Thanks-I had to teach myself video production from zero, and this is still just a thing I do on weekends, so I'm always doing what I can to refine my output. Some changes take longer than others... on-camera appearances, for example, are something I've wanted to do since about 2016.
If you flip the difficulty switches on the console, the left button will exclusively shoot the zapper and the right button will exclusively drop bombs in Xevious.
Ah, thanks for the info. The NES was the first console I spent significant time with, so consoles that use physical dipswitches to adjust game settings are still alien to me.
I came here to make this same comment. To be fair, very few 7800 games used the dip switches, so it’s totally understandable that you’d overlook this. 🤗
@@JeremyParish I get it. It takes a bit to get used to. I oftentimes forget to flip the switches back when I'm playing a game that you need them for like 2600 StarMaster. Also, whatever you're emulating these games on are playing the sound effects and music at a significantly lower pitch than original hardware. Just wanted to let you know :)
Yeah, I'm aware of the imperfections... like I said in the first 7800 episode, I'm current using a jailbroken Nt Mini for capture, with the goal of getting an actual 7800 into the mix. I have everything in hand at this point, but disassembling my capture setup to hook the thing into the pipeline is going to be a giant pain in the ass that involves uncoupling a dozen devices and moving a 50-pound CRT out of a deep, custom-built nook.
@@JeremyParish I get it. Those setups can be a real pain. Especially since the 7800 uses RF with no passthrough for other systems like the NES had. How are you enjoying the system so far? When you think of it as its own thing other than comparing it to the NES, it's a really fun system with a great library. I don't mind the controllers, either, though that's a pretty unpopular opinion. It's great that you're doing this. The 7800 needs some more love. Love your channel, man. Always have since I first discovered it.
A couple of things: 1) You really hit it on the head near the end of the Choplifter segment. The era of arcade ports being selling points was all but dead in 1987 as Nintendo and its licensees where releasing games with unprecedented depth to them, and there was no way relics like Choplifter and its brethern were going to stand against Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania and so on. It doesn't really get any better in 1988. 2) Not only was Xevious done better on the NES, Atari's Choplifter came out months after Sega has already pushed their own superior version of Choplifter on the Master System, though it was a port of the arcade game while the 7800 cart was modeled after the original computer game. 3) Unfortunately many developers who ported old computer titles to the consoles of the latter half of the 1980s often forgot those controllers had TWO fire buttons to work with.
"The era of arcade ports being selling points was all but dead in 1987 as Nintendo and its licensees where releasing games with unprecedented depth to them" Less dead than dormant, I would say. It came roaring back in a big way once the flashier arcade beat-'em-ups and fighting games took off.
13:46 Ah, yes, I love waking up to the screams of the damned. In all seriousness the fact that there was a voice clip in that game period is still impressive.
Sure thing. The next four or five videos are already rendered out and uploaded, but starting with the next Game Boy episode I've introduced another subtle alteration to the transitions that should make them feel a little smoother (even if the specifics are imperceptible).
Still waiting for that arcade-perfect conversion of Xevious on the Atari Jaguar that a homebrew group is still working on after all these years of teasing... Good video Jeremy!
Ive been wanting to get Jaguar for a while now. I try to buy stuff that I can't emulate (at least well) or something thats hard to replicate without authentic hardware (light gun games for example). Im blown away with how much support the Jag gets in regards to homebrew. Im a big fan of the Lynx, too. Im love to see someone do a Xybots port to the Jag , although that Lynx one is amazing for what its working with. It never got a near perfect port, and its always been a favorite of mine. If you re into the Jaguar, check out the homey Jenovi, if you havent already. He's a big fan of the Jag and covers a lot of Jaguar related stuff.
Choplifter on the 7800 had 4 enemy bases with 16 hostages each, which was how many you could hold at once. I know this because I was the only one I knew that had a 7800 in 1988 instead of the cool kids' NES and I played this game to perfection. Saving all 64 hostages without losing any gets you a substandard "CONGRATULATIONS!" message. I've seen that way too much. As for Xevious, I got that as a freebie for subscribing to the very short lived "Atarian" magazine from Atari in 1989. Only 3 issues were ever published and to apologize for that Atari also sent me the newly released 7800 port of Xenophobe absolutely free.
I'm still not quite sure how I feel about some of the format changes, but I appreciate the static being less harsh than it was last week. If I can make one more suggestion though, I feel like the framing on the talking head segments is still way too tight? It just feels weirdly claustrophobic, if that makes sense.
IIRC, the shots on Xevious was the result of the difficulty toggle switch. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I remember the bomb and shot being separate buttons.
Dude I love you, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing all this. My brother and I are obsessed with you and this channel and everything you do. Cheers!!
More wonderful video content. I'm an enormous fan of this style of your videos. I'm also a fan that you are giving yourself some screen time. Well done once again Mr. Parish.
Looking forward to the contrast of the Master System version of Choplifter. (Of course there were Famicom ports of Choplifter & Karateka that the US never got).
I do kinda love the idea of the fictional viewer stumbling upon this tv channel, seeing the intro, flipping to see that only Retronauts is on then sheepishly coming back
This is one of my favorite RUclips channels. Love the in-depth discussion of so many retro games (especially Game Boy games, which is how I found this channel). It kinda reminds me of the old Classic Game Room, except with more sophistication and less Truxton. I will say you need to be careful with those static transitions. There were a couple later in the video that you forgot to lower the volume of.
I do enjoy these trips down console lane. Admittedly though, I love when you cover the handheld stuff the most. More GBA & Game Gear please! (Of course OG Game Boy too)
Unfortunately more GBA isn't really in the cards for the foreseeable future. I'm slimming down the scope of my coverage to center wholly on NES and Game Boy, with these side excursions to competing platforms for additional context.
@@JeremyParish That actually sounds a lot like the focus of my game room as of late. Largely 8-bit and "friends of 8-bit" as I call them. I'm not really doing NES or SMS as a focus anymore, though.
Ron Gilbert actually coined the term “Cut Scene” for Maniac Mansion as it was one of the earliest games by him at least to include non-interactive sequences of storytelling
I just gotta say, watching pixelated Larry Bird dribbling in One-on-One makes it look like he's doing a pirouette before ascending into the stars xD Excellent conclusion to the trilogy, Jeremy!! The static transitions have been perfected here, and your top notch editing style shines through!! I was surprised to see no hat on your head this episode, haha, but nevertheless, it was still a great watch~!!
I wish my copy of Choplifter had looked that good. I had the combination of the 1987 release of the game and console revision where the graphics squish as soon as the game starts.
The editing, research, narration, and content in this video are very well done. Kareteka: This is the game I begged my parents to get me for Christmas 1989. Back then, as a kid, you really didn’t have much access to 7800 reviews. But it looked sweet, and I wanted a fighting story telling game. My mom asked: wouldn’t you rather have Joust or Galaga? No, mom, those are way out dated. Ugh. Mistake. By far my least favorite 7800 game, Kareteka was awful to play. Hit detection, the two buttons not being kick/punch, difficulty. No thanks. That same Christmas my mom also got me some old 2600 games (bargain bin finds) which I poo-pooed in my mind at the time but later came to enjoy much more than Kareteka. One-on-One: I really liked this one. Two player is really where it was at. It had some limitations, but it was really satisfying to smash that back-board and draw the ire of the custodian. Of the eleven 7800 titles I owned, I put this at #8. Xevious and Choplifter: I didn’t own either of these. Had played them on other formats, but can’t rank em here.
I do believe Maniac Mansion was the origin of “cutscene” a few years before Monkey Island, but either way it’s on absolute mad genius Ron Gilbert and his crew
As Christmas approached in 1986, I made a deal with my parents to forgo any birthday presents to get either an Atari 7800 or a NES. I was lucky to have a December birthday -- we were not a wealthy family. I had to do some hard lobbying to get them to agree to the more expensive NES. I wanted the one with the robot. The robot ended up gathering dust, but I'm still very glad with the outcome. I feel like I dodged a bullet.
Choplifter is one of my favorite games from my childhood. I feel like the Sega Master System was the best home version as it is almost identical to the arcade version.
My preferred flavor of Choplifter is the proto-RTS lineage starting with Rescue Raiders, where you both fly your helicopter and order ground troops from your base to march towards the enemy base while your opponent tries to do the same and both of you have to attack ground units and each other to push forward in a kind of reverse tug of war. I think nowadays its influence is felt mostly in the mobile market, though I especially like the flight physics in Glory Days 2 for the DS.
"Strange jellyfish-like weather balloons" Well... I'll try to call them that but I'm not sure that it rolls off the tongue as easily as "drone air mines". :)
3:08 @Jeremy Parish I’ve owned every major console released since 1979 to now mostly from their launch day with the exception of the Atari VCS. I haven’t played my Atari 7800 for at least 32 years, but I do remember specifically that both the regular shot and bomb in Xevious were assigned separately to each button on the 7800 controller. The only thing I can think of that may have affected your experience are the switches on the 7800 itself. For VCS/2600 games these switches determined the difficulty, but on 7800 games they had other functions. Try changing the switch to the other side and see if that fixes your issue.
I played Karateka on Apple II as a kid. I didn't notice Akuma's head, nor knew the names of characters (including Akuma), and just assumed it was a robot.
My favorite feature of Xevious is that dynamic difficulty feature. Before I learned about it, I knew Xevious as that one game with the really annoying soundtrack. I could probably play it for hours on end if it wasn't for the music, but playing it on mute doesn't really work as you really need those audio cues when fighting the Andor Genesis motherships. Also, I'm really liking the new video style. You just keep on improving with each new video.
@@JeremyParish I guess it's just me, then. I mean, I've been playing Xevious on and off since it first released on the NES, and the music has just never really clicked with me. I did like the music in the PC Engine port of Xevious: Fardraut Saga, though.
I had never played Xevious until buying it on a whim when it was re-released as a "3D Classic" remake on 3DS. I don't know what possessed me to buy it then, but I fell in love with it and spent many hours gunning for high scores. It's strange that my nostalgia for a game from 1983, covered here on a conversion made in 1987, can instead be traced squarely to 2011. But that's just the way it goes. Also, I see you, Land of Confusion.
Late to the party here but you state in Xevious that one button controls both the gun and bombs, but I believe that depends on the difficulty switches, so I believe it is possible to have the left button shoot the gun and the right button to shoot the bombs. I remember this when my proline joysticks went bad and all I had to play the game was a wico trackball because I could at least still take out ground enemies
It'll be in a condensed format like the 7800 videos (except with a handful of super significant releases that deserve standalone episodes), but yeah, that is the plan.
I still have a load of nostalgia for that "awful Micronics port of 1942", haha. Though I know that's entirely due to having owned it since I was a kid, and still never having had the chance to play the arcade original.
I'm reassured to hear that Karateka was intended to be punishingly hard. As a kid, I devoted many hours to that game on my Apple IIgs, never making it through the front gate. I can't count how many good runs were ended prematurely, as I excitedly ran straight into a waiting fist.
Will you do a retrospective on the Atari 7800 console its self? I quite enjoy your console retrospectives and I think it would be great to know more about its development history and hardware strengths and weaknesses. Same for the Master System. thanks for all your efforts btw :).
@@JeremyParish well, most of its exclusives were later releases (and if you count the ones it only shared with the 2600 or the lynx then it had a fair few). I think Midnight Mutants is the most impressive game on it graphically, and Its answer to Mario (scrapyard dog) was good too. The most famous true exclusive on it is obviously Ninja golf. I hope to see such a retrospective at some point, and thanks for all your great work again :)
Really glad to see you took the bulk of the feedback on the static transition, made for a much more watchable video. That being said I still really do not like the static transitions - although I do very much appreciate all the other changes you've brought to your projects recently, the Works series has come a long way - I just feel that they're too jarring still. They're extremely abrupt and strain the eyes a bit with the consecutive rapid shifts in shots. If I'm honest they feel more America's Funniest Home Video or Robot Chicken than they do Professional PBS quality history program, very tonally dissonant with the rest of the work. I don't know if that means I think they just don't belong in Works in my own opinion, or if they just need a bit more fine tuning to feel right for the project. Either way you're doing ever more incredible work as always Jeremy, and I look forward to seeing how you iterate on the show next.
@@JeremyParishokay, I'm mostly familiar with the master system version and from what I've garnered here the core gameplay seems to be identical, nevertheless I enjoy your work and look forward to your future content.
Super stoked to watch this, I do love the 7800. Side question, I am super confused about the numbering of this series. Did you go back and reassign Mega Man Legends as being #18?
Home microcomputer ports and Xevious. That's certainly a minefield (even if you're right). I felt like I slaughtered a sacred cow when I said the C64 version was terrible - if not for the analogue joysticks, I'd say the Apple ][ version is kind of okay though. But utterly smoked by this 7800 port, let alone those down the line (like those by Compile for MSX2 & PC Engine). Certainly been digging the 7800 explorations - truth be told, I guess the more limited nature of the format (in releases and score) does make it work better like this, and I'm looking forward to the future ones (alongside the SMS stuff)… even if it's going to be a long wait for obvious reasons!
I got Karateka with my Atari 7800 and I never could beat that one. It's not mentioned in the video, but the levels where you had a bird attacking you while fighting dudes were the worst. Could you even defend against that thing? I don't think I ever hurt it. I also had Xevious, Choplifter, and One-on-One Basketball. They were all great, but yeah....it wasn't long after I had a 7800 and a couple of games that I realized it paled in comparison to the NES library that I got to see at friends' houses.
@@JeremyParish Understandable! I doubt I would have the patience for it nowadays. But when I was a kid and it was one of only a few games I had for the system, I kept trying to do it. But that damn bird broke me.
It’s a Sony PVM 1953-MD (19” model designed to be fitted with hospital-grade splash guards to protect against... I dunno, endoscopy disasters? The mind reels)
Okay, so, here's a question: Why is One-on-One more high-res than the rest of the Atari 7800's library that you've shown? I can guess it has some effect on the frame rate and the detail of the rest of the game, but seriously, why? Also, are there other Atari 7800 games that use a higher resolution like One-on-One?
My understanding is that 7800 had two different resolutions: 160x200 (seen in most games) and 320x200 (seen here in One-on-One). The 320px modes work a little like juiced-up 160px modes where objects still move on a 160px framework and are restricted in their use of colors... this means 320px games tend to look choppy and often display color artifacts.
I think the most annoying thing about Atari in the day was the one button thing. Even as a toddler I was used to the NES controller and thus 1 button just felt so clunky.
This is the first time I think I've heard someone express their preference for the NES version of Xevious. No biggie... I was always more of a Terra Cresta guy myself. Also, "Ibidinc" is fun to say. Ibidinc. Ibidinc. Too bad they didn't last very long, because they could have joined forces with Artdink to make some games. They could have called themselves DoubleDinc after the merger.
xevious is cool and all in 1986, but by that time Gradius was already out on the NES and crazy AI based shooters are only a year away. seems like a "wait for fresh bread in the bakery" situation
Detroit Pistons? Either I missed some context, or maybe you meant Chicago Bulls. Didn't they do a follow up to that game with Jordan vs Bird? I feel like you did a video on that. My brain is a mess right now.
Stephan, In the era of this game, the Detroit Pistons were ascendant. The bad boys, with Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, John Salley, Dennis Rodman, Joe Dumars, etc., really became the nemesis of the whole of the league. Jordan had established himself as a superstar, but the Bulls didn’t earn any conference or world championships until the 90s. So, you just misinterpreted what Jeremy said, but Jeremy was certainly spot on here. EA did later make Jordan vs Bird, but not for the 7800. That game came out in 1988 and was for other systems like the NES, Sega Master system, and Atari 8-bit, among others. What’s cool about that version is it had a dunk contest--which would have been sweet in the 7800 version. But alas.....
@@mrp4242 thanks for info. Yeah I definitely misinterpreted what he meant. It also doesn't help that I'm genuinely ignorant of the state of the NBA in the mid to late 80s, outside of a couple big names. Like Bill Lambeer, I just know as the person who married the art of combat with Basketball.
Bad comment on my part. It was more a tongue in cheek reference to how insane Japan was for Xevious in any form more than anything. I still can't wrap my head around how popular Xevious was there.
I’m glad you listened to the feedback on the static transition noise - it’s way less abrasive now. Love the effect and the change in format!
I appreciate that even with the high level of quality your output has always possessed, you continue to raise the bar on production value.
Thanks-I had to teach myself video production from zero, and this is still just a thing I do on weekends, so I'm always doing what I can to refine my output. Some changes take longer than others... on-camera appearances, for example, are something I've wanted to do since about 2016.
As an NES kid, I love learning about this other side of video game history that I was pretty much totally unaware of.
If you flip the difficulty switches on the console, the left button will exclusively shoot the zapper and the right button will exclusively drop bombs in Xevious.
Ah, thanks for the info. The NES was the first console I spent significant time with, so consoles that use physical dipswitches to adjust game settings are still alien to me.
I came here to make this same comment. To be fair, very few 7800 games used the dip switches, so it’s totally understandable that you’d overlook this. 🤗
@@JeremyParish I get it. It takes a bit to get used to. I oftentimes forget to flip the switches back when I'm playing a game that you need them for like 2600 StarMaster.
Also, whatever you're emulating these games on are playing the sound effects and music at a significantly lower pitch than original hardware. Just wanted to let you know :)
Yeah, I'm aware of the imperfections... like I said in the first 7800 episode, I'm current using a jailbroken Nt Mini for capture, with the goal of getting an actual 7800 into the mix. I have everything in hand at this point, but disassembling my capture setup to hook the thing into the pipeline is going to be a giant pain in the ass that involves uncoupling a dozen devices and moving a 50-pound CRT out of a deep, custom-built nook.
@@JeremyParish I get it. Those setups can be a real pain. Especially since the 7800 uses RF with no passthrough for other systems like the NES had.
How are you enjoying the system so far? When you think of it as its own thing other than comparing it to the NES, it's a really fun system with a great library. I don't mind the controllers, either, though that's a pretty unpopular opinion.
It's great that you're doing this. The 7800 needs some more love. Love your channel, man. Always have since I first discovered it.
Hard to believe how long your channel has been going. Better than ever now
The screenburn on the Xevious arcade footage is a nice touch; it really brings me back
I got these games for Christmas. All of them. We already had most of them on 2600. What an improvement it was.
Jeremy, this is broadcast tv quality in terms of production value. Your work could easily be on PBS. Kudos!
Shhh, not so loud... the Republicans will try to defund me
That scream in one on one shook my soul
A couple of things:
1) You really hit it on the head near the end of the Choplifter segment. The era of arcade ports being selling points was all but dead in 1987 as Nintendo and its licensees where releasing games with unprecedented depth to them, and there was no way relics like Choplifter and its brethern were going to stand against Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania and so on. It doesn't really get any better in 1988.
2) Not only was Xevious done better on the NES, Atari's Choplifter came out months after Sega has already pushed their own superior version of Choplifter on the Master System, though it was a port of the arcade game while the 7800 cart was modeled after the original computer game.
3) Unfortunately many developers who ported old computer titles to the consoles of the latter half of the 1980s often forgot those controllers had TWO fire buttons to work with.
"The era of arcade ports being selling points was all but dead in 1987 as Nintendo and its licensees where releasing games with unprecedented depth to them"
Less dead than dormant, I would say. It came roaring back in a big way once the flashier arcade beat-'em-ups and fighting games took off.
@@willmistretta yeah, I was like "Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat beg to differ" lol.
13:46 Ah, yes, I love waking up to the screams of the damned. In all seriousness the fact that there was a voice clip in that game period is still impressive.
I'm glad you turned the sound of the static down a bit. Thanks!
For real
Now that's much better. Thanks for listening to our comments Jeremy :D
Sure thing. The next four or five videos are already rendered out and uploaded, but starting with the next Game Boy episode I've introduced another subtle alteration to the transitions that should make them feel a little smoother (even if the specifics are imperceptible).
Still waiting for that arcade-perfect conversion of Xevious on the Atari Jaguar that a homebrew group is still working on after all these years of teasing... Good video Jeremy!
Ive been wanting to get Jaguar for a while now. I try to buy stuff that I can't emulate (at least well) or something thats hard to replicate without authentic hardware (light gun games for example). Im blown away with how much support the Jag gets in regards to homebrew. Im a big fan of the Lynx, too. Im love to see someone do a Xybots port to the Jag , although that Lynx one is amazing for what its working with. It never got a near perfect port, and its always been a favorite of mine. If you re into the Jaguar, check out the homey Jenovi, if you havent already. He's a big fan of the Jag and covers a lot of Jaguar related stuff.
Choplifter on the 7800 had 4 enemy bases with 16 hostages each, which was how many you could hold at once. I know this because I was the only one I knew that had a 7800 in 1988 instead of the cool kids' NES and I played this game to perfection. Saving all 64 hostages without losing any gets you a substandard "CONGRATULATIONS!" message. I've seen that way too much.
As for Xevious, I got that as a freebie for subscribing to the very short lived "Atarian" magazine from Atari in 1989. Only 3 issues were ever published and to apologize for that Atari also sent me the newly released 7800 port of Xenophobe absolutely free.
I'm still not quite sure how I feel about some of the format changes, but I appreciate the static being less harsh than it was last week. If I can make one more suggestion though, I feel like the framing on the talking head segments is still way too tight? It just feels weirdly claustrophobic, if that makes sense.
Fantastic video, as always. Brings back memories of playing Choplifter, Tower toppler and Impossible mission on my best friend’s 7800 back in the day.
That static transition sounds so much better now. Thank you for fixing that.
That footage of xevious on 2600 is..... wow, just wow
It was canceled for a reason!
@@JeremyParishGlad to know.
That Karateka box art! Has there ever been a more 80’s cover?
I’ve liked all the evolutions and changes this channel has made. Make your art the way you want to make it.
My eyeballs are braced for these on coming episodes! Been loving the videos since the very first Game boy works video.
Man, the production quality on display just keeps getting better and better.
Also, YO! Master System coverage, heck yeah! Super excited for that
Awesome video. My brother and I spent many a weekend at my dad's apartment playing Choplifter and One on One. Fun games.
IIRC, the shots on Xevious was the result of the difficulty toggle switch. Perhaps I am mistaken, but I remember the bomb and shot being separate buttons.
Dude I love you, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing all this. My brother and I are obsessed with you and this channel and everything you do. Cheers!!
Thanks for making some of the best content on RUclips.
More wonderful video content. I'm an enormous fan of this style of your videos. I'm also a fan that you are giving yourself some screen time. Well done once again Mr. Parish.
Looking forward to the contrast of the Master System version of Choplifter. (Of course there were Famicom ports of Choplifter & Karateka that the US never got).
Excellent work as always Jeremy.
Also, I caught that Adobe Premiere Easter egg and yeah, I feel ya.
Thanks, Jeremy. Your videos are always a treat.
0:11 - Missing footage?
Well, hell. That wasn’t in the previous version of this video. All I changed was static volume, so I don’t know how that happened.
@@JeremyParish It's alright, it looks intentional. :P
Coming soon from Nabisco: Nazca Chunks. Chocolate filled spaceship cookies
The live action bumpers have kind of a Trevor Horn in Video Killed the Radio Star vibe, distinct!
God, I wish I were 10% as cool as Trevor Horn
0:06 I see you there, quarter-second snippet of Land of Confusion! Can't imagine why this video might be in the zeitgeist at the moment ;)
I was so scared of that video when I was a kid. Freaked me right the fuck out.
The background “twinkle” music of Xevious (and the NES version) always makes me think of “Starcade.”
I do kinda love the idea of the fictional viewer stumbling upon this tv channel, seeing the intro, flipping to see that only Retronauts is on then sheepishly coming back
The Retronauts channel is like those old UHF weather stations that were basically AM radio reports being broadcast with a static image
really like the new cut style. thank you for your content!!
I'm pretty sure the metric for investing in a new console for 1986 was actually how well it ran Crysis.
This is one of my favorite RUclips channels. Love the in-depth discussion of so many retro games (especially Game Boy games, which is how I found this channel). It kinda reminds me of the old Classic Game Room, except with more sophistication and less Truxton.
I will say you need to be careful with those static transitions. There were a couple later in the video that you forgot to lower the volume of.
I do enjoy these trips down console lane. Admittedly though, I love when you cover the handheld stuff the most. More GBA & Game Gear please! (Of course OG Game Boy too)
Unfortunately more GBA isn't really in the cards for the foreseeable future. I'm slimming down the scope of my coverage to center wholly on NES and Game Boy, with these side excursions to competing platforms for additional context.
@@JeremyParish That actually sounds a lot like the focus of my game room as of late. Largely 8-bit and "friends of 8-bit" as I call them. I'm not really doing NES or SMS as a focus anymore, though.
I like that you show your face now, you're about the smartest channel I follow, and you look smart too.
Choplifters of the world, unite and take over....
The way I remember it, hostages were still very much in the news in 1986, in particular the ones in Lebanon.
Ron Gilbert actually coined the term “Cut Scene” for Maniac Mansion as it was one of the earliest games by him at least to include non-interactive sequences of storytelling
I really love these latest Gaiden vids.
I just gotta say, watching pixelated Larry Bird dribbling in One-on-One makes it look like he's doing a pirouette before ascending into the stars xD
Excellent conclusion to the trilogy, Jeremy!! The static transitions have been perfected here, and your top notch editing style shines through!!
I was surprised to see no hat on your head this episode, haha, but nevertheless, it was still a great watch~!!
I wish my copy of Choplifter had looked that good. I had the combination of the 1987 release of the game and console revision where the graphics squish as soon as the game starts.
The editing, research, narration, and content in this video are very well done.
Kareteka: This is the game I begged my parents to get me for Christmas 1989. Back then, as a kid, you really didn’t have much access to 7800 reviews. But it looked sweet, and I wanted a fighting story telling game. My mom asked: wouldn’t you rather have Joust or Galaga? No, mom, those are way out dated. Ugh. Mistake. By far my least favorite 7800 game, Kareteka was awful to play. Hit detection, the two buttons not being kick/punch, difficulty. No thanks. That same Christmas my mom also got me some old 2600 games (bargain bin finds) which I poo-pooed in my mind at the time but later came to enjoy much more than Kareteka.
One-on-One: I really liked this one. Two player is really where it was at. It had some limitations, but it was really satisfying to smash that back-board and draw the ire of the custodian. Of the eleven 7800 titles I owned, I put this at #8.
Xevious and Choplifter: I didn’t own either of these. Had played them on other formats, but can’t rank em here.
As always I enjoyed this. Keep up the great work.
Another amazing video! So is Master System next week or are you planning on finishing the Lynx and Game Gear series first?
I'm not jumping immediately into Master System.
Xevious is a classic arcade game. 😀👍🎮
I do believe Maniac Mansion was the origin of “cutscene” a few years before Monkey Island, but either way it’s on absolute mad genius Ron Gilbert and his crew
As Christmas approached in 1986, I made a deal with my parents to forgo any birthday presents to get either an Atari 7800 or a NES. I was lucky to have a December birthday -- we were not a wealthy family. I had to do some hard lobbying to get them to agree to the more expensive NES. I wanted the one with the robot. The robot ended up gathering dust, but I'm still very glad with the outcome. I feel like I dodged a bullet.
Choplifter is one of my favorite games from my childhood. I feel like the Sega Master System was the best home version as it is almost identical to the arcade version.
Yep, I’ll be tackling that one in due time.
My preferred flavor of Choplifter is the proto-RTS lineage starting with Rescue Raiders, where you both fly your helicopter and order ground troops from your base to march towards the enemy base while your opponent tries to do the same and both of you have to attack ground units and each other to push forward in a kind of reverse tug of war. I think nowadays its influence is felt mostly in the mobile market, though I especially like the flight physics in Glory Days 2 for the DS.
"Strange jellyfish-like weather balloons"
Well... I'll try to call them that but I'm not sure that it rolls off the tongue as easily as "drone air mines". :)
Love the channel and the podcasts.
I love the aesthetic of the intro!
3:08 @Jeremy Parish I’ve owned every major console released since 1979 to now mostly from their launch day with the exception of the Atari VCS. I haven’t played my Atari 7800 for at least 32 years, but I do remember specifically that both the regular shot and bomb in Xevious were assigned separately to each button on the 7800 controller.
The only thing I can think of that may have affected your experience are the switches on the 7800 itself. For VCS/2600 games these switches determined the difficulty, but on 7800 games they had other functions. Try changing the switch to the other side and see if that fixes your issue.
I played Karateka on Apple II as a kid. I didn't notice Akuma's head, nor knew the names of characters (including Akuma), and just assumed it was a robot.
man i had all these games on 7800
I liked playing One-On-One just to break the glass. That was the first time I discovered you can do fun, pointless things in videogames.
My favorite feature of Xevious is that dynamic difficulty feature. Before I learned about it, I knew Xevious as that one game with the really annoying soundtrack. I could probably play it for hours on end if it wasn't for the music, but playing it on mute doesn't really work as you really need those audio cues when fighting the Andor Genesis motherships.
Also, I'm really liking the new video style. You just keep on improving with each new video.
The music is great, though
@@JeremyParish I guess it's just me, then. I mean, I've been playing Xevious on and off since it first released on the NES, and the music has just never really clicked with me.
I did like the music in the PC Engine port of Xevious: Fardraut Saga, though.
The Xevious loop was the basis of one of Japan's first video game-related mainstream music hits, courtesy of a lengthy remix by YMO's Haruomi Hosono!
I've never heard someone say Xevious like that. I've always heard it pronounced like it rhymes with devious. Either way, it was a fantastic shooter!
Is the media offline at 0:10 intentional? Meta commentary on video editing, or actual mistake? I can't tell...
I had never played Xevious until buying it on a whim when it was re-released as a "3D Classic" remake on 3DS. I don't know what possessed me to buy it then, but I fell in love with it and spent many hours gunning for high scores. It's strange that my nostalgia for a game from 1983, covered here on a conversion made in 1987, can instead be traced squarely to 2011. But that's just the way it goes.
Also, I see you, Land of Confusion.
Late to the party here but you state in Xevious that one button controls both the gun and bombs, but I believe that depends on the difficulty switches, so I believe it is possible to have the left button shoot the gun and the right button to shoot the bombs.
I remember this when my proline joysticks went bad and all I had to play the game was a wico trackball because I could at least still take out ground enemies
I did not know you were going to cover Master System. Kick ass!
It'll be in a condensed format like the 7800 videos (except with a handful of super significant releases that deserve standalone episodes), but yeah, that is the plan.
@@JeremyParish Sounds great to me. Some games don't need the full treatment so a brisk review is more than sufficient.
11:20 Was that noise from karate man?
Sounded like a cartoony bug getting squished.
I still have a load of nostalgia for that "awful Micronics port of 1942", haha. Though I know that's entirely due to having owned it since I was a kid, and still never having had the chance to play the arcade original.
been listening since like 2006 or so. that's what you look like.
I've been showing up on video since 2005 or so
Dont you think I didn't see that puppet Regan from Genisis's video at the start.
It wasn't hidden, so I would be kinda concerned if you didn't...
@@JeremyParish it was quick though, and some of these whipper snappers might not realize they saw a clip from the best music video ever
Still don’t know why Atari didn’t put at least composite for the 7800 and just rf? Why? The NES and Master system had composite and even rgb.
Weird how Xevious seemed to not have that 2600 style sound like most other 7800 games.
13:44 Im sorry Jeremy, i cant hear you over the sound of THE GATES OF HELL OPENING
"Get Ready." I see what you did there. #SpaceHarrier
I'm reassured to hear that Karateka was intended to be punishingly hard. As a kid, I devoted many hours to that game on my Apple IIgs, never making it through the front gate. I can't count how many good runs were ended prematurely, as I excitedly ran straight into a waiting fist.
Will you do a retrospective on the Atari 7800 console its self? I quite enjoy your console retrospectives and I think it would be great to know more about its development history and hardware strengths and weaknesses. Same for the Master System. thanks for all your efforts btw :).
Of course, but since I’m not as familiar with this system, I need to spend more time with its originals and exclusives. So far I’ve seen... zero.
@@JeremyParish well, most of its exclusives were later releases (and if you count the ones it only shared with the 2600 or the lynx then it had a fair few). I think Midnight Mutants is the most impressive game on it graphically, and Its answer to Mario (scrapyard dog) was good too. The most famous true exclusive on it is obviously Ninja golf. I hope to see such a retrospective at some point, and thanks for all your great work again :)
Really glad to see you took the bulk of the feedback on the static transition, made for a much more watchable video. That being said I still really do not like the static transitions - although I do very much appreciate all the other changes you've brought to your projects recently, the Works series has come a long way - I just feel that they're too jarring still. They're extremely abrupt and strain the eyes a bit with the consecutive rapid shifts in shots. If I'm honest they feel more America's Funniest Home Video or Robot Chicken than they do Professional PBS quality history program, very tonally dissonant with the rest of the work. I don't know if that means I think they just don't belong in Works in my own opinion, or if they just need a bit more fine tuning to feel right for the project. Either way you're doing ever more incredible work as always Jeremy, and I look forward to seeing how you iterate on the show next.
7:02 choplifter was also released for the sega master system in the us in 86 and is clearly superior in every respect.
That’s a whole other discussion, not least being that it’s a Sega arcade adaptation, not a Brøderbund computer adaptation.
@@JeremyParishokay, I'm mostly familiar with the master system version and from what I've garnered here the core gameplay seems to be identical, nevertheless I enjoy your work and look forward to your future content.
Super stoked to watch this, I do love the 7800. Side question, I am super confused about the numbering of this series. Did you go back and reassign Mega Man Legends as being #18?
Yeah, I kinda goofed on keeping track of the numbering, and the new numeration ties in with an upcoming episode.
Home microcomputer ports and Xevious. That's certainly a minefield (even if you're right). I felt like I slaughtered a sacred cow when I said the C64 version was terrible - if not for the analogue joysticks, I'd say the Apple ][ version is kind of okay though. But utterly smoked by this 7800 port, let alone those down the line (like those by Compile for MSX2 & PC Engine).
Certainly been digging the 7800 explorations - truth be told, I guess the more limited nature of the format (in releases and score) does make it work better like this, and I'm looking forward to the future ones (alongside the SMS stuff)… even if it's going to be a long wait for obvious reasons!
Was the NES version of Xevious released by Bandai? I am almost certain it was Namcot, before Bandai and Namcot merged.
In the U.S., Bandai published it.
Wow, those One-on-One sound effects are ear shattering. Music is nothing to write home about either.
Much better transitions. Same effect, but way less jarring. Thanks
I got Karateka with my Atari 7800 and I never could beat that one. It's not mentioned in the video, but the levels where you had a bird attacking you while fighting dudes were the worst. Could you even defend against that thing? I don't think I ever hurt it.
I also had Xevious, Choplifter, and One-on-One Basketball. They were all great, but yeah....it wasn't long after I had a 7800 and a couple of games that I realized it paled in comparison to the NES library that I got to see at friends' houses.
Yeah, I didn't get to the bird part... I lost patience with this control scheme after half an hour and said, "The hell with it."
@@JeremyParish Understandable! I doubt I would have the patience for it nowadays. But when I was a kid and it was one of only a few games I had for the system, I kept trying to do it. But that damn bird broke me.
That pro CRT you've got is looking IMRESSIVE and MASSIVE. What's the model? I've got a 13" JVC broadcast monitor
It’s a Sony PVM 1953-MD (19” model designed to be fitted with hospital-grade splash guards to protect against... I dunno, endoscopy disasters? The mind reels)
Enhanced lighting!
I’ll admit I was a little bummed when you went off Nintendo the rest if the year, but I have enjoyed this lynx coverage immensely
There’s still some Nintendo stuff slated throughout the rest of the year, don’t worry
@@JeremyParish Happy to hear, but your current content is awesome as well.
Glad you’re enjoying it!
Okay, so, here's a question: Why is One-on-One more high-res than the rest of the Atari 7800's library that you've shown? I can guess it has some effect on the frame rate and the detail of the rest of the game, but seriously, why?
Also, are there other Atari 7800 games that use a higher resolution like One-on-One?
My understanding is that 7800 had two different resolutions: 160x200 (seen in most games) and 320x200 (seen here in One-on-One). The 320px modes work a little like juiced-up 160px modes where objects still move on a 160px framework and are restricted in their use of colors... this means 320px games tend to look choppy and often display color artifacts.
guessing we will see some master system gaiden at some point?
Alex the kidd and wonder boy?
Is the Atari XEGS going to be covered?
That’s a computer, so no.
I, too, am tragically squishy.
I think the most annoying thing about Atari in the day was the one button thing. Even as a toddler I was used to the NES controller and thus 1 button just felt so clunky.
Neither the 2600 version nor the 5200 version of Xevious were ever released.
This is the first time I think I've heard someone express their preference for the NES version of Xevious. No biggie... I was always more of a Terra Cresta guy myself.
Also, "Ibidinc" is fun to say. Ibidinc. Ibidinc. Too bad they didn't last very long, because they could have joined forces with Artdink to make some games. They could have called themselves DoubleDinc after the merger.
Really? The NES version comes much closer to the arcade game. This one isn’t bad at all, but it’s nowhere near as accurate.
Hey what's up with the millisecond of land of confusion
xevious is cool and all in 1986, but by that time Gradius was already out on the NES and crazy AI based shooters are only a year away.
seems like a "wait for fresh bread in the bakery" situation
the 7800 was the "port machine" 30 years before the switch
Detroit Pistons?
Either I missed some context, or maybe you meant Chicago Bulls.
Didn't they do a follow up to that game with Jordan vs Bird? I feel like you did a video on that. My brain is a mess right now.
The Pistons did very well for themselves in the late ’80s, around the time these games were being released. Not really sure what the confusion is.
Stephan, In the era of this game, the Detroit Pistons were ascendant. The bad boys, with Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer, John Salley, Dennis Rodman, Joe Dumars, etc., really became the nemesis of the whole of the league. Jordan had established himself as a superstar, but the Bulls didn’t earn any conference or world championships until the 90s. So, you just misinterpreted what Jeremy said, but Jeremy was certainly spot on here.
EA did later make Jordan vs Bird, but not for the 7800. That game came out in 1988 and was for other systems like the NES, Sega Master system, and Atari 8-bit, among others. What’s cool about that version is it had a dunk contest--which would have been sweet in the 7800 version. But alas.....
@@JeremyParish ooooh ok. So I was just missing context. I thought you were implying that Jordan was with the Pistons. My mistake
Oh, I see. That was "Jordan and the Pistons" as in "as well as" not "along with his team".
@@mrp4242 thanks for info. Yeah I definitely misinterpreted what he meant. It also doesn't help that I'm genuinely ignorant of the state of the NBA in the mid to late 80s, outside of a couple big names.
Like Bill Lambeer, I just know as the person who married the art of combat with Basketball.
I know who was clambering for a good Xevious release. The Japanese.
They had one in 1984.
Bad comment on my part. It was more a tongue in cheek reference to how insane Japan was for Xevious in any form more than anything. I still can't wrap my head around how popular Xevious was there.
It's a very good game! And a great evolution of the Invaders format, which was the first real driving force among the gaming audience over there.