Retro Warriors 548 - Ikari Warriors

Ladies and gentlemen, look at my children, is that 548? As always, I'm your host, Justin Baker, and as always, I'm joined by Bible human Chris Saturn. Oh my god. Master speaker tonight.

What it is, it's everything in my power to not cough right now. And I'm trying, all my focus is holding in my coughs, because I'm still a little, I'm not sick, I'm just like, you know when you're not sick, but then for two weeks, you're fucking throat is drying, you cough, and then you have to tell everyone you're not sick. I'm in that stage of like, I'm fine now, but I'm just gonna be gross for a week and a half. So it's all I can concentrate on.

So that's our housekeeping. That's our housekeeping. That's our housekeeping. Yeah, but in different ways.

In different ways of my choosing. So that's our housekeeping. If I'm like weirdly still did or don't respond immediately or something, it's good. It's our own pausing to cough or snort or spray snot somewhere.

You know something. Yeah, normal stuff. Normal kinds of things. My week, I'm still playing some of the video games, play a little more luminase, arise, which continues to just be really good.

It's really fun. I'm very much slow rolling it, but it's been a good time and continues to be lots of fun. Some of the actual blocks, because it does the Tetris effect thing where they change up the blocks, but they do it kind of radically more in this one where the shapes of the blocks will change. They'll turn into, like, they'll turn into, there's one where it's like a traffic themed one and they'll turn into like walk and don't walk signs that move.

It's really weird. That sounds so much so interesting. It is. I mean, you can tell they built it that way on purpose to be disorienting, but it's still just a really good time and enjoying it and taking it nice and slow.

They seem to be doing all the events and stuff that Tetris Effect does, but I'm always critical behind on them. Also today, I was looking for something to play while I did something else. I don't remember. I was listening to something and I booted up for the first time in a while, since launch, basically, the Sonic cross-world racing thing.

Yeah. And I booted up and immediately told me that I had through the power of spending extra money, unlocked Joker, Ichiban, and Knights. Right. So I could now race as, so I did a Grand Prix as Knights and it's still just, man, this is a fun racing game.

Nice. I don't quite think it's worth, you know, $200 or how much it costs for like the gold edition or what have you. But here in like two or three years, when you get the complete edition for like 30 bucks, man, that's pretty fun. I think it's pretty fun, a little racing game.

And really it's Sega. It could be in eight months that it goes to 30 bucks. Yeah, it could have already been a dollar in the winter. So, you know, last month we just didn't know.

But it's just kind of one of those things. But yeah, it's been fun. I can't even go back in, I meant to go back earlier today and race as Ichiban and I did not. So hopefully he's as ridiculous as I think he's going to be.

I mean, you can race as Ichiban in Yakuza 7. What's the truth? Is it true? So the trash-clicking car or whatever?

Yeah, I think you're in a go-car, but you're calling like a trash car like behind you? I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember that much.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's been a good time. I think I'm going to try to get back into a little bit more heldovers. My thumb is kind of healing up nicely.

I'm on like day three of this injury. And so I hopefully will be able to really mash on it. Three days in, I wouldn't be sure where my injury is. But you're so familiar with injuries at this point that I trust your judgment.

Well, first 24 hours is the most alarming. It's the most pain. And then the day two and three, you know, it's just, yeah, I guess I am a little familiar with it. You're much more than I am, yeah.

You get more comfortable with it. After about a week, I can start leaving it uncovered. Hopefully that nail grows back sometime because there's a lot of it missing. And it's a little alarming looking.

I'll say that. But I've become accustomed to it. My biggest problem is the first day I get hitting it into things and then going to begin because, you know, you use your thumbs a lot. I didn't realize how much I used my thumbs.

And it's lots of stuff. I use his thumbs. I was born with 20 ingrown nails. And my nails all tend to want to go back to ingrown status unless I meticulously care for them.

And throughout my teens and early 20s, I just didn't give a shit and just let them get ingrown all the time. And because of that, my thumbs were constantly bleeding from the ingrown nails. I understand how much I use my thumbs. I learned that over the years.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, then you know. Yeah.

Anyway, what have you been playing? So for our game club this month, I handed it over to one of our Discord mods that we elevated. And a lot of thank you so much for running. Yes.

Thank you for that, in Club. And the games that were chosen were Arizona and Wonder Boy. And so I have been playing both of those, actually. By the time I put in the notes, I was only playing some Wonder Boy.

But I did play some Arizona as well. And man, they're both so good. Going back to Dragon's Round. I went to the Turbographics version because that's the one that I recall the most.

And it's just so, so good. So charming. It holds up really well. And if you're going to play it today, the remake is probably the better way to do it.

It's a little different, but only barely. And just such a good game. We did an episode on it like 10 years ago or something. Oh, yeah.

But it's just such a good game still. The soundtrack is still good. The art is still charming. The game design is so good.

I love those early Wonder Boy games. Those guys at Westone or Westone or however we decided we'd pronounce it. They were really ahead of the curve. They know what they're up.

Yeah. They make a good game. Yeah. Excellent.

And there's also good. Yeah. I always forget which one I enjoy more. Because one of them, like there's Arizona, and Super Airzonk.

Yeah. And the first one is the good one. The bad one? Yes.

OK. That's not bad. It's just not good. It's just a way.

I mean, I don't know how you define bad, but you can. There are a lot of shades before you get all the way to bad. I'd say it's in the bland. I guess so.

I guess so. I guess that's fair. That's fair. But yeah.

I need to go back and redo Wonder Boy. I so greatly enjoyed that. That was the one that LizardCuber did. Yes.

Wonder Boy, right? Yeah. Yeah. That was fantastic.

I played through it on Switch, on Xbox, and on PS5 and on PC. Yeah. So let's do some news. OK.

First up, Sony and Anacorn announced a series of 30th anniversary PlayStation watches. The $800 anniversary edition sold out almost immediately while the $250 normie editions are still available as of recording. These are some ugly watches and not in the way that I like. The anniversary one is almost ugly in the way that I like.

But almost, not quite. The other ones are just kind of bland. They just look like modern PlayStation branding. So the anniversary ones are the gray ones with the buttons on them, right?

Correct. There you go. It's bad. The second hand is bad.

It's a bad watch. Also, making the select button, what I presume, is the hour hand. Yeah, I don't know what they were doing. With the face of the watch, it's very hard in how the indices are.

It's really hard to tell what hour it's actually pointing at. It's just a stupid watch. Yeah, it's not good. And I know I'm asking a lot for a fashion watch to be fun, but I accurately tell the time.

Yeah. I've learned this in watches. Yeah, so for people who haven't seen the picture of it, the hour hand is the select button. The minute hand is the start button.

And then for the second hand, they've got this weird chain of the four PlayStation symbols. It's terrible, which they don't need because they have all four face buttons already on the watch represented. Correct. Yes.

What they don't have represent. So the face button is represented twice. And then the D pad is represented not at all, which is even weirder. Yes.

It's just kind of a strange design. They all are not represented. True. True.

They only made fucking 300 of them. That's a joke amount. And it came with a little NFC memory card for some reason. What's on the?

I don't know what it does. It's just a little NFC memory card. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, I just, it's dumb. The normy ones also don't have indices on them. So those watches were like, you don't actually fucking know what time it is. I mean, it signifies the four major ones with these tiny, bear visible areas.

I guess it very lightly does. Yeah. I don't mind a watch that or a clock that doesn't have the numbers on it. That is a fin to me.

But I prefer you have the numbers on it. Also the hands aren't loomed at all. So like you can't see it in a dimmer room. I don't know.

I mean, I just expect much functionality. I guess that's also it has. Because the four PlayStation symbols just jumbled into the bottom of it. Yeah, it looks like they float around.

I think they float around in it. They do float around. Yeah. That's just that would be raddling.

I assume that there's some kind of like gel or something in there that they float in so that it doesn't make rattle noises. But even then I don't want any of this. Sony gel. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess my question is on there. It's really something that functions out of the game. That's just not what they do. Oh, I did forget to mention in my week, speaking of things not functioning.

For Christmas, my wife got me the Sony PlayStation five earbuds, the little dual sense. Yeah, I don't remember what the product is called. But they're little earbuds. And I was very excited because I often play games in my family in the room and I always wear headphones.

And they always want to talk. Yeah, yeah, the pulse. And they always want to talk to me. And I can't wear my headphones or if I put them on where they're only on one ear, they kind of slide off my head.

Yeah. So with this, I can just have one earbud in still here. My game. And then they can talk to me.

Nice. And it uses the PlayStation Link wireless sound technology that their new speakers use and the PlayStation Portal uses and their headphones use. But their PlayStation five doesn't use because it doesn't have it built in. Because why the fuck doesn't it?

So it comes with a big ass like two inch long USB A dongle that you have to plug into the back of the PS5 because there is no USB port in the front. Why couldn't it be a small USB C that can plug in the USB C in the front? I don't know. As Sony, you plug the shit in the back and the wireless connection is so bad that it's constantly disconnecting.

Nice. I mean, constantly. Which is again, a thing Sony products tend to do, which is disconnect from any wireless connections they have. Yes, that's true.

So what you have to do is connect it to a USB extender and feed it through your entertainment center so it points out the front. If you're using an extender anyway, why not just use a USB C to A port and plug it into the front USB C connection? I don't know. It's just annoying.

Now when they're working, they're pretty nice. They have physical volume controls, which I greatly appreciate. Your buzz with physical up and down volume buttons. But also for Christmas from a different person, I got the new Arctis 7P headset that comes with a nice USB C dongle that works great.

But my favorite feature of both these headsets is that I can dual pair them with Bluetooth so I can finally, this is the thing I did on 360 all the time and I loved it. I can finally listen to music while playing a game at the same time. I don't get that. It's like I'm living in 2008 again.

I did it all the time. I hear the game audio. I hear the game audio just fine. I just have music going to.

I want to focus on the game audio. I don't want to hear some other thing on top of it. Oh, well, minigames often also play music on top of sound effects so I'm pretty accustomed to it. Well, yeah, but that's the game audio.

No, it's just music, music, music. I'm not going to do it. I'm selective about it. So if I'm playing my 100th match of Helldivers, I don't need the same three songs playing.

I'll listen to something. If I'm playing something in depth or whatever, there's story, usually I won't. But if it's just I'm just vegetating to Balotro or whatever. Yeah, I'll have something like that.

I have a TV show on the back. I can see it. But if I'm playing trails or some shit, probably won't be able to pay attention to both. You want to hear that great voice actor?

There you go. In the back to the news, they're mildly complained about Sony. Again, when they're working there very nice, they like them. They just have to be frustrating in that little Sony way.

Okay, Ari Tanaka, better known by the pin name Soraya Saga. As announced her retirement from video games at age 56, best known for work on Final Fantasy 6's Enogears and Zeno Saga. Which 56 is pretty young, be retiring. Yeah, she said it was to take care of some family health issues, which is...

Unfortunately, but you know, it's not good for her. Early retirement. At least she's leaving behind a hell of a legacy though. 30 years in the industry making just a ton of story games.

You know, EPSX has been updated for the first time in a decade. Now supports CHD files, also commonly known in our circles as Chad Files, DPI scaling, etc. So that's exciting. I call them Chad Files.

I call them Chad Files. I call them Chad Files. I like Chad Files. Chad Files is good, but it also just, I don't know.

Sounds like something from 4chan. Oh, there's that movie, Chud, from the 80s. Oh, right, of course. The movie Chud.

I can't believe it's exciting to see... It's a kind of underground dwellers. After all of the duck station drama, it's nice to see other PS1 enlators kind of get some updates and stuff like that. So it's fun.

Yeah. GOG is being acquired from CD Projekt by co-fiant-finder, Mickle. I can't pronounce it. They're Polish.

It's Polish name. I can't pronounce it. My couch. I can't say it.

My couch. I can't say it. Okay, thank you. I would have not gotten there.

Anyway, GOG being acquired from CD Projekt. I'm trying to not be alarmed. I'm trying to not be alarmed. That's where I'm at.

I'm not alarmed, but I'm concerned. Yeah. Yeah. Because it makes me question if it's being acquired because he is worried that CD Projekt could steer it in a direction that is against the morals of GOG or if he is simply trying to protect it from investors or if he's trying to make CD Projekt look better to investors.

There's a lot of questions and I'm just a little concerned about it as well. Yeah, it's kind of where I am. I'm a little concerned. I will say that in the years since GOG has launched, it's definitely gotten a lot more producty, I guess I would say.

But then they've also in recent years steered more into their GOG preservation, which is nice. Yeah, yeah, especially very recently, but I don't know. I've got back and forth. I've had my complaints with them, but overall I think GOG is still good.

I hope they remain good. And I hope this is, like you said, just him kind of protecting against things rather than trying to fix something that may be broken behind the scenes that we don't know about. Hackers managed to get doomed playing on a receipt printer. It seems terrible.

Someone somewhere was like, you know, I hear that this AI is destroying our environment, eating up our finite resources. What if we could do that and also play doom? If only. I can't tell if what would be worse, playing on gut bacteria or receipt printer.

Gut bacteria would probably be the slower one. Yeah, probably slower because these days with thermal printers, you can go pretty fast. Yeah. Sony has, well, I will say this, that does mean that it's possible to get doomed running on a Game Boy printer if it's running on a receipt printer.

So just throw it out there. You have a much, much lower, I don't think frame rate is the word for it. You have something. Refresh rate, maybe?

I don't know. There you go. Print rate. Sony has filed a patent related to the PlayStation 6 that implies full backward compatibility with all six prior console generations.

I want to know this one a bit because I didn't see it reported at any major outlets. I would also like to say that it's. Yeah. Well, I'd like to say the Sony also filed a similar patent for the PS5.

So let's not count any chickens before they hatch on this. Right, right. Yeah, I don't know. I've said for a little while now that if Sony releases a PlayStation that plays all PlayStation discs, if I can take any PlayStation disc from any PlayStation and stick it in there, that's a day one by for me.

It's 100%. I don't seem doing it though. Right. I just don't know what's happening.

L.R.G. is working with Edea to localize and release the two P.C.E. Tenshi no Ute games in the West for the first time. That's neat.

I don't know what these are. It's just some early P.C.G. and R.P.G.s and there's a third one that was on Super Famicom that is not in this collection for some reason. Oh.

It's cool and weird. Yeah. The P.S.2 port of E.S.5 has received a beta English localization. Which is neat.

It's just fine for the games 30th anniversary too because it released a new year's eve of 95. So only took three decades. Right. And that's also the only E.S.

game that is not available commercially in English. So if you want to play E.S.5 you can do the Super NES translation or now this P.S.2 translation. A Korean news outlet claims that video cards will see a massive price hike in the coming months with the GTS 5090 jumping from $2,000 which is already high-watering now to $5,000. Which is just obscene.

Honest to God at that point, just take it off the fucking market. Yeah, it's no longer a consumer item. I would say just a few weeks ago I was feeling the pinch. I was worried that video cards and other computer equipment were going to spike in price.

So I went ahead and jumped and got my 90-70 up to a 90-70 XT and sold my 90-70 for the same price that I bought my 90-70 XT for. So I made my money back. I'm doing fine and now I have a slightly upgraded video card. So that's something.

Yeah, there you go. The Xbox 360 firmware will no longer allow users to set the correct date of 1,1,26. Though it will allow you to roll over to the correct date if you set it prior to mid-9 on 1231-25 which may introduce some issues moving forward. Now if you're connected to the internet I think it will update its time online with Xbox 5.

I think it's supposed to do that. But we'll see. I guess they'll probably just push another patch to it. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Microsoft puts an update to the 360.

Yeah, there's a 360 update. I want to say in 2025 or 2022, like in the last year or two, 360 dashboard updates. So it's not out of the question that they would fix it. Honestly, I'm shocked the 360 is still around.

Really 360 and PS3. I'm shocked that they can still do anything and just kind of counting our blessings at this point for anything is where we are. Which brings us to our top-end hand, which is Ikari Warriors. Be more excited, Josh.

Ikari Warriors! So now it says, what if Marshmallows were lethal? I feel like that would be good commercial. Yeah, I think it would.

I could see it. I could see a goofy skit where someone's shooting Marshmallows and it's killing people. So Richard Warriors trivia time. Our very first artwork for the show was the Ikari Warriors art of the two guys.

Yes, Xbox art. Yeah, with our faces superimposed on the Ikari Warriors art. Yeah, and it kind of looked like I had a jizzoms on my forehead. I remember that.

It did a little bit. Yeah. I don't even want to superimpose this is really giving a lot of credit. It was just like MS-Painted in there.

Cheesily shopped in there. And the name of the show came from Ikari Warriors. Because we're both such big fans, right? In retrospect, there was virtually no compelling reason for it.

No. Neither one of us were huge fans of the games. We just thought it was funny. Yeah.

We just thought it was funny. We didn't think we'd be doing it a decade later. True. And then Andrew ran with it and made it a D&D theme thing.

Yes, which I latched on to and appreciated because it takes me from the fact that we randomly were like, I don't know, Ikari Warriors. Which is also how we did all of our early topics too. We just kind of look at games like, oh, what about that one? I think at that point, I had not even played Ikari Warriors.

No. To be honest. That would explain why you did not immediately get revolced by the name. Anyway, so for people that didn't know that's where the name Retro Warriors came from is literally going, instead of Ikari Warriors, they were Retro Warriors.

That's the joke. Yeah. And I told sat on, I was like, we've never covered Ikari Warriors. We have to cover it.

Yeah. Because it seems ridiculous. Yeah, we're 10 years ahead of the point. Yeah.

Yeah, so we need to do it. So I'll let you step us through release info real quick and we'll try to get through ports and then we'll talk first in counters. So it's well by S&K, published in Japan by S&K in North America by Trade West and Europe by Electrocoin. Oh, oh, the classic Electrocoin.

Yeah, I wasn't familiar with them, but apparently they did some arcade releases in Europe at the time. Yeah. Japanese release date February 1986, North America and Europe March of 86. Notably ported to the NES, which I think is what we're going to mostly get a focus on the NES, Porter of the Arcade version.

The arcade version is the one we're going to be putting on. Oh, thank God. It's a man that NES ports are. But it's probably the more well-known version of it definitely here in the West anyway.

It was developed by Micronics, known for their quality, published by in Japan, not even by S&K, but by some company called K Amusement Leasing. But S&K did publish it outside of Japan. That one was in November, 86 in Japan, 87 here in North America. And August of 89 in Europe, I can't believe you guys got a card warriors for NES in August of 89.

It must have looked great. Honestly, why bother at that point. Just let it go. The ports of the game came to the C64 from Data East or Elite in 86, Apple II from Data East in 87, Amstrad CPC by Elite in 87, MSX port was by S&K in 87, IBM by Data East in 88, Amiga Elite by N88, Atari ST, ZX Spectrum also Elite in 88, Atari 2600, and Atari 7800, both those ports were by Atari in 89 and 90 respectively.

Okay, Atari 2600, 1989. That's insane. God, honestly, it can't be worse than the NES version. It can.

Oh, no. It's a button. Oh, yeah. How do you throw grenades?

Actually, you might. I think you hold the button. I don't know. Anyway, it's not good.

It's a bad port. It's what I'm saying. It's real bad. It's real rough.

And it's a real late, Atari 2600 game, 12 years after the console released. They got a Cari Warriors. Good for them. After that, the real late ones, Future Phone in Japan 2004, PSP got a mini's release in 2011 and then the arcade archives on Switch and PS4 in 2019.

So it's been around and it was also on the 40th anniversary S&K collection on all modern consoles. It's out there. Which is how I played it. Yeah.

I played it. It's there. So it's been fucking everywhere. I don't really know why because as we're going to get into it on the merits, it doesn't really, I don't want to be mean to the game because I have some nice things to say about.

I don't think it deserves all this. It was successful at its time and it was very notable for a flash in the pan moment. There was a brief moment where it was King of the arcades. So it was one of S&K's biggest hits for quite a while.

So there is reason why it is notable for that moment in time. As far as players today wanting to play it, I struggle to justify it will get back. First encounters, I had played one or two of these before on NES maybe, but I never found them too compelling. I think I picked up, I can't even remember if it was a Cari Warriors 3 or Jackal or one of those generic Jekylls of different.

Yeah, I'm different, but I don't remember. They all run to get Russian attack, Jackal, the Cari Warriors. It's all kind of the same shit. The most I remember is I had a friend.

It might have been, I don't remember if it was you or this other person I'm thinking of, but they would always make jokes about how the bullets looked like marshmallows. And it was the NES game specifically. I probably could have made that joke, but I don't specifically remember it. So that's what I knew it for.

But as a run and gun fan, they always felt a little too dated to hit that sweet spot for me. So I just kind of avoided them. Yeah, I like with movies. I tend to avoid anything that looks too actiony.

So the cover of a Cari Warriors just looks like Rambo meets Contra, so I just didn't ever want to rent it back in the day. Oh, one minute. You're telling me to sweaty, oiled up guys with bandanas, shooting machine guns? Isn't that's not doing it for you?

That's too action? That's not me. That's not what I look for in a game. So I probably didn't play it until the main release and not released until I played it on the emulator in the late 90s.

And even then, I remember being incredibly confused by it because the default main controls for the rotation were awkward. And I think I had them on the triggers on my joystick. And so it was, yeah, emulating it was awkward in general. It's still kind of an awkward game to emulate.

And even current emulation is because I loaded it up in Rich Orchard or something. I was like, oh, yeah, that's that weird twisty thing that doesn't really matter correctly. Right. So it's this campaign.

Yeah. Take us through development for Cari Warriors. Sure. So it was developed by a guy named Koji Obata, sorry, Koji Obata at SMK.

And Obata had previously designed the game TNK3, which in Japan is just called Tank. I don't know why we got its stupid name over here. But he said that that game had taken inspiration from Taito's front line and front line was an 82 arcade game, which was known for having the joystick grenade button in the rotary dial, which you'd aim and then press in the dial to fire. And TNK3 stole that concept to have the rotator joystick instead of having a rotate on the fire button.

And so SMK made their proprietary joystick, the LS30, which is the rotator one. It has a 12-way rotation, a eight-way directional movement. But then in 85, the same year that TNK3 released, Capcom released Commando in the arcades. And Commando is a huge hit.

It's one of the... Now, is there any relation to the movie Commando? Questionably. According to the lawyers, no, certainly not.

Right. Right. But it is argued that Capcom was inspired by Commando and also they really wanted you to think it was a licensed game just so that you would go play it. But according to the lawyers, no, they are completely distinct in separate entities.

Of course. So Obata wanted to take the run-and-gun gameplay of Commando and mix it with the rotary controls from TNK3 to make a new style run-and-gun. And obviously, this would be the very last time that SMK would ever release a game inspired by a successful Capcom arcade game. They never did that again.

Definitely not. Of course not. So also, also, in 85, in addition to Commando, we had a movie came out, Rambo First Blood Part 2. Oh boy.

Yeah. That's not a confusing name at all. No. Aside, I hate the Rambo movies.

I've always hated them. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, alright. Okay. So I agree that Rambo's 2 & 3 and also the later Rambo are dumb-action-fests.

Um, huh, huh, huh. Okay. But the First Blood is a legitimate psychological exploration of the effects of someone coming home from war, and PTSD, there's an artist- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I thought... I'll give you the first Rambo was fine, but I still just don't enjoy it as a movie.

I get that it is well-made. I just don't enjoy it. But anyway, Rambo 2, however, was trash. And so Rambo 2 comes out and it's a giant international thing.

And granted I was too young and 85, I've registered any of this, but my brother was a huge Rambo fan. And then there was the Rambo cartoon by the time I was getting old enough. And he was big into the Rambo cartoon and I was like, this is all boring. It's just due to bandana, you know, boa.

I had no idea there was a Rambo cartoon. Oh, you don't remember that? Oh, we had the toys and everything. Oh yeah, I probably wasn't boring yet.

That's fair. You probably weren't alive when the Rambo cartoon was a thing. But anyway, so yeah, Rambo 2, anyway, releases. And in Japan, where it was also a big success, it had the name Rambo Colin Akari no Daschutsu, which apparently translates to Rambo, the Furious Escape.

And I see. And Obama making his commando knock off, he had intended to release his game as a licensed Rambo game. But SNK was either unable or unwilling to acquire the license to Rambo at this stage. Well, who the fuck afford the Rambo franchise license in the age?

In 85, when it was at its... But you know, especially SNK. Well, this was in Japan though. So a lot of American companies would just license anything to anything.

They're like, I don't know what you guys are doing over there in Japan. You figure it out. Yeah. So either way, SNK was unwilling at this point.

So since he was unable to name the game Rambo, the playable characters were then renamed to Ralph Jones and Clark Steel. You're natural next choice when you can't use Rambo. Right. Though in the West, they were then renamed to Paul Invents for some reason.

To be fair, Rambo is already kind of a dumb name. It's just been our whole lives associated with like tough guy. In the movies, he was John Rambo. So he could have just been John.

Right, yeah, it was his last name. But it's the same way we're like Donkey Kong is a stupid fucking name. We're just used to it. Right, we are going to do it.

Why is he a donkey Kong? It's a different animal. Anyway, we know now why he's a Donkey Kong, but at the time, it was incredibly stupid. Wait, no, I don't know why he's Donkey Kong.

I must have forgotten this. Why is he a donkey? Because because me and Moto wanted to just call him stubborn monkey and he pulled out a thesaurus, an English thesaurus. And for stubborn, it came to Donkey and for monkey, it came to Kong.

And that was it. And nobody stopped him and was like, hey, that Donkey Kong is the dumbest name for him. Nobody stopped him because nobody else there spoke English either. So they're like, oh, those are good English words.

All right. So yeah, all right. I do. I do.

I do. Hold on. Who wants to stop you and say, I've been an SNK fan for many years now, played a lot of SNK games. I never knew until we were doing this episode that one, the names of these characters are Ralph and Clark and two, that's where fucking Ralph and Clark came from.

That is where Ralph and Clark came from. They were they were the Akari warriors until they became metal slugs, until they became fighters of the fighter kings. Yeah, I had no idea. I think they were King of Fighters before metal slugs.

They were metal slugs. Really? Well, no, they were. They were in some seven.

I'm trying to remember now. I have it in the notes. They were in OK. Yeah, we'll talk about more of them.

I didn't realize that until the seven. I was like, oh my god, that's Ralph and Clark because Clark is one of my mainstays in King of Fighters 13. I play them all the time. Yeah, he's an Akari warrior.

I see. Yeah, also the game itself started going under the working title of Kari because they just stole that word from the Japanese name of Rambo too. Yeah, because again, the whole thing was just a blatant Rambo theft. So then they show the game off at a North American trade show, and it was incredibly successful there.

And as in case president was able to get in touch with and allegedly be friend, Sylvester Stallone. I don't fucking believe this is Sylvester Stallone told this story. OK, Sly Stallone says that the president of SNK called him in the 80s, and they became friends. Yes, that is what Sylvester Stallone said.

He said that the president of SNK got in touch with him. They became friends, and they had started working out how to get the film rights to Rambo for this game. However, the press had already started calling it a Kari from this trade show. And a lot of arcade operators were wanting to buy a Kari.

They did not want to buy Rambo. So SNK then broke off that communication and said, you know what, we're just going to release it as a Kari. And then SNK America was like, no, we're going to call it a Kari warriors. Hey, never mind literal actual Rambo.

Right. You sliced alone. That's a Kari warrior. That's the story that they all went with.

And then Sylvester Stallone then acknowledged that he had bought an Kari warriors cabinet because of all of this. And he enjoyed the game so much that he had an Kari warriors cabinet in his home. This is wild. Yeah, I don't.

I don't believe all of this feels like fantasy written after the fact by SNK, except for Sylvester Stallone and all said it. Now, normally I would say this. Normally I would say that Sylvester Stallone talks a lot of shit and tells a lot of stories he always has. Yeah, but there is a video put a job his Kari warriors cabinet out there.

But then also this is so specific and small for either. Why would he make this? Right. None of this is a reason for him to only benefit SNK.

And so I mean, what? Yeah, all of this is ridiculous. This is insane. Yes.

This is insane. We need to talk presentation. Originally, this section just had one sentence and it said it looks like turds. Which is still the most accurate statement about a Kari warrior.

I have more information. This is presented in the top down vertically scrolling Tate format, which is the game is very shmup-like. That is true. Yeah.

Which a lot of runs this time order. Sure. Sure. Absolutely.

But definitely has that shmup-like feels that Tate and you're scrolling vertically. The music, the Tate mode, music is present. But it's really just kind of some repetitive dramatic military sounding beeps and boots. It's not really a thing to write something about.

It's a good beat to the most. I did think because I was curious because I was like to me, a Kari warriors is like the vanilla ice cream of SNK running guns. It is the most boringest one. And so I wanted to look up like what are some kind of military gun related action esque arcade games also from 1986.

And we have stuff like rolling thunder, iron horse, jackal. But then I didn't realize that also Victory Road, which is Kari warriors too, came out also in the same fucking year. They're pumping them out, man. And I have a lot to say about Victory Road, which we're going to have to save it until later.

But as far as its contemporaries, in this specific genre of like military esque action-y arcade games, it looks pretty good. It looks OK. It's not like it's not head and shoulders above anything, but it doesn't look ten years old or any of that. Right.

But it does have that signature SNK. Everything is brown and green look to it of that era. It does have that. It does have that.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Some of the later stages finally introduce a little bit of color, but like when you're in the base, but even then the color that introduces is great.

It's great. Yeah. The animations are decent. Scrolling is smooth, which is still a thing that isn't always the case.

True. Sprites are pretty well represented, but basic. Like if you can always tell what everything is. Unless you're playing on a tarry.

Right. Unless you're on a tarry. I do want to mention the arcade cabinet itself because you touched on it because this was a big part of the presentation. But the arcade cabinet was a traditional vertical machine, but with, like you said, that twisting joystick to rotate the player's aim.

But the cabinet itself was part of the Dynamo HS1 kit that many games use, such as Final Fight, Street Fighter II, Double Dragon II. They would just send you a jam of harness and this thing. And then you'd get the art and then the game and just put it all the shit in. So even the arcade machine was kind of generic in that way.

Right. Apparently they released two different hardware versions of it. One of them was on a dedicated S and K board and one was a jammer. But they both could fit in the same cabinet if, depending on whichever kit you got.

Yeah. So it's just, again, nothing to my mind incredibly impressive as far as presentation of the game looks the arcade cabinet. And that's just sort of here it is running and going. The only thing that made it really stand out in the arcade was the joystick looked like a lollipop or something.

Right. It was weird. Yeah. Let's talk gameplay.

There's so much here, Saturn. There's so much to cover. The main gameplay consists of running and shooting vertically to the end of the game. That's the end of the game.

End of the game. There are no levels or sections or bosses. It's just a straight shot all the way to the end. I mean, there's sections.

Kind of until you end up inside of the base. True. But it doesn't change anything. And I want to say this.

I think there was a last boss. There is. Yeah. He's dead when you get there.

That's what I was going to say. Did I kill him with a grenade before we got on screen? No, he's just dead. Nobody there.

No, he's already dead by the way. It was supposed to be a twist ending at the time. But it really just kind of clear. It makes it feel like an anti-climax.

Well, but then you get past the guy and you're greeted by a drill sergeant. That's a nice time to save. Yeah, but he's as tall as 15 humans. Yeah, there's no way he should have been kidnapped.

His sprite is like half the size of the screen. He's totally out of skill to everything else in the game. He starts talking. He's our good job warriors.

That's a general Kawasaki. That's his name. Well, in proportion to the game, General Kawasaki is 30 feet tall. He's inviting the fucking warrior.

Yeah, he should have been the one-man army, not you. It was just a weird fucking ending. No reason. No boss.

He should have been kidnapped. He is enormous. They would have. Thanks to have even carried him into the base.