicom games.
Devil World was the first NES game to use split-screen vertical scrolling, which was very rare for this time period.
Great video! I spent a lot of my childhood on the Apple2E Lode Runner. Very cool to see you compare and contrast with the Famicom release.
This is where the Famicom really starts making waves and providing a real library that's really threatening what Sega was offering. Sega may have had Galaga for over a year, but it was a definite downgrade from the arcade game, while Nintendo lets you have a very arcade accurate version of Galaxian. Sega may have more content in their version of Lode Runner, but Nintendo's looks much prettier. Sega started out with a considerably stronger lineup in 1983, but this is where they have very good reason to start getting afraid.
...oh, that's where that one part of the Famicom Medley in Smash Bros. is from!
What a legacy of work you are doing here Jeremy! So well made! 🤩
Another fantastic episode. Thank you for your detailed but concise research and viewpoint.
i'm baffled by how few people talk about how tamagon hatching out of egg sound was repurposed as yoshi's hatching out of egg sound in super mario world
Namco's legacy on the Famicom feels kind of strange when you see how their games were published outside of Japan for the NES. A various mix of North American publishers bringing over some of Namco's titles (including Bandai, which in retrospect feels like a sign of things to come), but not all, and then the later Tengen unlicensed releases. Even funnier when you see how late Namco got to actually publishing their own games on the NES in the US, and how Nintendo timelines some of those Namco titles in the US (the NES mini using 1993 for the Namco-published release of Pac-Man rather than referring to the at the time licensed release of Pac-Man from Tengen years prior).
Also another set of games found in most if not all bootleg Famicom multicarts. Those bootleggers will dummy out the title screens and copyright information, but won't dummy out the unusable save feature in Lode Runner.
I really appreciate all the context around Devil World. I had no idea the game was such a foundational melting pot in terms of development, design and composition that would lead to genre-defining stuff. Even if the end product feels half baked, it is a pretty respectable work and an interesting use of no-mapper carts.
This is a particularly excellent episode, covering some MONSTER classics and adding GREAT history. Thanks so much for this! 😊👍
That footage of Doom on the SNES triggers my gaming-based PTSD, lol. I actually own it to this day, and it was the first way I played the full game. I fully appreciate how ID Software ported Doom (as well as Wolfenstein 3D) to the SNES fully in-house--I believe John Carmack did most of it, if not all, by himself--but it's frustrating that Doom is so dense of a game that it lags like crazy, which makes it even more difficult. Combined with the fact that you are forced to play it on increasingly harder difficulty levels in order to play episodes 2 and 3, I never was able to beat the game fully, and even only rarely did I finish episode 2. Fun Fact: Doom is only one of 2 red cartridges ever made for the SNES. (I believe the other one was Carnage) It's also one of the few to be such a big ROM that it utilized the two extra slots of "motherboard" if you will, on either side of the main piece normally extruding from the bottom of the cartridge.
Yay, TH-cam finally suggested a video from a creator in the USA! It's been on a UK and AUS kick the last year.
what a wonderful thing to wake up to! jeremy parish always makes my mornings better :)
6:24 you mention that Famicom was designed for Donkey Kong, which I've heard before, but then why does the Famicom support the groundbreaking feature of scrolling? Clearly they must have had aspirations beyond DK.
Of course they did. But DK was their baseline. Please check out Nathan Altice's book I Am Error for a very detailed look into the thinking behind the system's design.
Best youtuber on this period of gaming history
So Devil World never came to the USA because of its use of religious icons, as Tamagon collects Crosses, Bibles, and Ice Cream cones.
I don’t know which religion has Ice Cream as part of their iconography, but I want to join it.
Europe got it at least!
@@ChristopherSobieniak so I guess it doesn't have a swastika
This channel has worked 33 days without a Heiankyo alien reference. Fine work!
(also was that doom gba footage?)
It's really neat to see the first rays of the sunrise on the Famcom Golden Age.
Already on good footing, the third party offerings are hitting hard.
Galaxian is grossly underrated and overshadowed by its own sequels. There is a lot of depth to that game in a tiny package and the bit slower pace is a nice and different feel from most shooters that came after. Can really get into the zone with this one.
Very off topic, but Lode Runner 2 (which was isometric instead of 2D) is what got me into loving PC isometric games.
I actually had a petition for Nintendo to bring Devil World to America. It failed.
Ah, Devil World~ My main complaint with the game has always been with how slow feeling Gon happens to be when compared to his more well known yellow inspiration. He breathes fire, but his movement is so restrictive and the maze itself is out to get you. You can collect dots, but you're entirely subject to the maze movement and whether you have a cross instead of being granted the freedoms you have in Pac-Man. The game manages to be interesting, but also you're at the mercy of the antagonists and indeed, the walls, in very frustrating ways.
I think Lode Runner is the first puzzle platformer, I've never heard of an earlier one.
A crucifix wielding dragon battles Satan while wondering around mazes. The footage shown would seem to indicate that same dragon was at one point also eating bibles. That seems like a concept modern day Nintendo would not venture within a million miles of.
HEAR ME O MIGHTY ALGORITHM and bring your blessings upon this video and/or channel or something namu namu namu
Calling Devil World a "swing and a miss" is needlessly harsh. It's not an all-time masterpiece, but neither is Donkey Kong Jr. or even the Famicom verison of Mario Bros. Devil World is a perfectly good 7/10 kind of game, especially for it's time.
A "swing and a miss" isn't a strikeout, it's just... not a hit.
@@JeremyParish I suppose that's true, and I probably like Devil World more than most. It was one of the very first Famicom games I had ever imported back in the late 90s and I have a particular fondness for its weirdness.
How would you compare it to Sega's Pacar and Sindbad Mystery? Personally I'd put both of those over Devil World, and they had been out for a year at this point. Pac-Man derivatives had come quite a long way by 1984.
Quite the in-depth review of Galaxian! I''ve always preferred Galaga, but this gives me more appreciation for its forerunner.
I wonder how much Devil World was actually a key inspiration for something like Away - Shuffle Dungeon on the Nintendo DS.
Them old ass, x-amount-of-games on a single cartridge, its no surprise that its just all of the early releases.
Class of '84 Rules!
I wonder how much work it would have taken to secularize Devil World. You can swap the sprites for the crosses and bible. The devil looks so silly that he easily be called a goblin in the manual. Probably the hardest part would be those big crosses in the maze design. If you made them grey would anyone notice?
I understand why Nintendo of America wouldn't localize it as it is consistent with the code they had third parties follow. What was really odd though was that they removed the trophy for it from SSB Melee on the Gamecube, as if in 2001 that would have caused any stir at all. There isn't even any religious iconography in the trophy aside from the game's title. The cries from fans of Melee being "censored" was bigger than probably anything that would have resulted in the trophy being included.
Nintendo could have renamed the game "Dungeon World" or "Dragon World" and replaced the crosses and Bibles with magic swords and spell books. It still might have been controversial - recall the uproar over Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s - but it would have avoided explicit references to religion.
Galaxian is a lot of fun, will admit that :’)
I've always wondered what the story was on them using Bomberman sprites as the bad guys in Lode Runner. Seems like it came out at about the same time. (on home computers, anyway)
In the original Bomberman games, the main character is a dude in overalls. This game was the first appearance of the classic Bomberman look! Hudson used these sprite designs for the Famicom conversion of the game.
Legend has it that Famicom Bomberman was developed in 72 hours. If true, that may explain the reused assets.
Devil World is one of those games I'd like to see on the NES app for the US version of NSO. This is definitely one area where Europe NES got the better deal than the US.
I can guarantee you literally every single European would not only gladly trade their NES library for America's, but also laugh in your face about what a ridiculously stupid trade you agreed to. We missed out on so many great games back then I refuse to believe you actually LOOKED at what the respective libraries were before you wrote this nonsense.
@@Pikachu132 I wasn't saying Europe got the better deal on their NES library, I was saying Europe got the better deal on Devil World: getting the game 3 years later as opposed to never getting it. I may word things wrong occasionally but there's no need to flame me just because a misunderstanding of my comment. Yes, Nintendo often treated Europe like a redhaired stepchild but some of those EU NES games are nice. EU did get Saint Seiya (in French only I know but still that's something we Americans never got on our NESes) but still on balance US did get a more fuller library than EU.
@@absolutezeronow7928 Uh, yes, getting a game is better than not getting a game, that's obvious. You're still seriously coming across as a rich, spoiled kid with a house full of fancy toys whining because the kid that lives in a trailer park got a single toy you didn't have. Be happy with your far superior library instead of complaining that you missed out on a forgettable game nobody really cared about except the people that never got to experience its mediocricity.
You forgot to mention that Europe was splitted in two counterparts: PAL A and PAL B.
The only part of Europe who got "Devil World" was the one marked as PAL B. Plus, it was extremely rare to find even at its time of release: if you look at its prices of today, you'll get scary! But that's a really RARE game.
Over their late arrival in Europe, the decision of Nintendo to split their (and I say "their" because not every european country got an official deal with Nintendo to sell the NES, and that was the reason of the Famiclones' popularity) PAL territories into two separate entities was one of the biggest reasons of Sega's success across Europe (who was the first company to adopt the Multi-5 language standard for the translations of booklets and boxes, and a single PAL standard for ll the european releases), a success who got to be even stronger when Nintendo approached to the European countries where they selected to deal with, using these really annoying marketing strategies.
If you add that to the limited game library we got (especially the PAL A territories, compared to the impressive list of games available in US), plus the delay of their release compared to their US launch, you'll get an answer on why the NES wasn't the first gaming system of its era here in Europe.
Last but not at least: all Nintendo stuff was really pricy, and it was just an 8-bit system. In 1990, for a bit more of the NES price, you could get a Mega Drive (at least here in Italy), who was a 16-bit machine and the price of the games was almost the same .... Sega was the leader of home gaming, back in those days!
Sorry for my intrusion, I just wanted to add these aspects.
Cheers!
;-)
@@retrogamaniac3673 I don't mind the addendum and I learned something from it, thanks. It helped increase my understanding of why Sega was big in Europe (Sega is definitely an area where my video game knowledge has a lot of gaps. Which is why I'm thankful for Segaiden as a viewer and Patron to Video Works)
Calling Devil's World a "swing and a miss" feels a bit harsh. It feels more like a sac fly to me.
It's okay for what it is, and fills a hole in the Famicom's library Nintendo really needed to fill, but as far as 1984-era Pac Man-derivatives go, it's pretty durn mediocre. Nobody ever really gives a shit about this game except Americans, and THEY only care about it because they discovered in the mid 2000s that there was a Nintendo game they never got and made a very big and undeserved deal out of it.
Back when it got its first ever American release on the Wii Virtual Console you had all these American websites screaming about what a massive hidden gem it was and giving it rave reviews they were posting next to their "2/10 outdated crap that takes 5 minutes to beat and never play again" reviews for Donkey Kong, it was ridiculous.
@@Pikachu132 The mid 2000s? My friend, the emulation era was well underway in the late '90s. Nothing says 1998 like shady NES ROM sites and Nesticle's severed hand cursor.
@@classicomfy Yeah, but it took America a couple years after that to learn this game existed.
@@Pikachu132 I don't know what you mean by "America," but no, Americans were exploring ROM dumps of Famicom games in the aforementioned early emulation era of the mid-to-late '90s. "Devil World" was relatively well-known even before that, given its Miyamoto lineage, getting discussioned in EGM and similar mags.
@@classicomfy Ok, fair enough. The early 2000s is just when I started to see all this random American noise about it.
Either way my point was mostly just that this wasn't a game the people that just got it as part of their console library ever considered to be particularly noteworthy, it was only America that treated it as something special.
I remember liking lode runner, I think I first played it on gameboy as 'hyper lode runner' it was a neat concept! and shout-out to that level editor. on Space Invaders I heard the yen shortage thing was just urban legend? either way I personally prefer Galaga its more fast-paced.
It just so happens that Jeremy Parish covered Hyper Lode Runner in a previous episode! You can find it at th-cam.com/video/TGBO_BEDGdg/w-d-xo.html, if you're interested.
I'd heard the Space Invaders ¥100 coin thing was an urban legend. It's actually true?
The best sources I've found make it seem like something based in a certain degree of fact, but exaggerated/distorted into an urban legend. Like the idea that selling Dragon Quest games on school days was outlawed. I chose to elide over the specifics here because I have TWO Space Invaders episodes coming up (for both FC and SG1000).
@@JeremyParish Thanks for the reply, I look forward to more on ¥100 coin no densetsu in one of them.
Devil world should have been released in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮
I'm not sure I'd go as far as "swing and a miss" for Devil World, but only just so. It's not bad, but not particularly good. I consider it a black box game in terms of what it is, and like a number of those, it's not particularly worth playing these days.
I'm still a sucker for a few black box games. Duck Hunt, Golf, Excite Bike and Super Mario manage to still be charming despite their age, but you're right that they're hard to go back to without nostalgia as a factor.
@@LeoMidori No need for Golf when NES Open is the exact same game, but way better. And yeah, some of them definitely hold up. Super Mario is still great.
@@bfish89ryuhayabusa I never did try NES open despite always liking the artwork of it! I think I should, thanks for the recommendation.
I've never played Devil World and I'm curious to try it, but it looks like it might be like Clu Clu Land: a novel variation on the maze game genre, but frustrating to play.
Um....somebody's REALLY good at Lode Runner....
Also I love snes doom
It's craptacular
I’m a weirdo that prefers Galaxian to Galaga. It’s a shame we didn’t get it on NES. I do enjoy the Atari 2600 version though.
But when is he going to cover BIRD WEEEEEEEEK?!!!?
I'm sorry to say that I won't be covering Famicom games past the NES's U.S. launch... so, unless a patron requests it for some bizarre reason: Never!
11:39 The devil looks like Duke's mascot. May have been ambivalent before, but now I really don't like him.