The Video Game Years 1988 - Full Gaming History Documentary

who who are suddenly thrown into this fantasy world simon's quest for nintendo more excitement the better use of colors [Music] it's the video game years and get ready to skate into 1988. the systems the culture the games bill and lance battle an alien invasion contra just heightened your senses a landmark football title hits computers it is a massive undertaking to get this all done and dinosaurs go on a magical adventure pop the bubbles and then you collect some shady looking fruit and then you float down in the next stage in a bigger bubble plus a new gaming magazine and an ice hockey game heats up so set up that power pad and say no to drugs 1988 starts now [Music] huh [Music] anticipation was marketed as like the first adult party game on the nes it's kind of based very loosely off of pictionary up to four players can play anticipation but then again you've got to find three other people that are willing to play it you have you know a game board and you're going around and the computer draws things and you have to guess what it is once you think you know what the picture is going to be you have to buzz in and type the word the game doesn't judge you at the end of spelling it no if you put the wrong letter in boom get a warning you get a warning the second time though you're done you only had two chances to get the word right and if everyone got it wrong it'd never tell you what the drawing was you would never know it can be frustrating at times because some of the clues or or some of what you're actually trying to guess are just flat out weird so the category be science and the triangle is the puzzle travel would be the category and then the answer could be a parachute for travel the anticipation part of the title isn't waiting for what the drawing is going to be it's waiting for the game to be over abram's battle tank is a tank simulator game developed by dynamics for dos you had four crew that you dealt with then you had to blow up other tanks and it wasn't really a lot of tank games like this that came before you go back to the early early 80s it was kind of sold as a bit of a simulation uh it had you had four people in the tank working it but it was you know obviously a bit dumbed down the abrams game was while still difficult a bit more accessible and i would credit dynamics with a lot of that because they managed to make a lot of very fun games that just teetered on complexity they had a 3d engine that was developed in order to actually make the game so there was 3d elements which you never really saw very often in games they're simulated simulated 3d elements in games but this was a 3d engine used to to program it and that was pretty unique the same reason some people liked the game because of its arcade aspects was the same reason that purists just did not like it the simulation aspects weren't all there but it was interesting and it's definitely something that caught the attention of the public at the time and did pretty darn well i would say so contra is a run and gun action game that was designed and released by konami contra doesn't just have side scrolling levels it also has levels that take place from behind the back of your characters as you have to shoot up targets and then move forward into the next room while the game has success in the arcades much of its popularity stems from its release on the nintendo entertainment system the arcade version was built with a more vertical screen and i believe this was to accommodate what they probably saw as a draw which were the more vertical levels in the game the music is amazing and contra it has instantly recognizable themes yeah very memorable yeah and and the sound effects i mean you hear them it's like that's from content yeah you had a bunch of different types of guns you had the laser rifle you had a fireball gun you had the magnificent spread gun that shot bolts all over the screen contra just heightened your senses because you you couldn't let your guard down ever all the enemy bosses are very well designed and almost all of them you have to figure out how to defeat them in a different way so not just just shoot out a random you know stationary object contra made the konami code that gave you 30 lives famous but gradius was actually the first one to use it easily one of the hardest games i've ever played until you put in the code and then becomes one of the easiest games you've ever played contra's a game that teaches patience and pattern recognition and really prepares you for a lot of the harder games on the nes a lot of people complain about that game is too hard i don't think it's too hard i've only beaten contra a few times and i've never been able to do it without the code i know it's pathetic the the famicom version had a lot more animation in the background like the trees blowing in the breeze the snow falling snow falling it had uh extra cut scenes much of the game's popularity actually stems from the fact that you can have two players on screen simultaneously running and gunning this was a feature that was actually fairly uncommon at the time of concho's release some of my fondest memories of playing the nes was playing contra with a friend it's like a good album you're going to put contra into your system over and over again and you're going to keep playing it tuban was released by atari games in the arcade in 1988 and of course was released later on for systems like the nes about a year or so later it's a river racing game where you're trying to avoid obstacles and push your opponents into obstacles and beat them down the end of the river and you throw you throw like soda cans at alligators and and fishermen trying to get in your your cool cool tubing ways the soundtrack is interesting it kind of bounces between um a like a 50s beach party movie type music and it can go to like this really sinister uh kind of evilly tinged music when you have a foe on the screen it's bizarre the cabinet itself was very slim it was like a very weird design it was very tough yeah and a lot of it was a marquee but it was kind of like a slim machine too the arcade had a unique scheme where you had a paddle with left and right arm so you had to go back and forth and the turn you would just use one on the other just like how you would realistically realistically float down a lazy river extreme tubing eat my can bro [Music] and now it should have been a video game in 1988 oh hello i'm eric and here's the stuff from 1988 that should have been made into a video game but wasn't in movies the bear for the nes run frantically from hunters in this action platformer but be careful to avoid the hallucinogenic mushrooms because they will really trip you up far out man rain man for the nes allow your brother to take the wheel and drive you around without crashing innovative gameplay will have you using both the first player and second player controllers as you lean over to help your bro out of course he's an excellent driver they live for the sega master system get some use out of your sega 3d glasses and light phaser as you try to sort out who's who and what's what in this innovative shooter put the glasses on to see who's an alien and who's human but you have to take them off in order to see the ammo and power-ups i have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass and i'm all out of bubble gum in television garfield and friends for the nes predictably it would be about playing pranks on unsuspecting odie and eating a bunch of lasagna also it'd be funny ugh mondays am i right and that's the stuff from 1988 that should have been made into a video game and i want to play them narc was a violent run-and-gun shooter that was one of the first that was targeted by parents because of its content so in ark you play as two uh heavily armed i might add narcotics agents who on each level are out to either kill or arrest a certain number of uh these types of dealers drugs are bad because in the game you're basically beating drug lords but guns and violence and killing people not so bad if you look on it just says it just says no not just say no no they couldn't get the like the license rights to the to the just say no sort of campaign which is funny the game was already pretty violent but when you shot him with the missile launcher you just body parts everywhere and then what are you supposed to do with the hot furry you're supposed to run over all the uh the drug dealers if nancy reagan could make a video game and she was you know had the mindset of arnold schwarzenegger this is the game that she would want to make very difficult game it's fun it's a product of his time narc just say no excuse me just know [Music] so castlevania ii came out and of course after the first castlevania you're expecting more of the same awesome level based gameplay but you didn't get that in the first castlevania dracula put a curse on simon before he was defeated so in this game simon's got to find the five body parts of dracula and put him back together revive him and then beat him again you have to go around and get like his ribs and his eyes and his heart and they allow you to do different things the ribs act as a better shield the eyes allow you to see secret blocks and it's pretty open to explore you can go anywhere well almost anywhere go to towns talk to people buy items level up it's very rpg-ish you would extend your whip and and the whip strength and your hit points and all of this but the only problem is that uh none of the towns people make any sense they got a really bad translation people don't realize that i don't think everyone realized that kanji takes up a lot less space than the english language so when translating certain things like hints it just wasn't possible to put an entirely decipherable hint in a box how in the hell would you know to kneel down at the end of the thing so whirlwind can come and pick you up and bring you to a different part by the the text that was poorly translated nobody has ever gotten through this game without a guide i guarantee it it's a game that needs a walk through once you have that though it is a very fun game castlevania 2 had an interesting day night mechanic in the day the enemies weren't as bad at night they were harder and more frequent you know what else i really really liked is how the game would just grind to a stop and tell you that it's turning into night or turning back in the day and while the tech slowly draws across the screen yeah it's like why can't i skip this right the music is great uh music that continues to live on in in castlevania games or at least continue to until castlevania kind of just hit itself that's castlevania 2 simon's quest request of simon requesting to find dracula's testing [Music] 1988 ssi releases pool of radiance for the pc it took from the actual advanced dungeons and dragons uh rule set things that wizardry and ultima could only vaguely do without getting a lot of people pissed off at them and it started like any rpg you would roll your characters pick your classes you could have six people in your party that you put together you could customize them you could customize their little battle sprites it just it felt like you were playing dungeons and dragons on a computer it was masterful in fleshing out the world you were in uh it described so much of what was going on you had to interact with a lot of people and and discover you know plot lines going through in this story it was very very impressive i just think that it's cool that the complexity of role-playing games in terms of all the rule books all the things you can do you can now simplify it into a computer game pool of radiance uh is the first of the ssi gold box games the interesting thing about the gold box series and it was done before in wizardry but you could tell you could you could transfer all your characters from one gold box game over to the next this is a rough time for western rpgs in general but the ssi gold box games were overall a pretty bright light keeping that alive if you were a dungeons and dragons player this is what you wanted and nothing else was going to do but also simulate the wedges you get in middle school when you're playing dungeon dragons was that part of the computer experience i believe it was actually yes ghostbusters on the nes was like the e.t from the 2600 it was an extremely popular movie that was terrible when put on a home console ghostbusters uh for the nes was originally made by activision released on many platforms uh back in 1984 so already it's a bit dated what makes this game so bad is that even to get to the actual ghostbusters you have to drive in these awful almost never-ending sequences where you can run out of gas the goal of the game was to stock up on equipment and make money to complete your goal which is just busting ghosts enough pke energy stores up and then the zuul building you inexplicably have to mash buttons as you climb the stairs uh if you've made it that far congratulations uh the game sucks also ghostbusters has perhaps the worst case of engrish in any video game i've ever seen conglaturation you have completed a great game and proved to owes the justice of our culture now go and rest our heroes you know what i'm afraid of ghostbusters on the nes and now the gaming innovation for 1988. how do i get the bits out ah hello welcome to the gaming innovation of 1988. what do technology graced the world and changed the face of gaming forever king's quest for the perils of rosella had a trio of innovations this year it was the first graphical computer game to have a female protagonist it was one of the first computer games to have sound card support and it was the only king's quest game to have a real-time 24-hour day night cycle some puzzles could only be solved during the day now there's only at night pin it inside now that does it for the gaming innovation of 1988. i'll be seeing you next year and don't forget it's not just nostalgia it's science here rc pro-am uh is a genuinely fun game it was made by rare yeah who later would go on to do awesome things in it you race around little circuits and you just have to beat the other three players a fourth place finish causes you a loss and a third place finish or higher will grant you a trophy and movie lawn it's like the view you would have if you were playing with an rc a remote control car you moved with the course right you went around i mean there was a little map on the bottom i believe that showed like what you know where the other cars were and where you were on the track and maybe what turns coming up you could collect letters to spell nintendo which would give you an upgraded car the thing is is that they added some fun stuff to this and it's not super basic there's speed up arrows there's oil slicks that you have to avoid you can get rockets and bombs for firing forward or backwards you know to get people off your tail or to catch that first place that you're looking for it was one of those games that really revolutionized the whole racing game and genre as we know it a big oversight in this game was no two player ability but since the screen kind of moved around there's no way they would have been able to do it without doing like split screen or something so there you go one player you have no friends we had vehicular warfare yeah on a small scale like a precursor to the mario kart games right i don't remember my neighborhoods remote control cars having missiles and bombs so i'm not sure where they got that idea from you wish they did i do it's one of those games that is so good you really can't say much about it because it just balls play [Music] blaster master is a really interesting entry on the nes it's it's multiple genres just compacted into one the plot inexplicably involves the main character jason following his pet frog fred through a hole a guy named jason who is riding in the sofia tank car thing i've heard of people naming their vehicles before but your tank is called sofia the third what a name in blaster master you maneuver side scrolling levels in your tank and the tank can aim up and down and it can jump and these are fairly standard platforming segments you get out as a little guy and you run around and swim around and go up ladders and into doors and then you got the overhead stages each side scrolling level has multiple doors when you get out of the tank you can go into these doors and you enter a top-down zelda-like action stage where you often find power-ups and the boss of the level blaster master was also very much a non-linear game like metroid i mean a huge sprawling world that you could get lost in literally the levels are just really cool like i love the graphics and the design because it's just so kind of wild looking but it's so neat there's so many cool things to look at the game is notoriously difficult and only has three continues but the uniqueness of it and the fact that it is memorizable and the mazes are something that you can commit to your mind i did make it a very very popular game back in the day to have something that tried to be more uh and succeeded i would say this is a good game [Music] okay now we're talking thunderblade one heavily armed attack compton evil forces trash in your city twelve rounds of major airline ground destruction an arcade classic allow me note my aerial technique hey guys come on come on you'll get your turn thunderblade just one of 70 games from sega and now look for the incredible fantasy star sega major fun and games sega's thunderblade fantasy star and master system sold separately [Music] so wasteland is this post-apocalyptic rpg that came out in 1988 and it is it's groundbreaking in a few ways it's one of the first games to have a real persistent world took five years to develop the game that's a long time back then the story was so deep and there was so much text in the game that you can't actually get most of it through playing the game programming space in wasteland was so maxed out that they actually printed some of the dialogue that you had to read on paper so it would reference hey go look this part up now so many things just relied on magic and swords and here you have post-apocalyptic hunters and raiders and things like that and interesting it's an exciting new world to explore interestingly npcs could join the team and could also temporarily refuse to do things you asked them to do it really really set the tone for so much that came afterwards definitely influenced other games down the line i think fallout in particular is influenced from or by wasteland and not just in the setting but in the way that it's very open you know it's hard to find usually in the wasteland nice socks surprisingly [Music] zelda ii the adventure of link was a side-scrolling action rpg ganon's minions are trying to kill you so they can sprinkle your blood on the ashes of ganon and make him come back to life so when you die you see the silhouette of ganon laughing you hear him laughing scared the crap out of me as a kid scared the crap but it still scares me the overworld map is what you use to move around between villages and different palaces and zelda and in that way it resembled the first uh the original game in the series but all the towns all the palaces were side scrolling i always prefer the top-down perspective of zelda and i think it was really hard for me to get used to the new side-scrolling levels on here you had a magic meter you could actually level up walk around in town and talk to npcs so it was very much like an rpg basically you gain experience points and you can use those experience points to increase your health your magic or your your attack power you also can gain magic spells along the way going to a village you meet a wizard who would give you give you a new spell to use and these spells are very useful they could make you stronger they could have been a fairy it's an oddball in the series but i really enjoy it it is a hard game it's it's probably one of the hardest games in the series i would say the game gets so hard so early like the first stage is not too hard but then right after that comes death mountain and it's the hardest freaking part of the whole game the battle in zelda 2 was very challenging especially the iron knuckles like it took forever to beat them because they'd block every time you'd stab at him it took forever the fleshed-out combat added with the fact that you could get spells and that you had experience points really makes this the most rpg-like zelda that they've ever made i remember at the time when it was released it was a badge of honor for people to say what they've gotten to or whether they beat it or where they because it was so tough it was nintendo hard just like the original the sequel has a really great soundtrack that's just about as memorable as the first when these games came out we only had one prior game this these just seemed like natural evolutions now that we have a whole lineage of games that play more similarly to first entries in the series or whatever it's easy for someone to look back and knock these games even though this game was so different and people like me didn't really give it a chance at the time i kind of like to see nintendo give this another shot i think it'd be neat to see a new zelda game done in a side-scrolling style [Music] bionic commando was a unique platformer where you would use a bionic arm to swing from platform to platform that's very notable for the fact that it's one of the very few games where there's no jump button you just have a bionic arm and that can attach to ceilings and you can swing around unlike most platformers bionic commando isn't linear you could choose different stages from the map and go to whatever stage you wanted to and along the way if you get stopped by either a caravan convoy or helicopter you'll go from the 2d mode into the overhead shooting mode which is really cool way to break up the action in the international version the nazi symbols were taken out but the american instruction manual still refers to the enemies as the nas they didn't take out hitler himself so the very last part of the game is oh you shoot uh hitler in the face with a bazooka and the most gory head exploding animation ever it's famous i'm sure you've seen it just a trippy trippy game fantastic game capcom kind of came out of the shell a little bit with this one i thought and thank you thanks for the bionic goodness cabal published by taito was really the first third-person shooter which helped establish that genre basically they're a commando of some sort that's shooting at nondescript enemies making everything go explodey you're a soldier who can run back and forth across the screen using a trackball and you have a machine gun that you can aim around the screen as well as grenades while you were shooting you were really vulnerable because you couldn't move so you had to make really good use of the cover around you it's like a shooting gallery game yeah it's kind of a predecessor to like nom 1975 maybe like a wild guns even now instead of just aiming around and shooting at a static screen without much in the way of the ability to dodge now you can move around and it just overall not only is it more fun but it feels more fair you don't feel like you're taking as many cheap shots i like how cabal is like this serious war game but when you beat a level your guy like skips into the distance just running ah he's gonna prance around to the next level like arms up in the air yay that's the destruction [Music] bubble bobble was a platformer by taito that spawned a long-running series of sequels and spin-offs the famous game where two dinosaurs journey to become real boys by entrapping other monsters and bubbles and turning them into candy in mixed drinks you run around the stage you blow bubbles you trap enemies and bubbles you blow some more bubbles then you pop the bubbles and then you collect some shady looking fruit and then you float down in the next stage in a bigger bubble what's fun is that the later levels get very tricky and you have to learn how to do things like bounce on the bubbles bounce on the bubbles and you know make use of certain special bubbles that come through this stage that can turn you into a wrecking ball where you'll plow through everything uh you know in the past the music was written by japanese group zun tata and they made one of the most catchy themes ever a lot of levels there's almost too many levels to this game if you beat it by yourself you got the bad ending if you beat it with a friend you got the good ending but you only got the true ending if after beating that one you beat the super hard mode the original 99 grab the gem do them all over again do the 20 bonus levels beat the boss with two players and then and only then do you get the actual ending when you turn back into little gentlemen the last boss of the game was called super drunk oh yeah you're bob you're bob you're having a bubbly good time if you beat the game in super mode the true ending revealed that super drunk was actually your parents under a spell they were just super drunk [Music] in 1988 the first john madden football was released on the apple ii and it's easy to look at this and say well okay it was a football game on the apple ii what's the big deal what made this game special was before this football games didn't really look like football at all they usually had much less than 11 players on each side of the field there weren't real plays to select from it was all x's and o's they didn't just take the name john madden and put his crazy face on a box and say good we're done they actually took his advice they really took the first steps towards making sports games something other than glorified manager modes which is what a lot of sports games were they took plays that you know he had written up they took actual nfl plays from actual nfl teams and put them in the game it is a massive undertaking to get this all done this would become hugely popular once it was ported over to the genesis and the super nintendo and by the early to mid 90s they took off and basically helped create the sports brand of ea john madden to this day sees this as a teaching tool for people to learn the ins and outs and the intricacies of football to this day it's time for serpent skating fun in the sun with tnc wooden water rage basically kind of like almost like i don't want to say olympic but you had different games kind of similar to a skater dive but this one had surfing had skateboarding and just different obstacles in the surfing competition all you have to do is go from left to right and gradually get to the pier to move on to the next level uh and then there was another skateboarding level where you would have to uh just again avoid the obstacles jump over you know yeah big pots in the freaking ground for some reason i always find that found the timing or maybe it was the collision detection to be just a touch off in the skating segments but once you accommodate for it it's actually pretty darn fun you're surfing you're skateboarding oh by the way you're like a gorilla or a tuxedo cat so that's interesting that's an interesting twist it's not the deepest game but i mastered the skating level as a kid and you get into that groove the music keeps going and you kind of just get into it you kind of get into the game and now the popular pinball games of 1988. ian here with the popular pinball machines of 1988. cyclone by williams this sequel to comet has ramps galore and a rideable ferris wheel taxi by williams pick up riders from dracula to santa in search of the jackpot in this williams classic tx sector by gottlieb premier in this sci-fi table there's a ball transporter and some of the funkiest background music you'll likely ever hear and those were the popular pinball machines in 1988 because there's more to life than video games [Music] and blades of steel is the hockey game that everyone remembers for the fights that's all i would do i would just get into the fights it was my favorite part of the game the fights are cool though because you could you can block up or down and you can punch him in the face or punch him in the gut i would do the fights i would just spend the entire time not trying to score goals because winning what i just rammed into other players the entire time trying to get into fights the game featured voice samples that sound as good as you'd expect blades of steel blades of steel please i don't see you it was a cool game but it's another uh example of a originally vertical arcade game being transformed into a horizontal game on the nes it's not deep in terms of strategy it's undocumented but the teams are actually different in their strengths and weaknesses other than that though it's just a fun fun you know arcade sort of experience on your nes nes would would try to emulate on the television televised broadcast and you saw a lot of that with you know games like bases loaded and i mean trying to make it look like how you watched it as a sport on tv there are nice little touches in blades of steel like an advertisement for contra and you can actually play a little bit of gradius it's pretty cool really fun game i love it good music on top of it great experience hockey fun for everyone [Music] double dragon 2 really superior to the first game in just about every way the game starts with marion the girl that you rescued in the first game getting shot to death guys you think you would have figured it out after the first game just invite marion in i like how on all the covers for like the nes and even in the arcades you're rescuing her you rest you know everything's fine no she got machine gun in the chest basically this time around instead of just having a standard punch and kick button you now have directional attacks one button is for a left attack and the other button is for a ride attack definitely took a little bit of time to get used to but once you did it was you realized it was a more fair control scheme it helped you get out of um gang up situations a lot easier so if you've got enemies piling up on you on both sides you're not totally screwed you always would like kick backwards yeah so you have to turn around the kick the nes version of double dragon 2 allowed you to play two players simultaneously which is something that was completely missing from the first one on nes and that was a huge omission also the platforming while still there is a lot less frustrating a lot of the platforming in double dragon 2 actually takes place on a 2d plane the nes game was a claim which may actually be well they they published it which might be the best acclaimed game i like how billy and jimmy have much nicer quaffs this time out poof here hoopier here yeah not sure who would want to do that though [Music] going 13 top secret episode is based upon the longest running manga in japanese history which was written by tokyo saito the game seems like it got past nintendo sensors because it's sort of weird despite nintendo's restrictions the game still had blood a swastika made it into the game and there's even a scene where your character smokes a cigarette and gains health it's kind of like a thriller there's twists and turns there's backstabbing it's a very adult themed game you literally have sex in the game like there's it's insinuated where the where you laid down with the woman in bed and i'm like this is a nintendo game maybe they were sitting around reading bible verses but you know never quite explains it but i'm going to bet there were shenanigans going on there that's more than most people played this game ever got laid because they were eight it aspires to a lot and it accomplishes some of it it has different genres of game all together there's a pan and zoom mode where it becomes a first person shooter there are shooter stages where you're in a helicopter the gameplay is mostly side scrolling but it also has first person 3d mazes which i just can't stand not any one of these particular gameplay elements are done that well but it's the combination of having several genres of one game combined with it with a deep story i think makes it stand out and it's one of those games that more people played than you would think [Music] that you can use [Music] nintendo power was the actual bi-monthly successor to the nintendo fun club newsletter but then in summer in 1988 you had the magazine nintendo power and oh boy was this the greatest magazine in the history of magazines some people will say oh yeah well you know it was just propaganda it was just a way to sell more games yes but it was a really good way to sell more games it actually gave value to the people who were playing video games at the time to the kids nintendo power was an interesting magazine great coverage of nintendo titles i felt their sega coverage was a little lacking it was a nintendo run magazine and each issue had a number of reviews previews called pack watches in the back tips and tricks mail from fans very popular games at the time got fairly detailed walkthroughs in the center spreads of an issue of nintendo power so this was how a lot of us who were stuck on a game for a month finally got through it that was one of my favorite things flipping through and seeing an entire level from mega man or super mario just mapped out on pages we would have these huge maps that you couldn't see when you were playing the game by yourself you just see this little view of one screen but on the game since they're getting more complicated suddenly we'd have 20 30 screens wide and some down et cetera and and what we would do is take pictures of them and then tape them all together and then take a big picture of that and put it in the magazine so for once you could finally see the whole thing and it was so cool i just loved it and there's good old good old howard phillips damn howard phelps helped run the magazine and he of course appeared in the howard and nestor comics that would adorn every issue until he tragically left the magazine around 91. howard nestor was just a natural way to say well what if you were standing there howard and there is some kid saying no no i you know i can play this and you'd say well you might want to try this so you might consider that because it might help you along and also it affords this ability to give tips in the way that really is the most fun which is you don't actually tell somebody the answer you give them a little hint and lead them in the right direction not only will we like know what's coming up and what's good we'll be better at these games it increased the joy we got out of these video games to read about them in nintendo power to know more about them and to experience them to their full potential and now the other video games for 1988 hey guys i'm pixel dan and these are the other video games of 1988 vigilante in this beat em up you control a lone professional martial artist who has become a vigilante to fight an evil gang called the skinheads and their leader giant devil cyberball an atari games arcade game of seven man american football but it's played by robots and instead of a downs system the ball explodes real football should be played like that fa zanadoo an action rpg considered to be a side story to the game xanadu the second installment of the dragon slayer series so there you go my friends there are the other video games of 1988. hey just because they're not as popular as some of the others doesn't mean they're not fun island is a platformer known in japan as takahashi meijin's adventure island adventure island is actually an adaption of sega's arcade game wonderboy hudson was able to license the game but not the wonder boy character so they had to create their very own character and they came up with master higgins don't be little guy and as you run and jump you'll be able to collect fruit uh sometimes it's hidden and it shows up after you've jumped through the air in the spot that it is it's a fun platformer it's a little tough you gotta keep eating fruit to stay alive most enemies will kill you in one or two hits or if you trip on a rock you'll take some damage you can get a fairy that will protect you for a short time or an eggplant which for some reason just saps your energy it keeps depleting your health you start with stone axe that you can throw but you can also get fireballs as well and you can get skateboards to ride at the end of each area there was an end stage bus and to defeat him you had to throw hammers at him until his head fell off it's a great game and it did have many it did have a few sequels that were they ended up being quite different but this one is one that it's just fun to play almost at any time so super mario brothers came out in 85 huge ridiculous hit for nintendo almost single-handedly brings back the home video game market nintendo of america found super mario bros 2 the real super mario bros 2 they got in japan to be too difficult and too similar to the original so they said not going to release that super mario brothers 2 in america was essentially uh a shigeru miyamoto created game called doki doki panic in japan at the time there was no precedent set for what a mario game needed to be so it didn't necessarily have to follow the previous game in the series and you know what i really really like this game it's one of my favorite mario yeah and it's probably because it really isn't a mario game that is your favorite four different players to choose from mario luigi the princess and toadstool all different attributes super mario brothers 2 really did set a lot of the attributes that we we give to these particular uh characters from the mario universe it kind of set them in stone luigi jumps a bit higher than mario luigi is thinner and taller than mario towed out a short jump but he was fast and the princess could float making her probably the easiest character to use throughout the game a lot of the characters became standard for the mario series you see shy guys birdo a lot of those characters appear in new mario games now even today you no longer have to hop on enemies to kill them you pull things out of the ground or jump on enemies and basically pick them up and throw them at each other that's fantastic this time you have actual boss battles you have characters like birdo shooting eggs at you that you have to catch in mid-air and throw back there's different types of levels we have to like dig underground in some of them you can kind of explore and go on your own you know go back and forth in the levels you can't do that in super mario bros 1. giant flames that you have to hit with mushrooms you have three-headed snakes that you can even set up mushrooms as a barrier to block his shots it's colorful the graphics are fantastic the music is sound the controls are spot on great music in super mario bros 2. awesome music kind of rag timey yeah i think there's a lot of different tunes in there yeah especially in 88 you know we have three huge sequels to groundbreaking nes games that come out this year we got castlevania and zelda 2 and we got super mario brothers 2. all are completely different from the first game in the groundbreaking series and i welcome that it made a lot of changes oh yeah i'm i'm glad that we got the version that we did there's a whole sort of revisionary history now where people are like oh it sucks it's all remarking go off super mario bros 2 is a mario game and it's awesome [Music] chase hq is is a actually a really excellent uh racer slash chaser if you know i just made that up or have a racing game where you're a cop and you have to uh track down potential criminals alleged criminals by smashing into their car until they can't drive anymore i think you really only ram the heck out of them you weren't really shooting at them these are legend criminals and you still have the uh go ahead to crash into them and run them off the road and wrestle them before they've even been proven guilty racing games usually have these really cool soundtracks look at something like outrun it's got magical sound shower passing breeze splash wave i'm sure chase headquarters music could be just as cool if you could actually hear it above all this game is also very good with the voice samples you know none of this you're under arrest on suspicion of armed robbery and murder you wouldn't always see the bad guy at first and then when he did it'd say like a bad guy or enemy and the the siren lights would go on an arcade cabinet which is really cool that's cool you're actually hitting the the bad guy the criminal to try to apprehend him you got you can listen to yourself saying things like oh no i'm almost in one more hit they knew it was ridiculous just to smash these cars until they're literally on fire and almost exploding and your car was almost never damaged at all somehow that's just funny [Music] get tanken rbi baseball the only video game licensed by the major league baseball players association for your nintendo it's you and the pros to roger clements flash vince coleman the steel side [Music] rbi baseball the one the pros pitch rbi baseball by tengen released in both the approved and non-approved form in reality made by namco which makes it a fantastic baseball game you had the tangent version and you had the nes version illegal legal rbi baseball was the first console game to be licensed by the major league baseball players association it had the boston red sox team that was the same team that had bill buckner and blew the 1986 world series it's a very simple game but the uh action is very arcade like and the gameplay is smooth and easy to grasp and you could see the first and third basemen uh had like close-ups of them little first and third bases and then when the ball went into play you would go to the field view it was you know it was well done it was interesting it's like an arcade baseball kind of game there's actual players in it with their real life attributes i guess you could say but they all look like short chubby little chibi characters they're just cute it wasn't like a full season motor or anything but you could have a ball playing baseball rbi baseball on your nes they definitely beat baseball by nintendo hey dude you want to skate you want to die skate or die a game made for the times skateboarding was on the rise so it was like punk rock kind of stuff and man that game was dope one of the characters was named rodney recluse and had a purple mohawk but kind of looked like rodney dangerfield and he got no respect and there's different you know different events you can essentially go to it's not just a half pipe the original game has a number of events that you can compete in in either free play to practice or in a tournament mode there were two ramp events freestyle and high jump two downhill events and pool jousting which is like a gladiator thing well in the pool chassis you had to fight the king the king of skateboarding leicester i think it was ronnie dangerfield son or something yes they kind of alluded to that i love the halfpipe if you could get the half pipe right because it's so damn hard right it felt good if you got it right you had the street race where you can punch your opponent while you were going along this game was the 80s to me i mean skateboarding's popularity the attitude it had it all my favorite thing about skate or die just attitude wise is i believe it's in the downhill jam where at the end there's the cop car and if you can ollie onto the cop car which is much harder than it it seems uh the sirens on the car go off which i thought was a nice touch [Music] [Applause] [Music] fantasy style by sega on the master system is one of probably the three defining uh console rpgs so fantasy star hits first unfortunately it's on the master system which was being crushed by the nes so not that many people got to play it which is a shame because it's a great game fantasy star was one of the first story driven games released in the west and also one of the first to feature a female protagonist alice is the main character and the story is uh the evil king lassic kills her brother and she sets out to get revenge you don't kill her brother that's just you don't do that yeah she she liked her brother he messed with the wrong chick for me fantasy star is almost a combination between final fantasy and star wars because it's like a space saga with rpg elements at this point in time most role playing games were firmly set in the realm of sword and sorcery really good graphics in the game way ahead of their time yeah really thought out well all the npcs and the towns just stood completely still the dungeons and fantasy star were incredibly well done with the movement the turning of the corners the 3d effect it was full screen you didn't see stuff like that on eight no fantasy star was one of the first rpgs to feature animated monster encounters the backgrounds during the battles are amazing they reflect where you actually were like if you're on a beach it shows like the tide rolling in and out if you're in the woods it shows trees in the background and it also had three different planets that you could travel to each of them having their own different type of environment their own different type of enemies the big three that come out of japan in terms of japanese role-playing games in the 80s the dragon quest series the final fantasy series and the fantasy star series it was like i like fantasy star oh i like final fantasy you spell fantasy with the ph i spell it with an f because we know how to spell fantasy star is definitely one of the most important rpg franchises in history it's really an amazing 8-bit game it's a testament to what you could do on an 8-bit system [Music] metal gear is an overhead military action adventure stealth game that was originally released in 1987 by konami for the msx2 computer system over in japan and in 1988 it was brought to the nintendo entertainment system so you play as solid snake and you have to infiltrate outer heaven and destroy metal gear but stealthily getting into fights in this game is even more deadly than it is in later entries in the series you do not want to wake up guard dogs you do not want to alert um any sort of guards at all it's not the most transparent game in knowing what you need to do kind of like zelda we can kind of go everywhere but metal gear was you had a set goal but just different ways of approaching it and that just blew my mind as a kid i loved that you know you had binoculars so you can see the next screen over that's a cool concept right you need to find key cards but sometimes you you know where the hell to go with the key cards right that's part of the fun of metal gear trying to figure out what weapons you use to defeat the bosses things like that there were a lot of changes to the nes version that led to kojima straight up disowning the game they actually changed metal gear to a computer at the end of the game there was some pretty bad translation including lines like the truck have started to move if a guard feels asleep you should probably just let that guard feel asleep interestingly uh for games of the time especially on the nes cigarettes were an item that you could use in fact i think it's the only item that you start with yeah and eventually had a sequel on the nes that wasn't really yeah snake let's not talk about that thanks revenge it's just garbage metal gear was hideo kojima's first game and the poor guy is still doing them he wants to work on other stuff but he'll probably be doing metal gear forever ice hockey was a nintendo developed game about you guessed it ice hockey well it also doesn't follow the rules of hockey because you slashed out of your opponent to get the puck well that's how you play defense in the game and there's only four people on the ice so really it threw all the rules of ice hockey out the window yeah this was cutesy arcade you know nintendo fight arcade kind of hockey fat medium small how are you gonna make your team in ice hockey for the nintendo entertainment system so for example you have a skinny guy who's really fast but kind of gets pushed over quite a bit and you have a medium-sized guy who's gonna average on everything and you have the big fat ice hockey player who's slow but he's hard to push down he could really mix it up which added a lot of depth to the game i always like to do a team of fat guys because then it's harder for the puck to go by them but they were always super slow but super powerful i usually went with two chubby guys a skinny and a normal guy that's what i used to do blades of steel wasn't the only hockey game that had fights because this one did two but it was just a lot cuter just got in a big pile you just go and then you just bounce off each other yeah so it follows the same rules as uh blades of steel where the loser of the fight gets the penalty but not the guy who wins maybe who instigated it i don't know just a fun game john d presents the video game babes of 1988. i'm john d and these are the video game babes of 1988 the healing lady from zelda 2 the i don't know what's going on in that house babe alice landale from fantasy star babe princess toadstool from super mario brothers 2 the i can dunk from the freepoint line babe and the girl at the end of checkered flag the i should probably sue this racing team babe inappropriate and appropriate and those were the video game babes of 1988 did you ever know that you're my hero [Music] faces loaded by jalako was unique and it was cool particularly because it had third person behind the player on the pitcher batting and pitching the catcher would sit still and their glove would just kind of mysteriously do all the busy work move around on its own it's a ghost certain players on each team if you did throw the ball and hit them they would charge them out which is hysterical we'll actually cut to the big screen in the stadium and actually show the batter going up and beating the crap out of the pitcher which is awesome or if you uh strike out somebody looking on multiple occasions you hear you bum out like you'll hear the umpire call you a bum but this game added some nice first for the nes you had a season mode which was cool i may have played bases loaded on the nes more than any other game on the nes probably one of the most common nes games in existence because people love baseball kids love baseball bases loaded was a really fun really really visually appealing baseball game on the nes more so than any other so this was the beginning of like baseball games and consoles really trying to go for a little bit of realism so for that base is loaded thank you very much for making our summers more fun [Applause] [Music] taito released rastan saga rastan was a cool medieval type hack and slash yeah it's a conan i mean look at the character he's likoning he's definitely conan but you know he's not conan he's rastan it's another one of those games based somewhat on mythology mixed with dragons mixed with guys that look like conan the barbarian it's really cool you can swing on ropes you go up and down ladders to different parts levels you can upgrade your weapon it's just very smooth what sets it apart is that it is a very difficult game it's not unfair it's just difficult and i like how when you hit the enemies at least in the master system version they explode into a splat of blood yeah so cool yeah that was cool makes any game better it's the kind of game that or makes you earn its respect otherwise you're just going to be crying a lot pretty much your run-of-the-mill hack-and-slash game but it was pretty good it was ross standard something you better get ready for the most challenging nintendo system ever ready let's do it the new power pad it's only available in nintendo's new power set the power pad is an exercise accessory originally developed by bondi it was the bandai fun and fitness pad right re-branded nintendo thought it was such a great idea they bought the idea took it off the market and we released it as the nintendo power pad the power pad was basically plastic on either side of what sounded like tissue paper it just crunched when you walked on it so you laid this pad out on the floor you usually plugged it into the second controller port on the nintendo and what you would do is that you would run and jump on these on these buttons and my register basically has a button press you try to run on the thing and you do your jumps and you're trying to compete in these olympic events or etcetera and then you just get really tired of it so you get on your knees and you're patting on the thing trying to make your guy go as fast as you possibly can you're tubby and out of shape and can't can't run in place just use your hands can't get that high score on the long jump run lift your hands up and just let them go until you decide to plant back down the power pad should have been cool but everyone cheated as a kid we just you know we just get down just slap the crap out of the stupid buttons because you know using her legs was dumb and this was a lot easier but interestingly enough i mean world-class track meet some people now know as being the rebranding of stadium events which was uh i believe created by bandai originally one of the rarest games on the nes we only got about a half a dozen games in north america that were compatible with the power pad the weirdest game that came out was probably street cop because a street cop you would run a side scroll on this and then beat criminals into submission and these were dangerous criminals that would do things like litter and jaywalk and you would beat the crap out of with your night stick i remember waking my parents up every sunday morning they had to wake up to the sound of just my heels banging into the floor i liked short order because yeah it was kind of like a simon but with building a burger you had dance aerobics where you would literally just follow the girl and the leg warmers on the screen and try to sweat those calories away it was kind of like the first floor matt controller which paved the way for games like dance dance revolution huh where would the world be without ddr in its not somewhere i'd like to be that's for sure [Music] bad dudes versus dragon ninja so bad dudes is a side-scrolling beat-em-up very similar to stuff like double dragon that we've already talked about there's really cool levels where one of them you're on top of a series i guess of tractor trailers bad dudes is known for its intro cut scene that says the following rampant ninja related crimes these days white house is not the exception and it's got that very famous intro screen that straight up tells you the president has been kidnapped by ninjas and asks you if you're a bad enough dude to save said president it's one of those things that people remember those scenes more than the game it's like zero hour and the all your base belong to us kind of stuff unlike most other beat-em-ups bad dudes does take place entirely on the two-dimensional plane beat-em-ups to me seem to work better when you have room to maneuver it was kind of cool you would pick up weapons along the way like the nunchucks but the nunchucks wouldn't like fling like nunchucks like straight nunchucks it's like bank bank you have two players potentially on stream plus the enemies and it's a matter of positioning yourself on platforms and it just feels odd the first boss in bad dudes was actually karnov who has his own game and was actually the mascot for data east we love puppy karnov why you making my boss in the japanese ending ronnie gives the characters statues of themselves where in the american version he's just like let's go get burgers you think he picked up the tab i should hope so i would hope so too they have their own chefs in the white house [Music] got your jammies on let's play some mile and secret castle by hudson soft the goal of the game is to free queen eliza from a giant ridiculous maze you're over worlds basically the outside of a castle and you go into different rooms and you explore and there's a lot to explore you run around throwing bubbles to attack enemies and find secret passages through the castle doors windows title is not misleading it's not a mistranslation everything's a secret including what you're supposed to do i really don't like games where you have to shoot around at random to find hidden passages and vital items and this is one of those games not not the greatest game on the system not the worst and it's just too hard to be fun it's too hard to be fun very cute little character he should be milo should be in smash brothers i think no he wasn't a much better sequel called do remy adventure for the super famicom oh there you go and now the forgotten video games of 1988. pat here once again bringing you the forgotten video games of 1988 river raid 2 by activision the follow-up to the classic atari shooter that went mostly unplayed because by 1988 the 2600 was dead captain silver by data east swash buckle and seek a lost treasure in this sega master system side scroller dr chaos by fci this strange nes adventure game has a player battling through a house full of monsters including the gruesome big lady and the main event this konami wrestling game in the arcade featured a play-by-play announcer as well as a huge action button you had a slam on in order to perform your moves yeah drop kick them yeah those were the forgotten video games of 1988 just because you don't remember them doesn't mean they weren't fun [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Pat the NES Punk

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Length: 63min 11sec (3791 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021