Gomoku is not actually really related to Go in terms of gameplay, despite being played with the same pieces; nor to Othello, despite the also similar appearance. It's actually more just like Tic-Tac-Toe. Players take turns placing stones and the first one to make 5 in a row wins. There are a few additional rules depending on variant, but that's basically it. It really shouldn't be confused with Go.
Perhaps unusually, I find DK Jr. to be the superior game. A little less challenging, but I definitely always felt it was the smoother, more enjoyable experience to me. I love all your videos, especially Game Boy Works, but NES Works (Good Nintentions!) and its deep histories have always fascinated me too.
The Game Over book actually does describe him playing one of these board-game titles (maybe shogi, maybe go, I don't remember) but quitting in frustration after a few minutes.
These early Famicom games definitely have that 2nd generation console vibe. They look more like Intellivision and Colecovision titles..... which Donkey Kong was also ported to by the latter and is a story unto itself. Its amazing how far they pushed that hardware using mapper chips. It managed to outlive most of the superior consoles and home computers released after 1983!
Good memories, i had most of these games on my 190 in 1 NES cartridge sometime in 1991. except for that donkey kong music learning game. wow, nice overall synopsis! :)
What a shame that music game never saw the light of day. It would have been a great marketing tool too, making the NES look even more like an, well, entertainment system. On the other hand, most of these launch games weren't that advanced musically. Most songs are very short and don't even seem to use the noise channel.
The screenshots make me believe this was more meant to teach how to play piano and read sheet music as opposed to creating your own tunes, but maybe that’s where the “Donkey Band” mode comes in?
I'm trying to imagine what Super Mario Bros would have been like as a Coin Op Arcade Cabinet.... I think seeing "the princess is in another castle" would have been truly rage inducing as you kept shoving quarters into the monster.
As Wikipedia says, "Many games' North American debut was on the VS. System before being released for the NES, which gave players the impression of being 'amazed' at the accuracy of the arcade 'ports' for the NES." I also just learned that Super Mario Bros. 3 came out on PlayChoice cabinets the year before it reached the home NES in America!
I wonder if King Features licensed Popeye separately for consoles and computers, since the characters featured in three games released for the ZX Spectrum and other European home computers throughout the 80s and early 90s. Bizarrely, one of them is a wrestling game.
Man, Jeremy doesn't like DK Jr. I know he's in my age cohort so he may remember DK Jr. in arcades when it was fresh. I know I do. And people (me included) LOVED it. It was nearly (but not quite) the Ms. Pac-Man to Pac-Man. An improvement. So it's been weird to hear Jeremy disparage the game in multiple videos...
I'm pickin' up Good Nintentions (Ooom bop, bop . . . Good Nintentions) Good Good Good . . . Good Nintentions (Oom bop, bop) Brian Wilson would approve.
first of I loved playing the ROM of 'Popeye's English Play' I kinda want to track down a famicom copy of it! Also blown away by the additional photos of the DK music game... shame that one never came out! This was a great retrospective, looking forward to future episodes!
I love Number Munchers and DK Junior Math looks terrible to me, so I doubt that any bias towards the literary world has unjustly colored your perceptions of it.
Jeremy, I loved this video. It's obvious how much effort and thought went into it. At first I wondered if you were trying to steal Chrontendo's lunch, but this is a very different thing. It's got a unique vibe and it was just really enjoyable to watch. I hope you continue with more "compilation" type videos like this one. It's a cool theme for Gaiden videos.
The Roman alphabet works better when you are dealing with limited data storage space, because every character has to be drawn and stored in memory - it's 26 characters vs. Japan's two phonetic alphabets with nearly 50 symbols apiece. Plus, English was super trendy in Japan in the '80s, so it didn't seem out of place for players.
10% ownership now, but they basically straight up bought the Mariners back in 1993 (1992?). if you look at professional baseball teams in Japan you'll notice all of them named after the corporations that own them; the Yomiuri Giants are owned by Japan's biggest newspaper, and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks are owned by technology conglomerate SoftBank. Nintendo buying the Mariners was a huge power move. not only were they finally big enough to get their own baseball team, they also got a major league team. this didn't mean much immediately afterward, the Mariners kinda sucked at the time and Japanese baseball fans were way more interested in watching Hideo Nomo play his first season for the LA Dodgers as the, well, technically second Japanese player in major league baseball.
About 4-nin uchi mahjong, I don't think uchi means strike in this context, it's either from "uchiawase" which means get-together, like 4 people can get together and play, or it's just a suffix added to the amount to say "players" in a gambling context. In any case though, that "nin" "kanji" looks like a penis.
I mean there's a certain convenience to electronic mahjong, since mahjong has some pretty dense scoring rules if you haven't internalized them, as well as keeping track of things like being in Furiten or a hand not being valid or being worth less when it's open, etc. I know people can and do frequently play mahjong in person but I cannot imagine playing it without assistance.
What do you mean with Popeye not being ported/reproduced on another system? I played it on the C64 so there were definitely ports of it out there, is there something about the Famicom version that didn't appear in those ports? www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1970
Gomoku is not actually really related to Go in terms of gameplay, despite being played with the same pieces; nor to Othello, despite the also similar appearance. It's actually more just like Tic-Tac-Toe. Players take turns placing stones and the first one to make 5 in a row wins. There are a few additional rules depending on variant, but that's basically it. It really shouldn't be confused with Go.
Good point. Unfortunately not many people play go in the west
These videos have gotten so good. Thanks for spending so much time on them.
10:02 There's something *very* wrong with the 4-Player Mahjong game's logo.
I'm actually glad they shipped this. 😂
I scrolled down to see this. Was not disappointed.
Nah it’s fine! *cough cough* Pe$&@!
😳
The Popeye English game - it might have been easier for Nintendo to turn it into a Hangman type game had it been released in the West.
Another extremely compelling, informative video. This is one of the finest UA-cam channels around. Keep up the good work!
Jeremy these episodes are amazing and thoroughly enjoyable!
Absolutely incredible that the clip you used from Mario 64 is him dropping the baby penguin off a cliff.
Perhaps unusually, I find DK Jr. to be the superior game. A little less challenging, but I definitely always felt it was the smoother, more enjoyable experience to me. I love all your videos, especially Game Boy Works, but NES Works (Good Nintentions!) and its deep histories have always fascinated me too.
The Game Over book actually does describe him playing one of these board-game titles (maybe shogi, maybe go, I don't remember) but quitting in frustration after a few minutes.
it was go the fds ver of go that hank rogers did for bps as lead into tetris
These early Famicom games definitely have that 2nd generation console vibe. They look more like Intellivision and Colecovision titles..... which Donkey Kong was also ported to by the latter and is a story unto itself.
Its amazing how far they pushed that hardware using mapper chips. It managed to outlive most of the superior consoles and home computers released after 1983!
This was wonderful. Love your work, Jeremy
Good memories, i had most of these games on my 190 in 1 NES cartridge sometime in 1991. except for that donkey kong music learning game. wow, nice overall synopsis! :)
Great episode as always!!
What a shame that music game never saw the light of day. It would have been a great marketing tool too, making the NES look even more like an, well, entertainment system. On the other hand, most of these launch games weren't that advanced musically. Most songs are very short and don't even seem to use the noise channel.
I imagine (or at least hope) they reused ideas from the music game when they made the music design portion of Mario Paint.
The screenshots make me believe this was more meant to teach how to play piano and read sheet music as opposed to creating your own tunes, but maybe that’s where the “Donkey Band” mode comes in?
I'm trying to imagine what Super Mario Bros would have been like as a Coin Op Arcade Cabinet....
I think seeing "the princess is in another castle" would have been truly rage inducing as you kept shoving quarters into the monster.
Go check out Vs. Super Mario Bros.
I only knew it as a coin op cabinet prior to seeing it on NES. For a long time I assumed (Wrongly) that it was first.
As Wikipedia says, "Many games' North American debut was on the VS. System before being released for the NES, which gave players the impression of being 'amazed' at the accuracy of the arcade 'ports' for the NES."
I also just learned that Super Mario Bros. 3 came out on PlayChoice cabinets the year before it reached the home NES in America!
Mario Bros title screen music is "Downtown" by Petula Clark 😆
I wonder if King Features licensed Popeye separately for consoles and computers, since the characters featured in three games released for the ZX Spectrum and other European home computers throughout the 80s and early 90s. Bizarrely, one of them is a wrestling game.
Where Popeye brawls with aliens!
What happened to the sprites in Mario Bros? They look messed up.
Man, Jeremy doesn't like DK Jr. I know he's in my age cohort so he may remember DK Jr. in arcades when it was fresh. I know I do. And people (me included) LOVED it. It was nearly (but not quite) the Ms. Pac-Man to Pac-Man. An improvement. So it's been weird to hear Jeremy disparage the game in multiple videos...
I'm pickin' up Good Nintentions (Ooom bop, bop . . . Good Nintentions)
Good Good Good . . . Good Nintentions (Oom bop, bop)
Brian Wilson would approve.
first of I loved playing the ROM of 'Popeye's English Play' I kinda want to track down a famicom copy of it! Also blown away by the additional photos of the DK music game... shame that one never came out!
This was a great retrospective, looking forward to future episodes!
I love Number Munchers and DK Junior Math looks terrible to me, so I doubt that any bias towards the literary world has unjustly colored your perceptions of it.
Namco released a re-imaged port of Popeye for mobile phones... not a console, but still a port :-)
Jeremy,
I loved this video. It's obvious how much effort and thought went into it. At first I wondered if you were trying to steal Chrontendo's lunch, but this is a very different thing. It's got a unique vibe and it was just really enjoyable to watch. I hope you continue with more "compilation" type videos like this one. It's a cool theme for Gaiden videos.
I think the Popye game could have been repurposed as a hangman type game.
Why were so many of these Japanese games mostly be using English/English lettering?
Most Japanese know rudimentary English words. Plus it saves time for the inevitable English localization.
The Roman alphabet works better when you are dealing with limited data storage space, because every character has to be drawn and stored in memory - it's 26 characters vs. Japan's two phonetic alphabets with nearly 50 symbols apiece. Plus, English was super trendy in Japan in the '80s, so it didn't seem out of place for players.
@@JeremyParish I would say this was the case for the most part, and it certainly worked to their favor. The phrase "Game Over" became very universal.
I actually prefer the Colecovision versions of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. I find the Famicom versions a lot harder.
1:47 Mario nooooooo
LOVE that you chose that moment to show Mario 64. Love your videos Jeremy.
That weird moment when you watch these videos while playing online Mahjong, and the video starts talking about Mahjong o.O
Nintendo bought an American Baseball team??? Seattle mariners, 10% ownership, go figure. Maybe it's common knowledge, but I find that pretty amusing.
10% ownership now, but they basically straight up bought the Mariners back in 1993 (1992?). if you look at professional baseball teams in Japan you'll notice all of them named after the corporations that own them; the Yomiuri Giants are owned by Japan's biggest newspaper, and the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks are owned by technology conglomerate SoftBank. Nintendo buying the Mariners was a huge power move. not only were they finally big enough to get their own baseball team, they also got a major league team. this didn't mean much immediately afterward, the Mariners kinda sucked at the time and Japanese baseball fans were way more interested in watching Hideo Nomo play his first season for the LA Dodgers as the, well, technically second Japanese player in major league baseball.
About 4-nin uchi mahjong, I don't think uchi means strike in this context, it's either from "uchiawase" which means get-together, like 4 people can get together and play, or it's just a suffix added to the amount to say "players" in a gambling context. In any case though, that "nin" "kanji" looks like a penis.
why spend hundreds of dollars on 4 separate computer mahjong units with link cables when you could just spend 50 or so on a game board and pieces?
Why buy a car when you can just walk to the grocery store?
@@JeremyParish is linking up a bunch of game & watches really more convenient than a board and some pieces?
It’s more interesting
I mean there's a certain convenience to electronic mahjong, since mahjong has some pretty dense scoring rules if you haven't internalized them, as well as keeping track of things like being in Furiten or a hand not being valid or being worth less when it's open, etc. I know people can and do frequently play mahjong in person but I cannot imagine playing it without assistance.
i no know nes until 1987 i was late in 20's my son want it and i said lets check it out
You are so under subscribed.
Yeah this was a goldmine when I found him. All I can say is sub to his Patreon for a month or something?
What do you mean with Popeye not being ported/reproduced on another system? I played it on the C64 so there were definitely ports of it out there, is there something about the Famicom version that didn't appear in those ports?
www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1970
Poor choice of phrasing. I mean it's never been republished via Virtual Console or other formats once the NES license expired.
Ah, that makes sense.
I think ur saying something smart but i cant really hear it because of the sound effect that distracts me
Which is about the intro
Nintendo nes 1985 is better then the famicom 💩