David Wise definitely went back to the Rare music catalog to inspire the masterpiece on Donkey Kong Country's final stage. Using the Pirates opening theme at the start of Gangplank Galleon.
Honestly, this is the best show on TV (or otherwise). I can rarely just watch it live, or even finish an archive episode in one sitting, but I find this unmissable and go out of my way to watch it some way or the other every week. Just fantastic stuff.
Wow! This episode had two key video game moments of my life. Wrestlemania was a game my dad would rent and we'd play a ton together. yeah, its shitty, but back then when you had no other frame of reference, it was a great time. Then Pirates. my parents had this friend and when we'd go to their house sometimes id get to play their NES which they had Burger Time and Pirates. I would mostly play pirates, and man as a kid i was amazed with all the stuff you could do in this game. it was just fucking HUGE to me. Very cool game back then. Keep the science up Jeff, This show fucking rules.
Looking forward to seeing where you rate Crystalis and The Guardian Legend. These were my favorite NES games along with Rygar and Shadowgate but its incredibly hard to find anyone who played those two specific games.
I kinda think of Spelunker as a more open-ended Donkey Kong. Same fixed jump arc, same unforgiving fall distance, similar sometimes-janky collision. I wish I had Spelunker as a kid, I had a lot more time and patience for practicing to gain muscle memory and I would've certainly gotten more out of it than playing the same 3 Donkey Kong levels over and over
idunno Spelunker seems really charming for a 1984 platformer. It just looks like an expansion of Donkey Kong. It looks like it is to SMB what Crash Bandicoot is to Mario 64.
Seeing Xenophobe unlocked some weird memories I'd forgotten. It wasn't until i saw the weird barrier thing that blocks you from progressing that I remembered it. I remember basically nothing about it though but I vividly remember that shield barrier thing and the little floating gun that follows you around. I last saw it when I was probably like 4 years old.
Spelunker was my Strider. Saved my allowance quarters, spent them on that game, and just dismayed at my decision within about 15 minutes of booting it up. But I kept the game and grew fond of it. Never finished it - so I guess it’s the opposite of Jeff’s Strider story in a way - but I still mess around with it now and then. And I play the first level song in my head roughly once every two weeks to this day.
WWF Wrestlemania was the first video game I ever played. I remember 4 y/o me fighting with my Uncle to get a turn playing his NES on my Grandad's giant floor model tv. What an introduction to video games.
I love spelunker , I always had the muscle memory to deal with the weird unforgiving fall distance the game gives you. I’ve bought all the new spelunker games on PS3 and PS4 lol
I played endless hours of pirates back in the day, on my Tandy 1000. It's one of my favorite old-school PC gaming memories. Pirates and defender of the crown definitely have a few similar gameplay systems.
Wow wasn’t expecting to see Robocop. I remember wanting to love that game and just hating it. And for some reason I saved the box and everything to it. I have a near mint CIB Robocop… 😂
every time I read one of the titles to these I think of the national geographic issue that asked if evolution was fake and then the actual article was just a big "NO" in giant 72 point font
Toobin' brought back a very bad memory of a game I rented on at least two occasions called Jim Henson's Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival. Now THAT'S a video game. I haven't thought about that sucker for at least 30 years, and now it's come back with a vengeance. I think I need to become a member of the Gerstmann Advisory Panel just so I can throw my vote for a Muppet game to get played sooner rather than later.
Well yes, become a GAP member, but don't be mean and recommend _that_ game. I did a TAS of it recently and oh boy is it a hot mess. And then you get to the final stage and it's a side scrolling platformer starring Kermit and... even with slowdown and rerecords, trying to beat that boss still took me awhile because it's completely unintuitive.
Memory's a weird thing, I do remember Commando being a flickery mess but I also could have sworn you could blow up those bunkers with the grenades. Clearly I was wrong!
Gotta say, the other emulator may be just a smidge better for us, because we hear the achievement ping but they are so hard to read and only stay on the screen for a couple seconds with this one lol
Acclaim/LJN had Rare make a ton of games, but when Rare couldn't be bothered, they subcontracted the work to other studios, which is how Atlus wound up working on stuff like Jaws, Friday the 13Th, and Gotcha: The Sport. (edit) That said: That WrestleMania game looks and sounds like a Rare game in every way.
can't wait for the episode entirely dedicated to NES Military sims. Garry Kitchen's Battletank, Flight of the Intruder, F-117 Stealth Fighter and F-15 Strike Eagle were all ported to the NES. It didn't quite have as many flight sims as the Sega Mega Drive, but it had its share, and most of them played really poorly.
Regarding Toobin': I took a look at the MAME footage for the arcade version and Jeff's description of differences totally doesn't match. Doesn't look way more frantic unless it all comes from the control scheme awkwardness. The currents aren't faster and you can in fact just chill and hang in a spot. Now, since Jeff is saying this one's unlicensed - are such now fair game for being ranked here?
"Most of the wrestling games on this platform (are terrible)" Correct. "Most of the wrestling games on any platform (are terrible)" Big NOPE to that...especially if we're counting titles from Japan. It's a shame WWF had the videogame and toy rights as one back then allowing LJN to pump out the crap they did as Fire Pro and Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling (Natsume Championship Wrestling) which came later would've blown people's minds over here in the States. Natsume was completely forgotten after release until it landed on the Wii Shop...actually I hadn't even heard of it until then. But yeah, there's a lot of really good...even great wrestling games out there.
Well, that's just an opinion. I personally find most wrestling games boring, even though I enjoy watching wrestling. Most only become fun in a couch multiplayer setting, which rarely happened when I was a kid because my friends didn't play video games.
Ocean have plenty of console crimes to answer for, but Robocop isn't one of them. The NES version is by Sakata SAS/Data East; Ocean just licenced the rights to them.
Wrestlemania was one of those games you'd rent around big events (mostly because none of the better wrestling games were in), convince yourself you had fun, and then mentally swear to never rent it again. And then the cycle repeated. You'd also wonder why the hell Marvel had Hogan's license, not knowing they had it for _twenty years_ because of a legal thing.
Jeff, love your videos, been watching since GameSpot. But please do something with your office/game room. The continually moving in or out look has lasted too long.
@@eternalreturnal you're not wrong, it's basically always been that way. I'm not saying he needs to deck the room out with nano leafs and crazy set dressing. But painting a wall and hanging some framed art would go a long way.
@@bseider5387 He is also now in the process of moving out of that room in the coming months with the little one on the way so the office will be changing again
Man, that port of Xenophobe is sooooo bad. It's one of those situations where in attempting to make sure it had all the enemies of the arcade, but they didn't give you the tools that made killing those enemies without getting hit work in the arcade. Almost like they built the game of watching someone play it, vs actually playing it themselves.
NES achievements have been around since 2013, so a lot of ground has been covered by now. Six of the nine games featured in this episode have achievements.
Robocop NES music sucks man. Gameboy version is superior. By Jonathan Dunn. Look up the theme here on UA-cam. The comments are hilarious. No business being that good for a gameboy game.
My favorite streaming series to look forward to each week! Would be awesome to see you do the turbografx sometime!
David Wise definitely went back to the Rare music catalog to inspire the masterpiece on Donkey Kong Country's final stage. Using the Pirates opening theme at the start of Gangplank Galleon.
Every week, this is the best thing ever on the internet.
I didn’t know Sid Meier’s Pirates was on the NES, a delightful surprise it’s seemingly so full-featured
Let’s just say trading in Ninja Gaiden AND $5 for Robocop was a bad idea. I know Jeff will confirm this when I watch shortly.
Robocop SUCKS!
Jeff - You said "Kids love Night Court" all ironic, but I imagine you and I both watched at ton of that show in 1987.
Honestly, this is the best show on TV (or otherwise). I can rarely just watch it live, or even finish an archive episode in one sitting, but I find this unmissable and go out of my way to watch it some way or the other every week. Just fantastic stuff.
Wow! This episode had two key video game moments of my life. Wrestlemania was a game my dad would rent and we'd play a ton together. yeah, its shitty, but back then when you had no other frame of reference, it was a great time.
Then Pirates. my parents had this friend and when we'd go to their house sometimes id get to play their NES which they had Burger Time and Pirates. I would mostly play pirates, and man as a kid i was amazed with all the stuff you could do in this game. it was just fucking HUGE to me. Very cool game back then. Keep the science up Jeff, This show fucking rules.
Commando that high? Crazy.
Looking forward to seeing where you rate Crystalis and The Guardian Legend. These were my favorite NES games along with Rygar and Shadowgate but its incredibly hard to find anyone who played those two specific games.
Oh god, core memory unlocked when that NES RoboCop music started. I totally forgot i played the hell out of that game. Thank you for your sacrifice.
I kinda think of Spelunker as a more open-ended Donkey Kong. Same fixed jump arc, same unforgiving fall distance, similar sometimes-janky collision. I wish I had Spelunker as a kid, I had a lot more time and patience for practicing to gain muscle memory and I would've certainly gotten more out of it than playing the same 3 Donkey Kong levels over and over
Solid Chumbawamba reference there.
idunno Spelunker seems really charming for a 1984 platformer. It just looks like an expansion of Donkey Kong. It looks like it is to SMB what Crash Bandicoot is to Mario 64.
If he were a Kojima character, he'd be Jeff Videogamesman
Love this series, keep going Jeff! I hope once the NES is done ranking, there will be another console and you keep ranking until the end of time.
Toobin' on NES does have River Styx. River of blood, complete with the devil throwing pitchforks at you. That's wild, thanks Jeff for sharing that
man that spelunker title theme is awesome, amazed I've never heard it.
In Toobin' YOU DO NOT STOP.
Seeing Xenophobe unlocked some weird memories I'd forgotten. It wasn't until i saw the weird barrier thing that blocks you from progressing that I remembered it. I remember basically nothing about it though but I vividly remember that shield barrier thing and the little floating gun that follows you around. I last saw it when I was probably like 4 years old.
"His biggest opponent yet: walking down stairs."
Spelunker was my Strider. Saved my allowance quarters, spent them on that game, and just dismayed at my decision within about 15 minutes of booting it up.
But I kept the game and grew fond of it. Never finished it - so I guess it’s the opposite of Jeff’s Strider story in a way - but I still mess around with it now and then. And I play the first level song in my head roughly once every two weeks to this day.
WWF Wrestlemania was the first video game I ever played. I remember 4 y/o me fighting with my Uncle to get a turn playing his NES on my Grandad's giant floor model tv. What an introduction to video games.
Xenophobe is so damn good in the arcade.
Legendary Wings has some nice music, I'll give it that.
@1:15 : The first few bars of the Robocop theme just loops over and over again. for the entire game (presumably). What is this? James Pond 2: RoboCod?
Jeff playing NES games is apart of my wakeup/get ready for work routine. honestly it will be too soon when you start ranking SNES games. if ever.
"No more of that forever" 😂
I love spelunker , I always had the muscle memory to deal with the weird unforgiving fall distance the game gives you. I’ve bought all the new spelunker games on PS3 and PS4 lol
I played endless hours of pirates back in the day, on my Tandy 1000. It's one of my favorite old-school PC gaming memories. Pirates and defender of the crown definitely have a few similar gameplay systems.
Looking forward to seeing how much time the KOEI strategy games get... :P
Ah yes, who would forget Ted DiBiase's theme, Girls in Cars.
Fantastic catch.
The NES version of Pirates is my favorite!
What High Score tracker are we using here? Is this part of Retro Achievements?
Wow wasn’t expecting to see Robocop. I remember wanting to love that game and just hating it. And for some reason I saved the box and everything to it. I have a near mint CIB Robocop… 😂
every time I read one of the titles to these I think of the national geographic issue that asked if evolution was fake and then the actual article was just a big "NO" in giant 72 point font
I used to think that I was bad at NES Wrestlemania as a teen. Now I know better!
I, also, love, Pirates! For, the Commodore 64. I played that so much back in the day.
Just like Ed-209, Robocop was unable to walk down stairs!
I didn't remember the Toobin' port being that neutered. I'm going to play the next Toobin' cabinet I see extra hard now.
Toobin' brought back a very bad memory of a game I rented on at least two occasions called Jim Henson's Muppet Adventure: Chaos at the Carnival. Now THAT'S a video game. I haven't thought about that sucker for at least 30 years, and now it's come back with a vengeance. I think I need to become a member of the Gerstmann Advisory Panel just so I can throw my vote for a Muppet game to get played sooner rather than later.
Well yes, become a GAP member, but don't be mean and recommend _that_ game. I did a TAS of it recently and oh boy is it a hot mess. And then you get to the final stage and it's a side scrolling platformer starring Kermit and... even with slowdown and rerecords, trying to beat that boss still took me awhile because it's completely unintuitive.
the player character sprite art in Xenophobe looks like a dang NFT
this is the best series on the internet
I remember using a free rental to get Wrestlemania as a kid and then trying to get my money back.
Memory's a weird thing, I do remember Commando being a flickery mess but I also could have sworn you could blow up those bunkers with the grenades. Clearly I was wrong!
Thank you Captain Skyhawk!
I guess since I owned a NES as a kid, I never realized how many games I remember being ports of arcade games. These were always NES games first.
Forget RoboCop vs Terminator, RoboCop vs Stairs. Fight the real enemy.
The music is the best thing about Spelunker by far
Just here to watch jeff say "Spondylous" a few more times. LOL 🤣 What a dumb subtitle for a game hahahaha
I gotta be real, I am surprised that the music from Spelunker hasn't been sampled. That Game Over track would be so good on a Trap Mix.
Gotta say, the other emulator may be just a smidge better for us, because we hear the achievement ping but they are so hard to read and only stay on the screen for a couple seconds with this one lol
Ah, the Yukon. Famous for it's penguins.
Acclaim/LJN had Rare make a ton of games, but when Rare couldn't be bothered, they subcontracted the work to other studios, which is how Atlus wound up working on stuff like Jaws, Friday the 13Th, and Gotcha: The Sport.
(edit) That said: That WrestleMania game looks and sounds like a Rare game in every way.
The C64/128 version of Pirates is a top 3 game of all time. Didn't even know it released on NES. Anyway :)
Wasn't it a Nintendo mandate for ports from arcade to have new stuff exclusive to the platform as well? Or strong suggestion at the least.
the arcade version of Spelunker in particular really swung me around on that game. it still kinda sucks but it's pretty fun.
The 7800 port of commando is great too. Never had any flicker to begin with 😉
I know I'm sick in the head, but I still love Spelunker. I'm not surprised by Jeff's ire, however. A fair judgment, sir.
What did all of those golden retrievers ever do to Robocop?
RoboCop became an ATF agent.
I now just realised where "Spelunky" got its name.
2:01 only 2 cases? I thought there was a peach rings too?
can't wait for the episode entirely dedicated to NES Military sims. Garry Kitchen's Battletank, Flight of the Intruder, F-117 Stealth Fighter and F-15 Strike Eagle were all ported to the NES. It didn't quite have as many flight sims as the Sega Mega Drive, but it had its share, and most of them played really poorly.
FUCK YES DOUBLE DARE!!!
Love the show Jeff!
Why won't you read Bif's manifesto!?
Regarding Toobin': I took a look at the MAME footage for the arcade version and Jeff's description of differences totally doesn't match. Doesn't look way more frantic unless it all comes from the control scheme awkwardness. The currents aren't faster and you can in fact just chill and hang in a spot.
Now, since Jeff is saying this one's unlicensed - are such now fair game for being ranked here?
I try telling my son that Judge harry is a bad influence and he just does close up magic at me. These kids today.
i completely forgot that there was a version of sid meier's pirates for nes. so weird
There's something really wrong about that jaunty 8-bit rendition of the Robocop theme.
where's the yellow-green turtleneck bro!?
"Most of the wrestling games on this platform (are terrible)"
Correct.
"Most of the wrestling games on any platform (are terrible)"
Big NOPE to that...especially if we're counting titles from Japan.
It's a shame WWF had the videogame and toy rights as one back then allowing LJN to pump out the crap they did as Fire Pro and Zen-Nippon Pro Wrestling (Natsume Championship Wrestling) which came later would've blown people's minds over here in the States. Natsume was completely forgotten after release until it landed on the Wii Shop...actually I hadn't even heard of it until then.
But yeah, there's a lot of really good...even great wrestling games out there.
Well, that's just an opinion. I personally find most wrestling games boring, even though I enjoy watching wrestling. Most only become fun in a couch multiplayer setting, which rarely happened when I was a kid because my friends didn't play video games.
Got here so early there is no sound
Mr. Touch & Rank back at it again. Better than Mr. Game & Watch hands down.
I don't think there was a good home WWF game until Wrestlemania 2000 and even that game had some issues with difficulty spikes
Ocean have plenty of console crimes to answer for, but Robocop isn't one of them. The NES version is by Sakata SAS/Data East; Ocean just licenced the rights to them.
Waiting for Jeff to dunk in Maniac Mansion 😢
1:20:18 was so funny. 😆
Wrestlemania was one of those games you'd rent around big events (mostly because none of the better wrestling games were in), convince yourself you had fun, and then mentally swear to never rent it again. And then the cycle repeated. You'd also wonder why the hell Marvel had Hogan's license, not knowing they had it for _twenty years_ because of a legal thing.
They really didn't care when they made RoboCop because they confused ED-209's weakness for Robo's.
I prefer going commando over going trojan as well
More like Poopin' AM I RIGHT?!
Jeff, love your videos, been watching since GameSpot. But please do something with your office/game room. The continually moving in or out look has lasted too long.
it's almost part of Jeff's asthetic
@@eternalreturnal you're not wrong, it's basically always been that way. I'm not saying he needs to deck the room out with nano leafs and crazy set dressing. But painting a wall and hanging some framed art would go a long way.
whocare
@@bseider5387 He is also now in the process of moving out of that room in the coming months with the little one on the way so the office will be changing again
luv 2 spelunk
Spelunker is a Souls Game
With you're takes on smups I'm curious to see your take on Gun.Smoke once you get to it, personally it's my favorite on the system.
Man, that port of Xenophobe is sooooo bad. It's one of those situations where in attempting to make sure it had all the enemies of the arcade, but they didn't give you the tools that made killing those enemies without getting hit work in the arcade. Almost like they built the game of watching someone play it, vs actually playing it themselves.
I had that wrestling game as a kid. It's impossible to play.
Spelunker. I like the music. Too bad the game has constant cheap deaths. That's as far as I ever got. Why do all these games have achievements?
NES achievements have been around since 2013, so a lot of ground has been covered by now. Six of the nine games featured in this episode have achievements.
@@MuffledSword Around on what? Some kind of emulator? I know nothing of what he's playing the games on.
man the Rogue City release is looking DATED
The Commando music is so awful.
The entire game seems awful to be honest. I was surprised at how much praise Jeff gave it.
@@edwardrocks4338 nostalgia is one hell of a drug
Robocop NES music sucks man. Gameboy version is superior. By Jonathan Dunn. Look up the theme here on UA-cam. The comments are hilarious. No business being that good for a gameboy game.
GUN.SMOKE