Backtracking though the jungle: Rambo & The Magic of Scheherazade | Metroidvania Works 15
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- Опубликовано: 1 авг 2024
- Metroidvania Returns with a new look and... well, that's it, just a new color scheme for the lower thirds. Everything else about resumes where we left off [checks notes] two years ago?!
Yes, this episode has actually fallen behind the NES Works chronology, sort of. The Famicom release dates for Rambo and The Magic Scheherazade bring us to the end of 1987, right in the thick of the Famicom development communities drive toward metroidvaniation. That impulse manifests in the most unlikely ways-like with Pack-In Video's decision to take a Hollywood action movie and transform it into a story-driven, open world, exploratory action-adventure complete with a simplified experience system and inventory mechanics. Weird, but fascinating nonetheless. Somehow, Rambo for NES/Famicom gives us our first proper attempt to capture the lightning of Zelda II in a bottle... though certainly not the last attempt we'll see here.
And as our action-RPG sidebar, we have Culture Brain's The Magic of Scheherazade, a fascinating hybrid game that combines action and RPG with astounding literalness. I don't know that this one works, either, but as with Rambo, it's damned interesting to witness.
Production notes:
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NES footage captured from Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister. 
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Well, now all I can think of is Rambo: Breath Of The Wild, so thank you for that Jeremy.
"Purah...do we get to win this time?"
I got Magic of Scheherazade as an impulse buy when it was new with birthday money. It was a budget title and was $20 less than the likes of Zelda 2, for instance. Got it home and was stunned at how deep and complex it was, along with how janky it could be. Still love it and wish it had gotten a sequel
Same here. It had its ups and downs. The soundtrack being one of the major ups.
@@49erfanaticfromnm30 The peaceful overworld theme is in my top 5 favorite NES compositions, absolutely gorgeous and melancholy at the same time
Owned MoS and also played Rambo a fair amount back in the day. As you correctly assert, I feel they both fell just short of what could have been greatness. Generally both had good 'engines' and the controls/gameplay were solid. In my estimation they both suffered from being what I call 'mystifiers', in that both games at times made it difficult to determine what to do next. I desperately wanted to like them both as a kid, but as a kid they were a bit on the confusing side.
Yeah, there was a LOT happening in both that probably made more sense for kids in Japan, who had seen the progressive evolution of RPG elements in games, than it did for kids overseas, who kinda got dropped into the deep end with Zelda II/Rambo/Simon's Quest without seeing all the preceding works that inspired them (Druaga, Dragon Quest, Xanadu, etc.). Scheherazade especially does a LOT that requires some extra context to appreciate.
Scheherazade is tough to chew on but you can't help but be blown away the entire time you're playing it. It's truly a fascinating game.
Scheherazade was a awesome game and a favorite rental of mine when the game was new. I never beat the game but it was so cool.
In December 1989 in the Magic of Scheherazade.
Absolutely adored MoS as a kid. I tried going back to it as an adult and everything. was. so. slowwwww. The character felt like he was walking in mud in the overworld, and it felt like it took eons to get through an encounter using the turn based combat. I think we're just spoiled by modern gaming.
2:07 Hydlide in a Rambo skin (at least that’s what it looks like) is the weirdest damn thing. It’s like they had to make a game to appeal to the masses who liked muscley commandos, but the nerds liked their RPGs, so -
3:46 “Oh my god, look out for the flamingos, Rambo!” - words that have never been spoken before.
4:58 Map shifting like this is an odd choice. I see the need to not constrain everything to a single linear plane, but a warp tile is not how I’d convey that. I’d prefer something like how Castlevania conveys a branching path. Stairs or a ladder to different areas, even if it’s a flip screen.
"A Sly wink". Jeremy...
Man, I've been consuming retro game "content" for most of my internet diseased youngster life. And only now, as an "adult" I'm seeing footage of Magic of Scheherazade for the first time? Looks super interesting, and it's super affordable! Going to have to give it a fair swing if I find a copy. (you're the only youtube channel I actively follow anymore, you are the prime gem of youtube, never stop! I could flat out delete youtube from my life if it were not for your insightful chronology's!)
ah yes Rambo...one of my childhood games I only beat as an adult w/ save states...also a game I thought Nintendo copied because I played Zelda 2 after I played Rambo. One of the things I found out w/ Rambo as a kid was if you enter a password of "0" at the password screen...you'll be taken to a glitched out level w/ 99 of all items. I thought I was some sort of hacker bac then, haha.
I'm glad to see a prominent figure in the community give NES Rambo its due. Yes it's flawed and hard to play today (hell, it was hard to play back then), but it's so cool and ambitious. It doesn't deserve the hate. I'd argue it's better than the movie.
Right up my alley JP
I should play The Magic of Scheherazade.😀👍🎮
Give it a shot, it's great. I remember when my dad bought it used because it looked like Zelda. Still have the game.
@@49erfanaticfromnm30 ok I will. 😀👍🎮
Hooray, Metroidvania Works returns!
The fact that a Rambo game of all things is a foundational work for the genre is one of those little bits of history that I just love. Magic of Scheherazade is one of those NES games I've always wanted to play
Rambo was the first game I bought with my own money when i was a kid. I was a HUGE Rambo fan and had to have it.... I wasnt impressed at the time but over the years, it has become one of my most nostalgic games. I beat it for the first time a couple years ago.. Its pretty good if you figure out the map and know your way around. Thank you for all your content!
New Metroidvania Works and a Nintendo Direct in the same *morning?* It's already a good day.
MoS was such a fun game. I really enjoyed rambo also. Wasnt what i was expecting but i enjoyed it.
Oh battle of Olympus next time...cant wait such a fun game.
Magic of Scheherazade was big for me as a kid. Not long ago I nabbed a full complete copy, map and all, and it's still way more fun than it has any right to be.
The English text in Rambo is remarkably clear and coherent for a Japanese-developed title of the time. I wonder if that’s a result of the license, or if the dev just made a point of making professional translation a priority.
Considering that they brought movie licenses over to Japan, it isn't too much of a surprise that Pack-In-Video had a better English translator than the average game developer that dumped the task in the lap of whoever in the team happened to have OK grades in English from high school.
Magic of Scheherazade is easily in my top 3 NES games. I liked it so much that I tracked down a sealed copy many years ago, had it slabbed (before game grading became a major thing), and it sits on my wall to this day. It was a bit of a disorganized mess at times, but it was fun to play and had an amazing soundtrack to boot.
Somebody forgot about Castle Wolfenstein. Konami doesn't get all the credit for top-down stealth action.
Oh man, Magic of Schereazade is one of my favorite games. It felt so much more complex than any other RPGs on the NES.
The box art for Magic of Scheherazade is so cool! I’ve never seen that cartridge or even heard of that game before.
I never heard of Scheherazade but it looks fascinating. They really threw everything they could think of into it.
I remember trying to play Rambo back when I was a kid and just getting totally lost and giving up. The other game was pretty fun though.
I don't know about you guys, but I am a HUGE fan of Rambo's soundtrack.
choosing to read this title as a review of one game called Rambo & the Magic of Scheherazade
That sounds like a Robot Chicken sketch.
Both are great underrated titles. I especially loved Rambo. Even if it uses the Z2 game format, which is great in my book, the game really stands on it's own once you learn to navigate. The stranger in a strange land vibe it has is incredible- they made some very creative area and enemy design choices that give the end experience an acid trip/lost weekend feel, particularly with the odd jokes and strange translation.
I'm so glad to see these 2 games featured in this video!
I remember Rambo getting a lot of flack back in the day largely because most people didn't understood how to play it. That's one of the biggest sins a number of ambitious 8-bit era games had against them. If the game didn't do a good job of explaining all the mechanics in a logical way in the game itself then a lot of players got turned off quickly. It also wasn't good enough to try to explain the mechanics in a game manual either since so many people tried out games via rentals and most game rentals didn't come with a manual or came with some sort of small abridged one.
Also The Magic of Scheherazade was a game that looked neat but no-one I knew (myself included) knew how to pronounce Scheherazade. That didn't lend itself to having people talk much about the game except to make fun of butchering the name itself.
Rambo was the first game I paid for myself, with birthday money mind you but still, game was so strange but was a blast to play.
I beat Rambo a few years ago. Really enjoyed Rambo on the NES as an adult, as a child, not so much.
0:08 - "It doesn't matter what I read, it's the tone you use."
I have played the magic o sheherazde since the 90's. Afther playing it back then and a few years ago (on 2018). All i could say is that this is a game that attempts on so many things at the same time, and not excelling on any front, say being an RPG, an Action-RPG or an adventure game, it almost feels like a mess (especially on the pseudo RPG boss battles). But goddammit, it was a very close to be a good one.
Also.
Quote from Jeremy: "Radiates Ramboness..."
You sir, just added an awesome term to my vocabulary🤣. Nice job👍
I always find it interesting when something seemingly underrated help shaping the genres into what they are today..!
I rented this game when it was new. Despite that weird b-tier Culture Brain production, the game really impressed me back in the day, and stuck in my memory. If I ever get into Famicom collecting, it'll definitely be on the list.
"that Konami would properly invent a year later" that's not really how inventing works, but this is Metroidvania Works after all, a series that's all about the difficulty in locating the true origins of a genre, so maybe that's appropriate
I'll stick with rambo part 2 on the commodore 64 by the King's of euro/brit jank: Ocean Software 😊
Never played the Magic of Scheherazade but Culture Brain definitely did try for things in some games, probably more successful here than in Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll aka Hiryu no Ken. And Battle of Olympus next time? Oh boy.
It's a fantastic game and probably has one of the best NES soundtracks.
As someone who's roughly the same age as Mr. Parish, I remember Flying Dragon having a manga adaptation that ran in the first year or so of GamePro.
Rambo is one of those games that has become trendy to hate on… but with one exception I think it’s a really fun game. The only problem are the stupid North/South planes
MoS is pretty scattered, but certainly staggeringly ambitious for the time. Its biggest issue for me is that there's no compelling reason to engage with the turn-based battle system. It's just a slower, less efficient way of gathering the same resources you can get from the real time fights.
Makes me want to re-listen to "Song of Scheherazade" by Renaissance. Probably while playing this game.
I think I need to expand my Renaissance collection. Never heard that one.
@@JeremyParish It's side 2 of their fantastic Scheherazade and Other Stories album. And also performed on their Live at Carnegie Hall album, to which I believe there's a good "classical composer reacts" video.
I know this is based on year of release but I'm intrigued to see your take on the ambitious and technology pushing, if not very good, games from the later years like magician and castle of deceit
never got around to schereazade, but I did rent rambo back in the day... yeah wild they turned that one into essentially a zelda 2-esque metroidvania. heard it had some interesting things like an alternate ending where co doesnt die? I think it was on one of those hints and tips tapes that were all over the place when the NES was huge.
Yep, if you ignore her when you see her wounded at the waterfall, she won't give her dying message and instead shows up safe and sound at the base once you complete the mission. Super weird!
Greek Antiquity? I was wondering when Knightmare/Maze of Galious was going to pop up on here.
Last episode.
@@JeremyParish That's is a good note to end it on. Galious really is the one that managed to get it all just right, especially for its time of release.
No, "last" as in last episode, as in the Metroidvania Works episode before this one.
@@JeremyParish Oh, sorry I must have missed that.
@@Aboveup this is the most straight-to-the-point who's on first routine i've ever witnessed
The Magic of whatever.....I've been trying to remember this game for years now I rented it once, as a kid and never ran into it again
Rambo was an interesting but undercooked idea, you can tell they did their damndest to copy Zelda 2 and get it shipped in America before Zelda 2, but not bad considering. Magic of Scherazade is freaking amazing though!
I was a little too young when I first played Magic of - word goes here - to understand the moment in history it came from.
Never disliked that game, but it always seemed strange, and yeah, I can see it now for what it was.
I think I always thought of the NES as monolithic, like great games, good games, copycats, pirated, ripoffs, trash and bad games.
I watch this channel all the time, and hearing Rambo and the Magic game explained for what they where made something click.
Maybe other things too, but the original Nintendo entertainment system for sure.
I’m almost 40 now, and this is hardly an adult thought anymore, but I’m starting to think that when I was very, very young I must have enjoyed it a lot more than I ever can, and my view of the NES is like a reverb from the hallowed bell shaped void that was my childhood, something very old was there, and I think it’s a Nintendo machine.
Not a real Nintendo, nothing nostalgic, but the one I built as a child, the fabled treat at the end of the maze, the other side of school, the games grown ups were really good at, how does it work?
Silly stuff like that, all things I’ve grown well past, but the monolith remains.
Not the company, but that one specific machine.
Hey! Are you planning on sticking with Metroidvania Works for a multiple-episode run? I hope so!
Funny I would watch this today when my family got hit by montezumas revenge BAD today
I couldn't come close to pronouncing Scheherazade as a child so I always called the game the Magic of Shishkabob
Since you're giving some attention to culture brain, might I recommend the criminally underrated little ninja Brothers?
I’ll get to it at the end of NES Works 1990.
@JeremyParish that'll be so rad man. Way too many people seem to have completely missed that title.
Is a hotdog a sandwich or a metroidvania sausage?
What word does Rambo "shoot" at the guy to turn him into a frog?
IKARI ("anger")
@@JeremyParish Thanks! What a weird sense of humor that game had. I didn't know about the big head thing until this video.
No more Sega master system 😅 Was hoping to see something on R-type and Miracle Warriors.
Sounds like someone wasn't paying attention to the part in last week's episode where I said I was taking a short break from Master System and will resume in a few months.
@@JeremyParish I Presumed this was an ironic pivot due to the systems decline, but you are right sir 😳
I will never I understand…why is it called Metroidvania???? Castlevania just copied Metroid’s formula, right???? So why isn’t Metroid given the main credit??? Someone please help me understand this.
If only someone could create a video series tracing the evolution and influences of the format through the years.
@@JeremyParish lol, sorry, just being a goof. If only someone would do that….seriously, I’ve said it before and will repeat it again, you are the most underrated retro game channel ever. You should have a billion views by now. You can tell you actually PLAY the games and do the research, and that you care.
You can save Co in Rambo by not going to the event where she dies in game and she will be alive and present at the end of the game. I never see anyone mention this.
I touched on it in the NES Works Rambo episode.
Backtrack thru the jungle/Rambo is the game/you don't know what way to walk/honey i feel the same/you never can seem to find whatever you may need/and if you got no ammo, honey, you might get stung by a bee