Astro Robo Sasa / Honshogi / Robot Gyro retrospective: Welcome to the machine | NES Works Gaiden #39
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- The machines have risen, taking control of this trio of games and obviating humanity altogether. Well, almost altogether. R.O.B. at least demonstrates the value of mankind working together, hand-in-, uh, claw with its new synthoid overlords to defeat the vile Smicks in Robot Gyro. As for the other games, well, they're all about robo-kind's fight for dominance. If my performance in Honshogi is anything to go by, carbon-based life is doomed.
Production notes:
Video Works is funded via Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its TH-cam debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more!
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. NES/Famicom footage captured from @analogueinc Nt Mini Noir. Video upscaled to 720 with @retrotink339 5X.
Jeremy your Video Works series' have inspired me to dabble in retro gaming myself. I recently got an AV Famicom and now slowly building up my little collection of games. Before I had little reason to be excited over 8-bit games, but being able to play them with the vast knowledge you've passed down to us viewers in mind, it really adds a new dimension to the experience.
Fantastic sketches between the sections😁I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
"Never chase a pteranodon up an ice mountain in order to recover your eggplants" is not a sentence I knew I needed to hear, and it the best advice I've ever been given.
Thank you, Mr Parish
A lesson I will take to heart.
I had SaSa on one of those sketchy 64000 games in 1 carts. I don't know why, but I really loved that game, even in like 95; well after it's day.
I plan to get the small, Fake PS5 thing, for decorating. Maybe it'll be on that one, too!
Jeremy, thank you for a 15 minute respite from horror, anxiety, and despair. Yesterday’s leak has done a number on my mental fortitude and this video was a pleasant distraction.
Man, the Wii U seemed like the PERFECT chance to port this by having ROB be on the Game Pad screen and have the TV screen show the actual game.
Oh well.
You always nail these videos and its great watching you dive deep into the history of certain titles you openly admit to not even finding to be that much fun to play.
AAA as usual.
It would have been a good choice for the 3D Classics line for the same reason.
cute set dressing on this one, love to see you being creative and having fun
I love the sketches today. The triple threat of ROBs is quite menacing!
I've always found ROB the robot to be a creepy, menacing character in some aspects.
First the AVGN came with the episode 100, and now Mr.Parish comes with these sketches: the menace is real! :D
Greetings for your works: as a long time 8-bit enthusiast, it's always a pleasure to hear your words.
I send you a pixelated hug.
Originally, I questioned the need for NES Works in a world where Chrontendo exists. Especially since that goes through a lot more titles per episode.
After watching you explain the history of Honshogi, I can't believe I was ever so skeptical. You have a genuine love for the history of gaming that's refreshing to come back to, while Chrontendo increasingly seems to be forcing themselves to suffer.
There's room for both approaches, and I apologize if comparisons to other people's work makes you uncomfortable, but I wish there was more content like this out there. Right now, it seems to be just you, Atari Archives, Generation 16, Swan Song, and Pandemonium. with others focusing on memorable titles (The Spectrum Show) or having a broader scope (Kim Justice, BastichB 64K, Lady Decade) or focusing on the comedy. (Retro Pals)
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy all of these channels (Haven't missed a single Retro Pals stream.) but...
But doing things the way you do them is the only way to make even niche' and mediocre games shine as brightly as when they were new, to their intended audiences.
It's as close as we can get to actual time travel....if that makes any sense? I would kill for a channel that takes this approach to the history of film - but those hopes seem to have gone up in flames.
I just wanted to drop in and say thanks for the recommendations! Jeremy has been been my favorite TH-camr for a while now, and I've been on the lookout for other channels that take a similar approach to coverage of retro games for a while now. I was aware of Atari Archives (only because Jeremy mentioned them in one of his videos), but I had never heard of any of the others you listed.
Wow, I guess this was robot mania week. Wouldn't have guessed the Shogi game had a robot opponent. Famicom 1985 is at very close to Super Mario Brothers now.
Hmmm… Humanity retaining its freedom OR a totalitarian robot overlord that doesn’t seem to mention Xevious and Heian-kyō Alien in every video… Tough choice…
Loved the subtle Futurama reference.
Speaking of Shogi and games like it, there was a chess game for the Odyssey2 (more accurately, its European counterpart the VideoPac) that included a cartridge and an expansion module, merged together with a cable. The expansion module was more powerful than the system itself, which was handy as the Odyssey2 wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to handle the game by itself.
Odyssey2 games tended to be rather abstract in their designs because of the limitations of the system. There was a game called Pachinko, but it's probably more accurate to call it "Robots Poke At Balls with Pool Skimmers." Popeye is the demake-iest of demakes, as simple as it could possibly be while still being recognizable as Popeye. Sort of. I mean, Bluto could almost be mistaken for the character in the arcade game if you squint and have terrible eyesight.
That was a fairly ominous ending.
I wonder how long a Shogi match between two early Famicom era Shogi robots would take
Decades long.
I really enjoy Sasa. I remember discovering it on a multicart and having a good time. It was one of the first Famicom carts I hunted down. It's a neat expansion on the Lunar Lander idea.
Hon Shougi is like the Famicom's Silent Service. It's a super cheap, very common game that seemingly nobody wants to play.
So that's where Cave Story got its "gun kickback jetpack" gameplay element
It makes me really happy to see you bring up Epoch so much in this series. They had a really important hand in leading the Japanese console market, and even if they'd dropped off by this point I'd love to see a retrospective of their prior work, pre-famicom.
As soon as my Cassette Vision video mod and recap is complete, I’ll be diving in
Astro Robo reminds me of one of the 8bit-style mini games in No More Heroes 2. The mini game is called Getting Trashed. You use air to propel yourself in the opposite direction in space. The more air you expel, the less oxygen you have to complete the level.
My folks got me the Deluxe Set one Christmas and I recall briefly using ROB before realizing I could just push Player 2's buttons myself a lot faster. Still, loved the robot and had him on display for years in my room
Pretty sure we will see Jeremy again, the Robots are bound to have a 'bring your human to work' day.
R.O.B. and the Amiibos be like "do not address to me or my progeny ever again"
No joke. I became aware of Astro Robo Sasa through a parody of it in Hyperdimension Neptunia MK2.
Lol the Futurama reference was a nice touch
Honshogi actually means "the basic Shogi". This word is used to differentiate this specific type of Shogi from other variants (yes, there are Shogi variants). The Hon(本) here is used as Kihon(基本), which means "basic", instead of "book".
I see. Might want to let Giant Bomb's wiki editors know, since their translation of the title was what came up first when I did a title search. www.giantbomb.com/honshogi-naitou-kudan-shogi-hiden/3030-37125/
Yeah, each part of this game's title feels like a deliberate dig at Sega's contemporary SG-1000 release. "Oh, you have the endorsement of a Hachidan? Well we have a Kudan here! Oh, your game only has "tsume"-shogi? Well, ours has the real shogi!" Since the kanji "本" also has nuances of "true/pure/original" (as in 本当, 本来 etc.)
“It’s Gyro Robo!!” - Daniel
I feel like the level variety in Sasa is pretty considerable for its time. Like, they probably could've gotten away with basing the entire game around just one of those levels, but instead they kept mixing it up with something new each time.
Astro Robo Sasa is definitely a game where you need to do everything very deliberately.
Gyromite was more fun as a two player game where you demand your little cousin give your pillar a radish to crush or be flattened/trapped themselves. She claims she doesn't remember the torture no matter how many times I bring it up so apparently I got away with it.
Thank goodness the Angry Video Game Nerd defeated the Robotic Operating Buddy. There's no telling what calamity those slowly repositioned spinning gyros would have unleashed.
5:59 And she taught that though you can no dunk, are good with fundamentals.
Interestingly I was playing Astro Robo Sasa just recently, for the nostalgia.
I hope we see more of our future robotic destroyers in future videos 🤓
all your videos are the best
I, for one, welcome our Robot overlords.
ALL HAIL ROB!
-Sasa has a mechanic similar to Air Fortress, though in the latter, moving depletes energy, standing still replenishes it and getting hit reduces the max energy you'll recover. Itself a precursor to the dreadful Final Fantasy XV.
-I'll probably never know what playing Gyromite with R.O.B. is like, but moving the gates by hand obviously deprives it of any tension.
welp, Mr. Parish had a good run, lol. all hail our robot overlord buddy! :P SASA sounds interesitng at least, not one I ever really tried. I think my Japanese board game knowledge only goes as far as Othello, (thanks to getting hooked on the NGPC version) so Shogi still remains a mystery to me.
So Astro Robo Sasa also has electric seaweed, years before the infamous TMNT level. As the concept has no basis in reality, I wonder if there is some older Japanese source these games are pulling from?
I'll say this now... It was a bit disappointing when Nintendo did not make a Super R.O.B. and Super Light Gun Phaser for the Super Nintendo and no the Super Scope does not count as a light gun.
Did I miss the Xevious reference?! Hmmm…..
Welp. It's been a good run, boys.
Rob The Robot was a excellent idea at the time.
Can you please change the palette from the super bright one to one that mimics how the games looked on the console?
My palette settings have not changed in years.
@@JeremyParish OK.
I built a cuatom gyromite co troller that outputs d-pad presses to controller 1 and button presses to controller 2.
I esse tially cut 2 controllers in half and duct taped them together. Ok, its a touch more complicated than that...
Not sure if you'll read this but for someone who likes to delve into console libraries in chronological order, do you recommend starting with the NES or Famicom library first? I assume the latter.
Go with the Famicom. It starts out strong, with the kind of golden age arcade style the machine was originally built around.
Plus, you'll need that context to make sense of games that aged badly, like Hylide.
And it keeps you from taking games like Super Mario Bros for granted. Many westerners tend to think of that as the starting point for the platform, when it was nearly the grand finale to send the cartridge format out with a bang.
Now I want to go play cave story
Futurama reference.
sasa is a very fun game, even if it's incredibly brutal. i wish it was replicated or ported
2:14 another accidentally topical video. (this was available to watch for patrons two weeks earlier.)
The "must hate Elon Musk" directive originally went out around the time he purchased his 9% stake in Twitter, which was a month ago. This is less prophetic than you're giving it credit for.
I was specifically thinking of the way he tanks his company stocks periodically by saying stupid edgelord things on social media
@@JeremyParish my only point was that throwing shade at Elon Musk was already on trend two weeks ago. Yep, he periodically says things that tank his stocks (and others'.) No argument there.
Throwing shade on Musk transcends fashion, which is pretty cool really.
Take this robot, but beware it requires energy...
That's bad.
But it comes with a free energy!
That's good.
The energy also drains.
That's bad.
But you get your choice of energy!
That's good.
The energy contains Potassium Benzoate. ...That's bad.
Can I go now?
I had Sasa on a multi Kart back in the day & could never really get into it
Cool
Are you the same guy who runs the "Whatever Happened to Pizza at McDonald's?" podcast?
No
I guess one way one can do Nintendo vs. Sega is by playing the shogi games and playing the AI's moves in the other game..!
Appreciated the Musk slam. Our brave libertarian emerald heir to lead us into couping whoever we want for minerals produced by child slaves.
"very intelligent people" I think that's too much credit. He bought a car company and made people think he was always in charge.
Low cunning is a form of intelligence. (And so is the ability to spend your parents' infinite supply of apartheid murder gems)
@@JeremyParish Most definitely. I'll accept "intelligent". It's "very intelligent" that I draw the line at.
I might be wrong, but I remember how in SaSa you can screw yourself for later stages by playing poorly in the early stages - shots are always precious even if you have a lot of them. Frustrating, really. edit: aaaaaand you just said exactly what I typed.
I feel sorry for the cow spazzing out after being shot by a robot from space.
You don't have to spend time with people? Cool! I should hang with you! Need a roommate? B&B type of set up then? I have hurd of people renting out there front porch! Okay you just think on it for a bit! No rush! I understand you need space, a little time.
Might as well just play Gyromite with 2 controllers one in each hand
Next April get ready for Jeremy’s top 10 most boring famicom cover arts.
I don’t know if I would call Elon Musk “intelligent” to be honest.
But… his epic memes…