The Besties - The Video Game Required Reading List: 1985-1989 [The Resties]

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

The Resties Required Reading List returns!  Our goal is to curate and contextualize a "must play" list of 25 games released between 1980 to 2020. This week, we've selected games from 1985-1989. Join us as we time travel to the premieres of mega-franchises like Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and Tetris. Let us know what you think of the series and your personal reading list at @thebestiespod on Twitter. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Hello, everybody. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Froschek. Welcome to The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week, we are talking about The Resties' Required Reading List. You might have remembered our first episode in this series we're back and this time we're talking about video games between 1985 and 1989 and before you run off before you hit pause and delete this episode because you're like i mean those video if huey lewis is listening to the podcast right now, I think we've got him.

He wants to go back in time? Yes. He wants to go back in time! This is the reason that he wants to do that because we, the Rustys, are collecting a list of 25 games from Pac-Man to modern day. So that's 1980 to 2020. Each episode will focus on five years of video game history.

85 to 89 is actually five years. It kind of breaks your brain because you'd think it's 85 to 80. They're like to 90, but it's not. It's 85 to 89. Each of these episodes, we will pick between one to three games from each kind of section. And that limitation is there because, listen, we don't want you to feel like you have to play 5,000 video games. These limitations and the restraints, it's what makes for good content. I promise.

These are the games that we feel everyone who wants to have a fundamental appreciation of video games should play. So, again, these aren't our favorites. These aren't even necessarily the best. These are the ones that if you want to understand and appreciate video games, you should give them a try. Yes. That said... Foundational games. Foundational. We will also be

picking our own personal game from each of these. We're like, you know what? If you want to know the foundation of Rust Fresh Stick, this is the game from 1985 to 1989. Yeah. Which honestly just as important as the main list.

Yes. That's it. Who I did it. Is there anything that you, what have you been up to this week? I've, you know, we didn't make time for that.

Yeah. You know, just, uh, you know, doing my thing, man, just chilling,

chilling, you know, in New Yorkork city we do a lot of sitting on stoops and just sort of like singing at the people that pass by sure sure and snapping um so there's been some of that are you referring to the stars of where in the world is carmen san diego the tv show is that your idea of new york you know i was thinking guys and dolls but honestly guys and dolls is the foundational that's a good reference because it's the foundation for uh the band which was called rockapella actually it's not rockafella rockapella there you go and uh yes indeed i think i was the one in the pork pie hat, if I had to guess.

And I'm the one in the detective. Suspenders. Yep, that's me. That's me. I'm that one. I'm the one who loves acapella. Anyway, more acapella right after the bake. Bake!

Right after the bake. You're working with Annette. There's no rundown in front of you, and you get right after the bake because of that. We'll see you right after the bake. Are you ready for this? Because there's a caveat that I'm going to have to put out here, because we are going to enter three extremely important Super Mario Bros. games

over the course of five years. We're also going to talk about a weird period in video games where, like, you don't really know when a thing got released. And it could be released in Japan, like, two years before it was released in the U.S. I mean, we know when the thing got released, but you're right. From a regional standpoint, it does sort of vary. Well, I mean, the Super Mario Brothers, this is a great lead into 1985. Thank you. We don't, I don't believe we know the actual date that game was released.

Because this was a time where it was like they kind of shipped it out and then retailers would put it on shelves. So I think this specific date is a bit hazy. The original Super Mario Brothers, you don't know when it came out in Japan? I don't, well, I don't know about Japan, but in the States, I believe that the date is unknown. But this is just a rule for this. We're going to go with a game's earliest possible release date for a nomination. Including if it came out two years earlier in Japan? Correct.

Okay. Correct. I think that's just a safe way to have some consistency, right? And what does that mean for a game like Doki Doki Panic, which was later reworked into Super Mario Bros. 2? I have great news for you. It's in the same time period. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. The bigger question would be Super Mario Bros. 3. Oh, no. Which is, I believe, a 1988 game game and i don't think comes out in the states until the 90s okay we're in the weeds we're in we're in the weeds my friend not even this podcast let's get out of the weeds and talk about the year 1985 so there's a lot of games i'm just going to share some of them up top then we then we can dive into them. Gauntlet, which is kind of one of the first great D&D four-player action multiplayer games, I would say. Super Mario Brothers.

Space Harrier. Ghosts and Goblins. Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Hit it, Rockapella! Oregon Trail, the version that most people know we'll go into that in excite bike it's a good list of games that is a good list of games let's start with super mario because i think that's going to be the there's going to be a super mario brothers game on our top on this like 25 yeah i agree with that right but does it need to be the very first

game well again let me clarify there was a mario game before this it was oh my god mario brothers not to mention donkey kong i'm not even going to go down that road yeah but this is the one where it's a platformer i mean this mario Mario game was a platformer, kind of. It was like an arcade platformer. A scrolling platformer, which was the big deal about this game. Yes, I agree with you. The world scrolled with you, and it felt like you were in a living world, not in a static, like, framed painting of a world. I agree with you. This was the classic, traditional Mario as we know it.

Yes. But, so, I'm really really torn and you know what maybe we don't need to decide right now maybe we'd actually we have that feeling out there we're going to talk about super mario 2 super mario 3 yeah and then we can decide there yeah we can we can table the mario discussion but i think in the meantime, and, and I just want to clarify something. This is the earliest we go, right? We do not go earlier than 1984. We do go earlier. We,

80 to 84. Oh, we do do 80 to 84. We do 80 to 84. Wow. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

We don't go earlier than that. There is, there is a window of games that we could do from 75 to 80, but I, you know, I think Pac-Man to modern day. They're all like All brothers games you don't want to okay with all this in mind i think i agree with you we're going to table the mario discussion

i think we should start maybe cutting things that we know for sure will not make the cut of required reading for 1985 okay i think ghost and gobllins we can cut. I agree. It's a good game. I like, stylistically, I like it. I like the art, but it's not a great game. And it's slow and clunky and frustrating. It has legacy, but not much more than that for me. I agree.

Space Harrier can also die. Okay, well, before we do that, in honor of Space Harrier. Space Harrier, directed by Yu Suzuki, who took, this game was originally supposed to be a military flight combat game. And he was like, that's interesting. But what if instead we did it with a flying dude who shot space dragons? Yeah, it was just a guy. And not only he shoots them,

he shoots them with like these giant balls. They're not bullets. They're just these balls. Giant glowing balls. And there's like kind of a spiritual sequel coming out this summer on apple arcade that i am extremely excited for and people who don't know you suzuki he made outrun afterburner which is kind of ironic because i think afterburner came out after this and that is just a military flight combat game and uh shinmu which you know love shinmu around this house sort of um but that said

i feel like i've done my due diligence i have honored it goodbye space harrier goodbye um gauntlet i think we can cut do we know okay in terms of co-op arcade games. How many were there? I mean, there must have been earlier co-op arcade games, right? I feel like there has to be. But I'm going to kind of... Yes, there are cooperative arcade games. I mean, there is Pong Doubles. So co-oping on an arcade game existed.

I just feel like this is pretty significant. It definitely is significant. I mean, I'm pulling up some research now. Apparently, Joust had cooperative play. Joust, where you ride the turkey. I'm sure we'll talk about it. Yes. Also, I can't believe I forgot about this, but Mario Brothers.

You're the one that you keep bringing up was that cooperative i believe that you could have two people on screen for that you could have two people i forget if they were working together against one another i think it was cooperative because they were brothers that's mario yeah but i i mean looking i'm i'm looking back at a whole list of these games i think i think gauntlet is the one that i would nominate as like the first one that really clicks at me. It is certainly the best of those, and I would not be prepared to cut it right now until we see the full list. Okay, so then, let's see. I think Excitebike we can cut. We can ditch.

I love it. Excitebike, a little just fun detail about that game. The Super Nintendo version connected to a modem wait wait wait what what version of excite bike came out on super nintendo in japan there was a super famicom version of excite bike and you could connect via a modem that was also only available in japan and i believe you could download levels like the levels that people made that's pretty involved yeah yeah i mean modem history especially in japan is like kind of a trip and most of it didn't make it out here except for like sega tv but yes that said very cool game the first time i ever remember there being a level creator in a game that i played uh oh yeah i think same um okay so oregon trail and where in

the world is carmen san diego i thought a lot about both of these before they're both educational things they're both educational i think they're both kind of foundational they so oregon trail some things you should know about it this version is like the kind of when you think of the iconography maybe you think of like a green dos looking version of oregon trail you're probably thinking of something like this there was a version before this in 1981 that was a text only version oh so you didn't get to like shoot a bunch of buffalo and then have to like be weighed down by buffalo meat right right right and this is i i just i'm obsessed with this era of companies as everybody's about to find out during this episode it was made by this

company called i believe mech is how it was pronounced for m e c c and that is the minnesota education computing consortium love it and like during this era that was just normal like people listening to this might be familiar with the term Coleco or ColecoVision, which was an old hardware maker and software, I guess. And that was the Connecticut Leather Company. Whoa. It was Coleco. Yeah, yeah.

Isn't that wild? Well, not to mention Nintendo starting as a card game company. Yeah, yeah. I mean, all of these companies at the time had to come from, effectively, other things who were pivoting. company yeah yeah i mean that's all of these companies at the time had to come from effectively other things who were pivoting um so yeah or oregon trail just very chill and that was made for minnesota's public school district and then now it's like oregon trail it's funny that it'd be in minnesota and not oregon but yeah ah uh the other one where Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, another passion thing.

So I did a little bit of reading on it. Border Bund. Border Bund, yes. Border Bund, yes. Do you know much about them? No, I don't. So they actually were extremely successful before Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. Because they had made just a lot of hits.

They made Choplifter and Lode Runner oh sure you might later know them for stuff like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing she taught me popular Justin McElroy recurring joke I feel like on the besties um they would eventually publish Prince of Persia and Myst um and what I like about including this is I feel like it's like this alternate path that video games is like entertainment and education never took. So I don't know if that's a good reason to include it or not. But I mean, yeah, just the whole origin of this is just so weird. I mean, speaking of Coleco and Mac, the studio that founded this was two brothers and one was like a lawyer and the other one had a whole bunch of odd jobs and they made a ton of money off this i think like around the time that

this game is in development it is i don't know the exact rank but i believe it's like one of the biggest software companies in the world and again before they released this and then they have this game and they're like oh no like we don't know what to do with it even the guy who co-created it was like this isn't an action game nobody's gonna play this they ship it off with um the world almanac uh it's like the world almanac a book of facts and book of facts and schools are like hey book it must be an educational game let's buy it and then it becomes a humongous hit so one of the greatest like marketing gimmicks in history was tying this to a book that way like all these schools felt like it was okay to buy it it was vaguely educational yeah i think it

definitely is educational i mean especially by today's standards i think at that time it probably seemed like just another video game but something that just doesn't have a gun in it and makes you think about geography is yeah i'm trying to remember the like actual educational aspects so it'd be like you find a clue and the clue is like oh we found a page from the, you know, first, I don't know, Bible. And where was that printed? Let's go find out. And then you have to pick from three different places where the first Bible is printed. Basically, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, you're using clues of culture, geography, maps to piece together where San was also like san diego or other characters might be it was also like oh he had a tattoo that was like one of the defining characteristics which doesn't seem educational that's just like i guess crime solving yeah there is a bit of detective work i mean it's very noirish and the tv show goes i think even further in the noir direction i think there's like kind of this weird thing where the tv show is so foundational to our generation that like this game i don't know it kind of like skews how you remember it because it's i mean i played the game before i saw the tv show and i'm a little bit older than you so i think that's part of it um but i loved both of them uh the tv show

was like i mean it's funny you describe it as noir because it's so ridiculous and colorful, uh, and not like grim, like noir tends to be, but it definitely had the detective aspects. Oh yeah. Well, this is also the noir era of like Dick Tracy, right? Oh sure. Where pennies from heaven, where it's just like weird. right oh sure where pennies from heaven where it's just like weird it's not neo-noir because that would be like cyberpunk but yeah it's different um i don't know if we should include either of them but i did want to make a case for them just in case yeah i mean the argument against them i think is that educational video games are more or less dead right now right like yes they

just don't exist anymore so if you were looking to find a baseline for a genre the genre is basically non-existent that's not entirely 100 true but 99 true yeah well and that's like the reason that i it's both the reason to not include it and to include it sure right because it's like oh this this is a way that the industry could have gone. And I think understanding game history, that's kind of just as important. But again, we're trying to be narrow. This list is only going to get more bonkers very quickly.

Let's, I think, move on from those and we'll reconsider the two that we have kind of penciled in, which is Gauntlet and Super Mario Bros. later in the show. Cool. 1986. Okay, here we go yeah wow we just like really start diving into it hard starting now dragon quest the original dragon quest metroid castlevania outrun speaking of yusuzuki uh the original the legend of zelda bubble bobble arachnoid salamander which i'm only including because the box art is so good i don't know i'm not it's like oh my gosh can you can you search it and then describe it to me what you see wow it's scary so salamander um it's a snake and he's really scary.

He's got epic teeth and he's sort of spitting fire, but his body is also made of fire and he's in space. I guess he's a salamander, but... I invite anybody who wants to try to draw this without Googling it, just going off of Frushdick's description, please do and send it to at bestest pod on twitter because i would love to see your editions of the snake breathing fire this also has a body of fire it's yeah pretty epic i think the game in the u.s was called life

force oh that makes sense i've heard i think that's right okay um okay so salamander and then the last one is uh rampage starring the dwayne the rock johnson yes indeed excellent list uh love a lot of these games i think we can start by cutting some of them yes oh so i think we should cut metroid in castlevania i went for the hard ones first. But can I make my case? Can I make my case? Sure. I think both these games are incredibly important.

And I think both of these games do not become their true forms until later entries. But that's not the point of this list. Isn't the point of this list the base? So, it's not the very base. Because I don't even think Castlevania 1, to me, isn't even the base of what a Castlevania game is. No, I agree. I agree.

Castlevania went through a transformation, but I think Metroid, even though it's very primitive, has a lot of elements that still exist in Metroid, whereas Castlevania has really departed quite a bit. Let's hold on to Metroid for a second. Okay. I know you hate it, so I'm sensitive to that. No, I am going to make the case

that Super Metroid should be here instead, but we'll get to that in a second. We'll get to it. I think the other step we can cut, it pains me that almost certainly, I don't know, maybe Shinmu makes the list later. Huh.

It feels really weird for me not to have a Yu Suzuki game on here, but I think Outrun gets cut. Yeah, I don't like any of those games. And this is not like a quality thing. I think it's also like, I don't know. It's a different era. It's just a different era. I also think we can kind of cheat because all those games are in Shinmu.

So if we end up putting that in it. It will be a tough fight to justify me agreeing to include Shinmu. I'm going to bring my entire graduate thesis for it. Okay, I'm looking forward to it. I think we can cut Bubble Bobble. I agree. Bust a Move is better. I think we can cut Arachnoid.

Even though I will make the case right here and right now. It is better than Breakout. It's very, very good. I have very fond memories of Arachnoid even though it i i will make the case right here and right now it is better than breakout it's very very good i have very fond memories of this is one of those like paddle ball games where you break bricks yeah brick breaker i think is actually the name of the genre um and i think we can cut rampage even though it's probably my favorite arcade game as a kid, I don't think like historically it has a legacy really at all, or even that much influence. I do want to say one thing about ramp, ramp before we cut it.

It is the first time I've seen digital naked people in a video game. That is true. Because when you die as a monster in rampage, you shrink down to your original form and you are naked and covering your shame as you sort of inch off the screen. And maybe your buddy eats your entire body because they're still a giant monster. And it's really formative for me.

I had some moments. What a great game. But I agree with all those cuts. So that leaves us with legends of Zelda. Dragon quest. I'm not convinced on metroid so we're not gonna cut it castlevania i agree with you um it transforms into what would later be a much better format for the genre even though i like the aesthetics of the original castlevania game i think gameplay wise it is just like you know you talk about another era it basically plays very similar to

ghosts and goblins um which again is just like a genre that or a style of play that is just not really around anymore as much yes i i'm gonna make a case for the legend of zelda that i think kind of well i mean obviously but i think this would this would be the Zelda game that I want to include, like more so than Breath of the Wild. And I think the case I'm going to make, I think might knock out Metroid and Mario. So one, I think this is the quintessential Zelda game because everything that is in this game is the inspiration for everything that is in breath the world in zelda of today in that game is still innovative like it still feels fresh i think it's absolutely incredible what this game does the precedent it sets for both its own series and the rest of video games so some context to that uh shigeru mi Miyamoto obviously gets lots of love for this game, but not as much for Takashi Tezuka, who served as a director and a designer and a writer on the game, has remained a supervisor on the series all the way through.

This is the guy who co-designed Yoshi. Miyamoto, I think the story that everybody's heard, most people have heard, is that he famously drew inspiration for the game from childhood exploration in nature. Yep. But it's Tezuka who had basically all of this connection with Tolkien. And he is the one who's responsible for much of the story. And this is the wild part. He and Mario were designing this. Sorry, did I say he and Mario?

He and Miyamoto were designing this and Mario at the same time. It's like literally they would have an idea and be like, you know what, that's a Zelda thing. You know what, no, that's a zelda thing you know what no that's a mario thing and at the exact same time they built what is i think the foundational game of like linear game design of you know just go from left to right yeah what a lot of shooters are and exploration game design open they did it at the exact same time yeah it is wild so that all that said i think the other games in these series go on to do other things i think the problem is with mario it's like we almost have to have a 2d

and a 3d mario because i think they're such different things but i think mario has gone off in a variety of different ways way more so than zelda um i think metroid obviously had a pretty clear trajectory but what i think is wild about zelda to me is they get it right here and i actually think that he could get further away from what made it great and then come back to it and that that to me is just like unbelievable game that came out in 86 i completely agree you know of all the games that we've talked about so far there was no with a bullet one more so than the legend of zelda the original legend of zelda um so yeah it's it's gonna go in the list, which will make the rest of this a little more challenging.

But I completely agree. Let's talk about Dragon Quest really quick. So Dragon Quest, the original Dragon Quest was called Dragon Warrior in the US, but effectively they were the same game. Correct me if I'm wrong, this predates Final Fantasy? I believe that's right. I believe Final Fantasy is the next year. It's 87. And I mean, it's very tough for me to remove my pretty intense loathing of cherubicies

from this element. And a lot of that is an issue just because I don't have the frame of reference to know what specific elements of Dragon Quest have sort of carried through the canon. So maybe you can speak to that. Yeah, so I am not the world's leading historian on Dragon Quest by any means. But I will say from what I understand, having played bits and pieces of many of them and having listened to our friends at the end of the ether, who I think played through all of them at this point, is that Dragon Quest, you know what you're going to get with Dragon Quest, right? it's a familiar flavor and that's what they are selling you it gets better and better not better and better it gets more and more polished each time kind of like pokemon in a certain way where

final fantasy is the one that i would say takes risks for better or for worse um you know you can have pretty big departures and what a final fantasy game is, even in the mainline. I don't know if either of those things really determine whether or not we should choose one or the other or both or whatever in this period. I guess I would say for Dragon Quest, knowing that

I would sooner pick a later version of that game and honestly, and Final Fantasy as we kind of transition to 87 here. I would sooner pick later versions of that game sure and honestly and final fantasy as we kind of transition to 87 here i would sooner pick later versions of it because i do want people to actually be able to play these games like if it's a required reading list right yeah sure and i think while they dragon quest may be foundational in bringing the you know role-playing experience to a system and bringing the role-playing experience to a system,

I think it's a really tough ask. It is. To get anybody to play that game. I played the original, I think, when it came out on Game Boy Color, one of the portable platforms, and it just feels like a relic of another time. It is not... You know, it's just very stiff.

And I'm sure there are elements that were first introduced there versus other video games. I don't know. I agree with you. I think there's probably a more representative thing. I, if I had to guess, think that we're going to end up on this overall list, including a Final Fantasy game and not including a Dragon Quest game, if I had to guess. But I guess we'll find out. We'll see.

We'll see. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure on that. I think we will definitely include a Final Fantasy game. I want to table the Metroid discussion to the short list before we really have to narrow it down. Let's jump to 1987 and we'll go through that. 1987, we have the original Metal Gear. Not Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear.

We have Contra. We have Punch-Out. Double Dragon. Mega Man. The original Final Fantasy. Blades of Steel. I voluntarily cut Blades of Steel. Yeah, you can cut that even though it's a good hockey game.

It's a good game. Very cool sounding hockey game. The original Mega Man is terrible. It's bad. There's another Mega Man game that I would include we'll get to it uh but uh i don't think we need to include the first megaman game correct um the original metal gear is pretty rough even though it has kind of elements of what would later become metal gear it's so rough around the edges and bad that uh i can't justify anyone really playing it um also it is even though the game has had the

same name basically it's more like inspiration for what would happen with metal gear solid i mean there are there's there are a lot of things that care like you can like smoke cigarettes in the original metal gear and you sneak up on guys and they fall asleep and you know you crouch in the grass and stuff like there's metal gear stuff in there it's just like what was the like cinematic truth of Metal Gear, like what became this franchise staple did not happen until Metal Gear Solid. So I think we could probably just cut it for now. Yeah. I can't play Contra.

I mean, Contra is very good, but yeah. It's very good, but I can't. The only one of these that I feel like very strongly about, I'm not saying it's going to make the final cut, is Punch-Out!! Interesting. Why is that? And this is not the right reason,

because I know there's a different list. But fuck, Punch-Out!! is so good. I can still play Punch-Out!! every single day. We have our personal list. I know. Yeah, maybe that's a personal list thing. Double Dragon, obviously, pretty foundational from a beat-em-up

standpoint for co-op beat-em-up games. There's a better game, though, that's going to come before the end of this podcast that does Double Dragon, in my opinion, way better. Good tease. Yeah, and then

I agree with Mega Man 2 is much better final fantasy i i would just sooner recommend final fantasy 6 if we want to get into the 2d games or 7 7 remake even if we want to talk about appreciating what Final Fantasy in its entirety has to offer and its kind of influences. Yeah. I think even, I mean, I guess I don't know if we can include remake. Maybe that's 20. I don't know what year that is. I think we're skipping 1987 as a whole.

Yeah, I think that's right. But that's okay because 1988 video games come back with a vengeance. 1988 we have Super mario brothers 3 megaman 2 ninja gaiden king's quest for blaster master john madden football and snatcher speaking of kojima this is the earliest earliest version of snatcher kojima would make this like came out for sega cd i think like eight years later yeah it's not just the only one of these that i've never played yeah i i am not i'm fine with cutting it other than just recognizing that like holy moly kojima was doing his thing really a long time ago yeah i think it it can be lost of how long my dude has been been doing this um i blaster master will probably be on my personal list probably yeah i think we can cut

it but i think it's just incredible that how it approached scale on the nes when you you could basically be outside of your mech car tank thing and the world would feel very like claustrophobic and you'd be in like little cavern areas and then you would get into your vehicle and suddenly it was small in these giant worlds um just really clever sense of making you feel like you're in an actual like big world which i don't think any game of that era does as well as that i mean maybe jrpgs but certainly not action games yeah i i love blaster master so that's completely accurate um maybe we should talk a little bit about megaman 2 because megaman 2 i think is the first time that this series kind of like all clicked uh i had mentioned previously mega man 1 being kind of bad

a lot of that just has to do with balance the mega man even though like there's a lot of similarities between the two games mega man 1 was just like difficult to the point of just not fun there is like a lot of design choices that changed in megaman 2 that made the whole concept click in such a way that like a whole series of games whether it's the main megaman games or megaman x built off of megaman 2 and even despite that like megaman 2 still hits highs that most of those games do not um it's pretty spectacular level design wise enemy you know boss fight wise um really quite a high point of the series you know given how selective we're being is it going to get included i don't know but um definitely worth considering yeah i especially like the open-endedness of it,

of being able to kind of pick which, you know, you basically pick which boss you want to go after. Yeah, that was something that was in the first one, I'm pretty sure. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I'm just saying it actually works here. Yes. And, yeah, and being able to, like, get their weapon and then use it to get through the rest of the game.

I think that's very clever and something that I think had to have been a nightmare to balance. And something that we don't see a whole lot. I think that Crackdown 3 kind of promised to be something like that at some point. Where it was like, you can go anywhere and you can break down gangs and go after bosses and make sure that their guards down by taking out the lieutenants and all that stuff and and that kind of i mean it's there but it's thin yeah um super mario brothers 3 debatably the best 2d mario game unless you like super mario brother super mario world or if you're one of those like sickos like me who likes new super mario brothers wii u it's great what what do you think it is

that i mean apart from like more powers better graphics etc what do you think it is that elevates 3 over Super Mario Bros. the original? I think, I mean, yeah, it looks beautiful. I think it makes good on the fantasy of Super Mario Bros. Like there's actually kind of a world.

It feels more like playing the instruction manual. You know, like, oh, you can go on these airships. And there's these worlds where you can go behind the world and, like, be behind the 2D map painting. And it's intentionally there, right? Like, you can see your silhouette. The whole, like, kind of theater aesthetic that it has going on. of theater aesthetic that it has going on there's just a like cohesion to it that that i think the first one doesn't have or it has but it's more like kind of fainting at it

sure um you know you being able to jump outside of the bounds of the game is it doesn't visualize that in any way that you would know or think to do it. And it really does feel like the game is broken in a certain way. That said, that's kind of what I like about the original. Yeah. And just keep in mind, like the physics of Mario,

even though they have changed, certainly, were really defined by the original. Like the feel of jumping, the original kind of set that standard and they've been tweaked a little bit but but predominantly like that's where it comes from and so many platforming games owe so much to that core yeah and so the question is really worse do you sorry i was saying that so many platforming games are still worse oh yeah definitely how many times we played through little big planet levels and like please just give me anything that feels close to any mario game a jump uh yeah no i agree uh let's we'll bold it for now

and then once we get to narrowing down we'll see if uh mario brothers 3 but i think the rest of these games ninja gaiden is a good action game but not a great one um king's quest 4 i mean you know there's obviously a lot of like point and click adventure games that we could include over the years i it you talk about a dead genre it's pretty much a dead like there are a few steam games that come out a year that like play with the genre but not to the point of major impact and i think we kind of need to include stuff that has still a major impact on the world of gaming so i would probably just cut that uh john madden football there's just a better football game from this era in tagline super bowl okay i i'll push back on that okay because i think this game i think literally the nfl doesn't exist today as it is without john madden football but you think that happened that i do because so the whole way this game happens is the team that wanted to make this game wanted a real football game where you had all of the players on the field.

Okay. That was a whole problem at the time is, you know, making a football game that had, like, basically enough processing power to get that many characters on the field and simulate it. Yeah. Was next to impossible. Yeah. their second i guess the big meeting that solidified this was basically because he was stuck on a long amtrak trip and they just like sold him on it and he was his thing was hey he had already taught football i can't remember what he taught a class on on basically why football matters for normal people um somewhere before all this and then he makes this game and the way that madden is made versus tecmo or anything else it is very much about educating people on how football works so i think like if i had to say you know how is the nfl where it is today i think it is nfl films

made it more cinematic so it's it's actually better to watch a football game on your TV than it is to watch it in the stands in most cases. And Madden as a series making it more understandable. I don't know. I'm not saying that it needs to be on the list. I'm just saying like if we are going to have basically a sports game, I think this would would be the one i mean or nba jam yeah but like nba jam is very fun but like nba jam again is like kind of like a flash in the pan right like sure it doesn't really play like the sport it has a moment and then it kind of like disappears um where i think this has longer

appeal i let's just bold it for now okay well i'm not saying we'll keep it sure um okay now we're gonna jump to 1989 yes the final year of our five years for this chunk and this is another, like, barn burner. So, 89, we have SimCity, Mother, which is the prequel to Earthbound, effectively, only came out in Japan, River City Ransom, Populous, Prince of Persia, Phantasy Star 2, and Tetris, specifically the Game Boy edition. and Tetris, specifically the Game Boy Edition. Okay, so I guess we'll do cuts first, right? Populous can probably go. Sorry to Peter Molyneux. He made a lot of weird games, including Populous. But it's also arguably the first god game.

I think that would be its significance. Yeah, I mean, you play it as a god, but effectively you could make that same argument about SimCity where you can summon tornadoes. Yeah. I think we can cut Mother. I think so too. Prince of... I don't know enough about Phantasy Star 2.

We can cut Phantasy Star 2. If we're going to also cut Dragon Quest, I think we have to cut Phantasy Star 2. We can cut Phantasy Star 2. If we're going to also cut Dragon Quest, I think we have to cut Phantasy Star 2. Okay. I'm trying to spread the representation and share PGs. Sure. So I guess the question I would have is, you have Tetris, and it says Game Boy Edition.

My recollection, and this might be totally wrong, I thought that that version of Tetris was like the version of tetris like oh no that's not the first version no no no no the the russian version is the first version right but in terms of the one that was like widely distributed i i think this is the one that is that had the most impact culturally because this is the game like you know hillary clinton is famously photographed playing it on a plane yeah right like it gets game boys in a gajillion people's hands and i yeah i think the case for it is like a double whammy of tetris itself is just the foundational puzzle video game um yes it will be on this list in some form i think the question is

oh i i understand so yeah just for some history because i just looked it up so it came out in the ussr in 1984 uh it didn't hit the eu until 1987 and then north america in 1988 and then obviously the tetris version would come out afterwards this was the first like portable version 1989 on the game boy um i think i think even though it was a huge deal for tetris to be on a portable platform and like kind of defining i think the game itself is even more of a deal like it is maybe the most timeless game ever made. In terms of video games. And it's cold war era politics.

Of 84. I think is like incredibly significant. I would probably look earlier. Yeah I think we can cheat. Use the 84 game. And we'll get it. I think we'll get it in there. On that list.

For people who want to read ahead, Tetris, The Games People Play by Box Brown is a great, great, great, great graphic novel that's like the history of Tetris, like how it came to be and its distribution and all that stuff. Very cool. Prince of Persia, another Broderbund publishing thing jordan mechner the the designer um what i mean rotoscoping is i guess the big claim there is that he rotoscoped his brother into the game yeah and also just the overall feel of moving through that world is like pretty foundational just because it you know and a lot of that has to do with the rotoscoping like feels very realistic or looks very realistic for the time it was like way ahead of its time you know as a game it's it's very stiff today but i understood i mean i had a heck

of a time playing it when it came out back then yeah i don't know if i would include it but i will say like for people who like game history and that's why you're listening to this episode. There's a book called The Making of Prince of Persia. I think it's journals 1985 to 1993, and it's by Jordan Mechter. And it's literally the journals that he was documenting the process of making this game with like photos and annotations and it is one of the coolest books on game design for like just anybody let alone somebody who

wants to you know actually be a game designer stuff that is left here so yes that leaves River City Ransom and Sim City yeah I know River City Ransom is obviously the beat-em-up that you were referring to earlier when we were talking about Double Dragon.

It's certainly worth shortlisting that. SimCity definitely, man, super impactful even today. Obviously, the brand SimCity is not exactly super active right now,

but it has informed a lot. Yeah. I mean, I, I think the Sims brand, whether it's SimCity or SimInfo. Yeah, I would not,

I, you know, I think the origins, I think SimCity and the Sims, even though there are under the same branding are so different that i would not really consider sim city to be the progenitor to the sims but certainly you know you see its impact on a game like city skylines which is a huge deal now um and there are other like sim uh city building games that owe a lot if not everything to the original sim city um i certainly think there are

better sim city games than the first one i have a specific fondness for sim city 2000 um i don't know yeah i mean i i would say that we should include this game because I think it is this fiercely political game, even if I don't think the politics in it are especially great, especially in hindsight. reading about city planning and basically using his beliefs on city planning as the win and loss states for this game so even though you think you're designing a city to be the best city right you're actually designing to rules like you are in any video game yeah so it's kind of subversively teaching you that the best way to build a city in the game is just the best way to build a city um if that makes sense which is which is a trip um i found this quote from a new york times write-up from literally 1989 so like right when the game is coming out and it said that will write was also intrigued by a story by Stanislaw Lem called the

seventh Sally, which is appears in the mind's eye, a collection edited by a yada, yada, yada. The important part is in the limb story, a banished tyrant returns to his despotic ways after being given control over a simulated city.

So it was literally the story of like a, this like old tyrant being like, well, we need to keep that person entertained. Let's make a SimCity for them, and that'll feed the hunger. And then he made that for just everybody, which is just hilarious. The other

callback here, Broderbund, star of the episode, actually opted not to publish this game. Big mistake. And then Will Wright takes over to a little company called Maxis. Maxis is like, yeah, sure, seems great. We don't have a lot of experience in this.

Broderbund comes back and is like, you know what? I think we made a mistake. And they distribute for Maxis. Oh, good for them. Yeah, but they threw away the entire Sims. It was the Golden Goose. Franchise. Yeah.

So, I mean, even though literally this didn't create the Sims, Will Wright in many ways did along with all these other games. And I mean, it's just a hell of a legacy, this game. So, yeah. I'm going to read out our short list and then we'll take a break and we'll narrow it down when we get back. Short list.

Gauntlet. Super Mario Bros. The original Metroid. The original Legends of Zelda. Super Mario Bros. 3. Mega Man 2. John Madden Football. SimCity. River City. Ransom. Okay. We're back.

Are you ready to do the final? So I set up top one to three. I lied. It's two to four. We're including two to four games in this group. If we really want to, you know, we could take five here, but that means later on we're going to be, you know, it's going

to hurt us. So I think two to three is like it. Four, that means we're probably not going to take four ever again. Okay. So we'll plan for two to three. And we're going to be pretty fierce in cutting things right now. Gauntlet, I think, toss it.

Got it. It's gone. I'm not even going to justify it because time is running low i i'm going to cut river city ransom because it's going to be my my pocket game from myself and i'll talk about it there you did talk about blaster master but okay um let's see are there other ones that I would immediately cut? I would immediately cut. I think we need to decide between Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 3. I think Super Mario Brothers 1. I agree with you.

I think 1 is the way to go. I think Mega Man 2 is great. I do not feel it is absolutely mandatory for people to play Mega Man to appreciate it. I also agree. I think John Madden is great, but I think it is more important to play John Madden to understand football than it is to play video games. I agree.

So that leaves us with SimCity, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros. I think we cut Metroid. I think we probably cut Metroid. And again, that's because I am feeling very confident that we pick up metroid later on i i agree with you we will pick up metroid later on um so that leaves us with three

do you want to cut down to two or do you feel good about three okay so the three are sim city the legends of zelda and super mario brothers which are cutting down to two we're doing because that would be like, hey, you know what, I bet there's going to be a five year chunk coming up where we need five. Yeah, I haven't looked ahead enough to know, but I think

all three of these games are like, again, super foundational and important for differing reasons. And so I think we should leave it and then we should start talking about what our personal picks are. Okay, so our picks for the required reading list,

1985 to 1989, are Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, and SimCity. Yes. And then you and I will select our personal faves. Correct? Yes.

Do you want to do that right now? Yeah, you go first. I think you already teased it. Okay. River City Ransom is my personal pick for this. River City Ransom, I mean, it is a game like Master Blaster where it felt to me as a kid like I was actually going to another planet. In this case, well, I mean, I think they tried to make it look like it was a town in America, but it's clearly a town in Japan.

It is part of a Japanese series called Kunio-kun, which is huge there. It is still going. I believe that there's a new entry coming out on Steam in the States called River City Saga Three Kingdoms. I think that comes out in the US this summer. What? It's a Three Kingdoms? It's a Three Kingdoms version of River City Ransom.

Amazing. It looks awesome. I pray that it actually comes out here. I'm kind of worried that it never will um because i think it's already out in japan but yeah i mean this to me is the game that sets video games on the track for stuff like grand theft auto because unlike it's like double dragon but there's a lot more freedom and where you go around the city you are stopping in shops and like buying you know weapons or uh health you can eat at restaurants it feels more like you live in this place and i say that now today if you went in you'd be like okay so there are menus inside of buildings for you to buy things and it kind of

has a generic impact on you yes correct but at the time it felt like a whole breathing world and yeah it's incredible it borrowed elements that had appeared in like rpgs but never appeared in action games like the idea like imagine you were playing contra and suddenly there was a restaurant and you could order a meal in contra like that's how weird it was and it and plants right like it brought the entire world to life in a really cool way um and it's fun as hell and and you could like pick up items around the streets i believe you could pick up your friends in that one too yeah you can later on so the world itself felt like a place you know it wasn't just a static drawing that you moved around in. Yes.

Um, what is yours? Mine is punch out. Oh, well, I mean, that makes sense. You,

you love punch out. I do love punch out. It's a weird one for a number of reasons. One of which obviously there's a lot of like, not the best stereotyping in Punch-Out!! I'd go so far as to say it's bad. And yet I find myself playing it a lot still today. Like if I boot up the game, I'll just like I'm going to crush Glass Joe in the first like three guys that i face because i know those

patterns so well and strictly from a game feel perspective there are not many like fighting games that feel as satisfying as punch out despite it being so simple like there's really just like left punch right punch you know uppercut versus not. And the controls are super simple, but it's just like very cleanly animated, very, it feels like everything you're doing has impact. And when you win a fight, these fights are like built up where, I mean, your name is Little Mac and you are physically like maybe a fifth the size

of the guys that you are fighting. To win those fights is just this moment of like true elation and incredibleness um it doesn't have a lot of analogs to modern day fighting games because fighting games have gone in a completely different direction that is obviously not you know one player and uh you know kind of these like puzzle fights but man i adore it and uh yeah they rock it's a good pick uh i think that's it i think we did it we made it through another segment so the the full list i already mentioned this group's picks our previous picks were resident evil 4, Wii Sports, Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare, and Demon

Souls. Wait, do we pick four? Oh, no. Oh, wow. We're going to have to get really choosy. That was another like heavy hitters batch of years. That was. I mean, that feels really tough to argue against.

And I believe we did Bioshock is my pick for that group and what was yours uh and my pick was red faction gorilla right yeah so we're working our way through i think this is going to be like a long project is my suspicion it is um anything before we wrap um no i think that about does it. A very full episode filled with excellent, excellent games. It really reminds you of just how many incredible games came out in that short five year span. Yeah, I was weirdly kind of worried about doing the 80s when we set out to do this. I was worried it would be kind of boring episodes. Yeah, I don't know what the I'll be curious to know what the 80 to 84 batch looks like.

It's good. There's like some good stuff there. I mean, yeah, it's weird. It's different. It's not good in the, oh, you know, Mario and Zelda. Yeah, sure. Sort of way, but it's pretty good. Cool.

Well, that has been another episode of The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. Thank you for listening. We will see you next time. Resties!