Here at the tail end of 1987, the western licensees have begun to arrive on NES in full force. The material you see here will become far more common once we move along into NES Works 1988. After two years of doing a pretty good job of winnowing out the low-grade kusoge from Japan, Nintendo appears to have shrugged and said, "Well, as long as it's locally sourced kusoge, that's fine. It's fine."
Folks, it's not fine.
2020-03-11 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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This episode did not go the way I expected. I figured Kid Niki would be the main course, with Gotcha! as the brief side dish. But the more I read up on Gotcha! and dug into its history, the more interesting it was. Not the game, mind you... just the history and culture around it. By no means is it a great game, but sometimes it's the strange middling games that have the meatiest origin stories.
2020-03-04 14:59:59 +0000 UTC
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I'm afraid we've a bit of ho-hum content to work our way through before we get to The Good Stuff™. This week's episode isn't especially inspiring—it's essentially a low-grade repeat of the Zanac/Lunar Pool episode from last month, but instead of being cool Compile games, it's... these. Please bear with me for the next month or so! It'll all pay off. Episode 70's gonna be a banger, I promise.
2020-02-26 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Well, the good games couldn't last forever. Here's one that aims high and falls low. Low into the... DARK WORLD.
2020-02-19 14:00:03 +0000 UTC
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It's always a pleasure to cover a personal favorite, though I did try not to drone on about it. I worried it might be unseemly after giving Punch-Out!! relatively short shrift.
2020-02-12 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Well, one thing is for sure with this episode: I'm in no danger of setting blindfolded perfect play speed records for this game. But hey, I'm about providing retrospective insight and context, not blistering finger skills. And thank goodness for that.
2020-02-05 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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This week's episode is a request by Joseph Wawzonek, and it's the best kind of patron request: One on a topic I love dearly. This episode not only gave me an excuse to carry a tricked-out telephoto-capable Game Boy Camera around Japan, as well as an opportunity to really dig around the Camera's software. Which is rad.
2020-01-29 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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This week's episode features a personal lamentation as I recount my harrowing brush with tragedy, precipitated by this physically taxing game. Also, I once again reveal my mancrush on Akitoshi Kawazu. I suppose I'm no longer objective about this subject since I've worked on one of his games. Whatever! You can't scold me, you're not even my real dad.
2020-01-22 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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I've decided to up the frequency of N64 Works from "once every few years" to "a few times every year." Nah, just kidding. Once I power through NES Works 1987, I'll get serious about finishing up N64's 1996 run. It's not like there are that many games! And by and large most of them were pretty good—as with Wave Race 64.
2020-01-15 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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A fine palette cleanser after last week's soggy beginning to the year, don't you think? Neither Zanac nor Lunar Pool are the most beautiful-looking games on NES, but they both play magnificently. And isn't that really what it's all about, in the end? I vote "yes."
2020-01-08 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes you gotta slog through the bad to get to the good. Next episode... is very good. This episode... well, the games aren't bad, but I sure don't want to revisit them. Sorry for the bummer of a beginning to 2020!
Description: SunSoft returns to NES with their first internally developed game for the U.S., though like this episode's back-up feature (Alpha Mission) the game in question (Spy Hunter) actually hails from the arcades. Neither of these vertical shooters offer much i...
2020-01-01 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
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Double Dribble is a good Christmas gift! Ring King less so. Especially for me. I'm gonna have to clean up so many YouTube comments about that stupid interstitial animation....
This is the final video update for 2019, so thank you for your support this year! I'm going to rework the tiers and goals for this Patreon slightly in the new year, streamlining things a bit. And I'm also considering a monthly Patreon-exclusive video... that failed systems poll wasn't just for my health, ya know
2019-12-26 03:00:00 +0000 UTC
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I know I said I was going to stop publishing retrospectives out of sequence, and now here's a 1991 NES game. I didn't lie, though! This is actually a 1992 Famicom game, newly localized and converted to NES in the year 2020. I am nothing if not technically honest.
But for real, I love Metal Storm, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to tackle a review copy of the new Collector's Edition. It's very good! (I say this despite some potential conflicts of interest on the ho...
2019-12-18 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Which seems more interesting to you?
2019-12-12 21:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Yeah, this one's WAY out of place, but (1) it's a patron request and (2) it's going up Christmas day and (3) it's a patron request for Christmas. The hat trick!
(Also, I have a lot of nostalgia for this game, and it's nice to have an excuse to fudge the chronology and cover something cool every once in a while.)
Back to the proper schedule next week!
2019-12-11 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Huh, somehow the post I had scheduled for today... disappeared? Anyway, here is the unintentionally belated video for this week. It's a little out of chronological sequence, but it seemed like it needed to be done, given recent coverage.
2019-12-04 21:30:59 +0000 UTC
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Hey! We're all caught up again to the usual two-week lead time on these videos. Thanks for bearing with me while I got things back on track.
This week we see, by far, the most valuable game I will ever include on Video Works. I was very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work with one of the most highly coveted NES games of all time. I was also very fortunate not to keel over dead from a heart attack while recording this footage. Or to die of disgust from playing Winter...
2019-11-27 15:00:03 +0000 UTC
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The Game Boy Advance was the last platform, to my knowledge, on which we saw a significant number of intriguing first-party titles fail to reach the U.S.; on DS and everything after, the Japan-only stuff tended to fall more on the side of things specifically designed for the Japanese audience exclusively. Here we see the first of the games to remain stranded in Japan... sort of. Napoleon did receive a limited release in France, but only in France—a rare sight.
Everyone got
2019-11-25 14:52:17 +0000 UTC
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I didn't quite manage to catch up with my video backlog over the weekend, but I did make some progress. This video is four days late instead of seven. I've also written all video scripts for public releases through the end of the year, which is nothing to sneeze at. So, a decently productive weekend.
This week's game was a pleasant surprise. I really had expected an unmitigated disaster, but shockingly Turok 2 was pretty OK. Go fig.
2019-11-18 03:25:48 +0000 UTC
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(By a week or so.)
Alas, it has finally happened—five consecutive weekends of cross-country travel have disrupted my weekend productivity for this, my favorite weekend project. I do enjoy having a two-week lead here on the public release of videos, though, so I'll be aiming to catch up over the next few weeks. Apologies for the minor disruption! I was doing pretty well there for a while, but this past month or so has made it difficult for me to spend time recording the footage I need ...
2019-11-13 13:41:26 +0000 UTC
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I feel like NES Works is truly settling into its own here. After a string of amazing, groundbreaking, world-class creations, now we're on to the mundane mediocrity. Games that were okayish, not great, and mostly existed to fill out toy store shelves. Thanks, Acclaim. You excelled at creating the bulk filler that parents bought when the games their kids wanted were sold out.
2019-11-06 14:00:02 +0000 UTC
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I apologize for this hyperbole-free retrospective on a much-hated game. I've accidentally gone and put together an even-handed piece that offers ample criticism but also extensive context. Whoops! I'm probably going to be kicked out of YouTube Gaming for this offense. Please enjoy this, my final statement before I am banished unexpectedly into the
P A R A L L E L Z O N E
2019-10-30 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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A quick side dalliance in one of my long-simmering projects before we dive back into the NES in earnest. At some point in the relatively near future, this series will converge with NES Works... won't that be something?
2019-10-23 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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If you're wondering why I jumped the gun a bit and launched Game Boy Works Advance now, here's the answer. I hit a pair of Castlevania games last year for Halloween, and by cracky, I feel like that should become a tradition. Not sure how I'm going to make it happen, but we'll figure it out...
In any case, this is the second-longest single Works video I've ever produced (right after Gargoyle's Quest). I can't make this a habit, because I'll die if I do, but sometimes the moment ...
2019-10-16 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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I added a few new pieces of capture hardware to my recording setup over the summer: A Mega SD for convenient Sega CD capture, a Wide Boy 64 GBC for Game Boy Color, and an Intelligent System GBA capture kit for Game Boy Advance. Here's the first results of the lattermost addition.
Like Game Boy Works Color and N64 Works, I see GB Works Advance as a secondary project for the time being, much less critical than my focus on NES Works 1987. But I have been wanting to add this series to the r...
2019-10-09 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Stinger is an unusual entry in a long-running Konami series that has barely had any traction in the U.S. And... that's about all I have to say about it that wasn't covered in the video.
Anyway, next week will be something completely different.
2019-10-02 13:00:02 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes, in the course of creating a chronological survey of old video games, one must inevitably Fudge It. This is one such case: I know at least one of these games shipped in 1987 in the U.S., but despite putting quite a bit of effort into pinning down the particulars, precisely when and how many remains a mystery. I've checked as many online resources as I could stomach, and even attempted to sort things out by poking around old games magazines of the time—not that many existed in the ...
2019-09-25 13:00:04 +0000 UTC
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My overall plans for Video Works are somewhat up in the air at the moment—I'm torn between doubling down on NES, focusing on Game Boy Color, or tackling a different platform and throwing in some NES/GBC stuff in there for balance. I would like to give you a definitive plan for the future, but the plan keeps changing. Alas!
I can, however, say with confidence that the next few episodes, including this one, will be about NES. Yes.
2019-09-18 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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It's been a long, long time since the last N64 Works episode, but since my head has been in the "mid-to-late ’90s" space with Virtual Boy Work and Game Boy Works Color, I wanted to throw the occasional N64 title into the mix from time to time as well. With the system's 23rd anniversary just around the corner, it seemed like a sensible time to bring back N64 Works... at least for a one-off. I won't be producing this series too often, because N64 games are generally much larger and more compl...
2019-09-11 14:00:03 +0000 UTC
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I tackled this one slightly out of the actual chronological order of Game Boy Color releases. But sometimes you've gotta fudge it a bit, and this one's slated to go public the same week the Link's Awakening remake hits Switch. I think I can be forgiven.
Besides, who's going to complain about a tribute to Link's Awakening? Only monsters, that who.
2019-09-04 12:59:59 +0000 UTC
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