I really appreciate Jeremy's consistent dedication to correct pronunciation. It's something a lot of RUclipsrs don't pay enough, if any, heed to. You'd never catch this man saying "ex cetera", or Brohderbund
@@JeremyParish I should've left a comment earlier then. I first noticed with your accurate "anime" and "manga" vowels, but it's something you are very consistent about. It's refreshing for someone like me who has a bit of a nails-on-chalkboard reaction to incorrect pronunciation, much as I loathe prescriptivism.
To clarify the Bomberman/Lode Runner connection: The original 1983 computer version of Bomberman starred an actual man; a human in a spiffy pork pie hat. The 1985 Famicom version of Bomberman "borrowed" the sprite created for the 1984 Famicom Lode Runner, not vice versa.
Will Mistretta He will be covering Bomberman in the not too distant future (it was released in the West in 87 as well) so it’s likely that he will expand on the connection at that point.
Lode Runner disintegrating to dust always terrified me as a kid (silly death music notwithstanding), especially when the cause of said death was the beloved Bomberman.
Same here. You can clearly see the little guy scream in agony as he's being erased from existence. Now that you mention Bomberman too, in most of his games he ruptures like a balloon, emiting a "funny" sound at the same time.
Championship Lode Runner is an absolute wonder that really floored us, appearing innocently in Famiclone multicarts as "Lode Runner 2". The level of skill required to beat those levels turns the game into a true Puzzle Game. For instance manipulating enemies so they'll fall into the open air with the right timing to let you walk across a pit on their heads. Wish there was a little more Lode Runner music included in the video, it's simple but pleasant.
Funnily enough about the Bomberman clones in Load Runner............ In the first NES Bomberman game, Bomberman was a robot who’s a slave in a underground bomb making factory. One day after hearing about rumors that robots could turn human after escaping to the surface, Bomberman did just that and ventures upwards. After finishing all the stages, Bomberman did escape and thus transforms into the Runner in this game with Hudson Soft even advertising their port of Lode Runner in the ending.
Mohhamad Aliff True, it’s likely that the connection between the two games will be addressed in more detail when Bomberman itself is covered. That was also a 1987 release so it shouldn’t be too far off.
Yeah we've got a ways to go before we get to 88, unfortunately, as I discovered just yesterday when I looked up how far until we get to Milon's Secret Castle, one of those magical games that is almost objectively bad but you still have wonderful childhood memories of and can't help but love it. You know, like Night Trap or Metroid!
You're slowly working your way towards the GREATEST Broderbund game of ALL TIME for the NES -- the highly beloved and cherished DEADLY TOWERS!!! (I may or may not have receive an ample cache of ludder for this endorsement.)
i really appreciate your attention to pronunciation of nonenglish titles. too many channels don't even bother trying, which is one of those things that kind of gets under my skin. i really appreciate your effort
Raid on Bungeling Bay was the first game I owned for my C64 and one of the best too. Losing your carrier was a catastrophe but not quite as bad as suggested at 7:30 in the vid... you could no longer repair your helicopter, however it WAS possible to restock your bombs. Near the top of one of the islands is a weapons cache, landing there replenishes your bomb supplies! This means it is possible to complete the game as long as you avoid damage until the last factory is reduced to pixelly rubble. The weapons cache is actually mentioned in the instruction manual (not how to find it though) and appears on the island as a small landing area with a bunch of vaguely bomb-like symbols next to it. Don't know if this is also true for the NES version but it saved my butt many times back in the day on the C64.
Lode Runner was a popular game in the US, and me and the guys back in high school played a ton of it on an Apple IIc we had there, but in Japan it appears to have been something almost on the order of a cultural thing.
The first game in the Big In Japan trilogy! :D God I miss Brøderbund. It never hit me until this video that I probably owe Actraiser’s existence to Raid on Bungeling Bay. The formative years of all these genres are wild. Now to look up that Madoola no Tsubasa game and again mourn never getting to play Legacy of the Wizard. And to stop having Spelunker flashbacks after that next episode preview.
Have you checked the Japanese versions of these? Often the titles available vary by region. Probably not in this case, but you never know. Certainly the mini consoles had different games for their japanese versions than the western counterparts...
As a kid, I always thought I was raiding a bay of bungling idiots in Raid on Bungeling Bay, only to realize years later that they are in fact recurring villains called the Bungeling Empire. Talk about poor naming choice on their evil leader's part. 😅
Another great review, thanks Jeremy! I like hearing about the particularities of these ancient computer games ports to console from an era where porting meant adapting more than simply "making it run on platform x". As a coder in the industry, my experience of porting to console nowadays is that it essentially implies adapting to higher or lower graphical capabilities and modifying the control scheme but much of the assets and code remains completely untouched, only a thin layer gets modified during ports. Back then, porting often implied rethinking some aspects of the game, even though for the games reviewed here the changes are also quite minimal. A last technical point regarding the C64 port of Raid on Bungeling Bay: the C64 is absolutely capable of scrolling these kind of maps while handling the full 16 colors and the limitation to 4 colors likely has more to do with Will Wright's skills as a coder than the machine's constraints. I do not blame him, he may have had limited time to write these scroll routines but a technical limitation is likely not the reason for this choice.
Looking back on this now, i wonder if we'd have to add Apex Legends & Valorant to the discussion on influential western games in Japan. i hear Apex in particular actually makes more money than Fortnite does in Japan, about the only country where that's the case! Both of those games are also among the biggest in terms of streaming numbers there, alongside Street Fighter 6 as of this comment. Your Undertale prediction seems spot-on now, btw.
What's interesting about these two games (at least the original computer versions) was they were part of the same multi-game universe Broderbund was creating back then, since they both feature you battling the "Bungeling Empire". I don't remember if any other games were part of that as well.
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns on the Playstation was my favorite. Singleplayer, cooperative, versus, tons of levels from cakewalk to insane, all with the level editor able to save 'em.
Wow, I haven't heard that name in a while, I had the NES Raid on Bungeling Bay as a kid. I got it used and other games used from a local rental store that went out of business. I had no idea what you were supposed to do, so it was just fly around for a bit and then switch to another game.
Did the cover art of Bungling Bay kinda scare/creep anyone else out? Just the dead pan stare of an evil robot/ cyborg, who's goal was to destroy human beings.
I poured countless hours into Lode Runner on an Apple IIe when I was younger. I didn't even know there was an NES version, let alone that it sold better. Thanks for the great video!
While Lode Runner was praised in Japan, Bungeling Bay was not. It became more of a meme than a game. Will Wright was right about his predicaments; SimCity was absolute banger in both sides of Pacific.
AAAAAAH! I was gifted a hand-me-down Apple //c when I was eight years old in the late 80's. Anyone seriously using a computer at the time wound up collecting several shoeboxes of 5 1/4" floppies. On the back side of one of an floppy labeled 'Receipts' was a copy of Lode Runner. No instructions, no context, just a game that started when you put the disk in and reset/powered on the system. That was the first computer game I'd ever owned and by far the best I'd found in those shoeboxes. Needless to say, I played the snot out of that game though about half of the levels because I didn't know how to make the game save or load progress, and I only learned about the edit mode and how to enter it from an Archive.org manual scan. Funny thing though, every time I reset the Apple II a weird message appeared at the top of the screen "Cracked By The Reset Vector". I thought it was a kind of weird error message. Nope, turns out my first major game was pirated, and it was the cracker leaving his signature. Thirty years later I found a copy of the very same cracked disk: archive.org/details/a2_Lode_Runner_1983_Broderbund_cr_Reset_Vector What's a Reset Vector, besides being an extremely 80's hacker handle? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_vector Anyway, the NES version is probably the best one as far as presentation and control, and it having those 50 original Apple levels are likely because it's a 32kb n-rom... which funny enough, also makes it a good candidate for being pirated on these 100 in one carts because of no additional mapper.
Just a question, how do you record your NES games? Do you record them directly from a TV with some sort of camera, or do you emulate them and use a screen recorder?
I use an Analogue Nt Mini, which are hard to come by these days. I'd recommend finding an RGB-modded NES if you can. Or maybe a MiSTer if you don't mind some DIY labor.
For capture? Turn it on and go for it. Anything HDMI-capable should be plug-and-play with something like an Elgato HD60. I'd recommend setting your output and capture to 720p, though. 1080p plays poorly with upscaled 240p graphics.
My first instant when I saw Cubic Lode Runner was to open an eBay tab to see if it got a localized released that's affordable on the used market. That's a fun looking idea that I'd love to try out. Sadly it seems exclusive to Japanese Gamecube and PS2. Shame.
Back in the day, I had a boot disc that I'd use to play Japanese games on my US GameCube. It was made by Datel or some similar peripheral manufacturer. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find a copy of one of those, and then Japanese lode runner will play just fine! You'll need a separate memory card dedicated to Japanese games if you want to save your progress, though. Edit: Went and found it for nostalgia's sake. It's the Datel FreeLoader, and you can get it on Amazon for just ten bucks.
If you haven't tried it, Lode Runner 2 (1998) on PC is a great isometric 3D Lode Runner game. They went with a sci-fi type approach rather than the cutesy style of the 2D games, but it's not like _Bomberman: Act Zero_ - it's pretty stylish, with good-looking tilesets and atmospheric music.
I quite enjoy the modern Lode Runner. It's like the new pacman that retained the gameplay but made the graphics 2.5D and added lots of flash and sparkle. The new version of lode runner is exactly the same in gameplay but is just more flashy, unless you want to choose the vintage mode which makes the graphics like the old games.
I dunno I found Raid on Bungeling Bay to be incredibly boring... and for early NES shooters there was no reason to play it over Zanac which was released a year earlier. Though that's just my tastes as I never really liked scrolling shooters where you can turn and fly in different directions.
![Liga Mexicana 2001 - Winning Eleven 2000 - PlayStation 1 (PS1) [GamePlay]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/jxx3DLbD6iY/mqdefault.jpg)
I really appreciate Jeremy's consistent dedication to correct pronunciation. It's something a lot of RUclipsrs don't pay enough, if any, heed to. You'd never catch this man saying "ex cetera", or Brohderbund
This is the first comment I've ever seen about pronunciation that isn't a complaint/nitpick/erroneous "correction"! A RUclips miracle!
He's a really great narrator.
@@JeremyParish I should've left a comment earlier then. I first noticed with your accurate "anime" and "manga" vowels, but it's something you are very consistent about. It's refreshing for someone like me who has a bit of a nails-on-chalkboard reaction to incorrect pronunciation, much as I loathe prescriptivism.
This is something I also appreciate.
I've always been happy he pronounces Mana correctly. I'm usually not a stickler but that one bugs me
To clarify the Bomberman/Lode Runner connection: The original 1983 computer version of Bomberman starred an actual man; a human in a spiffy pork pie hat. The 1985 Famicom version of Bomberman "borrowed" the sprite created for the 1984 Famicom Lode Runner, not vice versa.
Will Mistretta He will be covering Bomberman in the not too distant future (it was released in the West in 87 as well) so it’s likely that he will expand on the connection at that point.
Another excellent video by the world's foremost scholar on Heiankyo Alien and its vast and branching legacy.
Heiankyo Alien reference! Everyone take a drink.
Mr. Parish actually influenced my purchase of the game by his constant referencing. Fun game!
Lode Runner disintegrating to dust always terrified me as a kid (silly death music notwithstanding), especially when the cause of said death was the beloved Bomberman.
Same here. You can clearly see the little guy scream in agony as he's being erased from existence. Now that you mention Bomberman too, in most of his games he ruptures like a balloon, emiting a "funny" sound at the same time.
Championship Lode Runner is an absolute wonder that really floored us, appearing innocently in Famiclone multicarts as "Lode Runner 2". The level of skill required to beat those levels turns the game into a true Puzzle Game. For instance manipulating enemies so they'll fall into the open air with the right timing to let you walk across a pit on their heads.
Wish there was a little more Lode Runner music included in the video, it's simple but pleasant.
Funnily enough about the Bomberman clones in Load Runner............
In the first NES Bomberman game, Bomberman was a robot who’s a slave in a underground bomb making factory. One day after hearing about rumors that robots could turn human after escaping to the surface, Bomberman did just that and ventures upwards.
After finishing all the stages, Bomberman did escape and thus transforms into the Runner in this game with Hudson Soft even advertising their port of Lode Runner in the ending.
Mohhamad Aliff True, it’s likely that the connection between the two games will be addressed in more detail when Bomberman itself is covered. That was also a 1987 release so it shouldn’t be too far off.
I'm afraid Bomberman was an ’88 U.S. release. Weirdly, we got Robo Warrior (aka Bomber King) over here before the game from which it was spun off.
Yeah we've got a ways to go before we get to 88, unfortunately, as I discovered just yesterday when I looked up how far until we get to Milon's Secret Castle, one of those magical games that is almost objectively bad but you still have wonderful childhood memories of and can't help but love it. You know, like Night Trap or Metroid!
When I know I am going to have a stressful day of work I pop these relaxing videos on so calming.
You're slowly working your way towards the GREATEST Broderbund game of ALL TIME for the NES -- the highly beloved and cherished DEADLY TOWERS!!! (I may or may not have receive an ample cache of ludder for this endorsement.)
I know this guy named Benj, you'd get along great.
i really appreciate your attention to pronunciation of nonenglish titles. too many channels don't even bother trying, which is one of those things that kind of gets under my skin. i really appreciate your effort
Thanks! I don’t always get it right, but I always do my research so I can at least make an earnest effort.
@@JeremyParish it shows, and i thank you!
Raid on Bungeling Bay was the first game I owned for my C64 and one of the best too. Losing your carrier was a catastrophe but not quite as bad as suggested at 7:30 in the vid... you could no longer repair your helicopter, however it WAS possible to restock your bombs. Near the top of one of the islands is a weapons cache, landing there replenishes your bomb supplies! This means it is possible to complete the game as long as you avoid damage until the last factory is reduced to pixelly rubble. The weapons cache is actually mentioned in the instruction manual (not how to find it though) and appears on the island as a small landing area with a bunch of vaguely bomb-like symbols next to it. Don't know if this is also true for the NES version but it saved my butt many times back in the day on the C64.
Lode Runner was a popular game in the US, and me and the guys back in high school played a ton of it on an Apple IIc we had there, but in Japan it appears to have been something almost on the order of a cultural thing.
I am very excited by the return of NES works.
The first game in the Big In Japan trilogy! :D God I miss Brøderbund.
It never hit me until this video that I probably owe Actraiser’s existence to Raid on Bungeling Bay. The formative years of all these genres are wild.
Now to look up that Madoola no Tsubasa game and again mourn never getting to play Legacy of the Wizard. And to stop having Spelunker flashbacks after that next episode preview.
I had the IBM PC Jr. version of Load Runner. I was addicted, I eventually purchased a Championship version as well. Super tuff.
_"Brooderbund?"_
All this time I've been pronouncing it _"Brotherbound!"_
It’s a shame Lode Runner hasn’t been available on non-Wii Virtual Console or the NES Switch app given its historical impact in Japan.
Have you checked the Japanese versions of these? Often the titles available vary by region.
Probably not in this case, but you never know.
Certainly the mini consoles had different games for their japanese versions than the western counterparts...
Lode Runner's available on the Wii U Virtual Console.
As a kid, I always thought I was raiding a bay of bungling idiots in Raid on Bungeling Bay, only to realize years later that they are in fact recurring villains called the Bungeling Empire.
Talk about poor naming choice on their evil leader's part. 😅
It's no "Decepticons" is it?
Another great review, thanks Jeremy!
I like hearing about the particularities of these ancient computer games ports to console from an era where porting meant adapting more than simply "making it run on platform x". As a coder in the industry, my experience of porting to console nowadays is that it essentially implies adapting to higher or lower graphical capabilities and modifying the control scheme but much of the assets and code remains completely untouched, only a thin layer gets modified during ports.
Back then, porting often implied rethinking some aspects of the game, even though for the games reviewed here the changes are also quite minimal.
A last technical point regarding the C64 port of Raid on Bungeling Bay: the C64 is absolutely capable of scrolling these kind of maps while handling the full 16 colors and the limitation to 4 colors likely has more to do with Will Wright's skills as a coder than the machine's constraints. I do not blame him, he may have had limited time to write these scroll routines but a technical limitation is likely not the reason for this choice.
Yay more NES Works. Keep going, I want you to reach Tecmo Bowl.
It didn’t say how in Lode Runner that the robots can instantly refill holes that you make if you try to make a hole too close to one of the robots
Looking back on this now, i wonder if we'd have to add Apex Legends & Valorant to the discussion on influential western games in Japan. i hear Apex in particular actually makes more money than Fortnite does in Japan, about the only country where that's the case! Both of those games are also among the biggest in terms of streaming numbers there, alongside Street Fighter 6 as of this comment.
Your Undertale prediction seems spot-on now, btw.
"Bungling bases." Nice one, Jeremy.
What's interesting about these two games (at least the original computer versions) was they were part of the same multi-game universe Broderbund was creating back then, since they both feature you battling the "Bungeling Empire". I don't remember if any other games were part of that as well.
Lode Runner: The Legend Returns on the Playstation was my favorite. Singleplayer, cooperative, versus, tons of levels from cakewalk to insane, all with the level editor able to save 'em.
Sierra Online had a few versions of Lode Runner for Windows 95. One of them even had online support!
Wow, I haven't heard that name in a while, I had the NES Raid on Bungeling Bay as a kid. I got it used and other games used from a local rental store that went out of business. I had no idea what you were supposed to do, so it was just fly around for a bit and then switch to another game.
Both of these were some of my early favorites on C64
Did the cover art of Bungling Bay kinda scare/creep anyone else out? Just the dead pan stare of an evil robot/ cyborg, who's goal was to destroy human beings.
I played a LOT of Lode Runner back in grade school on our school's computers. I don't think I ever actually played the NES version, though.
The original "Lode Runner" on Apple II made whoever designed the original joystick with its two fire buttons seem like a genius.
Wasn't that Steve Wozniak? He legitimately is a genius.
You could only play Lode Runner Championship outside Japan is if you had a multi-game cart that had it
"The robots are sort of smart [...] but also sort of dumb"
Cheers, I'll drink to that.
Yeah, the robots are dumb. 13:22 He could have totally killed the guy but he decided to get back to the hole and this one destroyed him LOL 😂🤣😂
I poured countless hours into Lode Runner on an Apple IIe when I was younger. I didn't even know there was an NES version, let alone that it sold better. Thanks for the great video!
Always enjoy these videos. Keep up the great work.
Fantastic overview
35th anniversary for Nuts & Milk, and also Lode Runner on the Famicom is at the end of this month.
While Lode Runner was praised in Japan, Bungeling Bay was not.
It became more of a meme than a game.
Will Wright was right about his predicaments; SimCity was absolute banger in both sides of Pacific.
AAAAAAH! I was gifted a hand-me-down Apple //c when I was eight years old in the late 80's. Anyone seriously using a computer at the time wound up collecting several shoeboxes of 5 1/4" floppies. On the back side of one of an floppy labeled 'Receipts' was a copy of Lode Runner. No instructions, no context, just a game that started when you put the disk in and reset/powered on the system.
That was the first computer game I'd ever owned and by far the best I'd found in those shoeboxes. Needless to say, I played the snot out of that game though about half of the levels because I didn't know how to make the game save or load progress, and I only learned about the edit mode and how to enter it from an Archive.org manual scan.
Funny thing though, every time I reset the Apple II a weird message appeared at the top of the screen "Cracked By The Reset Vector". I thought it was a kind of weird error message. Nope, turns out my first major game was pirated, and it was the cracker leaving his signature.
Thirty years later I found a copy of the very same cracked disk: archive.org/details/a2_Lode_Runner_1983_Broderbund_cr_Reset_Vector
What's a Reset Vector, besides being an extremely 80's hacker handle? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reset_vector
Anyway, the NES version is probably the best one as far as presentation and control, and it having those 50 original Apple levels are likely because it's a 32kb n-rom... which funny enough, also makes it a good candidate for being pirated on these 100 in one carts because of no additional mapper.
There's a Lode Runner game on Switch?
Ha! The enemies in Lode Runner really are bombermen.
Just a question, how do you record your NES games? Do you record them directly from a TV with some sort of camera, or do you emulate them and use a screen recorder?
Direct RGB capture through an upscaler.
Brilliant. Any recommendations on ones to get? I fancy recording some NES stuff myself.
I use an Analogue Nt Mini, which are hard to come by these days. I'd recommend finding an RGB-modded NES if you can. Or maybe a MiSTer if you don't mind some DIY labor.
I have a HDMI adapted NES. Any advice on that?
For capture? Turn it on and go for it. Anything HDMI-capable should be plug-and-play with something like an Elgato HD60. I'd recommend setting your output and capture to 720p, though. 1080p plays poorly with upscaled 240p graphics.
I picked up Bungeling Bay for cheap back when and I'm pretty sure I never understood the concept of it at all lol.
Brøderbund was all over the place with the game releases.
And Print Shop, don't forget that!
I loved playing around with that on the old PC. It delivered all of our printing needs in stark black and white.
@@7thangelad586 Yep! Plus when we still had form-feed printers, it made making banners pretty sweet!
It all comes back to Heiankyo Alien...It always does.
I keep telling you people
I have a multi-game cart that has a game called Lode Runner Championship I think officially that one may have only been released in Japan
Aww yeah, gotta get that Heiankyo Alien reference!
My first instant when I saw Cubic Lode Runner was to open an eBay tab to see if it got a localized released that's affordable on the used market. That's a fun looking idea that I'd love to try out.
Sadly it seems exclusive to Japanese Gamecube and PS2. Shame.
I had it back in the day, and it was alright, I guess. I didn't love it.
Back in the day, I had a boot disc that I'd use to play Japanese games on my US GameCube. It was made by Datel or some similar peripheral manufacturer. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to find a copy of one of those, and then Japanese lode runner will play just fine!
You'll need a separate memory card dedicated to Japanese games if you want to save your progress, though.
Edit: Went and found it for nostalgia's sake. It's the Datel FreeLoader, and you can get it on Amazon for just ten bucks.
If you haven't tried it, Lode Runner 2 (1998) on PC is a great isometric 3D Lode Runner game. They went with a sci-fi type approach rather than the cutesy style of the 2D games, but it's not like _Bomberman: Act Zero_ - it's pretty stylish, with good-looking tilesets and atmospheric music.
Fuck yes. Nothing better than coming home after a hard day's work to find a new Jeremy Parish video waiting to be enjoyed. Thank you.
Completely honestly, it's often the highlight of my week.
Lode runner look good for me to play. 😀👍🎮
I quite enjoy the modern Lode Runner. It's like the new pacman that retained the gameplay but made the graphics 2.5D and added lots of flash and sparkle. The new version of lode runner is exactly the same in gameplay but is just more flashy, unless you want to choose the vintage mode which makes the graphics like the old games.
NES Works! YES!!
I missed these. A drawing game map soon?
My mom and I loved playing Lode Runner on NES(read: Chinese Famicom ripoffs) in the 90s
I should get her Lode Runner Legacy on Switch.
I wish Nuts & Milk came to the west
I have both of these games
Great video as always. Just wondering but is there a reason you're taking a break from game boy works?
Ask again next week
Next time: Let's go Spelunking!
no not that-
Yeah, the robots are dumb. 13:22 He could have totally killed the guy but he decided to get back to the hole and this one destroyed him LOL 😂🤣😂
4:44 Door Door I wish that game came to the west
Hehe.
Nuts and Milk.
Jomaster The Second: A penny for your thoughts. 💭
On the other hand - never mind! 🤔😁
The seldom discussed Firehawk nes plays like a better ,more fun Bungeling bay..I love firehawk. I don't care for bungeling bay
I love elevator action
However SIM City did make it onto the SNES
Yes, see the SimCity episode.
@@JeremyParish will do
I question the strategic wisdom of deploying an aircraft carrier with only a helicopter.
Bungeling vs. bungling
I will play raid on bungeling bay. 😀👍🎮
When are you going to cover Pollywog's Parrot and Zhu Bunny Complete..? Oh, wait - sorry, wrong universe!
I dunno I found Raid on Bungeling Bay to be incredibly boring... and for early NES shooters there was no reason to play it over Zanac which was released a year earlier. Though that's just my tastes as I never really liked scrolling shooters where you can turn and fly in different directions.
I preferred the sequel, Lode Runner 2049.
Bomberman being engineered to conceive and bear young was a retcon I could have done without