This is spot on, more people need to recognize this game's production quality (the music in particular is very ahead of its time) If the invunerability window was better, people would mention this in the same breath as 1943, Commando, and other Capcom NES classics.
I was trying to think of the simplest fighting game I could and remembered playing 2P Trojan way back. Imagine my surprise when I learned of its connection to Street Fighter.
It's more of an honour to come across more rarer titles like Trojan and see how Capcom can change their games for a less powerful hardware terms and improve on it. Section Z is the same like Trojan, not that easy to find back in the day and lesser known title but a joy to come across should you ever be fortunate to have come across it. So many 1988 memories here for me...
When I was a kid, I went to the video rental store down the street (Action Video) and chose this game to rent based mainly on the box art. My mom rented it for me. I took it home and played it. It was hard as hell. I asked my mom if we could go back to the video store to return it for a different game (you're not really supposed to do that). We went back and I told them the game was made for two players. I think they believed me. I rented Q*bert instead. Not sure I liked Q*bert any better. I ended up lending the rental to a friend who later returned it for us.
I cannot BELIEVE I've never seen or heard of this one. Wow. It's good to know there are still some games left for me to enjoy, even though I already have HUNDREDS (incl. Multicarts) ; games that ARENT unobtainable like RC pro am 2
Man, does this bring back memories. I played the hell out of this game when it first came out. The graphics were the best of any game I had ever owned at the time. It's frustratingly hard but certainly beatable. However, I agree that many subsequent NES releases put it to shame.
I recently did a video comparing NES and arcade versions of Trojan, and real talk: the NES version feels a lot easier after beating your head against the brick wall that is the arcade version. Even by the quarter-munching standards of the mid-'80s, that game is a real tough cookie.
Yep I played the NES version and later the arcade version of Trojan. The NES version much more forgiving and beatable with practice and persistence and also has a better ending than the arcade version.
I had this game as a kid and played a lot of it, especially the 2-player fighting mode. But I had completely forgotten about it until this video popped up in my feed.
Aw man, I really liked the videos on the smaller titles. I'll reserve judgment until I see the end result, of course, but seeing stuff like volleyball or soccer was always nice to me because they were games I knew practically nothing about. I hope the new format doesn't completely brush the games aside or treat them as nothing but footnotes.
Ian Burman I can’t see much that can be said regarding Volleyball since it’s a basic rendition of the sport. The only real thing of note that I can think of is the fact that the game was based on the rules of the time in which a point can only be won by the serving team
I'm pretty happy about this decision. As much as I've always been tickled by the fact that you do 10 minute videos on all sorts of Mahjong titles, they were kind of ridiculous in reality. Plus this way you'll actually be able to get a little deeper into the libraries of these systems.
Wait... Trojan... Spartan X... I can just picture that game pitch meeting. "So what if Spartan X was more... Spartan-like, and like, in the future? Just trust me on this, guys."
I used to love this game as a kid even though I can never get past the beginning of the third level on my best day eyemagination carried me through though and the music was pretty solid
Oh this is going to be a great season. :D Trojan was always a mystery as a child. It was never within reach and all I ever knew of if was the name and tiny picture in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, but it had me curious for a long time. Being fully immersed in Greek mythology and deeply in love with Kid Icarus at the time probably stoked that feeling. I have to admit, Fist of the North Star post-apocalypse was totally not what I expected. But man, what a way to bookend the year. I am going to miss the deep dives into even the lesser of lesser titles but it's entirely understandable. The volume of titles is going to escalate quite a lot and damn there were a ton of sports games in the mix.
Here I was thinkin' that certain elements of _Trojan_ were merely _inspired_ by _Kung Fu Master_, and now I learn that the connections run so much deeper. Nice find there, Mr. Parish. I have great fondness for _Trojan_, so I'm happy to see a review/retrospective that actually gives it a fair shake. It's a short-but-sweet action game. It does the job of supplying 10-15 minutes of reliable fun when you're in the mood to play games but are lacking for time.
Same here, especially the stage one music, the sewer music, and I think stage 2's music, the level where there's mountains in the background and flying guys shoot at you. Great game and music.
Not having gotten my NES until Christmas 1988, I’ve never heard of a lot of these early releases. But man, Trojan sounds cool as h*ck and I totally missed out.
Trojan is a good one. Give it a try one day. It holds up. It's not something you'll want to play for hours or anything like that, but it's a very fun, challenging little game that you'll have fun messing around with in small bursts.
I played this game so much back in the 80's .. Great cool ending also . I still can to this day can play the whole game without dying once . Not much into speed runs but I just like to take my time and get it done . I'm talking about the NES version here.
Hands down, the game with best control scheme is Kaze Kiri. You have so many movement options, yet the controller only has 2 buttons, start select and D-Pad.
What a great mini docu😇 It brings back A LOT OF GOOD MEMORIES I just found your channel & i will recomend & share your videos whit some oldschool friends of mine that STILL to these days play old retro games (like me😂) we met at the arcades in 85/86 & still get together and play arcade/nes & other retro games so i say hello to FZD & Mr Weedman my oldschool gamer friends And A BIG THANK YOU👍👍 for making these videos😇 Pd i just suscribed😇
1987 was the year Capcom brought us “Trojan”, “Section Z”, and the game that started it all, Mega Man”. Capcom became the best company to put out great NES games back in the day. The first two were “1942” and “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” are both sucked, but “Commando” became the third Capcom NES game, and it started to become bigger.
I think round-up episodes are good. There's so many NES games in general, and in particular so many with similar backgrounds, mechanics, and flaws. I do hope that the more unique lesser games still get their own episodes, though. Also, glad to see a return to NESWorks!
BFisch I think this may be a one-off at this point since Jeremy mentioned that he did the episode because he needed an excuse to mess around with the joystick controller he recently received. The fact he also mentioned in the next episode preview the line when NES Works returns in full strongly indicates that it will be some time before we see the next one and it’s more likely that he will finish the SNES Works 1991 first.
Very nice job. This game is definitely quite tough, I remember there was this youtuber named Kingdom Carts who had some awesome strategies on this game, but he took down all his videos.
Firs time i played a nes, we rented one along with a few games. BReakthru (which must have been easy as hell cause my brother finished it in the like 2 days we had the NES and back then we'd never owned a gaming system so while we had played atari at a babysitter, we didn'T exactly have skills yet) , Ikari Warriors II (terrible), SMB (believe it or not i was kinda meh on SMB...i liked things with guns and ships at 9), Gradius (great but too hard) and Trojan. I kept a great memory of it though to be fair when i finally got to play it again easily a year or more later, i had played a lot more NES games and i didn't like it half as much.
Back in the day borrowed this from a friend then called him to say it was impossible. He came over and beat it with one life. a day or so later I could too. always liked it for that reason. seemingly impossible but easy enough to master
The strategy to use for Muscular is to slash him just once, from as far away as possible. Then immediately retreat backwards to avoid his attacks. Repeat until he's dead. Do it this way and you usually won't take a single hit.
Capcom's early NES output did have a bit of jank to them. Commando and Strider felt the same way. The graphics in Commando totally glitch out in between screen transitions.
1987 was indeed where the NES really began to make its mark, since the first real all-time classics (post-Super Mario Bros) came out. Should be a good series of episodes. And I understand the round-up idea, but Slalom should at least get a spotlight since it's the first game developped by Nintendo's future BFF.
I actually do remember using the Game Genie on this game: OENKXPLE was my go-to code you start with almost 100 lives! (I think it was like 88 or 89? it's been a while so I don't remember exactly...) but overall I did enjoy it!
Trojan is actually *dead* easy. Used to have the game as a small boy. Played it again yesterday for the first time in over 2 decades. Finished it on my first try. The P symbols are key - if you can hang onto both, the final boss takes just 2 hits to kill :p
@@JeremyParish I was just going to comment that "it looks like this guy's seen Labyrinth," but you beat me to it yourself, in regards to using the term at all.
Good call on the sports stuff. It really does become the bane of most other chronological review series like Chrontendo and Turbo Views. Just...nobody cares. Nobody. But they've committed to the format, so....
Agreed, sports games are pretty much the same except for some nuances which aren't worth covering in whole single episodes. It's better to have just one for all sports games on a platform like what AVGN did.
2:02 "I somehow finished Trojan legitimately as a kid, but I can only reach the halfway point..." That's kinda confusing... Lol. Did you finish it? Or did you only get to the halfway point? And then you say "thank goodness for Game Genie cheats..." So does that mean you didn't finish it legitimately and had to use Game Genie? So many contradictory statements in just a couple of sentences. 🤣... Not trying to nitpick, just genuinely confused as to wth u mean. Lol
@@JeremyParish 😂 nice! just messing with you man. Ur channel gives me a chance to explore games that I could never play as a kid. Keep up the great work.
This is spot on, more people need to recognize this game's production quality (the music in particular is very ahead of its time) If the invunerability window was better, people would mention this in the same breath as 1943, Commando, and other Capcom NES classics.
I was trying to think of the simplest fighting game I could and remembered playing 2P Trojan way back. Imagine my surprise when I learned of its connection to Street Fighter.
It's more of an honour to come across more rarer titles like Trojan and see how Capcom can change their games for a less powerful hardware terms and improve on it. Section Z is the same like Trojan, not that easy to find back in the day and lesser known title but a joy to come across should you ever be fortunate to have come across it. So many 1988 memories here for me...
Trojan was the first NES game I finished. I have fond memories playing it. A very underrated NES classic that I wish had gotten a sequel.
Give Achilles some credit, while he may be weak to jump attacks is Raoh cosplay is quite impressive.
When I was a kid, I went to the video rental store down the street (Action Video) and chose this game to rent based mainly on the box art. My mom rented it for me. I took it home and played it. It was hard as hell. I asked my mom if we could go back to the video store to return it for a different game (you're not really supposed to do that). We went back and I told them the game was made for two players. I think they believed me. I rented Q*bert instead. Not sure I liked Q*bert any better. I ended up lending the rental to a friend who later returned it for us.
I cannot BELIEVE I've never seen or heard of this one. Wow. It's good to know there are still some games left for me to enjoy, even though I already have HUNDREDS (incl. Multicarts) ; games that ARENT unobtainable like RC pro am 2
This was one of the few NES games I could beat without dying
Glad you're still with us.
I am continually impressed with the quality of your videos. Great job!
Man, does this bring back memories. I played the hell out of this game when it first came out. The graphics were the best of any game I had ever owned at the time. It's frustratingly hard but certainly beatable. However, I agree that many subsequent NES releases put it to shame.
Fantastic work my friend. I played this game so much when I was coming up and loved it. Also another great game was wizards and Warriors.
My cousin gave me this after we got a NES in Xmas 1988. Game used to piss me off.
Trojan is one of my favorite games for the NES.
I recently did a video comparing NES and arcade versions of Trojan, and real talk: the NES version feels a lot easier after beating your head against the brick wall that is the arcade version. Even by the quarter-munching standards of the mid-'80s, that game is a real tough cookie.
Gun.Smoke is much the same. The arcade original wants you dead, pure and simple.
Definitely does.
Yep I played the NES version and later the arcade version of Trojan. The NES version much more forgiving and beatable with practice and persistence and also has a better ending than the arcade version.
I had this game as a kid and played a lot of it, especially the 2-player fighting mode. But I had completely forgotten about it until this video popped up in my feed.
Aw man, I really liked the videos on the smaller titles. I'll reserve judgment until I see the end result, of course, but seeing stuff like volleyball or soccer was always nice to me because they were games I knew practically nothing about. I hope the new format doesn't completely brush the games aside or treat them as nothing but footnotes.
I'll still be delving into those games, but for like... two minutes, instead of trying to scrape seven or eight minutes of monologue out of them.
Ian Burman I can’t see much that can be said regarding Volleyball since it’s a basic rendition of the sport. The only real thing of note that I can think of is the fact that the game was based on the rules of the time in which a point can only be won by the serving team
I'm pretty happy about this decision. As much as I've always been tickled by the fact that you do 10 minute videos on all sorts of Mahjong titles, they were kind of ridiculous in reality. Plus this way you'll actually be able to get a little deeper into the libraries of these systems.
@@berniepodwyer I like 10 minutes about Mahjong
Wait... Trojan... Spartan X... I can just picture that game pitch meeting. "So what if Spartan X was more... Spartan-like, and like, in the future? Just trust me on this, guys."
Haha, I didn't even think of that.
Capcom was always the industry leader. Still cranking out cutting edge visuals for todays systems.
I used to love this game as a kid even though I can never get past the beginning of the third level on my best day eyemagination carried me through though and the music was pretty solid
Ok double dragon also had a mirror enemy after you defeat the boss. Also which one is the jerk who created elevator levels??!
Benj's joystick controller looks cool as hell
Oh this is going to be a great season. :D
Trojan was always a mystery as a child. It was never within reach and all I ever knew of if was the name and tiny picture in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide, but it had me curious for a long time. Being fully immersed in Greek mythology and deeply in love with Kid Icarus at the time probably stoked that feeling. I have to admit, Fist of the North Star post-apocalypse was totally not what I expected. But man, what a way to bookend the year.
I am going to miss the deep dives into even the lesser of lesser titles but it's entirely understandable. The volume of titles is going to escalate quite a lot and damn there were a ton of sports games in the mix.
Also, Anatomy of a Game: Zelda 1 & 2 was a fantastic and pleasant read. Recommended to those looking for some of Jeremy Parish's other books.
When I play this one on an emulator, I use a Genesis controller and remap up to an actual button. Plays much easier.
that's something i like to do for fighting games too, up for jumping feels not great
That's a good idea. I don't mind using up to jump if there's a good reason for it, like in Trojan, but of course I'd rather use a button.
Loved playing the first 2 levels over and over again XD.
Here I was thinkin' that certain elements of _Trojan_ were merely _inspired_ by _Kung Fu Master_, and now I learn that the connections run so much deeper. Nice find there, Mr. Parish.
I have great fondness for _Trojan_, so I'm happy to see a review/retrospective that actually gives it a fair shake. It's a short-but-sweet action game. It does the job of supplying 10-15 minutes of reliable fun when you're in the mood to play games but are lacking for time.
Strongly in favour of your new approach. Rolling up secondary titles into omnibus episodes is going to make all of us more sane!
Loved this game back in the day. Can't say I have the same zest for it nowadays, unsurprisingly, but that game's music is etched in my brain! :)
Same here, especially the stage one music, the sewer music, and I think stage 2's music, the level where there's mountains in the background and flying guys shoot at you. Great game and music.
I grew up with this game and I love it
Same here.
Not having gotten my NES until Christmas 1988, I’ve never heard of a lot of these early releases. But man, Trojan sounds cool as h*ck and I totally missed out.
Trojan is a good one. Give it a try one day. It holds up. It's not something you'll want to play for hours or anything like that, but it's a very fun, challenging little game that you'll have fun messing around with in small bursts.
I played this game so much back in the 80's .. Great cool ending also . I still can to this day can play the whole game without dying once . Not much into speed runs but I just like to take my time and get it done .
I'm talking about the NES version here.
Actually Trojan Is my Favorite NES game , ... Soundtrack,.. on the System
Almost had you there Jeremy 😂 😂
I still find the stage one music and the sewer music creeping into my head once in awhile. A very cool soundtrack.
So Trojan was a trojan horse for NES Works 1987?
Hands down, the game with best control scheme is Kaze Kiri.
You have so many movement options, yet the controller only has 2 buttons, start select and D-Pad.
this was one of my first nes games
The key to NES Trojan is that you got to get the hidden power ups hidden in the man holes.
What a great mini docu😇
It brings back A LOT OF GOOD MEMORIES
I just found your channel & i will recomend & share your videos whit some oldschool friends of mine that STILL to these days play old retro games (like me😂) we met at the arcades in 85/86 & still get together and play arcade/nes & other retro games so i say hello to FZD & Mr Weedman my oldschool gamer friends
And A BIG THANK YOU👍👍 for making these videos😇
Pd i just suscribed😇
I picked up this game several years ago but never gave it a real shot. I should really sit down with it some day.
Great series, Jeremy!
This Chanel is criminally underrated
I've never heard of this game. Fascinating!
Can't wait to see the 1987 games cause that's when the NES got good!
1:12 when you want to jump, you have to press ᵘᵖ
Only took me almost 40 years to realize the name "Trojan" is a play on "Spartan X". Nice.
1987 was the year Capcom brought us “Trojan”, “Section Z”, and the game that started it all, Mega Man”. Capcom became the best company to put out great NES games back in the day. The first two were “1942” and “Ghosts ‘n Goblins” are both sucked, but “Commando” became the third Capcom NES game, and it started to become bigger.
Versus mode makes this, technically, Capcom's first fighting game.
hey!! your work is amazing and insightful as always and seeing these videos every week is a treat. thank you for your hard work!
I think round-up episodes are good. There's so many NES games in general, and in particular so many with similar backgrounds, mechanics, and flaws. I do hope that the more unique lesser games still get their own episodes, though.
Also, glad to see a return to NESWorks!
BFisch I think this may be a one-off at this point since Jeremy mentioned that he did the episode because he needed an excuse to mess around with the joystick controller he recently received. The fact he also mentioned in the next episode preview the line when NES Works returns in full strongly indicates that it will be some time before we see the next one and it’s more likely that he will finish the SNES Works 1991 first.
As long as you keep the sword powerup from the first stage, the game isnt' too hard. It's like Gradius, where if you die, you're screwed though.
Very nice job. This game is definitely quite tough, I remember there was this youtuber named Kingdom Carts who had some awesome strategies on this game, but he took down all his videos.
You have to press... ?
Firs time i played a nes, we rented one along with a few games. BReakthru (which must have been easy as hell cause my brother finished it in the like 2 days we had the NES and back then we'd never owned a gaming system so while we had played atari at a babysitter, we didn'T exactly have skills yet) , Ikari Warriors II (terrible), SMB (believe it or not i was kinda meh on SMB...i liked things with guns and ships at 9), Gradius (great but too hard) and Trojan. I kept a great memory of it though to be fair when i finally got to play it again easily a year or more later, i had played a lot more NES games and i didn't like it half as much.
This game is hard. I used to beat this game for fun as a kid, but I don’t have the patience anymore to beat it.
His name isn't "Trojan Man", His name is Ken. i cant remmber where, but it says it somewhere....
You’re thinking of Fist of the North Star, understandable error
@@JeremyParish i could have sworn it was ken, but after looking at the Capcom fandom page, its Ryu.....
so we both wrong lol
@@JeremyParish
i was getting it mixed with Streetfighter 2010, but i knew this dude had a name.... hope the day is treating you well..
@@JeremyParish
Back in the day borrowed this from a friend then called him to say it was impossible. He came over and beat it with one life. a day or so later I could too. always liked it for that reason. seemingly impossible but easy enough to master
The strategy to use for Muscular is to slash him just once, from as far away as possible. Then immediately retreat backwards to avoid his attacks. Repeat until he's dead. Do it this way and you usually won't take a single hit.
I had this game and loved it. Was a lot of fun.
this port's 2 player mode was also capcom's first stab at a fighting game, bearly predating the original street fighter.
I never found this game to be hard. Once you master your shield, the game becomes kinda easy. One of my favorite NES games.
I remember borrowing this from a friend as a teen and not even making it past the first manhole.
Had never heard of this game, seems really similar to Magic Sword, also from Capcom.
So Kung-Fu Master was originally known as Spartan (X), and this game is called Trojan? That can't be a coincidence.
Capcom's early NES output did have a bit of jank to them. Commando and Strider felt the same way. The graphics in Commando totally glitch out in between screen transitions.
1987 was indeed where the NES really began to make its mark, since the first real all-time classics (post-Super Mario Bros) came out. Should be a good series of episodes.
And I understand the round-up idea, but Slalom should at least get a spotlight since it's the first game developped by Nintendo's future BFF.
i was really hoping the protagonist was called TROJAN MAAAAN
I actually do remember using the Game Genie on this game: OENKXPLE was my go-to code you start with almost 100 lives! (I think it was like 88 or 89? it's been a while so I don't remember exactly...) but overall I did enjoy it!
His name is "Muscular"... And his build type is Fred.
His name is Anakin... And he's a human being.
Is the boxart pattern a TM of Capcom?
I doubt they trademarked it, but it would be considered copyrighted trade dress.
@@JeremyParish I meant the chess board-like pattern that you can find on the boxart of both this game and the original Mega Man.
Right. I don't think they trademarked it.
@@JeremyParish I wonder who came up with that Double Grid pattern?
A graphic artist at Capcom USA, one assumes.
its really complex for a nes game! good one
Trojan is actually *dead* easy. Used to have the game as a small boy. Played it again yesterday for the first time in over 2 decades. Finished it on my first try. The P symbols are key - if you can hang onto both, the final boss takes just 2 hits to kill :p
The best music on a nes game ever
This was the first game i rented.
Great work
Trojan will make you cry in your fruit berry crunch!
I liked this game somewhat. It was a bit of a challenge though.
Rich was right about your channel.
Great vid!
It’s all about getting the Blinking p power up😳
Bravo!! 👏👍
Even on pirate carts this game was with all copyright information on title screem which is unusual for chinese bootleggers.
This game is super easy.
Aaah yes trojan :) the dark souls of nes. Thank u for retronauts and all u so jdog.
Here from ReviewTechUSA. He Loves you, so now we all do too!
I will play the arcade version first before I play the nes version. 😀👍🎮
This game looks so cool, but the whole up to jump thing is a massive turn off for me...
What's an oubliette?
Looks like someone's never seen Labyrinth
Or perhaps I have, and I was setting you up to complete the reference.
Nobody who didn't already know could possibly spell it right. ;)
I thought that's what UA-cam comments threads were for
@@JeremyParish I was just going to comment that "it looks like this guy's seen Labyrinth," but you beat me to it yourself, in regards to using the term at all.
Good call on the sports stuff. It really does become the bane of most other chronological review series like Chrontendo and Turbo Views. Just...nobody cares. Nobody. But they've committed to the format, so....
Agreed, sports games are pretty much the same except for some nuances which aren't worth covering in whole single episodes. It's better to have just one for all sports games on a platform like what AVGN did.
2:02 "I somehow finished Trojan legitimately as a kid, but I can only reach the halfway point..." That's kinda confusing... Lol. Did you finish it? Or did you only get to the halfway point? And then you say "thank goodness for Game Genie cheats..." So does that mean you didn't finish it legitimately and had to use Game Genie? So many contradictory statements in just a couple of sentences. 🤣... Not trying to nitpick, just genuinely confused as to wth u mean. Lol
I beat it as a kid. 30 years later, I found it easier to use Game Genie codes to get footage of the late game. Not that complicated.
@@JeremyParish aaah, that makes sense. It gets complicated when things aren't phrased coherently.
I can see how this would be confusing if you don’t distinguish between past and present tenses and think I am currently a child.
@@JeremyParish 😂 nice! just messing with you man. Ur channel gives me a chance to explore games that I could never play as a kid. Keep up the great work.