Zippy Race / Super Arabian / Front Line retrospective: Origin of the feces | NES Works Gaiden #37
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ย. 2024
- OK, this week we have the ACTUAL debut of Irem on Famicom, but it's hard to say TOSE's take on Zippy Race makes for a splashier debut than 10-Yard Fight would have. At least 10-Yard Fight had the benefit of not having been shown up by a conversion of the same game to technically inferior hardware more than a year earlier. TOSE also helps a second publisher make its debut here with Sunsoft's first Famicom release: A similarly underwhelming arcade-to-console conversion of the game Arabian. If you love Ice Climber's jump physics (spoilers: you don't), you'll love Super Arabian (spoilers: you won't).
Finally, wrapping up the episode, we have another arcade port from Taito. Front Line more or less invented a genre, but does that mean this version has any value besides its place in history? (Spoilers: it doesn't.) Yes, it's dark times for Famicom.
Production notes:
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NES/Famicom footage captured from @analogueinc Nt Mini Noir. SG-1000 footage captured from a combination of Sega SG-1000 II with (with Card Catcher) and @analogueinc Mega Sg with card adapter module and DAC. Vintage hardware mods courtesy of @iFixRetro . Video upscaled to 720 with @retrotink339 5X.
It's fun to see how even games that weren't the best would inspire others to do better
I love to see the evolution of the ideas into proper fun gameplay elements
@@thedeadpoolwhochuckles.6852 Sometimes at least..!
Big props to the lil Front Line guy, taking it to the enemy despite his bad case of rickets.
I'm pretty sure that in Frontline you're a WWII Japanese soldier mowing down the Chinese. Which actually led to a bit of outrage in Japan on the game's Famicom release. It was the first Famicom game where you have a human shooting other humans and that had Japanese parents decrying violent video games.
Also, I didn't spot any footage of the fourth board in Super Arabian, let alone later loops where they change all the words again! Can't blame you there since that third stage with the carpets is just a nightmare to play. There's actually a lot of concessions to the home player there like an easy way to make yourself invincible and how the djinn almost never shows up on the first loop. That doesn't make it a better game, though.
Seems bad!
I liked the part where you talked to Rob like he was a baby
He didn’t, I’m afraid
@@JeremyParish I'm sorry to hear that. I guess it's up to you to decide if you want to do it again or not, though, of course, it always was.
This time on NES Works, it's bring your child to work day.
I love my son, even if he is a useless layabout
@@JeremyParish mine is the same, can't even pick up after himself.
The leg movements on Frontline and the way the little pistol rotates made me lol at work.
2:24 I love how the car just flies off the road like his planet needs him. I also adore Kangaroo, so it's always nice to see it show up again. Also, congrats for not mentioning Xevious in this video!
Front Line depicts the adventures of a militant Devo fan on the rampage.
The Mothersbaugh of All Wars
“A prince of Persia,” huh? That would make a great title for a mystery game set on a train.
My god: Taito really let Front Line Frank get far up the screen, didn’t it?
Oh lord please please PLEASE let "Front Line Frank" be the character's canon name!
@@jessragan6714 i looked up the arcade manual and it just says "the player"
I admit that Front Line was a guilty pleasure from my trusty 64-in-one multicart 😬
Mine is Front Line's arcade rotary-aiming sibling, Wild Western. Unfortunately, that one was never ported to consoles (as far as I know).
I don't think anyone else quite says the word "jank" with as much sting to it.
Having Rob as a little silent co-host is great. Really made me smile! Great content as usual!
And Robert here is gonna serve as our little buddy here for a while, I reckon.
its not like he has a ton of works oustide of the blocks and gyros... and saying hello to a certain pink puff
@@alex_-yz9to It will be several years before he becomes a submarine navigator, too.
When Frontline came out, it was incredible. I loved the coin-op and the Coleco Vision version. By the time this Famicom conversion came out, it was pretty long in the tooth I imagine.
I was really into Front Line at the time. It was interesting to see the progress when I first encountered Ikari Warriors in the arcade. I was fascinated that SNK managed to merge the rotary dial with their joystick.
Yeah, both Irem and Sunsoft would go on to make better games for Famicom and NES. The games inspired by Front Line would mostly show the potential of Front Line's concept and a nice tease of Jackal, which should be coming to NES Works soon.
Most of the big arcade hits from this era got good home ports, many getting released over and over again. But Kangaroo got released on the 2600/5200 and that’s about it. Bummer.
There's a clone of Arabian on the C64 called Tales of the Arabian Nights. It's the exact same game, with the same stages and goal just you have to get the letters in order and it has synthesized speech at the title screen as well as at the start of each stage explaining that chapter of the game.
Astrocade. Astrocade has a similar paddle/joystick hybrid. And Coleco's Gemini too, but that was a specially adapted Atari 2600 so that probably doesn't count.
Anyway, I marvel at how forward thinking Front Line was. It's like, all the tropes you've come to expect from an NES action game, years before the NES. It feels weirdly incongruent in the pre-crash era.
I thought Front Line was a weird Commando knockoff. And in reality it was first by years, in the fast-moving early 1980s game industry no less.
I think the Bally Astrocade had a rotating control stick, but I'm not sure I'd want to imagine what Front Line would look like on that system.
I love your show notes and if people aren't reading them or don't know that they're there, they're really missing out.
Couldn't the Intellivision have made a good controller for Tron? It has a circular disc that can spin and can press down to fire along with plenty of buttons.
beginning to think Tosei and Micronix were the Ubisofts of their day
Doing research on Atari Inc.'s coin-up division recently, who licensed Kangaroo for U.S. arcades, revealed the fact that their programmers really looked down on it. They hated it!
I sort of agree with them. Any game that assigns jump to pushing up on the stick - esp. when pushing up is also used for other actions like climbing ladders - is at least deserving of reappraisal.
Atari Vs. Europe
I imagine the Intellivision controller could ALSO have played a mean game of Front Line, with it's disc pad thing and TV remote style square bank of buttons... but I can't imagine why you would want it to.
Love the music references.
Thank you for discussing the history of these games. I use to play all these on my nes back in the day and love em cause I played them with my family. The conversion of front line is good if you we're looking for arcade action on the nes. Keep up the good work.
That sunsoft pun at the beginning made me groan almost as much as “floppy seconds” 😂
Frontline has to have the derpiest walk animation I think I've ever seen in a game.
There’s really no other word for it
Ally Viper and B.A.T. in the background!
holy shit was that Cosmo Police Justy??
You win the prize. I do not know what the prize is
what a wonderfully thoughtful take on front line!
The early Famicom days certainly had its fair share or games that only really made for a couple minutes of playtime before I'd get bored. I can play games like Pac-Man and Galaga for over an hour, but... these three are rough.
OMG...Front Line and Arabian...i totally forgot about those two games!
nothing screams bootleg multicart/NES on a chip system sold at a mall kiosk more than Front Line
Why does that sand-themed Zippy Race map look mighty familiar...??
Kinda looks like a Paris-Dakar rally stage? That was my thought, anyway.
At first I misread this as Super Ambien, which would be a far more interesting game
Sounds like a real snoozer to me
@@JeremyParish A combination of LSD Dream Emulator and Rez Infinite
11:56 "The only console controller that could have potentially reproduced this setup, I think, might have been the Fairchild Channel F's"
The Bally Professional Arcade (AKA Astrocade) had a controller very similar to the Channel F with a joystick with a paddle controller on top. The big difference is that it had a separate button instead of pushing the controller.
There are four built-in programs on the Astrocade and two of them support joystick and paddle control simultaneously. Here is Gunfight (like Atari's Outlaw but predating it) being played. th-cam.com/video/Vnj4Wqh_Tbo/w-d-xo.html
I always think of Pat The NES Punks review of Front Line (now I think about it, that review has prob been nuked as it was a tribute to JewWario) and his comments about how your character shoots the gun crooked as hell.
2:57 Highway? Did the civil engineer plot the route while falling down the stairs? Nice sprite animations but truckers would avoid this route at all costs.
I admit the ubiquitous hedgerow is pleasing.
The Origin of the Feces?
Type O Negative?
Haha nice intro. But I'm not going to assume you're a Beatles fan after that fiasco where I thought you made three Stephen King references in a video and you had no idea what I was talking about haha
That’s good, I’d hate to have to bring Maxwell’s silver banhammer down upon your head
@@JeremyParish LOVE IT!
Just think of how crazy that would sound if you didn't get the reference, and forgive me for the King stuff, to millions of people it would have been as fun as what you said haha
Frontlines failures that led us to taito making the vaus controller. Would the vaus save frontline? Prolly not but I can’t play Arkanoid without it.
Oh god, Frontline, that's what it's called, haha
Anyone know what the story is as far as plot and setting in this game?
I believe the plot is “pew pew”
3 underwhelming ports of 3 (mostly) derivative arcade games that somehow don't even manage to have a tertiary third degree of separation from xevious, and they all turn out to be incredibly forgettable. coincidence or fate? you decide.
Tertiary AND third?
Wtf, no Xevious OR Heiankyo Alien references??
It's feast or famine
Super Arabian and Front Line should have been released in the USA in the first place. 😀👍🎮
Atari 2800????
Correct.