Warpman has this touching little tribute written in its ROM: "THIS PROGRAM WAS THE POSTHUMOUS WORK OF SHOICHI FUKATANI. HE WAS ONE OF THE BEST PRO" This was written by programmer Fukashi Ohmorita, who himself seems to have passed away just last October.
Scrolled down to post this and happy to see it was the first comment. Definitely what sparked my interest in the title back when I played it a couple years ago.
@@montego200x The thing that amuses me is that I get the feeling Jeremy genuinely really likes Xevious, but could happily go the rest of his life without ever playing or thinking about Heiankyou Alien again lol Heiankyou Alien is like Boxxle, neither are BAD games and I appreciate them for the impact they had on the medium.... but they can go away now. I've had enough lol
The control scheme of Road Fighter actually has skill involved with hitting other cars. You must counter steer to regain control. Depending on the angle you hit other cars, it can be used as a technique in narrow roads to pass them when they're kind of hogging a bit of the middle, though with risk. Once you get a feel for counter steering, you're always thinking about it as you play along with the, you know, primary objective which is not to hit them in the first place. Anyway, counter steering is done by steering the opposite direction your car faces, not the direction it moves. Spin slightly left, turn right, etc.
Right? I'm curious to know if there are other games like this out there predating Bomberman, or if Warpman was the first to say "What if you took Pac-Man/Heiankyo Alien and gave the guy some claymore mines?"
I'm still in the beginning of the episode but just want to say that in Road Fighter if you hit a car and you swerve in the opposite direction of which you're spinning in combination with letting off the gas you can save yourself that way too. I just really love Road Fighter (as well as MonacoGP and Zippy Race for that matter.)
Recovering control in Road Fighter isn't just accidental stuff. If you see your car's front at a direction, steer the opposite. Usually that means you're steering while skidding in the same direction, but it works.
Reset both the Xevious and the Heiankyo Alien counter to zero in one video. That’s a new record, that’ll probably not be beaten again, in the foreseeable future.
A shame Warpman didn't come to North America - I would've had fun with this one, and the risk-reward mechanic is interesting. Also nice to see the beginning of Chunsoft, the developer that would go on to make the Mystery Dungeon games.
14:23 “Permanently sealing it into the Phantom Zone” I was sort of thinking more a Cask of Amontillado scenario. Adorable video game protagonists always are revealed as merciless monsters at the most cursory examination.
Glad to see not only a reference to Xevious and Heiankyo Alien in this video, but also one to Dragon Quest. Which I feel it's gonna be more common the moment it hits in NES Works Gaiden which would be a little earlier than regular NES Works (I'm not being impatient or anything! I just think it's a fun thing to point out)
Road Fighter was surprisingly present in a lot of pirated cartridges here in India back in early 00s Me and neighbor lads used to try to atleast reach the checkpoint.
There was a very ubiquitous 31-game bootleg multicart in my area growing up that had both Road Fighter and Zippy Race. We usually ignored them in favour of Excitebike.
Thanks again man, love your work, I was born in 82 and played lotta nes as a kid, finding out about games was ruff back then, Famicom games are always interesting to hear about,thanks man
Also, I've got to say that Door Door's got the most passive way to dispatch enemies in any single screen game I can remember. Dig Dug can CRUSH enemies with rocks or POP them like balloons. Pac-Man CHOMPS wandering ghosts, and even the star of Clu Clu Land can SMOOSH sea urchins against walls. But Chun? Here's an open door. Let me close it behind you, at which point nothing happens. You might get a little cold outdoors, I don't know. There's not much bang for the buck there.
I am watching Famidaily from the start, so it's interesting when suddenly this episode comes up on my playlist on the same day I watch the Famidaily episodes about these games.
I love how many classic racing games basically operate with the premise that you're the absolute slowest starter in the sport's history and you'll never take first because there's an infinite number of cars in front of you.
The runner up in the contest that found Door Door was the first game by Kazuro Morita. A name that doesn't mean much to western gamers, but he's the definitive Shogi software person.
Thanks for the enlightening information on road fighter and warpman, I use to play them in the 90s on a pirated 1 in 110 games nes cart that my dad bought from a thrift store. He use to bug me to play golf, baseball, pac man, and donkey kong on that cart.
Warpman is definitely a fun play on the Evercade. Nice to see Heiankyo Alien pop up again. Nice to see Enix's debut with Famicom. Interestingly enough, one of Square Enix's most consistent hit making producers, Tomoya Asano, is from the Enix legacy division of SE. (Asano's games also use outsourced devs)
I found Warpman absolutely baffling when I first tried it. But now that Jeremy's given me something to work from, Namco 2 is in my machine for tomorrow's commute.
I learned about Door Door through its feature on Game Center CX. Finally tracked down a copy last year, and it has become one of my favorite Famicom titles. It has so much charm, and the gameplay reminds me of a mix between Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in a really satisfying way.
I love a good Heiyankyo Alien reference. I played *every single* port of it for a (now non-existent) podcast years ago and absolutely fell in love with it. I was especially fond of the Super Famicom Nichibutsu Classics port, even got to play it two player a few times.
At first I thought you were showing footage of an Apple II version of Door Door, I can't believe the Famicom version actually looks and runs like that.
I played a ton of road fighter as a kid! The red cars actually swerve in whatever direction you move, so it's possible to move towards them making them move in the opposite direction.
It was only shown briefly at around 11:17 but Zarth is actually a pretty good ADV game, at least by 1984 retro Japanese computer game standards. For one thing the art was done by an actual professional artist, that alone puts it above 80% of the contemporary releases, which were mostly done by bedroom hobbyist programmers with little - if any - drawing talent. (Often they would create graphics by taping a photo to the computer screen and awkwardly tracing it in a painting program, to give you an idea of the level of professionalism one could usually expect. Naturally in the latter half of the 80's, games with higher production standards would become the norm, of course) This game is somewhat notorious in Japan for featuring a screenshot of a cute anime girl in a somewhat suggestive state of clothing damage in its magazine advertisements, and on the back of the box, luring a "certain type" of customer to purchase the game... only to find out that said girl only appears for about 6 seconds in the introductory sequence and is subsequently never seen or mentioned again, haha! The story is pretty crazy and off-the-wall in that distinctive early-80s sci-fi manga type of way that I love: post-nuclear apocalypse, renegade AI, giant Gundam-style mechs on the moon!? Sign me up! Also the difficulty is fairly low, again relatively speaking. Many adventure games of the era, not just in Japan but the West as well, often devolved into insane moon-logic puzzles and "guess the verb" wall-banger stab-in-the-dark situations, yet Zarth is fairly intuitive and briskly paced. If you can get past the language barrier there are definitely worse games that Enix, Square, Sierra, Falcom etc. were putting out at the time. Anyway, my apologies for typing such a long comment on a subject that is "tangentially related" at best and most of the people watching this video won't take a smidgen of interest :P
One of the pleasures of these series is filling in the blanks on what all those words on the Ridge Racer cars referred to. "Bosconian? Is that a drink?" Now I'm only left with the question of why the Warpman Bass Cruiser ended up being an SUV.
Blown away by the sudden appearance of the PC-8801 Gumball! Also - if you have the patience to add a Japanese account to your Switch, Warp Man is available piecemeal through the Namcot Collection (sometimes for as low as 200 yen).
I'm so glad you've covered Warpman, as I have a ROM for it on a famiclone bootleg thing and always assumed it was some sort of "made for NES" garbage, like all those badly-made topdown shooters, with the good graphics stolen from something else. And I don't fully understand the hatred people have for Road Fighter. It's not that bad.
How. In the hell. Had I not known about Warpman until I was today years old? That game would have totally been my jam back in the day! Not to mention, holy shit, Bomberman was a ripoff this whole time? Jeremy, you're blowing my mind, man!
Lovely video as always, Warpman and Door Door are both the perfect variety of weird overlooked early Famicom/NES fare. Dunno if it’s just me but I’m seeing a weird glitch in the game capture clips where the first few scan lines are offset to the left every other frame, making a weird flickering bendy effect. Doesn’t ruin the video or anything, but it might be worth tracking down the cause.
I first experienced all three of these games through multicart bootlegs. Being early games that don't consume much space at all without any special mapper chips meant they were common on the legally questionable 150 in 1s. Of course, most of my attention would be towards the likes of Mario and Bomberman, but I do remember finding out oh, actually, I _really_ like this "Battle City" game and this "Nuts & Milk" game. Road Fighter was ho-hum to me. It felt like a Commodore or Atari game to me. The NES could do much more exciting games. Warpman was certainly a lot more playable than Chack'n Pop, but it also never caught my attention. Door Door was a game that child me couldn't figure out. It wasn't obvious what I needed to do. I was a dumb kid.
And F1 Race, and Yie Ar Kung Fu, and Karateka, and... well... a lot of games made it to famiclones, including Battle City, Dig Dug, Mappy, between so many others. Yeah, my childhood made me familiar with a good bunch of the Famicom catalogue.
I'm greatly looking forward to your future video about Portopia! I played its fan translation about two years ago, and it got me hooked on the visual novel!
These games are really interesting! At the same time, I can kind of understand why they didn't come over to North America, particularly Road Fighter considering what Konami prioritized during the NES' lifespan.
huh, i never knew door door was enix published, or chunsoft developed, or that it was chunsoft's first game under the enix label, or that it was both of their first offerings for famicom
Considering my familiarity with Road Fighter thanks to Famiclones, one thing that bugged me with this video, is that after accelerating to 199 KM/h, you didn't press B to accelerate to 400 KM/h (letting go the A button), which makes you go faster. Also, did you know that you can get a Konami Man to spawn if you go fast enough and you don't crash? I saw this in the first stage by driving almost to perfection and at top speed.
Yes thank! i thought the same and was looking for any comment in this regard. also the (disturbing) flying man can be see in each of the four level. I get a copy of the game five years ago and was amaze to see the release date being 1992, seven years after the japanese version, and no US version?!
Yeah I wanted to mention this as well. It's key to getting far into the game and makes it fun. The manual (PAL version) actually has false instructions regarding this method.
I like the contrast of the sprites and that they don’t flicker in Road Fighter. I can clearly see what’s happening and that’s important for a racer. 6:36 - if you’re looking for another roommate you can just ask
Door Door is basically Heiyankyo Alien. Also, Torneko's Mystery Dungeon is really fun, but it didn't invent the console roguelike: that honor goes to Dragon Crystal on SMS.
@@JeremyParish like how Metroid isn't really a Metroidvania, though I think calling it a rough draft is a disservice, as it really isn't the same type of game, since it's all about being an exploration challenge, with progression and gathering items being secondary, as opposed to Super Metroid (or the Zero Mission remake) where exploration is curtailed to never take priority over the progression and general game flow.
I feel like maybe you could open a door from either side if it was sort of like a Jacob's ladder? Although I guess that would only work if there were another door immediately beyond the first one. This requires cogitation. Also, how did I miss this video for two weeks? I usually watch them as they come out. WEIRD. Anyway, I appreciate what you, Parish, do. UPDATE: I guess it IS from today? Then why are there comments from two weeks ago? Again: WEIRD.
Parish briefly touched on this in the description, but for whatever reason Konami decided to release Road Fighter in Europe in 1992 under its Palcom sublabel, almost seven years after its release. Mean Machines reviewed it and gave it a score of 9%, their worst rating ever.
This is an example of how Jeremy Parish's chronological retrospectives put video games in their proper context. By the standards of 1985 Road Fighter was a decent game, but in 1992 it would have seemed outdated compared to games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Street Fighter II, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
i find really interesting how Warpman 1 and 2 are dressed and colored somewhat like Taizo hori and his Ex-wife (the protagonist of marmaduke) i suppose its a reference added just for the famicom release?
I think it's a pretty good way to save dev time by making the score-increasing powerup something that already exists in-game. Most games probably have some sort of text-graphics, if only to let the player enter their initials for a high-score. So reuse those graphics and do something that feels intuitive with them- namely using letters to spell out a word. At least, that'd be my off the cuff, unprofessional guesstimation.
I may be alone in this, but there early famicom games are mostly just *so* incredibly boring, and Warpman really highlights that fact by being actually different.
Warpman has this touching little tribute written in its ROM:
"THIS PROGRAM WAS THE POSTHUMOUS WORK OF SHOICHI FUKATANI. HE WAS ONE OF THE BEST PRO"
This was written by programmer Fukashi Ohmorita, who himself seems to have passed away just last October.
Aw! That's lovely!
Worth noting that the only Western release of "Door Door" is as an Easter Egg in Chunsoft's "428 Shibuya Scramble".
Scrolled down to post this and happy to see it was the first comment. Definitely what sparked my interest in the title back when I played it a couple years ago.
Amazingly, Nakamura was a high school student when he submitted Door Door to Enix's contest. Talk about being an over-achiever!
There are three things certain in life: death, taxes, and Xevious references in Video Works.
And Heiankyo Alien. We get a twofer this episode!
@@montego200x The thing that amuses me is that I get the feeling Jeremy genuinely really likes Xevious, but could happily go the rest of his life without ever playing or thinking about Heiankyou Alien again lol
Heiankyou Alien is like Boxxle, neither are BAD games and I appreciate them for the impact they had on the medium.... but they can go away now. I've had enough lol
@@ValkyrieTiara Same with Lode Runner.
@@montego200x What would be a Jeremy Parish triple crown?
@@XanthinZarda Probably Sokoban (aka Boxxle, as Tiara mentioned) would round out the three.
The control scheme of Road Fighter actually has skill involved with hitting other cars. You must counter steer to regain control. Depending on the angle you hit other cars, it can be used as a technique in narrow roads to pass them when they're kind of hogging a bit of the middle, though with risk. Once you get a feel for counter steering, you're always thinking about it as you play along with the, you know, primary objective which is not to hit them in the first place.
Anyway, counter steering is done by steering the opposite direction your car faces, not the direction it moves. Spin slightly left, turn right, etc.
I am fascinated by Warpman and it out-bombing Bomberman by years!
Right? I'm curious to know if there are other games like this out there predating Bomberman, or if Warpman was the first to say "What if you took Pac-Man/Heiankyo Alien and gave the guy some claymore mines?"
@@JeremyParish InfantryMan: You get a shovel and also try not to blow yourself up with hand grenades.
Pac-Man is mostly a copy of Space Chaser, so Namco might as well have their games copied too.
Tower of Druaga, Heiankyo Alien, and Xevious mentions in one episode? You spoil us. That's got to be a Works hat trick.
I'm still in the beginning of the episode but just want to say that in Road Fighter if you hit a car and you swerve in the opposite direction of which you're spinning in combination with letting off the gas you can save yourself that way too. I just really love Road Fighter (as well as MonacoGP and Zippy Race for that matter.)
Recovering control in Road Fighter isn't just accidental stuff. If you see your car's front at a direction, steer the opposite. Usually that means you're steering while skidding in the same direction, but it works.
Reset both the Xevious and the Heiankyo Alien counter to zero in one video.
That’s a new record, that’ll probably not be beaten again, in the foreseeable future.
Druaga's comin' up soon...
A shame Warpman didn't come to North America - I would've had fun with this one, and the risk-reward mechanic is interesting. Also nice to see the beginning of Chunsoft, the developer that would go on to make the Mystery Dungeon games.
I'd never heard of "Door Door" before this. A major "Burgertime" vibe
Although it is different, I kept thinking of Hotel Mario.
I absolutely love the name "Door Door!" It's so simple, almost dumb sounding but perfectly describes what the game is all about! lol
And Warp & Warp was also called Warp Warp in some places.
The subtle touches of houses, people, and pools on the sidelines are so cool in Road Fighter.
14:23 “Permanently sealing it into the Phantom Zone” I was sort of thinking more a Cask of Amontillado scenario. Adorable video game protagonists always are revealed as merciless monsters at the most cursory examination.
Glad to see not only a reference to Xevious and Heiankyo Alien in this video, but also one to Dragon Quest. Which I feel it's gonna be more common the moment it hits in NES Works Gaiden which would be a little earlier than regular NES Works (I'm not being impatient or anything! I just think it's a fun thing to point out)
I own and love all of these. They all feel like they inspired what would become the games on Game Center CX
Yeah, you can definitely feel their influence.
I was getting a definite Robot Ninja Haggleman (from Retro Game Challenge) vibe from Door Door.
@@billcook4768 I forgot about the door mechanic there. I was more focused on Rally King and it's Road Fighter driving scheme.
I believe Arino-kachou did play Door Door on one of the very early episodes, that unfortunately hasn't been fully archived...
@@satoukazuma7952 I remember that episode (or challenge at least). it was the reason I hunted down the game way back then.
Road Fighter was surprisingly present in a lot of pirated cartridges here in India back in early 00s
Me and neighbor lads used to try to atleast reach the checkpoint.
There was a very ubiquitous 31-game bootleg multicart in my area growing up that had both Road Fighter and Zippy Race. We usually ignored them in favour of Excitebike.
I played the heck out of Road Fighter and Warpman on famiclones, and I completely forgot both existed until just now.
Area 88!!
Thanks again man, love your work, I was born in 82 and played lotta nes as a kid, finding out about games was ruff back then, Famicom games are always interesting to hear about,thanks man
Ticking the Xevious AND Heiankyo Alien boxes today?
What could be next…
Also, I've got to say that Door Door's got the most passive way to dispatch enemies in any single screen game I can remember. Dig Dug can CRUSH enemies with rocks or POP them like balloons. Pac-Man CHOMPS wandering ghosts, and even the star of Clu Clu Land can SMOOSH sea urchins against walls. But Chun? Here's an open door. Let me close it behind you, at which point nothing happens. You might get a little cold outdoors, I don't know. There's not much bang for the buck there.
I am watching Famidaily from the start, so it's interesting when suddenly this episode comes up on my playlist on the same day I watch the Famidaily episodes about these games.
I wonder how many more consistent game references these videos can have before we can make "Jeremy Parish" Bingo? 😛
Great video as always 😄
Very interesting episode, full of fascinating and clever tidbits.
I love how many classic racing games basically operate with the premise that you're the absolute slowest starter in the sport's history and you'll never take first because there's an infinite number of cars in front of you.
The runner up in the contest that found Door Door was the first game by Kazuro Morita. A name that doesn't mean much to western gamers, but he's the definitive Shogi software person.
Thanks for the enlightening information on road fighter and warpman, I use to play them in the 90s on a pirated 1 in 110 games nes cart that my dad bought from a thrift store. He use to bug me to play golf, baseball, pac man, and donkey kong on that cart.
Warpman is definitely a fun play on the Evercade. Nice to see Heiankyo Alien pop up again.
Nice to see Enix's debut with Famicom. Interestingly enough, one of Square Enix's most consistent hit making producers, Tomoya Asano, is from the Enix legacy division of SE. (Asano's games also use outsourced devs)
I found Warpman absolutely baffling when I first tried it. But now that Jeremy's given me something to work from, Namco 2 is in my machine for tomorrow's commute.
Obscure Bomber man trivia ftw!! 👍🏻👍🏻
🌟 DOOR DOOR PRO TIP 🌟 - you should be able to half close doors, which prevents the bad guys inside from escaping but also keeps the doors in play
I learned about Door Door through its feature on Game Center CX. Finally tracked down a copy last year, and it has become one of my favorite Famicom titles. It has so much charm, and the gameplay reminds me of a mix between Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in a really satisfying way.
I love a good Heiyankyo Alien reference. I played *every single* port of it for a (now non-existent) podcast years ago and absolutely fell in love with it. I was especially fond of the Super Famicom Nichibutsu Classics port, even got to play it two player a few times.
I had most of the games covered in this series on a pirate nes cart growing up. Great to see the actual names and official coverage.
Crazy how these are way more my childhood than Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, Zelda...
A Xevious and Heiyankyo Alien reference in one video. Jeremy is getting better at this.
At first I thought you were showing footage of an Apple II version of Door Door, I can't believe the Famicom version actually looks and runs like that.
I played a ton of road fighter as a kid! The red cars actually swerve in whatever direction you move, so it's possible to move towards them making them move in the opposite direction.
It was only shown briefly at around 11:17 but Zarth is actually a pretty good ADV game, at least by 1984 retro Japanese computer game standards. For one thing the art was done by an actual professional artist, that alone puts it above 80% of the contemporary releases, which were mostly done by bedroom hobbyist programmers with little - if any - drawing talent. (Often they would create graphics by taping a photo to the computer screen and awkwardly tracing it in a painting program, to give you an idea of the level of professionalism one could usually expect. Naturally in the latter half of the 80's, games with higher production standards would become the norm, of course)
This game is somewhat notorious in Japan for featuring a screenshot of a cute anime girl in a somewhat suggestive state of clothing damage in its magazine advertisements, and on the back of the box, luring a "certain type" of customer to purchase the game... only to find out that said girl only appears for about 6 seconds in the introductory sequence and is subsequently never seen or mentioned again, haha!
The story is pretty crazy and off-the-wall in that distinctive early-80s sci-fi manga type of way that I love: post-nuclear apocalypse, renegade AI, giant Gundam-style mechs on the moon!? Sign me up! Also the difficulty is fairly low, again relatively speaking. Many adventure games of the era, not just in Japan but the West as well, often devolved into insane moon-logic puzzles and "guess the verb" wall-banger stab-in-the-dark situations, yet Zarth is fairly intuitive and briskly paced. If you can get past the language barrier there are definitely worse games that Enix, Square, Sierra, Falcom etc. were putting out at the time.
Anyway, my apologies for typing such a long comment on a subject that is "tangentially related" at best and most of the people watching this video won't take a smidgen of interest :P
One of the pleasures of these series is filling in the blanks on what all those words on the Ridge Racer cars referred to. "Bosconian? Is that a drink?" Now I'm only left with the question of why the Warpman Bass Cruiser ended up being an SUV.
Interesting mix of quality-ish releases that never made a US appearance and still look like they’d be fun to dabble with in 2022….
Blown away by the sudden appearance of the PC-8801 Gumball!
Also - if you have the patience to add a Japanese account to your Switch, Warp Man is available piecemeal through the Namcot Collection (sometimes for as low as 200 yen).
I'm so glad you've covered Warpman, as I have a ROM for it on a famiclone bootleg thing and always assumed it was some sort of "made for NES" garbage, like all those badly-made topdown shooters, with the good graphics stolen from something else.
And I don't fully understand the hatred people have for Road Fighter. It's not that bad.
because its been put on every famiclone known to man
Door Door looks like it may be using sliding doors, which would make more sense for the doors able to open either direction.
These all look like pretty decent games for the time, never actually played any of them
How. In the hell. Had I not known about Warpman until I was today years old? That game would have totally been my jam back in the day! Not to mention, holy shit, Bomberman was a ripoff this whole time? Jeremy, you're blowing my mind, man!
I don’t know if Bomberman is a rip-off! But there was definitely prior art, legally speaking
@@JeremyParish Fair enough, but, as you said yourself, the similarities are remarkable, to say the least :)
Lovely video as always, Warpman and Door Door are both the perfect variety of weird overlooked early Famicom/NES fare. Dunno if it’s just me but I’m seeing a weird glitch in the game capture clips where the first few scan lines are offset to the left every other frame, making a weird flickering bendy effect. Doesn’t ruin the video or anything, but it might be worth tracking down the cause.
Whoa I haven't heard your voice since the days of 1up! Great video. I'll have to check out the rest of your work
5:29 Wonderful, I love it!
I first experienced all three of these games through multicart bootlegs. Being early games that don't consume much space at all without any special mapper chips meant they were common on the legally questionable 150 in 1s. Of course, most of my attention would be towards the likes of Mario and Bomberman, but I do remember finding out oh, actually, I _really_ like this "Battle City" game and this "Nuts & Milk" game.
Road Fighter was ho-hum to me. It felt like a Commodore or Atari game to me. The NES could do much more exciting games.
Warpman was certainly a lot more playable than Chack'n Pop, but it also never caught my attention.
Door Door was a game that child me couldn't figure out. It wasn't obvious what I needed to do. I was a dumb kid.
Good old Road Fighter AKA That car game on every Famiclone ever made.
That and Circus Charlie :D
And F1 Race, and Yie Ar Kung Fu, and Karateka, and... well... a lot of games made it to famiclones, including Battle City, Dig Dug, Mappy, between so many others.
Yeah, my childhood made me familiar with a good bunch of the Famicom catalogue.
The Door Door music sounds very similar to the opening synth riff from Yazoo's 1982 hit "Don't Go"
I'd go so far to say it is clearly a copy of it.
Thankfully copyright hadn't been invented back then
I'm greatly looking forward to your future video about Portopia! I played its fan translation about two years ago, and it got me hooked on the visual novel!
Eric and the Floaters!!!
These games are really interesting! At the same time, I can kind of understand why they didn't come over to North America, particularly Road Fighter considering what Konami prioritized during the NES' lifespan.
Wait, Road Fighter is the basis for all those racing games on bootleg plug and plays?
Huh
"Bespoke"? What it is, a Digital Foundry video?!
But, in all seriousness, a great episode of NEW Works Gaiden, Jeremy.
Adoorable
Loce the Area 88 intro
huh, i never knew door door was enix published, or chunsoft developed, or that it was chunsoft's first game under the enix label, or that it was both of their first offerings for famicom
I can't be the only one who thinks the Warpman aliens bare a striking resemblance to the Troggles from Number Munchers, right?
Considering my familiarity with Road Fighter thanks to Famiclones, one thing that bugged me with this video, is that after accelerating to 199 KM/h, you didn't press B to accelerate to 400 KM/h (letting go the A button), which makes you go faster.
Also, did you know that you can get a Konami Man to spawn if you go fast enough and you don't crash? I saw this in the first stage by driving almost to perfection and at top speed.
Yes thank! i thought the same and was looking for any comment in this regard. also the (disturbing) flying man can be see in each of the four level.
I get a copy of the game five years ago and was amaze to see the release date being 1992, seven years after the japanese version, and no US version?!
Warpman is quite fascinating.
Regarding Road Fighter:
If you press the way you're currently sliding, you get back in control very quickly.
Yeah I wanted to mention this as well. It's key to getting far into the game and makes it fun.
The manual (PAL version) actually has false instructions regarding this method.
I like the contrast of the sprites and that they don’t flicker in Road Fighter. I can clearly see what’s happening and that’s important for a racer.
6:36 - if you’re looking for another roommate you can just ask
The creator of the rogue like genre was a game known as rogue lol
Technically the genre was created two years earlier by Beneath Apple Manor, and popularized by Rogue.
You can avoid crashing when you bump into another car by quickly pressing left and right on the dpad.
@Jeremy Parish Just a quick question. Are you recording your games with a U-Matic tape? Also, Road Fighter rocks!
Xevious reference, everyone take a drink!
Rise of the Robots?! Noooooo!!! Not even Brian May could save that one!
I think it was a hint that the next episode will feature the two R.O.B. compatible games: Stack-Up and Gyromite, a.k.a. Robot Block and Robot Gyro.
Door Door is basically Heiyankyo Alien.
Also, Torneko's Mystery Dungeon is really fun, but it didn't invent the console roguelike: that honor goes to Dragon Crystal on SMS.
Yeah. I’ve already covered Dragon Crystal. But one of those games defined a genre and one just happened to be an early rough draft
@@JeremyParish That's one way of looking at it, I guess.
@@JeremyParish like how Metroid isn't really a Metroidvania, though I think calling it a rough draft is a disservice, as it really isn't the same type of game, since it's all about being an exploration challenge, with progression and gathering items being secondary, as opposed to Super Metroid (or the Zero Mission remake) where exploration is curtailed to never take priority over the progression and general game flow.
4:44 Xevious is to NES Works Gaiden what Heiankyo Alien is to GB Works at this point
the guy in Newtron is actually not Chun, but rather a completely different character named Ron
Warpman seems to be a clear step up from its arcade incarnation. Is that the first time we’ve seen that?
Warpman has some cross-pollination with Dig Dug by the looks of it.
I feel like maybe you could open a door from either side if it was sort of like a Jacob's ladder? Although I guess that would only work if there were another door immediately beyond the first one. This requires cogitation. Also, how did I miss this video for two weeks? I usually watch them as they come out. WEIRD. Anyway, I appreciate what you, Parish, do.
UPDATE: I guess it IS from today? Then why are there comments from two weeks ago? Again: WEIRD.
It was probably privated until today and the older comments are Patreon backers or something like that.
Those three games should have been released in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮
Ive got a weird soft spot for Yie Ar Kung Fu
Parish briefly touched on this in the description, but for whatever reason Konami decided to release Road Fighter in Europe in 1992 under its Palcom sublabel, almost seven years after its release. Mean Machines reviewed it and gave it a score of 9%, their worst rating ever.
That game is not a 9%. I wonder if that was Jaz's review? I should hassle him about it next time we see each other.
Edit: Ha, it was!
This is an example of how Jeremy Parish's chronological retrospectives put video games in their proper context. By the standards of 1985 Road Fighter was a decent game, but in 1992 it would have seemed outdated compared to games such as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Street Fighter II, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
i find really interesting how Warpman 1 and 2 are dressed and colored somewhat like Taizo hori and his Ex-wife (the protagonist of marmaduke) i suppose its a reference added just for the famicom release?
M-marmaduke?
@@JeremyParish They meant Baraduke.
Baraduke
Xevious!
I wish there is a English translation of the Wing man game
Why is the only one of these 3 released in the PAL territory....
And why was it road fighter.
Wonder why so many games around this time had a letter-to-spell-a-word collecting mechanic?
I think it's a pretty good way to save dev time by making the score-increasing powerup something that already exists in-game. Most games probably have some sort of text-graphics, if only to let the player enter their initials for a high-score. So reuse those graphics and do something that feels intuitive with them- namely using letters to spell out a word.
At least, that'd be my off the cuff, unprofessional guesstimation.
Also if you do numbers instead, that's how you end up with Donkey Kong Jr. Math. Do you want Donkey Kong Jr. Math?
"Drop a crucifix"
that is not a crucifix
Agree. That looked more like an Iron Cross to me.
I may be alone in this, but there early famicom games are mostly just *so* incredibly boring, and Warpman really highlights that fact by being actually different.
All three of these games are great and your fairy godmother says she is very disappointed in you
These games seem quote primitive... It's not so bad they never came to NES to me...