Mischief Makers - Nitro Rad

foreign [Music] the N64 now this thing right here had a really good variety of platforming games and man some of these were the very first games I ever sunk a lot of time into for most people these days that would probably be like an Elder Scrolls game or something similar but for me it was Donkey Kong 64. that is my real play time from when I was a kid right there yeah I know bananas but I think it was mostly just me leaving the game on and just hanging out in the game's world you know I mean this was the first machine that could really take me somewhere different from Princess Peach's castle to the Glade of Dreams the spiral mountain in Silicon Valley this thing offered so many 3D Platformers that all had their own unique worlds that were ready to be explored back then just Open Spaces were an exciting new thing and so much so that I'm not even sure that people really as they were still even making 2D games on N64 mostly Fighters and mostly puzzle games but there was a pretty wicked platformer it's kind of easy to forget since you know 2D games were way more of a PlayStation thing at the time but one of the most beloved Platformers on N64 was actually a 2d side scroller it was a game called Mischief Makers and it was by a developer called treasure and I tell you that is just so freaking fitting because all of their games kind of do feel like buried treasure you know I love that cover art that is so sick just classic 90s ass CG render right there back when the American covers all focused on showcasing the impressive 3D technology and the Japanese covers focused on looking uh good and hey don't get me wrong I still love my classic retro chunky 3D renders it's just that uh no it's just nothing now what am I talking about I'm glad they had this disconnect it just means that we got more cool artwork in the long run and besides people emulate old 3D looks deliberately now I can't pretend that this isn't cool art too either way it's an incredibly memorable cover and I know that personally I never forgot what this thing looked like when I was a little kid I saw this on the Shelf at Blockbuster back in the old days of renting cartridges and everything about it grabbed me unlike anything else that was there just the expressiveness the Stark pose and the colors and angles I just had to stare at it at least for a little bit I'm not entirely sure why I didn't rent it I probably saw it was a 2d game yeah I think I looked at the back of it and it just wasn't what I was looking for because you know back in the 90s you bought the N64 to play these new 3D games and I just played Mario 64. I want to see what else what other you know worlds I could look around uh so I think it just wasn't what I was looking for but I always regretted not trying it because I would just keep keep thinking about it what was that weird game I saw I kept thinking about the cover I kept thinking about the weird character designs I saw in the front and the back it was like what was that game but unfortunately I never really got the chance to rent games often enough to ever go back and give it a shot eventually I did try it in high school but I played it on an emulator and it was like super broken and it didn't look right and I took like I took like four steps I was like this is broken I can't play this and then I just never touched it since not for any particular reason it just kind of became one of those bucket list games that you know I knew I would get to it eventually and uh Hey eventually it's now I guess I know someone who did rent this game as a kid though my friend Brandon told me that when he was a little kid and this game was new he rented it because he liked the character on the cover and uh he told me that he brought her home puts it in and it was like a bad dream he says that there was like there's like this face this horrible face on everything like every block every character every object every random thing even the houses like every house was just covered in these horrible terrifying face is just just conveying pain and anguish and suffering and he said it was terrifying to him as a kid and uh and that's that's all I really know about this game so uh why don't we pluck it in and I give it a shot so more about treasure that's a logo you want to see every game you see the treasure logo on it is guaranteed to be a little different a little interesting I I played the side scroller for the PS1 buy them a while back when I was just browsing stuff I threw in the PS1 classic you played as this little witch character and you switch sides to change color and there's mechanics revolving around that what the hell was a thing that was a silhouette Mirage silhouette Mirage that's what it was I hope you don't want to copy of that game they've made a lot of really cool and cute stuff I'm sure a lot of people know gun star Heroes on Genesis stretch Panic is also something I've always wanted to try they made a bang i o that shmup game with a they cutesy anime characters ikaruga as well that was on Dreamcast and GameCube and uh they've even made a couple of games for Nintendo too they haven't made anything in forever I don't even know if they're still around anymore but they were a golden example of those quirky Japanese Studios that we used to have populating the video game industry with all sorts of wicked and weird weird stuff like of course Mischief Makers we start off with this little anime intro and this would have been nuts seeing this on N64 back in the day the Super Nintendo never had Sprites like this and linking them all together into this little intro really freaking cool and uh yeah we got all the villains whizzing by showing them off big evil mustache must be the main uh main villain hearty old laugh what the hell is what the hell is that thing oh ew ew what what are those who are these oh yeah yeah yeah get them out of here I don't want to see that little I don't want to see that little whoa holy [ __ ] [Music] why is the title screen music like way too amazing it feels like I'm approaching the great robot Shrine of ancient Malarkey dick I've never heard many stuff sound quite like this WOW a quick little fun fact in Japan the game is called UK UK troublemakers so instead in that version the title screens I'll like Rubble to make her suit oh my I've I've actually never booted this cartridge before looks like it was well loved I love that ah is the one that they put all the time into I'm leaving that there uh bye-bye Skippy it's James's file now M or F Well I'm a gamer so M for Mario I don't know why you need my age though I don't know what that is to do with anything I'm 29 right now okay [Music] oh wow that's a wicked transition man I'm bored I came to visit the planet of clancer and I can't go out why can't you go out Professor doctor Marina told me to stay in the space ship until she's done from scouting so the story follows this scientist and his Guardian robot companion that he built Marina who we know from the cover and they're visiting an alien planet called clancer things go very wrong very quickly though in some clancers which are the aliens that live there storm the ship and take his ass away what's this guy hear me crawling for how does that help everyone's going you're still here doing this then we have this level select screen okay we just got a 1-1 meet Marina we open with the clancers flying off with the professor uh Weaver ordered to take you to our emperor that's all we know but what I do know is that you'll have a horrible time with us get ready to cry and scream and there we are Marina the ultra Intergalactic cybot G and you're the people who kidnapped my Prof this guy's like no no we didn't do that uh all the cleansers just look exactly the same but don't get it twisted there's ones that work for the Empire and then there's just the normal ones that want to live peacefully like this guy oh my God even even the blocks have the same face Jesus Christ I see what Brandon was talking about now this is horrific I think it really reminds me of the um the uboa face from you maniki it's just a it's It's just sad it just conveys like like sadness anguish pain I almost wonder if it's supposed to be like riffing on Super Mario or something you know how the clouds and the hills and stuff they all have these happy little faces it almost feels like one of these developers was playing Mario 3 or Mario World or something they're like yeah it would be funny be funny if all these faces were expressing abject Terror instead oh my God even the flowers even the butterflies talk about like gray goo ego you know oh scary control stick doesn't do nothing at all in this game how am I supposed to hold this controller since we were just Escaping The Second Dimension for the very first time the N64 controller was designed with both 2D and 3D games in mind just not in the modern sense where your hands still have access to the the whole controller at once rather it was intended to have different modes for different games change and I see why people get confused by this though because in the grand scheme of things there weren't very many games that used this grip style and it didn't help that popular games like Zelda would like put the map on the L button making you think like wait what huh am I supposed to be able to reach that I grew up with a number of 2D games on N64 that I'll use the d-pad so I guess I had the context to be like oh I see what's going on here but if you never had a game like that you'd probably always wonder why there is this mostly unused d-pad Island over there games like Mischief Makers is why the movement is locked to a 2d plane so all we really need are the eight trusty directions of a d-pad so of course you can press the a button to do a jump it's uh just a singular jump you can't press the a button again to double jump or anything like that uh no instead the movement options are explored further by the C buttons to have one of these bright yellow guys and Marina's gonna do a short Dash in that direction very cool now you can't hold the button to keep jetting forever but you can match the button to keep boosting over and over uh doing this you can really fly through the air which is really fun boosting upwards it doesn't fly away or anything but it does let you add an extra little chunk of height to any jump you can also use it the hover in place which is super helpful this way you can have an extra second or two to think of what to do in mid-jump you can also Dash downwards very helpful for speeding up those drops anytime you need to make haste it's a very cool control style and I really love how much the game actually gets out of it none of these directions feels at all wasted the game is always making good use out of all four of these buttons you can also do the dashes by double tapping the d-pad but I kinda wish you couldn't because it happens by accident a lot and sometimes it even gets me hurt and besides having every direction conveniently mapped to its own button is really freaking cool I haven't really played anything else that really feels like this controlling it it's just so unique it kind of feels like they picked up the controller and they closed their eyes and they start tapping the buttons and it's like okay you know if these aren't doing anything with a camera what is this doing for our character and you kind of tap it out and I don't know you kind of feel the light bulbs going off in their head and and that really is the magic of the N64 controller is that these are always meant to be camera buttons in the same way that like a right stick is for now usually but you didn't have to use it for that you could do a lot of other cool things with having like a buttons version of the right stick you know if you're tapping the stick for for the jet Direction it wouldn't really feel quite as Snappy and precise as just tapping the buttons so you know say what you will about the N64 controller but the layout did lead to some cool stuff sometimes as for other movement options Marina also has a sliding kick that you can do by crouching and pressing a jumping out of this we'll have Marina go way higher than usual so it's really good for getting up to out of the way areas it's pretty much just a slide jump from Crash Bandicoot if you've played that I guess Justin 2D of course which is a much more interesting option than a boring double jump would have been I like it when the moves require a little bit of a deliberacy I find that always makes executing a move way more engaging so yeah having to worry about the space a little bit I do like that a lot there's a slight physics aspect to the jump as well jumping up and jetting it'll have different results depending on your timing you really have to jump up into it if you want to get the most height so that's what we got for moving moves as for other moves like uh like action moves we only have one and the entire game revolves all around it the B button this guy is gonna have Marina grapple whatever is in front of her this could be a piece of the environment you want to climb this could be an enemy or it could just be something you want to pick up and carry around there's a lot of things you can do with this grab move it's really impressive honestly where do I even begin Clan balls I guess yeah let's start with Clan balls that's what these things are called I think everything with a clancer face has the same prefix I don't know why but anyway these things are a major component of the gameplay they're everywhere they're as frequent as blocks in a Mario game and like blocks they're for a lot of different things but mostly for getting around grab one hold a direction and simply tap b again you'll pop off grab the next rinse and repeat and you're popping and bopping around the stage there's also ones that ride on tracks ones that rotate and stretch when you dash while holding them some of them are switches some will spawn things like a bomb need for a puzzle or an item or something they always seem to have some random function now the way you interact with stuff is probably one of the more well-known things about this game the way you do that is by grabbing hold of it and giving it a good shake shake shake double tap C down and Marina's gonna give that thing a good Russell knocking out Whatever item is inside or triggering whatever mechanism it's connected to it's basically how you interact with everything in the game other than like talking to people that you do with the shoulder buttons yeah it's a weird choice I don't know any other games where you advance dialogue with r and l you also skip cut scenes with a zed button that's another weird one I don't even find that until halfway through it all makes sense though the rest of the controller is all used up so that's all you kind of got left the game tries to encourage you to shake everything you see so there's all these little hidden things you can find or make something do for example if you have a missile launcher your fire and missiles shake it and they'll all turn into homing missiles during this boss fight you can catch rockets and throw them back at him but if you think that shake the rocket it'll make them bigger and stronger it it's this extra little thing where if you think to do it you just might find something cool you can also use the grapple to pick up and throw just about anything bombs boomerangs clancers you could just knock the [ __ ] out of these guys for no reason they're not even bad guys I'm just being mean some clancers are enemies though they'll usually be wearing a hat and will come to attack you deal with them by grabbing them and shucking them around into the ground into lava into other clancers whatever you want just grab and throw it's it's kind of awesome it feels like they made an entire game out of suplex Kirby it just doesn't get old I don't know why like something about grabbing these poor guys and hurling them around at each other I don't know if it's a sound effects or the feeling of weight behind each throw but it's really satisfying very silly too it's also really interesting how we're shown how to fight through a boss instead of giving us a regular enemy to try like a game usually would but I guess since it all revolves around grappling it makes total sense to teach us using a single large character instead of throwing a bunch of little guys at us and if you want to make clobber in them cleansers even more interesting sometimes you can find a weapon to fire at them I love this idea of things being in your hands like sometimes just holding on to something can change the gameplay whether it be changing the way you attack enemies or even changing the way you get around the stage maybe you'll grab a spring cleanser to bounce around the level or maybe you'll grab onto a tricycle and hit those ramps and that just about covers the whole controls it's all about Jet and grabbing and throwing very very fun it's so simple but I think they got two actions that bounce off of each other really well is why and on top of having very Snappy and precise controls the camera is also really good at tracking your character feels like it's always pushed out in the direction that I actually want to see whether it's up or right or left or anywhere uh though with how much it can fling all around I wouldn't blame somebody for finding it a little bit nauseating sometimes all right so the objective of each level is to find the warp star at the end sometimes you'll do that just by scrolling through you know platforming to the level left to right just like any old side scroller but sometimes you might have to navigate something a little bit more tricky or maybe you'll have to solve some puzzles to feed some enemies or maybe you'll even have to fulfill some sort of story based objective like this level here this lady lost her kids you gotta track them down chase them around come here your little [ __ ] scoop them up bring them all back and once you're done you get a delicious warp gate sandwich this one here has Taran greeting you he's a glancer with a little ball cap and he reveals that if you shake him he can transform into his alter ego block man the controls on this guy are really neat it's all about nudging him in different ways boosting in different directions to get different results and doing different combinations getting all these little different movements it is so cool it has like a one-off stage gimmick this is like this is cool as [ __ ] in some of the later levels you'll even play as Taryn in his normal form he has a totally different move set it's less about 5 fighting and more about spamming jumps and gliding through the level with ease oh I like that slide kick too that's pretty good this next level has a giant worm intruding on taryn's sister's Garden slap him around until he blows up and you're the winner next one has you in the gang fighting off hordes of clancers and then the next one after that is this platforming stage where you have to find a bomb and then blow up the wall blocking your way so yeah first world is all pretty basic stuff but the second world is where things really start getting cool we start off by navigating a volcanic Temple dodging blasts of fire grappling through the obstacles and squeezing through these tight vents as we carefully time her movement this next one is a wicked cool you're sending up a vertical climb this tall tower try not to fall and I love this puzzle at the end using these chain reaction blocks they're kind of like the ones in Kirby where you hit a bomb and then you follow the path of blocks they're sort of like that but there's a little bit more to it you got these switches that'll reset the room so you have to time the blast with the reset to reverse the the action and then you can climb up but then still get past the wall now the reaction is happening off screen obviously so you kind of have to contextualize the way things function well things are blowing up and then you recreate them all while the explosion is still happening that puts an explosion up there and then it comes backwards made me feel like a genius this one here I really love a lot too you have to outrun this big torrent of fire that's destroying the entire stage's footing behind you you're clamoring through hopping from platform to platform and even timing the destruction to get past certain walls and stuff too this one has us riding another one of these things these things are so genius dude like you remember how boring Auto scrollers and Mario games can be sometimes well here they found out how to make a version of the moving platform that you actually still have some control over this one here is all about these platforms that can get weighed down into the lava so you can't let the enemies pile up or else you're gonna lose your footing that's so cool they're always finding so many new ideas to go along with this whole grab mechanic they even read use that whole weight mechanic in this level here you have to weigh down either end of a missile to steer it through the air I mean talk about using the whole Buffalo dude if they introduce an idea or a mechanic here in this game you better believe that you're not just gonna see it one time they will use it in a whole bunch of cool ways throughout the entire thing the clan pod is a really great example of this too it's this item they introduce a little bit later on where you can store a bunch of stuff in it carry it around and pull it all out later so you can use it to haul around any items you might need throughout the level but the real trick to this thing is how you can shake up what's inside to mix it all together you can combine stuff into helpful but optional items like boomerangs and stuff or or maybe you'll combine a bunch of little grenades into a big bomb that you'll need to progress probably my favorite Clan pot puzzle was this place right here you have to figure out what to do in each screen to make progress the first one's pretty easy you have to just match the pictures you know bring the two objects together warp gate appears and you go to the next one but here you have to somehow get a bomb over this really tall wall which like you can't do that you can't use the clan balls here while holding something and you also can't throw it over because it would just blow up so what do you do you put it in the clan pod and throw that over it's almost like they made a puzzle out of like how you would throw your backpack over a fence as a kid this level here has us navigating a big maze looking for all of these little ghosts it's just that instead of a vacuum we got a clam pot I love the way you have to exchange it through this wall right here the way you put it down roll under and then go over and grab it again God this game sure loves mazes there's another one here where you have to warp all around and find your way through it you'll have to keep track of all these big numbers and even what color they are too to figure out where you are and which warp gate to head through next there's another one later on where you have to fight a bunch of mini bosses throughout the maze it's pretty fun they're fun fights but I kind of wish they didn't repeat as much as I do now there are some levels that don't really have any action at all or puzzle solving either you just kind of walk around to town and talk to people almost ends up feeling like like a diet Paper Mario chapter or something this game is just totally unafraid to have a level that's entirely about the silly writing instead this one here is really funny it's all about this big hotel on the way to the the funny games or whatever but the hotel is really shitty so every glancer you talk to along the way they just whine about how much they hated here and then they go to the manager to complain about it I'm not even joking that's the whole level It All Leads up to this next level which is a track and field contest the professor is the prize so I guess we have to play the games and win fair and square there's a hundred meter dash a high jump even some mathematical brain games this hundred meter dash though it was kicking my ass at first I didn't know what I was doing wrong I just kept trying over and over and I would lose every time I'm matching the button as fast as I can what what else can I even do well it turns out that for some reason mashing the d-pad makes you go a lot faster than mashing the C buttons I don't I don't know why but once I did that then it was pitifully easy this is the only level where a story focused thing is more of like a mini game collection otherwise you're really just walking and talking to people and and I guess it does make the game a little bit slow going towards the beginning I mean the first handful of levels are really just doing that but I feel like that really works I feel like that is a very smart choice and it's because this game is just so absurd looking I feel like if you're trying to learn the game mechanics before you even really understood what you were even looking at that might have been a little confusing or overwhelming so I don't know I think it makes total sense to give you more LAX opening chapters to allow the weirdness to settle in let the absurdity become a little more readable before the game's actually asking you to do things with all this weird stuff it is a pretty bizarre looking game after all oh check this stuff out oh yeah this is where the 3D effects really start to shine the stone platforms and the way the camera's wrapping around them as I go by it's so freaking cool looking it almost feels like they took the Parallax scroll kind of look from Super Nintendo but they would absolutely nuts with it trying new things you couldn't do before I actually really love the way this game looks it has a little bit of that old uncanny like pseudo 3D look where the Sprites look based on 3D models and it also has that tweened kind of sprite look where they move the individual parts of the character and while this can sometimes look and feel kinda cheap Mischief Makers is really smart with it like it's done purposefully to create a certain game feeling I mean it's a game about grabbing and throwing things and the Sprites being knocked around all the time so it makes total sense to make everything feel all bouncy and rag Dolly and that's a really big part of why the gameplay feels so satisfying it's a really good reminder of how it's all down to the execution not only did they make sure to have character designs that translate into this really well but they also have a lot of anime to go along with the movement it all feels really fluid and natural just take this Dragon boss early on for example this is such an incredible example of this the entire fight is just nuts like look at all these Expressions on his face and the way he telegraphs the attacks with all of this body language but the best part is the way you catch the punches and throw them right back at him man like having every body part being its own separately animated thing it creates a fight that feels like we're really physically interacting with pieces of the character instead of just feeling like we're doing damage to the entire Sprite as a whole and on top of that there's just so much potential for aspects of puzzle with this for example the dragon boss the wizard will keep healing him so you have to think to knock him out with the punches first God that lightning ball he throws at you that's pretty hard to dodge but once you get him out of here it's an all-out flurry of blocking punches keep an eye on his face that's how you're gonna tell when he's gonna fumble ah [ __ ] I missed the timing it's not easy but this is the fight that's going to take that muscle memory and lock it in after this fight the controls like weirdly felt better to me but I think it was really me like learning the positioning a little better learning how to connect the grabs more consistently so if you struggle with this fight uh don't get discouraged this is the part of the game that's going to teach your muscles how to respond and once you beat it you're gonna feel it every single major boss fight has this ridiculous energy to it the flashy backgrounds the bouncy Sprites the way you catch things and throw them back all the while dodging an onslaught of attacks from all these different weapons they are incredibly fun boss fights the sense of scale and space these fights provide sometimes they're in the background firing stuff at you in the foreground sometimes half of the pause is back there while you fight the other half in the foreground sometimes you're flying at mach speed or running at mach speed you'll mostly attack these bosses by catching stuff and throwing it back but there's also all of these little openings to perform a grapple honestly it kind of reminds me of punch out a little bit the way that certain animations have those opportunities to do a more effective strategy for example this guy here when he enters his upright Mech phase you can sometimes grab his foot once you have it then Dash away to pull his legs out from underneath him it'll knock him over from there pull up and slam it down right into him is that cool or what now the smaller bosses I was significantly less impressed by the big guys are a great hearty challenge full of excitement and stuff but every minor boss feels kind of pointless you just grab them and throw them over and over and that's it I mean you have so much health that you're not realistically going to lose they hardly even qualify as bosses honestly it feels more like I'm whacking two toys together until one of them blows off every single boss has an incredible explosion whenever you beat it I I don't know why very good question it is a pretty great cherry on top of that cake though I gotta say that much okay one more there we go yeah take that and boom shaka uh holy [ __ ] Marina should play basketball I mean it makes more sense than Mega Man soccer did and you gotta love the little visual touches that the N64 brings to the table here I never really considered how the n64's motion blur could be used on 2D Sprites like usually you see this in 3D games and convey like haziness or confusion but I never really thought about it adding a sense of momentum to a 2d game oh those shaking effects though whenever there's an earthquake and you gotta run through the level it can be a little bit much but you really have to appreciate the way they use the N64 here this game could never have been on Super Nintendo anybody that actually gave this thing the time of day back then they could easily have seen how much of the n64's power was really being taken advantage of here it truly was an x-gen game it was just pushing and polishing what we already had instead of charting totally new ground like everybody else was doing on N64 and let's be real that had very mixed results so staying in 2D that was something more people should have been doing it's just so full of style and personality I mean look here on the level select they can't just tell you the name of the level no they have to have a little microphone guy down there saying it to you this really is one of those special cases where the same amount of love and effort they put it into both the style and the substance it gives the game such a strong identity in both means of gameplay and presentation I really don't think this game would be what it is if it wasn't for such a clever combination of both and while there isn't really a whole lot to the game's story you can still tell about a lot of love went into that too it's a lot less about having like a super concise plot and way more about all the laughs and the silly writing it really does feel like a goofy 80s or 90s anime that just does not take itself seriously at all it's kind of like watching a whole bunch of episodes of Samurai Pizza cats or something like that I mean the entire reason all these dudes are trying to kill you is because they're just gullible enough to believe that you're the bad guy it's like yes guys just listen to the most evil looking guy in the game I'm sure he's right there's a pretty good running joke where all these idiots just cannot listen to any plan at all and they always just want to skip straight the fighting Marina the terrible communication skills lead to some pretty funny moments and that's how the professor ended up being the prize of the track and field and that's also why Marina was uh allowed to compete like wait yeah why would they let us do that I mean that's what they thought he wanted it's quite the cast of lovable bozos here I especially love all the stupid little voice lines I have during the boss fights how could I lose to you to punish evil forces I have been charred I live to fight Cerberus Alpha Cerberus Alpha it really does sound like that old iconic era of English anime voice acting like uh like from Digimon or metabots or something back when it's like oh I guess we need a voice for that guy and then somebody's like this is the voice for that guy and it's like no you're right that's the voice for that guy there's all kinds of iconic sound bites here I mean the obvious shake shake but I really like the professor crying out for help there's another running gag where every single time we save this guy he immediately just gets kidnapped again but not before we Chuck his ass into the stratosphere every time you rescue him he gets all hanging you and grabby grabbies oh just everyone's favorite anime Trope I mean I I guess it would have been pretty funny if that's the reason we had to keep rescuing him because we keep chucking him away for being a weirdo it's like why do we why do we even keep rescuing this idiot but no instead they just cut back to him home before the glancers take him again I don't know wasted opportunity for a better version of the running gag if you ask me so after saving the professor over and over and over knocking out another one of those henchmen each and every time we then come to the fifth and final world and it is a total action Fest well I guess we're entering this spoiler zone now I'm gonna be talking about the final world real quick followed by the final boss and the ending and uh and then I'm gonna go over all the post game stuff getting the secret ending in what exactly that entails now you can skip here to avoid seeing any more of the game and just you know not see any of that just hear my final thoughts and conclusion but there is gonna be some absolute Malarkey in the post game you will be missing if you do that so I I don't know Skip here for the funny post game bits and then I'll let you skip again before I show you the ending or whatever but otherwise if you don't care about any of that and you just want to see all of it then stay with me my friend and we gonna have a we're gonna I'll show it to you World 5 starts off with an all-out glancer War he got these dystopic industrial streets completely littered with militaristic Lancers as far as the eye can see grab them Chuck em smash them into each other blow them all up and make your way to the end then we have a high-speed mini boss where we ride an ostrich and Dodge lasers and after that we're riding the bee boss from the second world this had my brain going straight to Rayman you know how you like you beat the mosquito boss and then you ride on him for the next level I couldn't help but to wonder if that was the inspiration for this after a brief fight with merko were then plopped into the final side-scrolling stage and uh okay if I'm being honest it's kind of whatever for like a last level the first room is pretty fun you gotta hit all the switches and use the war gates to teleport back and forth trying to figure out how we can get a bomb to blow up these blocks it's a pretty fun puzzle room but after that it's just like a pitifully easy mini boss and then a casual walk forward with nothing in your way it's it's not exactly the exciting final challenge I was kind of hoping for but I don't know I guess at least the set piece is pretty cool all the dark clouds rolling by looks the part next up we have a rematch with merko I showed this one earlier in the video it's pretty fun you gotta rip the weapons out of his hand and then throw them back at him all the while dodging that giant drill Mech thing really great fight but it is weirdly short compared to the others the moment you hit the second phase all you have to do is grab a missile once you do that you literally just win okay final boss time turns out big evil mustache he was the professor's brother Leo the professor's name is Theo so it's Theo and Leo this space ain't big enough for the number twos of us Leo explains that he wants power and lots of it he wants to control the whole damn world like I said the story is pretty simple so it's not like the villain has a super complicated motivation or anything one tidbit here that is pretty cool though is learning that these henchmen were actually heroes from space responding to Planet clancer's SOS signal but after they arrived against Leo like brainwashed them or something and got them all to work for him pretty soon we find ourselves fighting the big Obelisk from the background uh inner struggle is the name of this fight so I think it's supposed to be like taking place inside Marina's computer brain or something like that as if the big digital Obelisk this is what influenced the minds of the other robots and now they're going for us too during the fight you'll see all these words floating up by representing all these different negative emotions so grab one and shake it up into a better emotion and then fire it right back at him now that's the power of the will my friends it's a really cool fight visually but it's not all that challenging the attacks are pretty easy to dodge and figuring out what to do that wasn't all that hard I've lost that's why I don't like justice my dream was to be destroyed by my brother why did you have to defeat me Marina well if I'm going to go I'm taking you all with me oh the classic move Leo pops off a freaking Spirit Bomb but then Theo jumps in the way to protect Marina as if it wouldn't have been a much better idea for your super duper cyborg to take the hit but I guess it's the thought that counts the professors dying we then get some silly ass melodrama between Marina and the professor he's just trying to be dramatic but he's really fine and then we move to the final fight for real this time free of Theo's control these three Knuckleheads still wanna fair fight with Marina so they combine their mechs into a giant Gundam and then we get this ridiculous final battle and it's a damn fun fight too way more challenging and fun than the previous one so many attacks that are a blast the Dodge and the way you catch the rocket fist before timing your aim and sending it right back oh my God and the way you grab his feet when he's trying to stomp on you and you throw him right upside down oh my God they really saved the most satisfying grapples for the final battle and that is just awesome this attack is really fun when he goes in the background and fires his chest laser into the foreground and you gotta scramble around the screen to dodge it oh boy I gotta say Mischief Makers has a fan freaking tastic final fight I I freaking love this boss [Music] after we're done with the final battle we then unlock one final stage simply titled ending it's basically this long and drawn out cut scene where the clancers are celebrating their victory over the Empire and we also get some drama surrounding Terran truly being block man and not actually being related to his sister and how she accepts him for being her true brother even still something something I don't know it kind of feels like contrived drama but it's fun all the same but the real peculiar thing about this ending is that it only goes to as long as you still have Gold Gems remaining yeah like see that counter up there at the top left you'll notice that is slowly ticking down as the cutscene goes on if that number reaches zero it just abruptly ends Fade to Black cutscene over sorry [ __ ] you only get to see the first half go get the rest of gems then you can see it all just for testing's sake I had to come back with just like a handful of more gems and yeah you get to see more of the cutscene but it's still just abruptly ends the moment it hits zero it is really cool how they just straight up don't tell you what's happening though you just have to kind of connect the dots yourself and realize oh my God the more Gold Gems I get the more of this scene I get to see and then you have this realization that you only need 29 of the 52 total gems to clear the scene and get to those credits but then the credits cut you off which begs the question well then what's on the other side of these credits if I can get more gems and keep it going well then there has to be something over there right and they do stick a version of the credit so you can see anyway in the level select but I feel like that's just so people can just see credits you know feel like they actually beat the game those credits don't have anything at the end of them though and this timer really makes me feel like we're going to see a secret scene at the end well [ __ ] I guess I gotta head back and grab the rest of these don't I okay so there's basically one of these hidden in every single level and uh most of them aren't that hard to get they're not too hard to find not too hard to grab oh my God but some of these some of these are a pain in the entire ass and I'm talking cheek to cheek Carnage dude for the main boss fights you gotta beat them all without getting hit once and that that's not easy to do the final boss was a pretty tough cookie for this the problem was that at a point he stops doing these stomp attacks so you have to wait for him to launch a hand missile in order to retaliate but it felt like the fight would go on forever and he would rarely ever do it the trick is that it depends on what side of him you're on after he uses the laser I kept dodging to the left triggering the laser blast and the kick attacks but if you end up on his right then he uses the rocket punch I figured this out because eventually I realized that each different side of him has a different weapon and he would always use that side's weapon if I was on that side pretty fun to figure out actually so as difficult as it may be getting through a boss fight without taking any damage there are usually a couple of things you can figure out to make the fight quite a bit easier the Cerberus Alpha fight for example the missiles you catch you can shake them to make them bigger and stronger cutting down the amount of time you have to survive for by quite a bit also whenever he transforms to the second phase I would almost every time get hit but eventually I found out you can just go to the top right of the screen that always works this was probably the hardest one to pull off it definitely took me the longest although they all took me a long time pretty much everyone took me about an hour of trying yet I never really found myself getting impatient with it because the patterns here they're just so much fun to learn how to dodge and get through tackling it over and over and getting better at it bit by bit like I was dying again and again and again but I was having so much fun with it that I I just couldn't really get that frustrated the dragon boss is nowhere near as hard after enough practice you could even knock out the little wizard guy before he can fire a single shot if you stand underneath the dragon's fist you can sometimes prompt another attack right away it doesn't always work but it's really handy when you get it to this guy took me a little bit it's not as long as the other fights as I said before but this first phase is pretty annoying dashing downwards while you're trying to rip his weapons from his hands that is essential because this drill kept hitting me and ruining my run hit him with his own stuff twice and then the rest isn't too hard those were all the standout fights that took me forever to get through but you know I really wanted to get all the no damage stuff out of the way first because obviously that's going to be the hardest stuff so the rest from now on should be smooth sailing right not not entirely all right so most of these aren't that hard to find they'll either be in an out of the way area that you can just find by exploring or maybe you'll have to bring a bomb to open a path to get to one and maybe you'll have to Simply Shake It Out Of A peculiar looking enemy but other times you might have to complete some sort of hidden objective in the stage like this one here uh back here where we have the hurt of those kids once you get them all she'll also mention that her husband is still missing this is our hint that there's still something to find in the stage so if we walk past that warp gate and head back out we'll notice the camera way over here now shows a little bit more level figure it out grab the dad bring his ass home and wait I didn't even I didn't even get the Gem I didn't get the Gem yeah some of them are a little bit picky about what exactly you have to do it's not enough to just rescue the dad no you also have to think to shake the gem out of him before you end the level don't forget to shake everything guys you'll end up doing the level over some levels you'll have to find a hidden Point that's beyond the goal like here if you think to keep riding the missile past it you'll find a hidden area up here with it this one's pretty cool you have to experiment with a clan pot to find it combine six blue gems to make a green gem combine six more blue gems to get a second Green Gem and then combine those two green gems and you got it in the bag like a grocery now while the gem hunting can be pretty fun I can also easily see people growing frustrated with it because some of these are not very easy to find at all and I don't think there's always really good hints about where to find it or where to even begin looking for example this one here you literally get it just by shaking the boss over and over again until it eventually appears which I guess that is the only thing you can really do here after you try everything else I guess but it takes so long that it's really easy to think no this isn't working this can't be it and that was my precise reaction I thought the shake them over and over and it just wasn't coming out of him so I thought okay I gotta look this up and they just told me to keep doing what I was already doing and with how many of the other mini boss School gems are found by parrying a specific or unobvious attack it's easy to start looking for something that isn't going to happen this one here for example you have to grab this big laser beam straight out of the air you know not the most obvious thing to do in this boss fight so there you go there's a gold gem as a reward for figuring it out and who's to say maybe they did this on purpose you know making uh some of the more obvious and some of them less obvious just to play with me to make me overthink things sometimes but I don't know I still think they needed some sort of feedback to let me know that I was in fact in the right direction this mole boss here I had a similar problem with but it was a little better I was at least able to figure it out you gotta jump on his stomach after you knock him over which like yeah sure he does react so maybe there's something here but again you have to do it so many times that I could easily see people needing a guide to realize that they are in fact doing the right thing some of the stage Gold Gems can also be a little bit cryptic uh this one here was actually kind of cool you have to find this hidden platform down here just below View shake this clan ball and a bomb will drop destroying the footing that's not what we want though we want to grab it before it makes contact use it up on this side and then we can grab the clan pot now you might not know what to do with this because there's nothing to put in it but you think well maybe there's something already in it shake it up and it's already got three clancers which combine into a giant jetpack Lancer that you grab and fly around with jet up to the stars and you can find it up there it's a little hard to find but it's worth it because it's satisfying and rewarding but some of these are just plain evil man and not in the way you'd even think I'm not talking hard to find I'm not talking annoying to get I'm talking multi-layered psychological trickery baloney that I don't think any other games ever freaking done to me in my life so I'm talking about this one here they have all of these little hints about what to do right this guy here is immediately in danger he's gonna die if you don't do anything but this guy here he's safe on the Green Block so you put two and two together oh I see I totally have to save all of these guys that's the optional thing here that's the secret goal okay so first one's easy Chuck them in oh nice of them to make this thing hook in like that yeah these are absolutely what these are for another guy easy but oh man that last one this last dude he's a Fickle Cactus just prickly hatch ah daddy daddy do this I keep dying I keep chucking them and I keep following you gotta okay you have to wait for them to get destroyed and now okay I see what you have to do you have to toss it over there it's just it's just hard as [ __ ] and since this one's at the very end you have to do the whole level over again to get another shot every time but hey after enough tries I finally get it yes and nothing changes nothing's different you don't get anything I was I was like what where is there did I get a gold gem I didn't get a gold gem so I you know I'll watch the footage back there's nothing this does nothing that's that's not what you do at all no you have to wait here you wait right here yeah wait until they blow up grab this guy shake shake and then a new round sphere ball appears the end of the stage you shake that guy and uh yeah yeah there it is it's right there I I almost can't believe that I almost can't even believe that you know I I've never I've never had a Game prank me quite like this before and you know what it is you know what it is it's because this game has that like really efficient non-verbal teaching game design that's just so good at getting the player to figure out what to do because I mean think about it game looks like [ __ ] nonsense it looks like nonsense it should be strange and unfamiliar but just because the game uses these simple consistent rules that are so easy to understand I they can get you to figure out what to do just by putting the right things on screen every time and uh they know that they can do that so they they're like hey what if we made it look like you had to do something completely useless and wasted people's time they use that game design to create a red herring as like a practical joke that is bananas to me and you know what I'm kind of annoyed I'm kind of annoyed that I wasted so much of my time just figuring out that there's nothing here [Music] but I am thoroughly entertained by the fact that they would do this so I I love this that's amazing oh no okay time for the real jerk one you know you know the one thing in the game is just too stupidly annoying to get or bother doing and you're gonna give up but you're not you're not because it's the one thing you have left and you're gonna do it until you go nuts uh the funny games remember this level well there's a gold gem in it for you if you can beat that first hundred meter dash event under 11 seconds and they mean under if that number says 11 it doesn't count you can go get lost it has to say 10. you have to start mashing super duper mashing that d-pad the very freaking moment the moment that signal goes off if you're shy just a hair you're gonna be shy just a hair okay next time oh sorry idiot you hit the button too soon you have to be so close to when they say go that this is going to start happening over and over until you're doing it too late again it was pretty much just flipping back between those two things for way too long this took me an hour of trying over and over to get this and I know what you're thinking the boss fights also took you an hour the boss fights were fun now these things you practice them until you've mastered them and that's really fun to do this isn't that this isn't fun this is just a part of the game that's meant to piss you off and that's precisely how I felt too I felt pissed off I felt pissed off it felt random it felt random it didn't even feel like it was up to me it felt like it was just in the hands of the universe whether or not this was going to be the run or the I don't know the two neurons in my brain connect like two milliseconds faster enough to to get it just rolling the dice over and over until yay yeah there it is there's the one give me that gold gem please thank you I'm not even happy about it I'm just thankful it's over luckily there aren't really any other Gold Gems that are particularly terrible these are all the worst ones to get and now we have every single one so let's see that full ending here's the chance to skip if you want to after all the drama between the clancers Marina and the professor head back to the spaceship house thing and depart the planet of clancer and of course the entire planet has the face I do not know how I didn't see that coming and with 23 Gold Gems still strong we tank through the entire credits and we get a hidden scene this elder wizard clancer dude visits each of the robot hero henchmen guys and transforms each one back into their true human forms which they apparently have yeah baby I'm back now we can return to being the original Beast actor whoa this is my True Body it's so beautiful Star Wars text really okay well I guess this was back before it was like a super overdone thing I mean hell Windows Movie Maker wasn't even out yet and with the timer down to only four gems the wizard visits the house and asks do you also wish to be human Marina he messes up at first though oh my God imagine being like too gem shy and you barely don't get to see the ending imagine seeing like Dragon Ball Z imagine seeing the messed up go tanks but then your VCR broke before you could see the actual go tanks it's at the very end so you really need every gem to even get a glimpse of it but Marina is turned into a human pretty cool thing to hide here at the end even if it is kind of nonsensical but you know that's Mischief Makers for you also one last little tidbit about this ending remember when the game asked for our age I was wondering about that the whole game but it turns out if we typed in 16 or younger during the scene Marina will be a kid instead of an adult just a neat little detail as far as I know that's the only thing this changes apparently there's also a slight difference to the ending scene if you get every a rank in the game but this video is taking way too long to make so I think I'll can it right here surely it's online if you care to see it or you could challenge yourself and unlock it fair and square and That Just About Does it Mischief Makers 4 the N64 I gotta say pretty damn cool game this one you know they really catch you with the cuteness and then they really get in with with all the weirdness but it's the game mechanics you really end up staying for it's just such a it's such a unique playing game that it really makes no wonder that all the people who grew up with the game or even played it later in life they still talk about it like it was one of the coolest things I ever got to try to this day you can still see a lot of love for this game all over the Internet I've seen Marina pop up so many times over the years I mean even recently they put her in that smash 64 remix rom hack that had so many characters and stuff to the game they even made her a whole character sheet and everything she's absolutely a character that is stuck with people for a long time and I really think that is saying something because the only other game she has ever appeared in was when treasure put her in their PS1 fighting game rakugaki Showtime which was a really cute game all a hand drum with crayons and stuff I wish it was in Japan only because this this is the exact kind of creativity treasure was known for and yes I only know this because of the character sheet that was Justin from front of me two seconds ago you caught me red-handed pretty wild you can get this thing running off of a real N64 oh like the authenticity dude it really does feel like she always belonged like the game deserved better more love for more people back then I mean the effort put into making her really feel like she was always here I think that's emblematic of how much this game really did stand out to the people who did play it going on too I really gotta play those ones someday and it's also interesting to me too because I feel like so many N64 Platformers are these cool ideas that I often end up wishing for a better version of someday like chameleon twist or space station Silicon Valley and sometimes you do see a new game take those ideas and flesh them out into a much better thing which is awesome but Mischief Makers is so not that situation not only do I think all of this holds up incredibly well but it's still pretty damn unique I can't think of very many other games that have made this much out of a single grab mechanic let alone pair it with these fun movement options that feel so different than anything else though I have seen some mini games on the horizon aiming to capture this whole kind of thing too so definitely keep an eye on those if you like this sort of thing I almost thought people really just liked this thing for the the anime robot made but no I can personally attest to how impressive this thing really is it is a playground of interesting moves that are not only fun to use in a vacuum but they actually have all of the inventive level design that's constantly getting new things out of it Mischief Makers is such a cool freaking game it is weird and silly and strange and it is just as clever as it is odd it's an absolute crime there's nowhere as of this video that you can easily get it at the very least Nintendo needs to get this on Nintendo switch online though I do think it would be a lot better to have a full-on re-release on all platforms but uh yeah until then if that ever happens you'll have to either get a physical copy or you know I mean hey I don't want Mario to bust my door down and tear my [ __ ] out of my dick so I can't condone any thing but all I'm saying is when consumerism fails to preserve the things we care about it's just in the hands of the people to do so that's all treasure hasn't made anything since like 2014 so I have no idea what the people from that company are up to I do know a lot of those guys in Japan stay within the industry though especially when they're passionate ones and games like this do not come from people that don't have passion so I could see it floating onto a digital storefront someday you know somebody out there has to Cobble the rights together in in some way but I'm just saying I wouldn't entirely count on it but either way I would absolutely recommend the hell out of this game mostly the people that I love Snappy and challenging 2D side scrollers because 100 in this game is a really fun and unique Challenge and I would also recommend it to people that just want to play it for the weirdness and the comedy and the quirkiness too because the just going through the main story and not 100ing it pretty easy to do casually so you kind of get the best of both worlds but uh yeah it's certainly one of the most unique games I've ever played and since it was also really fun on top of that too probably gonna remember this thing forever and it's pretty nice that that memory is finally something a lot more than just seeing it on the shelf and wondering what the hell it was didn't I tell you to clean your freaking room go grab a broom or the vacuum And subscribe to the nitroad one dollar podcast or one dollar a month you can hear me and Brady talk about Pikmin I'm the [ __ ] roadie

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 245,578

Keywords: nitro rad, review, mischief makers, treasure, old games, retro games, n64, sidescroller, 2d, big bazinga

Id: UMkX0w86g9U

Length: 55min 44sec (3344 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 09 2023