Kid Niki & Gotcha! The Sport retrospective: Shinobi shootout | NES Works #66
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- Опубліковано 3 лип 2024
- Data East (finally) serves up a pretty solid game in the form of Irem's Kid Niki: Radical Ninja, but the real story here is Gotcha!: The Sport. Not only is it the debut release from one of the NES's most questionable publishers, it also very much represents a specific moment in popular and political culture. Gotcha! was based on a movie and a toy line, and its publisher's fortunes were impacted by poor toy sales right as the national conversation began to focus on some unfortunate results from America's gun culture and the early days of the the police's move toward militarization. That's quite a lot to tie to a simple NES Zapper game...
Thanks to Steve Lin for lending the Kid Niki packaging to this endeavor!
Video Works is funded through Patreon ( / gamespite ) - support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its UA-cam debut! And be sure to check out the Retronauts podcast (www.retronauts.com), where I (and many others!) tackle a much wider array of classic gaming topics each week. - Ігри
As a kid, I used to play indoor soccer (talk about _another_ 80's phenomenon!), where the rotation of arcade games at the snack bar included one Kid Niki. I asked for the NES game for my birthday, not knowing if it actually existed, but to my surprise, I opened the wrapping paper, and sure enough--Kid Niki: Radical Ninja. And yes, the bubbles were really tricky--I never made it past the Stone Wizard.
you got lucky there. you made it as far as the final boss.
I really liked the arcade version when I saw it. for a small town we had a very up to date arcade near my house
All American Indoor Sports, by chance?
When you are playing a game with a boss named “Death Breath”, you know you’re playing a classic
Kek. 😂
8:59 "In which films geared toward older audiences are given kid-friendly tie-ins..."
"Yippee ki-yay, mutha-"
That cut was *_glorious._* 😂
Thanks, but I'm personally more satisfied with the RoboCop smash cut!
Too bad you couldn't make "Bitches, leave" work...
The 1980s were weird that way. There were toys and cartoons based on Rambo and Robocop. LJN released a toy line based on David Lynch's film adaptation of Dune. The Feyd Rautha figure came with the caged cat that Thufir Hawat had to milk in the movie.
that actually started in 1985, when a group of toy designers began pitching a rambo toyline to various toy companies. most of them chickened out of the pitch saying "this is an r-raited film. nobody's going to want these.". ultimately coleco agreed to sell them and it became a big hit for them, though not quite enough to keep them afloat, as they went bankrupt 3 years later.
Damn, you killed it with the second part of this video. Kid Niki is cool (I actually use an edited version of the back of the box dialogue for my deejay bio) but the history behind Gotcha was amazing.
I sure learned a lot about a game I never ever played made by a company I only knew from its retrospective reputation.
Gotcha was the only LJN game I ever played!
Now that we've had a video obliquely mentioning one, I've realized I'd love to see an NES/SNES Works Gaiden video on the original Megami Tensei or Shin Megami Tensei. They're probably among the most influential games in the Famicom family library that we won't get to see directly otherwise; outside of Jack Bros, which was weird in an entirely different way, the only Megaten game we'll see in the scope of this project is, eventually, DemiKids through Game Boy Advance Works. I feel like Megaten deserves a look on its own.
It's also, by weird loophole, probably the most successful licensed video game series in the world. WHich is mostly unrelated even to Megaten's success, but it's also the weirdest thing I know about it, and I love it.
I must've gotten one of the defective Gotcha guns because I remember my brother and I going out to play with them and being disappointed by the guns barely shooting the "paint" without constantly malfunctioning.
Nice, cool to hear a first-hand account.
I had completely forgotten about them until the commercial. I figured they were just disappointing because I bought them late in their lifecycle on deep discount from KB Toys and all the paint had sort of dried up.
@@pfriedel They didn't leave any paint, but the blue bruise from the hardened paint pellet must have been a pretty strong indication that you'd been shot.
Gotcha! was the second Nintendo game I ever played after Super Mario Bros. at some kid named Nick's house in preschool. Blew my mind, and I was hooked on video games for life, but somehow I doubt these days they'd be encouraging preschoolers to handle toy guns. Nostalgia!
This is the first video ive seen about Kid Niki that wasn't ripping it to shreds the whole time. I actually did like this game as a kid and rented frequently. Its such a unique departure from the normal stuff my friends and i played and that always stuck with me
Seeing the title card read "Solomon's Key" on top of the Zillions anime clip at 7:34 threw me for a loop for a sec, ngl.
Aside from that, great vid as always!
Growing up in a post-Columbine world the idea of somebody selling toy guns with the selling point that they resemble real guns is so bizarre that it loops around to being kind of funny
I always looked at Gotcha as a throwaway 3rd party title, but it actually looks to be a bit more interesting here. And the music sounds pretty good, especially the snow level. May be worth going back to check out provided expectations are tempered.
You should be able to pick it up for cheap. There aren't many Zapper compatible games and Gotcha! is a decent one.
Whenever I see Kid Niki spin his sword, my mind tends to think of the prop shredder move that Dante has in DMC3 while in Sword Master style. Maybe someone at Capcom was a fan of Kid Niki? It wouldn't surprise me, seeing as how self referential the game industry is, what with gamers growing up to become game makers and the like. A rather random comment I know, but I've been playing DMC3 recently on my Switch and so that's kinda where my mind is at right now.
I personally think of Jade from Ultimate Mortal Kombat III.
I always lump this game in with Dino Riki, which no one else seems to remember or care about.
I *_loved_* that game as a kid!
I think our version was called "The New Human" or something, but it *_definitely_* kept us entertained those many summers ago!
Every single one of these is just so fascinating. I didn’t even know LJN had a pre-crap games origin! (would make sense T&C surf designs wasn’t bad)
Those were some really good cuts during the Gotcha video
Oh man, Gotcha. I was really excited about this one! I have a lot of fond memories of playing it with my cousin. We would take turns with the controller and the zapper turning it into a pretty unique co-op experience. It was so much fun, at least for a couple of 6 year old kids lol
Gotcha seem to be infinite. I once played a 3 weeks game (keep the game at pause during college hours) with my roomate. We were stuck on level 99 and wanted to see if the score would revert to 0 or stay at 999999 pts. A power outage putted an end to it
The first sentence in that 1988 New York Times article at 10:22 has some pretty uncomfortable wording as a reader in 2020.
It absolutely does, but it also underscores just how much things have changed in 30+ years.
Gotcha! was practically not only my first owned NES game, but my first owned video game period. Christmas of 88 I was 6 and I got the Action Set version of the NES console (bundled with two controllers, the grey Zapper and Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt two-in-one cart) along with Top Gun and Gotcha! The Sport. I'm pretty certain I also got the NES Advantage controller that same Christmas, though my memory is a bit fuzzy there.
Now these weren't the first video games I had ever played mind you, just the first that I could actually call my own. Prior to this I had already been playing games thanks to my father's decent sized collection of Atari 2600 titles (like Pitfall, River Raid, Spider Fighter, etc. just to name a few).
I had no idea until now that the LJN memed and mocked by YTers covering bad NES games was nothing more than an alter ego for Acclaim, who I always felt were worse publishers than LJN: Seems I had every reason to think that as they're basically the same.
SeafoamGaming LJN wasn’t sold to Acclaim by its parent company, MCA, until 1990
At 7:36 it says Solomon's Key instead of Zillion and gives the release information for that game. Fantastic video as always, just a small nitpick.
Apparently his editing sofwtare sonetimes makes a mistake, example in the Solomon's key/Mighty bomb jack video it put the wrong names of the games
I've had a personal grudge with Kid Niki ever since I borrowed it from one of my older brother's friend back during summer of 1989 my obvious hatred of it was the one hit deaths which frustrated me until I bought a Game Genie in 1991 only to be even more furious because as stated in the code book the codes only work for certain copies of the game I was like screw this game I'll never beat it. Fast forward to 2006 as I've gotten older and my reflexes have gotten sharper than when I was in my teens I've finally managed to beat Kid Niki now I can die happy. Of course there are other games that I was determined to complete but there's this thing called UA-cam and it kind of saved me the trouble of going through some games mainly because odds are the ending sucks but I still enjoyed playing through the game regardless how fair or unfair it is.
Got my NES for Christmas in 1986 and remember getting "Gottcha! The Sport!" sometime in 1987, aged 9 or 10.
Good little Zapper game and obviously nostalgic.
The music really takes me back, boys... good times
Do you think Gotcha was possibly intended to be played with LJN's Rock 'n Rolla controller? I'd imagine being able to move with your feet would be a lot easier than a gun and a pad.
Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Bundy! 🎩
Didn't that controller ship a few years after this? It's certainly possible the controller was designed with this game in mind, though.
Hello, you!!
Ooh, Sanritsu! I'm kind of a fan of their Donkey Kong-like platformer Dr. Micro, where you have to fight a mad scientist and his army of robots.
Also, Kid Niki has the same tempo and overall feel as a later Irem release, Hammerin' Harry/Hero. Except it's less urban and doesn't have the instantly dated battle cry of "Let's get BUSY!"
Alternate intro dialogue: "Kid Niki you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, Kid Niki!"
I still have this game, and I think the music where an enemy attacks you and loses a life is the one that I used in an “MTN Gang” episode called “Wendy the Picky Eater”, a parody of an “Arthur” episode called “DW the Picky Eater” where Wendy was started to puke and went “BLAH!” And splat all over the screen where the “Lose a Life” music from “Gotcha” was played at 9:12, and then cuts to a school transition where the “Game Over” theme was played.
My neighbor had Kid Niki when i was a kid in 1989... i only played when we were in his humid basement. Great game.
Brilliant point about the illogical choice to change toy guns vs. having police not kill kids. Loving this video series and the obvious love and care you put into each one!
i play this game every summer... because in my memories, i played it for the first time at my neighbor basement when i was a kid.
great stuff Jeremy, still the best retro gaming channel out there
Oh man, I loved Kid Nikki! Never had my own copy but borrowed a friend of a friend's copy pretty much continuously until I beat it!
I played gotcha! On one of those bootleg N64 style plug n plays with a light gun at the tip
Thanks a lot for your videos. I enjoy watching them, brings back nice memories.
Gotcha, The movie I know about, but I really didn't know that there was a NES game.
Thank you for continuing to make videos, I look forward to seeing your videos every week. I had a Gotcha gun and rented Gotcha, and remember being disappointed by both. The guns range was pathetic compared to even cheapo drug store suction cup gun..
"Gotcha! The Sport!" was my first light gun game (we ended up getting the base NES package and bought a separate aftermarket gun later) and remains my favorite. Though it's true, there's not much variation after you make it through the stages, a lot of the light gun games have that same repetitive nature. I think of it as the rare, good LJN game.
That Robocop edit, though. Brutal.
Now that you mentioned Megami Tensei I'm hoping you do a Gaiden episode covering it.
Sorry, I think that would be too time-consuming. I'd be willing to tackle it as a patron request, but I don't really have the free hours to sink into a grindy 8-bit RPG otherwise.
Love your work. Please keep it up.
Oh, and I LOVE the Metroidvania series (my favorite genre). Please continue it as well. :)
This and FCIs/Ponys Dr. Chaos were my Video Paradise regular rentals. SNKs Iron Tank a close 2nd. I'd love to hear you talk about Capcoms Code Name Viper. I know you you've played that. Very Rolling Thunder type gameplay.
Kid Niki drove me nuts because it was a game I didn't hate but didn't particularly like either. Fortunately, I borrowed it for a friend for a week or two. Perhaps along with Athena? He seemed to gulp up a lot of sub-par games with cool packaging and not much else.
Love your videos brother. I've seen a lot of these. Yours are by far my favorite.
Hey, super-cool quarterback Jim McMahon. My sister was really into him back then.
Sadly, he now suffers memory problems due to all the hits he took on the field.
Kid niki wears his Japanese-“NES” on his wrist bands. They did replace the Japanese version’s top knot with the rat tail (I had a rat tail in 3rd/4th grade, maybe that’s why I love this game so much). Also, these days I bet cops would shoot someone even if it was a bright orange gun. And yaaay Karate Kid next
Oh, you have to use the controller to scroll Gotcha ...I bought it recently and hadn't spent much time with it, because I couldn't get anywhere 😂😂
Gotcha! made me feel scared as a kid. That music and those sound effects must have been slightly traumatic.
I played a ton of Gotcha back in the day. Not because it was good (it was not good) but because it was the only other light gun game I had besides Duck Hunt.
I know my brother had Kid Niki when i was a kid..and I'm so curious did 'Death Breath' 10:15 inspire the scene in 'Big Trouble in Little China' or the other way around? No coincidence here.
-Oh!..and ofCOURSE Ljn bungled their own selves that way. HA!
In 1989, I couldn't bring the orange NES gun in my bagages on the plane. 😆
gotcha actually seems like a cool idea for a game if it was just made better. d-pad controls with a light gun sounds fun
Good god that status bar
I think we're getting really close to Top Gun and Megaman soon?
The cultural gulf between the fever dream 1980s and now couldn't be anymore apparent with some of the topics in this video. For one, they'd probably just not even bother super-localizing Kid Niki and put that anime tie in out front... LOL
Kid Niki. Damn. I remember that.
Kid Niki: Radical Ninja definitely feels Irem/Data East like.
I remember renting Gotcha! when I was, like.... seven.
Once.
Man I loved Kid Niki!
I remember Gotcha. It was a decent light gun game, one of the better LJN published games.
While the R-rated cuts are amazing, they've already been mentioned, so I'll throw some attention to the nice use of Back to the Future, Pt II. Subtle tie-in.
I'm calling it right now.
*Mega Man will be episode #69, as a reference to the fact that its Japanese pronunciation sounding like "rokku", thus being used as a wordplay for **_Rockman_*
Deep Weeb Interesting but unlikely. A few weeks ago Jeremy Parish mentioned in one of his videos that Mega Man would be a tax day special meaning in it will air in 4 weeks from now on April 15th as episode 70. Going by release dates episode 69 should be Wizards & Warriors.
hell do you know if NES and Famicom versions are the same ?
Could you tell me more about what you mean by "Minor 3rd" when you were mentioning music?
It involves music theory. You could try here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_third
When I got my NES in 1987, my mom took me to the store and told me I could get any game I wanted. For some unknown reason I chose Gotcha. I played it a few times, but never really liked it.
I still have an Entertech watergun, heh
Jeremy, question from someone who's been rewatching these at random: Did you mean for UA-cam's chaptering function to create new chapters every time you show a new game's title at the bottom of the screen? I'm seeing this in multiple videos across numerous series, and it's weird.
No, they turned on that feature without permission, and there’s no way for me to remove it from the archive episodes without tweaking 300+ videos one by one.
Honestly Gotcha! wasn't too bad, a little weird due to requiring the D-pad and a Zapper but an okay light gun game
“It’s comin’ around!”
Kid Niki was more Dragon Ball than Dragon Ball.
Never heard of kid Nikki. Interesting
I actually owned Gotcha gun lol
As for Entertech, the original guns were indeed very lifelike. I had the Waterhawk model, which I bought with the proceeds from a couple of days' running Kool-Aid stands. (Damn I'm dating myself.) I also bought a second one, which was painted in red-and-blue spots after the various police shootings. I feel like you'd have had a screw loose as a kid to go around pointing _any_ of them at a police officer, but the phenomenon of Kids Doing Stupid Things sadly wasn't confined to the 80s:
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_challenge
* www.nytimes.com/1993/10/19/us/not-like-the-movie-a-dare-leads-to-death.html
I had that toy, too. They wouldn't let me take it with me on an airplane despite it being packed away in my suitcase (unusually strict airport security for the time!) :) I watched Gotcha the movie various times thanks to it being a cable TV mainstay for a while. Back when people thought Anthony Edwards was going to be a star, before he became some guy who wasn't George Clooney on ER. I never bothered renting the game.
I actually enjoyed Kid Nikki back then.
Glad to receive confirmation that my fondness for Kid Niki isn't JUST residual nostalgia--although, let's be real, it's clearly still MOSTLY residual nostalgia.
Ah, the toy guns that look too realistic thing.
I would call that an American problem, but it kinda isn't, since we dealt with it in the rest of the world too (just with less chance that a police officer would randomly shoot a kid for it, since police generally are discouraged from shooting people in general in most of the world, even IF the people they're faced with seem to be armed)
I suppose making toy guns less realistic looking wasn't the worst idea.
But from what I've seen America is now faced with the opposite dilemma - the availability of real guns in paint schemes and designs that make them look like toys.
While having a purple hello kitty themed handgun is amusing on some level, it seems like it could also cause these problems distinguishing toys from the real thing to resurface...
True, although it is not an American problem that people are getting guns in dumb paints and styles. Not any different than the rest of the world.
Here is where I add my usual random weird fact that no non-obsessed person would probably know:
There is one substantial difference between the NES and arcade Kid Niki, that actually gives the home version a leg-up on the coin-op game: it's got a lot of cool but very obscure secret passages! And there is no consistent way to find them or know where they're hidden except from stumbling on them and memorization! And many of them have unique programming, and even a couple of enemies that appear nowhere else! See: ua-cam.com/video/jSYg67fUpFo/v-deo.html
Wow, wild.
Yeah like climbing up the right tree or ducking in the right spot
Scrolling through the comments, I was about to mention the secret rooms in kid niki if no one else did. You beat me to it, not that I mind as long as someone mentioned them. There is actually at least one secret room that is still programmed into the game but is inaccessible with stock NES hardware. If playing on a famicom, either the japanese or US VERSION, there is a secret room in one of the big buddha statues that can only be accessed by making noise into the famicom microphone.
Red Dawn was the first movie to have a PG 13 rating.
Ah, the US. Blaming police misbehavior on everything except police since... probably considerably earlier than 1988, but at least 1988.
What is the music for the end of the video?
It's a chiptune rendition of the next episode preview music from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
worldrummer To add to what was mentioned below he originally used the actual preview theme but changed to the chiptune version due to copyright concerns when the show was announced to air on Netflix.
Yanchamaru in Japan had such a strange take with the 2 sequels on the Famicom. He looked nothing like this title in the video which is also an arcade title, big departure. The strange thing, and I wasn't aware of it until more recent times, there was a TRUE sequel to the FC/Arcade release on Gameboy in Japan. Ganso! Yanchamaru hit the GB and it is a direct visual and play sequel to the FC release and it's utterly fantastic enough that I sought it out as one to own on cart and I can not recommend it enough. Maybe something to pop into GB Works at some time?
Being radical was so fucking important in the 80s. Modern humans have no idea about how crucial it was.
Apparently people were using Entertech and other realistic-looking toy guns to commit robberies as well.
I mean, considering that one guy tried to rob a Canadian bank with a G1 Megatron, that wouldn't surprise me.
kid nikki coin op was a great game. the ports were not as great as the original.
Kid Niki showcased the difference in culture between the West and East and I would have enjoyed the charm and overall game if I purchased it in 1987 however, I have never played this game before so this may be a pleasant surprise even though I know the theming.
Gotcha seems like a want to be black box game due to the series box.
It seemed like it was pretty good but sadly, emulation is hard and I'm not sure if it was released in Europe for use with Pal systems.
I commend you on making social-political commentary In a vast pit of video game people who strive to be apolitical. Nice work. I love your videos.
I think Gotcha was the first NES game I ever played. I went to my neighbor's house, he was one of the first people I knew who owned an NES, and he had that game. I remember being fascinated by the Zapper and immediately wanting an NES for myself.
Atta boy
This video perfectly explains why LJN became such a cesspool of awful games! :)
Should've stayed with toys but I guess being sold to MCA is what did it.
An LJN game that is not a steaming pile of f*cking sh*t!?
OH MY GOD! THEY MADE A GAME THAT'S NOT SH*T!
We found a gold at the end of the rainbow! Maybe it's bronze or something, but THEY MADE A GAME THAT'S NOT SH*T!
IT'S NOT, SH*****T!!!
How can I buy the flip grip in the UK? There is no other product like this (which surprises the hell out of me because so many games and compilations of retro games on the switch have vertical display modes, there's so many, the Atari collection, the SNK collection, the Capcom collection etc all have games where you can switch the display to vertical so it fills the whole screen of the switch)
Anyway do you ship to the UK? Because seriously there's really no other product like it. Come on China, get your arses in gear. But I'd rather support you and your channel anyway, I'm already a patreon patron. But I want the flip grip and every time I look I get confused as to whether I could even buy it and get it shipped without crazy costs and customs fees etc. I just want a bloody flip grip. Maybe I'm stupid. I'll have another look now. Though with the global pandemic, maybe buying things internationally is a bad idea right now
Kid niki radical ninja look good to play. 😀👍🎮
Could you tell me more about what you mean by "Minor 3rd" when you were mentioning music?
It refers to music theory, where a "minor 3rd" is an interval, or space between two notes, that corresponds to 3 half-steps, or keys (both black and white) on a keyboard. C to Eb, for example. That being said, I think the wording was somewhat misleading, as although the Yo (the brighter sounding) and In (darker sounding) scales, the two most famous "Japanese-sounding" scales, do feature some minor 3rd intervals, that's not exactly where the source of their color comes from, in my eyes. These scales are modes of the pentatonic scales, and more defined by their relationship with perfect 4ths in the former case, and the minor 2nds in the latter.
From a cursory listen to Kid Niki's soundtrack, it seems like it focuses more on the In scale.