Mais Ouija: Predator & Taboo: The Sixth Sense | NES Works 122
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- čas přidán 16. 01. 2024
- A couple of games this episode that both try to do something a little different, but do they really succeed? And, perhaps more importantly, did anyone actually ask for them to forge their own path in the first place?
I will say this, though: At least they have both a point of view and a legacy. Predator belongs to the NES's legacy of overly ambitious media adaptations by very creative Japanese studios with neither the time, the resources, or (if we're being honest) the design chops to make it all come together into a true classic. Like Jaws, Rambo, and Friday the 13th before it, Predator aims big and fails big. In fact, one might argue that it fails most bigly of all.
And Taboo belongs to the tradition of not-really-games developed by Rare with nice visuals and sound and audio-think Anticipation, but even more so. It also draws on the legacy of fortune-telling software seen fairly often on Japanese consoles of the time. It's the kind of thing that would make for a fun bonus mode in a more substantial game, but seems kind of empty for a standalone full-price cartridge.
Production notes:
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NES footage captured from Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with xRGB Mini Framemeister. "Before the Storm" courtesy of Jacob Le. - Hry
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This channel has gone 0 days without a lighthearted jab at Kung Fu Heroes. Unlike Kung Fu Heroes, these jabs are actually effective.
New running gag, perhaps?
@@SpyHunter89 playing Kung Fu Heroes makes me want to run and gag, am i right?
I kinda liked KungFu Heroes. Only rented it once, but I kinda liked it. It's on my 8t458-in-one, gray-market, Chinesium emulator.
Some of the enemies in Kung-Fu Heroes can only be defeated using certain attacks. Collecting punch power-ups increases the power and speed of your punches and they have to reach a certain level to be effective against some enemies. Some enemies can only be defeated using a sword that's hidden in two of the stages. There are other hidden treasures that make enemies easier to defeat. To beat the game you have to know which attack to use against an enemy and which enemies are best avoided.
@ginormousaurus8394 you're right. I've actually beaten the game before (I'm something of a Super Chinese fanboy who used to write game walkthroughs for the RPG games in the series for a long forgotten website), so I'm familiar with the mechanics and how it's somewhat ambitious (as most Culture Brain games are). I do agree it doesn't play particularly well though, and I get a kick out of seeing Jeremy joke about it.
Jeremy, we are all rooting for you to live long enough to finish NES Works.
Definitely!
Thanks, but that's out of my hands! Please speak to corporations and politicians about climate change and pandemic preparedness, thx
I think we just respawn on another server and we can give the backlog a go in that playthrough
Can we choose a different game altogether? The worst people have been logging on lately and I don’t think there is a good server left
We need some serious patches or at least some DLC soon@@rootbeer_666
I remember that you had to be a least 19 years old to rent Taboo from the video store in town that carried it. Such is the power of pixel boobs and tarot.
I just love the bluntness of "BIG MODE"
It does appear that smoking a blunt entered into the equation there, yeah
The main thing you learn in special forces training is the way to save bullets by making them boomerang right back into the barrel of the gun.
The questions you asked "Taboo" went to a dark place that I was not expecting
Yeah... reality. 😔
American democracy was doomed from the very start lmfao
Good
Asking Taboo the real questions. Last year I picked up the Predator cart as I had missed playing it as a kid, it was a fresh sensation of getting your weekend rental wrong.
14:14 And thus, the arc of Kung Fu Heroes becoming the new punching bag truly commences. I mean, I'm not arguing the point as much as noting it, but still. Also, the questions you asked Taboo are priceless.
I remember wasting THAT $5 off any NES game coupon and a birthday present on Taboo because the back of the box said something like "this game is not intended for children."
Curse you reverse psychology.
One curious detail about Pac-in-Video is that the company eventually became publisher Marvelous, so it's funny how they went from janky but ambitious low-budget games no one remembers to janky but ambitious low-budget games that would actually reach cult status
Quite the glow up
Really? I had no idea. Reminds me of when Radical Entertainment went from publishing crappy Rocky and Bullwinkle games on the Genesis to making the two Prototype games for Activision. How'd you guys get so non-lousy?
@@jessragan6714 To be fair to reach to that point there were various mergers and buyouts over the years (Pac-In-Video merged with Victor Entertaiment and became Victor Interactive, and later they were bought by Marvelous Entertaiment, which later merged with AQ Interactive to make MarvelousAQL, currently just "Marvelous". Not to mention them buying Xseed and turning it into their western branch)
People think of acquisitions and consolidation in the gaming industry as a recent phenomenon but it has been a thing for ages, only difference now is how those make the headlines and the payouts are astronomical
@@jessragan6714 And The Simpsons Hit & Run too.
My therapist sometimes asks me, "Would you rather be a Milky Princess or a John McTiernan?".
It kinda makes sense that my insurance doesn't cover these visits.
Taboo was a WEEKLY rental, every damn Friday when we was kids...a child's introduction to the occult and our parents had NO clue! It deserves a lot more credit and far less dumping than the Internet zeitgeist gives it.
If you are into Tarot, Taboo is certainly a neat little novelty. As a gateway to the occult, I can certainly see it working quite well too, especially with the manual providing more context to the cards and their interpretations.
I have fond memories of Taboo. My uncle had a copy, and I'd play it whenever we visited. I didn't understand tarot (and still don't,) but the music was cool and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen, so it always hooked my attention.
I got one game from my parents per Christmas/birthday and I wasted a Christmas present by asking for Taboo. I knew what it was, but I thought doing tarot readings at sleepovers would actually be fun, and it turns out it isn’t. I remember putting in my first question (probably about the potential affections of a classmate) only to get through the whole reading and realize it doesn’t actually give an answer.
The coolest thing about Taboo the Sixth Sense is the psychedelic background visuals when your cards are being dealt. It's a genuinely interesting full screen effect, and pressing the d-pad changes its colors (it changes on its own so it's not immediately obvious, but you can compare with save states).
It makes me wish they made a trippy interactive visualizer instead. With VJs/ protectionists in the chiptune scene making their own ROMs that run on vintage gaming hardware, it's neat seeing what the closest parallel to what they're doing was, from an actual NES product from back in the day.
The NES/Famicom could do some pretty good trippy effects we were robbed of; the latter day Mega Man titles have a nice "bleed" for their titlescreen.
Heiankyo Alien: times are good
Kung Fu Heroes: times are bad
Normally I’m not a big fan of creepy pasta but I feel that something like Taboo can work as some sort of NES horror story.
I was not expecting you to wring out so much from Predator. But that's what's so cool about this series!
Maybe the bacteria enemies are a homage to everyone on the Predator shoot coming down with Montezuma's Revenge
I do love Rare's output during this era. There really wasn't any job they wouldn't take to make a quick buck - and even then, they typically turned out better work than most outsource/"ghost" studios.
NGL, I love Rare's NES Wheel of Fortune games
Ai Sensei no Oshiete is another strange Famicom fortune telling game. Came in a HUGE box with Mucha-inspired cover art. I love weird non-games like that sometimes.
I think rare might have been doing some tech behind the scenes on taboo. It’s one of those games that often doesn’t run on clone hardware, and really looking good is all taboo does. Aside from wasting a weekend rental when I was a kid.
It's amazing that Predator, such an obvious action game with plenty of straightforward gunplay, somehow managed to ignore that almost entirely. To think that someone chose not to include the iconic minigun in the video game.
7:05 Was expecting guerillas, literally lol'ed at gorillas.
PING PALS! Bane of my existence! Got duped by that one thinking it would be like Animal Crossing before Wild World came out and have never been more disappointed. Great episode!
Kung Fu Heroes has become Jeremy's Jekyll and Hyde.
Pack-in-Video and Subcontractors: "But I was using my *whole* ass!"
i don't remember whether predator came before punch-out on nes, but little mac in punch-out is also made of background tiles (and the opponents are sprites, much like in predator)
I remember really liking NES Predator as a kid. The spacey, vibey music with the surreal dreamlike visuals made it memorable.
18:46 It's funny because it's deeply unsettling.
Due to the opponents in Punch Out!! being so big, Little Mac is another (earlier) character who consists of background tiles that scroll around rather than sprites
If the whole Predator game was “big mode” it would’ve been slightly better than a pink camo Arnold fighting amoebas.
The Predator game reminds me of Irate Gamer. Now, I’ve always found him entertaining even if in many cases it’s “So bad it’s good.” But one big moment that’s so hilariously out of nowhere involves this game.
In the days of old angry gamer sketches, it was custom to “fight” a character from the game you were reviewing now and then, popularized by AVGN in his Friday the 13th video. So of course, that happens in the IG Predator video, you treat it like a bit, that’s it.
Fast forward several videos, and turns out there’s some evil master using Irate Gamer’s evil twin to attack his show, and he sent the Predator after him. The words “I sent the Predator to sabotage the show.” are still in my head to this day 😂
Classic stuff.
@@harvardsmithdeangelo6905 The way he says it with mild frustration too. Darn Predator I hired.
Whoa, minesweeper had a tg16 port? That's why I love this channel: Always learning something new here.
I used to have Taboo; sold it to someone in my neighborhood - after they had gotten to play it - and they angrily tried to make me take it back.
I had always assumed Pack-In Video felt inspired for Big Mode by Fist of the North Star/Black Belt boss fights on the SMS.
This is my favorite episode to date! Great job!
I came close to buying Taboo at a store in Layton Hills Mall last year. Purely for the novelty.
I was a kid who squandered a birthday present on Taboo. It was fun for a day or two, but not worth the $55 price tag that new NES carts had.
Sometimes that little sun on the back of the cards would turn into a skull and snap its jaws at you before the cards were dealt. Questioned my sanity the first time I i saw that.
One time i used the lucky numbers to deduce between which class periods I should try to talk to my first crush. I put in 1-8 and said to give me 2 results. It actually gave me 2 and 3. So, after second period I tried to find her but couldn't.
Oh hey, it's Genpei Toumaden! I still need to play that someday; its inclusion in Namco x Capcom captured my imagination back in 2006.
And we get a Mozza cue?! Yeah, badass!
Summer 89, we, brother and I, had got our NES in the middle of summer 88 so this was gonna be our first summer where we could play it for the whole summer holidays. Except not cause my parents decided we were gonna go on a two weeks trip in Gaspésie (southeastern region of Quebec, we lived in the northwestern part) It was a fun trip but as we were newly gaming obsessed, all through the trip we looked for arcade machines anywhere we went which tended to annoy our parents cause dammit they hadn't taken us on a trip to play games! Anyway, we're on the tail end of the trip, 3 days left, and we're badly aching to game (we HAD found two arcades on the trip, one of which introduced us to P.O.W which would turn out to be the next NES game we'd buy though wed be disappointed to find out there was no 2 player option) and by that point we're actually coming back through Quebec city. We stop at a mall, we look at NES games, whoa there's a Predator game! We'd seen the movie earlier that year and the behind the box pictures with the big sprites during boss fight make it seem really good to us. There's even a salesman at the store selling us on it... "oh yeah , played that, great game, absolutely" (well he said that in French bit I'm translating) So yeah... we bought the damn thing. And we're so excited to play it we had our parents cut the last three days of our trip into one so we can be home and play this obviously terribly exiting game..
Yeah... within ten minutes of coming back home and rushing to the basement to play it, we knew what horrible mistake we had made (we paid for our games at that point too, pooling our pocket money, most of which earned mowing lawns). To this day this is my worst video game purchase, no question. Today i wish we had taken those three additional days and not cut the trip short so I'd have more memories from it because I always feel very nostalgic about that holiday . IDK if it's the worst game on NES but it has to be in that top ten. F you LJN for fobbing me of those 3 days of memories (yeah, we did it to ourselves, I know)
I do love learning stuff like "The NES Predator 1 game is not good but unusually ambitious and contains a surprising amount of technical trickery."
I am less fond of learning the answer to the kind of questions that was asked of Taboo.
Rest in peace Carl Weathers...........I don't remember the Predator game being very fun and this review has reminded of why it wasn't very fun.
The Predator game single handedly killed a friend love of video games.
That Rare music though! Some of the tracks in Taboo would be right at home in Wizards and Warriors.
Crazy good catch on that scorpion detail.
Taboo has a copyright by Rare Coin-It, suggesting it might have been part of the (presumed) effort within Rare to make Vs Unisystem software. Other Rare Coin-It titled include Slalom (which did get a Vs release!), Wizards & Warriors, R.C. Pro-Am and Cobra Triangle, and all of these games have arcade-like trappings, like a cycling attract mode and a high score table. It doesn't seem too out of the question that Taboo was originally planned to be put into a kiosk in some mall, offering 25-cent fortune readings to passers-by. All of this is speculation by me, of course, but that Rare Coin-It attribution has bothered me for decades.
I don't remember exactly if I finished Predator on a rental back then, but I _think_ I did. I never bothered trying Taboo, but it at least has Rare's trademark visual flash. They were masters of NES graphic effects.
I seem to remember Taboo getting several pages in Nintendo Power giving a rundown of the "game."
Fun fact about Pack-In-Video's Minesweeper games is that Arc System Works developed them. Yes, the Guilty Gear, DB FighterZ and Blazblue ArcSys
I remember seeing a video that showed how Little Mac in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out was actually using the background sprite layer. And I think that came out before Predator in most places.
Pack-in definitely brings the interesting failures and another nice teaser for Turbo Works. Definitely nice that you got a chance to mention a game set in the Heian period. And sneaking in a related JoJo's reference to Taboo is always nice.
I've always loved Taboo and I will continue to do so.
Punch Out! was the first game where you control a background object if I'm not mistaken. It's not very obvious while playing it, but Little Mac is a background object. I recommend checking out DIsplaced Gamer's video on the game.
WHAT WAS THE ANSWER TO THOSE QUESTIONS?! 😂
Nothing good!! Taboo doesn't pull its punches.
My local video store had a post-it note on the box for taboo stating that you had to be at least 14 to rent it. I always assumed it was because of the occult theme - I never imagined it could contain nudity.
There is something perfectly Reagan-esque about asking a video Tarot game about the fate of democracy.
Reagan didn't ask questions, he just read his scripts.
Japan's boom-era economy was supposedly driven by a seer's pet frog, it's a whole thing really. But please don't ask what Taboo had to say about democracy, it was very bleak.
@@JeremyParish Someone needs to get to the bottom of this whole frog business
Someone did! Check out the Alex Kerr book "Demons and Dogs" for more on the strange happenings resulting from Japan's economic miracle era.
@@JeremyParish Very cool! Thanks!
Parrish does british humor with an American accent.
Those are definitely some spicy pixels 😉
Rambo looks crazy ambitious
Genpei Touma Den is a game I would love to see you cover top to bottom! If you've already done so, please let me know so I can thoroughly enjoy it.
Oh my god, you actually found a way to escape that Predator gully in the first stage? I always just reset the game and try not to fall down there.
I think Taboo may have been, like Anticipation, an attempt at capturing the market of "You bought this machine for your kids but maybe you could use it at a party?" Before actual party games existed someone had to try this.
I remember seeing taboo at KB Toys at the mall when I was a kid. I probably would have bought it if I had the money.
This wasn't the first NES game where you controlled a player made out of background tiles. Little Mac in Punch Out is pure bg tiles. Only the other boxers are sprites.
Taboo had appeal just for being something unusual as well as being clearance priced at about $10 after a year or two at the likes of Kay Bee Toys when it didn’t move, which happened to a number of other games of varying quality such as Star Soldier and Golgo 13 - Top Secret Episode.
Predator was just a frustrating waste of time regardless of the price.
“Like Contra, but single player and bad.” 🤣🤣🤣🤦🏾♂️
Hey Jeremy, It was Ocean software who traced the image of Arnie for their home computer ports of Contra with Gryzor, Konami liked their box art so much, they asked if they could use it too.
As for Big Mode, Kensiden on the Master System had it too, and there was also the arcade game, Gladiator.
The sprite in the standard levels of Predator bears an uncanny resemblance to then current WWF wrestler and full-time Canadian Bret 'The Hitman' Hart
How can you make a Predator game that doesn't start with a flashing "GET TO ZA CHOPPAH!!" instruction???
Taboo at least has that Rare charm to it?
Aliens Vs Predator by Capcom is a personal favorite of mine. First use of air combos!
i really enjoy the tone of your videos. very relaxing
Will we ever have a game where we play as Carl Weathers ? What if we had a Carl Weathers Simulator ?
Cooking games are all the rage now apparently, so maybe we can look forward to _Baby You Got A Stew Going!_ in Q4 this year
I think Apollo's playable in some of the Rocky games.
Carl Weathers Weather Forecast Simulator.
Predator on the C64 was amazing. No idea why they just didn't clone that game for the NES
Taboo is at the very least _an interesting idea,_ which is more than I'll give for something like Dragon Power, which brought 0 innovation to the table.
16:51 getting a bit dark here 😅
Taboo isn't bad, but it definitely isn't a game. "not being fun" is no more a critique of it than it is of a weather app. However, nothing on the box indicates that it's not game, and in fact, just the opposite. So the real problem is people buying it expecting a game and very much not getting what they wanted, and most likely not getting something they could even like if they did know what it was. I don't think it deserves its reputation as being terrible, but it didn't really put itself in a great position to attract an audience that would actually appreciate it.
Seeing there's another episode with bizarre Pack-In Video and Rare games in it: "You son of a bitch!"
Taboo is probably the weirdest game we got in North America for the nes, if you could even call it a game. My aunt had that game. I played it a couple of times, I didn’t understand the idea behind it one bit, and I used to play some pretty complicated games. I still don’t understand the whole astrology or tarot thing anyway, doesn’t make sense to me.
Predator sucked but it was at least fairly playable, more than can be said for a lot of the bad nes games.
Wow. Samurai Ghost?
RIP Carl Weathers
I know :(
Kung Fu: The first time you controlled a background element.
Taboo had a ton of ad space running in commic bookc, botht eh nes and teh GB vresion if I remember correctly.
All they had to do was clone Contra with a facelift
You might want a flashing lights warning for 17:09
I loved renting Taboo as a kid ^_^
That's definitely a Bret Hart sprite
Did Nintendo use a Luigi board to contact the dead?
Is Predator NES why dunkey's company is called "big mode"?
Taboo was a very terrible idea. I remember seeing it at a Palmer Video store back then and knowing it was garbage. This is me as a little kid. My radar for noticing crap went through the roof
We really gonna act like Pack-In-Video didn't go on to develop _Harvest Moon_ and _Kawa no Nushi Tsuri 2_ just a few years later? How is it surprising that they brought unnecessary technical sophistication and complexity to what should have been movie license shovelware? (Guess they'd learn polish over the next few years.) 🤔
Pack-In didn’t develop those games, though. They were just the publisher.
@@JeremyParish Both of them? 🤔 I wasn't sure about Harvest Moon, but I thought they at least developed Kawa no Nushi Tsuri 2. The internet doesn't seem sure _who_ developed it... But the next title (Umi no Nushi Tsuri) _is_ said to have been developed by Pack-In-Video. 🤔 (You'd think if TOSE had developed them like they did the Game Boy sequels, we'd _know_ that, right?)
I have an inexplicable love of these dumb fishing RPGs... 😅 Probably because they help keep me from going outside and falling in a river. 😏
Angrily flipping my desk over because you didn't include the answer to your Taboo questions.
The C64\Amiga Predator is actually kinda interesting albeit flawed. And most of the Predator 2 games are at least ok.
Hi Jeremy! Is the Sega SG-1000 book ready yet? Has it been released already? I'm almost always late to the party, so I just want to know if I missed it. Looking forward to it!
Yes, it's been out for a while at Limited Run Games (hardcover) and Amazon (paperback). It's a book about SG-1000, so there is no danger of it selling out any time soon.
@JeremyParish OK, thank you for the information. I must have missed all the updates about it. Thank you for letting me know. I'll head on over to Limited Run Games and check it out!
Kung Fu Heroes can't hurt you anymore...
Not true, its existence causes existential pain every day. Like when you walk through poison tiles in Dragon Quest, just constant HP drain
LOL! Fair enough.@@JeremyParish
I think what's most galling for me is that while Kung Fu Heroes looks charming and seems brimming with technique, the enemies are cheap and the gameplay elements are muddled. You want it to be good. It COULD be good with some work, but it just... isn't.
Lol and just today that the video was released Schwarzenegger got arrested
What!!
Edit: looked it up, what a goofy turn of events.
Hm. So Pack In Video is Japan's LJN.
Nah, I'd say their average output was way better than LJN's. Maybe more an Acclaim.
@@JeremyParishI believe it!
Your ouija questions were depressing 😌
Predator is an fantastic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. 😀👍