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Legendary Wings / Xevious / Galaga retrospective: Recursive loop | NES Works
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- čas přidán 7. 12. 2021
- This week is a bit of an ouroboros: While the primary feature here is Capcom's Legendary Wings, this episode also touches on the NES release of Xevious, the game that very clearly inspired Legendary Wings (not to mention about a thousand other Japanese arcade games of the era). Xevious is by far the purer of the two, not to mention the fairer, but there is something to be said for that late ’80s Capcom house NES style...
Production note: SG-1000 footage in this episode was captured from a combination of Sega SG-1000 II with (with Card Catcher; RGB amp mod by @iFixRetro ) and @analogueinc Mega Sg with card adapter module and DAC.
Video upscaled to 720 with @retrotink339 5X.
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My favorite thing about Galaga, both arcade and NES versions, is, when a ship gets captured, you can still shoot while it's spinning around wildly, its shots going off in all directions, which in 1981 terms is a terrific little touch. You can even sometimes accidentally shoot the bug capturing it, causing your now-freed ship to immediately fall back down to the bottom of the screen.
How did I not know about this!?
@@JeremyParish This is the point where I thought to myself, if you reacted so incredulously to this, I should make sure I hadn't misremembered, I mean it's happened before.
I checked and I was right! And it does happen in the NES version. When I checked the arcade version, I even managed to shoot the abducting bug.
I know a couple other things about arcade Galaga. There is a bug (heh) in the game where, once in a while, an enemy insect will fire a shot outside the bounds of the screen, which means it's never updated, which means it'll never be freed up to allow its sprite to be reused for another shot. There's a limited number of shots possible active at once, so this shot is effectively out of play for the rest of the game. This is the source of the old trick where, if you do nothing but dodge shots at the end of a level for 10-12 minutes, eventually the bugs stop shooting, because all the available shots get launched in this limbo area. They won't shoot for the rest of the game.
It's also possible to crash Galaga machines in attract mode, causing it to reboot, and I have even done that on a Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga 20 Year Reunion machine so it's a long-lived bug indeed.
Holy SHINBONE, I've never heard of this before. Never heard ANYONE mention it! Thanks!
@@TheSmart-CasualGamer I feel it's worth noting that the ship graphic in Galaga is the same one as in Namco's Bosconian, from around the same time, so they already had graphics of it rotated in various directions.
Xevious was an Arcade hit back in the 1980s in Brazil. But if you ask any Brazilian old-schooler about "Xevious", you'll likely to get a blank face.
This game was released by "Taito do Brasil", a subsidiary of the Japanese company lead by the Michael Kogan's son, which existed in 1972-85. Basically, they ported games from rival Japanese companies to their own boards and released them under a different title for the Brazilian market. As Brazilian laws didn't protect copyright owners without local representatives back then, it was a perfectly legal move.
So, people here know "Xevious" as "Columbia", which is basically Xevious with a different name and some differences in palette colors and sound effects. The same is also true for "Galaga", which is known here as "Fantastic". Because of that, most old-school Brazilians played most of the Namco's and Konami's early successes under different names and with Taito branding.
I can't believe Xevious's 4-sec music loop never drove me crazy, but here we are.
I don't care for the music at all myself, but the gameplay is so solid that I just give it a complete pass anyway.
Xevious seems like the velvet underground of the japanese video game scene
I'll never understand why you don't have more subscribers. Well researched, well presented and child friendly.
I would disagree on child-friendly. I've seen what my nephews and nieces watch on CZcams, and it's mostly hyperactive shrieking. My voice is what we used to lull them to sleep when they were feeling fussy as babies.
@@JeremyParish yes, not necessarily what kids like/enjoy nowadays but something I'd feel safe letting kids watch. Unlike for instance avgn and even Scott the woz.
Legendary Wings def bring back some memories for me. I remember my mom letting us pick out 2 NES games at Benny's (shout out to folks from New England). One game we would keep for ourselves the other would be an Xmas gift to our cousins; we picked Legendary Wings and Castlevania. Back in those days you had solely the box art and the screenshots to go on -- based on that we chose to keep Legendary Wings. We clearly made the wrong choice, but my brother and I did get a lot of 2P play in on it. Not a terrible game and I think if they simply varied that final brain boss at the end of each horizontal level it would have had a lot better legacy.
Hey I just wanted to say I appreciate you pointing out that parents were the ones making the purchases and we the children were the ones picking the game. So many CZcamsrs like to brag about how they "bought" this game or that game when they were less than 10 years old. I'm sure there are a few true accounts in there, but let's be serious... It was Mom and Dad's money purchasing anything we had as kids
Great comment and i agree, boss variety would have probably helped LW be remembered more fondly.
The top-down version of the Legendary Wings character reminds me of Zardoz, which would have been a hell of a tie-in to make some 10+ years late. And thank you for reminding me of the overwrought box text on Galaga, which I thought was absurd even as a 10 year old seeing the game in a rental shop in 1989.
Space Harrier had a boss that resembled the floating stone head from Zardoz, so it's possible that the movie did influence Japanese video game developers in the 1980s.
Zardoz? Is that sean Connery in the red bdsm gear? Lol
I love Legendary Wings. My best friend had it when we were kids. He also had Lifeforce and Silkworm. I never thought about it but maybe those co-op experience turned me into the STG gamer I am today.
I loved getting a used copy ofthis game at a pawn shop in Westlock Alberta Canada in the early 90s right beside a health food store. Was like a pit stop from Lesser Slave lake to Edmonton on a weekend get away. Loved rhat it turned out to be co op as well.
Xevious was a childhood joy, and was one of my first NES games and seemed a natural progression from Zaxxon on ColecoVision. Great episode on three shooting games.
The high score music in Legendary Wings after the game over is a underrated snippet of music in the NES/Famicom library. Real neat short composition.
I'd literally had never even heard of Xevious before over here until it appeared as one of the games on Namco Museum on the PS1.
It was ported to British home computers, as did a lot of obscure Namco stuff like Motos and Metrocross, but it totally passed by me.
That’s what livin’ on a literal island does to a man, but you know it better than anyone.
Xevious was very much not a big thing over here, was it?
And have you had a chance to try it out since then?
I had it back then, 60-pin Dynavision II Famiclone cart. One of my favorites (mother also liked it).
@@benisaacs Meh, I think it was pretty well known. Not to the level that Robocop or Renegade were, and certainly not to the level that Xevious was in Japan, but I'm pretty sure it was still a pretty well known game. Just about everyone I knew who had a C64 had Xevious.
Legendary Wings is basically Kid Icarus Uprising in retroform
ah man, many many hours of coop Legendary Wings with my friend Nathan in 6th grade, good times
Legendary Wings is one of those games that I'm very familiar with from regularly flipping through older copies of Nintendo Power as a kid in the early 90s, but never actually played myself. By the point that I was old enough to become deeply interested in video games, the world was already rife with mega men and brothers mario. As a kid who never really cared for shooters, my interest in Legendary Wings never went beyond "Oh hey, it's that game. I know that game."
I feel like NES Xevious has come up so many times already in this series that I was shocked you hadn't actually covered it until now
Bandai dragged their feet on this one! I'm sure it would have showed up much sooner if Namco hadn't been in a tiff with Nintendo and had self-published on NES prior to 1993 rather than leaving their games to be picked up haphazardly by U.S. licensees.
Me too!
I was amazed to hear you say you had never played Legendary Wings until your research for this piece, considering how many obscure titles that I had never heard of you've taught me about! My small-town rec centre had a Legendary Wings standup, so I just assumed it had to be one of those common-as-dirt machines that most any fan would know about, but I guess I was wrong!
Legendary Wings is one of the games I've been waiting for this series to get through! All that's left is really Cobra Command, The Guardian Legend, and .. a couple others whose name escapes me.
Guardian legend!!!!
Wild! I didn't learn about Legendary Wings until very late in life, too. I stumbled upon it while looking for cheap retro games for a college video game club. I was surprised that I missed something so solid from a big name publisher. I never saw it at my local rental store!
Bandai publishing Namco games in the NES era is one of those things like Eidos publishing the PC versions of Final Fantasy VII and VIII that's just funny to look back on
Bandai also made “Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde”, “Dick Tracy” and “The Rocketeer”, and to be honest, “Dick Tracy” was hard and kinda frustrating when it never got passed the first stage of the game. The object is to look for the criminal and you’ll be rewarded with a password.
I remember complaining about not being able to free roam in Galaga and an older kid told me that the player ship is rushing to a point so it is going the fastest it can hence it can only shuffle left and right. Made sense to my 6 year old mind.
I'm pretty sure Legendary Wings was the first game I ever rented. It was also my introduction to the twin worlds of slowdown & sprite flicker (that 2p mode was rough). Still, it looks better than I expected it would after all this time.
For some reason Legendary Wings was very popular on NES in the 80's. Seemed many people in school talked about it and owned a copy. I think part of it may have been the departure from normal setting of space aliens or classic plane based combat seen in other shooters, and the mixed-mode gameplay definitely stood out at the time also.
I wonder how many more episodes we'll be hearing about Xevious in? I had not realized it's importance and impact on gaming until seeing your overviews of it's history and influence.
It has been [0] days since the last Xevious reference
This man is playing Galaga……he didn’t think we’d notice……..but we did
Something interesting brought up by Jeremy with Legendary Wings in regards to asset use: the action HUD, which is basically "1P #" (# being the lives in your stock), is the Mega Man font which was used in the entire Mega Man series (six too, I think? Can't remember...) but also used in DuckTales, The Little Mermaid and TaleSpin on NES. The action HUD seems to be on the sprite layer, but that I could be wrong about, and it uses a drop shadow effect.
Like you I never got around to Legendary Wings back then, really never touched it either since, but can now. Just found the cart locally in the last fews days or so with a couple others I hadn't touched before either, and a re-run of fun too. Looks like a solid game and I like the merger of styles, reminds me of Stinger(Twinbee 2) for NES with the directional changes. I do kind of have life force, just the less limited FC version Salamander on that fantastic translucent blue cart.
One of my cousins had legendary wings for Nintendo when we were kids, it was lots of fun. I didn't play the arcade version until 1991.
My friend had Legendary Wings on NES and I enjoyed its strangeness and aesthetic, but I agree that Life Force totally wipes the floor with it.
My friend had Legendary Wings and i got to play it a few times. I never got hooked but feel like i need to try it again
I'd seen Xevious multiple places in the states where arcade machines were common (theaters, convenience stores, arcades, etc.) and it never really felt special because the first time I saw one, the NES was already in homes.
It does become clear when looking at the 'sacred genres' of japanese developers that Xevious is the bible for vertical shooters and that every game in that genre after Xevious should have the date produced listed as AX or 'After Xevious'.
I learned to appreciate Xevious more over the years. It defined the direction the shoot'em up genre would take going forward. It's a rough blueprint of things to come. Also Xevious Arrangement is pretty dang good. The weird Famicom exclusive sequel is also pretty interesting in the ways it tried to shake up the formula but it came at a time when other games had done the genre loads better and even in Japan it didn't do great.
I had a moment like Yuzo Koshiro when I was a kid, only it was for Spy Hunter.
I really got into Dragon Spirit before Xevious, so going back to it, you realize, oh, later Namco vertical shmups like Dragon Spirit/Saber or Phelios are spiritual sequels to the play style from this game. Both dandy with an NES Advantage to be sure
I think Legendary Wings is one of the best examples on the NES of a shooter that becomes exponentially more difficult once you're forced down from your most powerful form. One play attempt, I beat it with ease with the best weapons, yet another time, I had difficulty getting past the third stage or so after some unfortunate weapon downgrades.
I think Blaster Master is the top example (does it count as a shooter?) due to being more well known/popular and also due to the enormous power gap between the top form and everything below it.
I was reminiscing about legendary wings which was one of the first games I ever played. So I typed in the name and found this video. I cannot believe I've been watching CZcams video game commentary for so long and I've never found your channel. You have maybe the best presentation and fact-based history knowledge I have ever seen. I absolutely love your channel and I will be a regular watcher.
So when I was a kid, my child mind made me think Legendary Wings was a Hawkman/Thanagar/HawkWorld game. The cover with the guy with wings and a gun really made me think of the Sci-Fi version of Hawkman from my dad's comics from the Silver Age.
DC Comics' Hawkman and the heroes from Legendary Wings resemble the Hawkmen from Flash Gordon.
Loved the arcade classic
Ahh, Yuki-chan's Papa...
Haven't heard that name in a while.
The Legendary Wings: Live and Let Fly
I loves me some shooters! Thank you for speaking at length about the true influence Xevious had on the Japanese game public and game designers. While I can't say that Xevious had a lukewarm reception in North America - there are a fair deal of Atari's Xevious PCBs out there, it was featured a fair deal in Starcade back the in day, and there's no shortage of the NES version either - it definitely was less popular than Galaga here, which was a MASSIVE hit. It took me some time to really appreciate Xevious for what it is, but what it is was really revolutionary when it came out.
Xevious was on our family computer along with many Namco games. Something about Xevious unsettled me. The geometric, 3D craft over a grassy coast... It's uncanny in an on-point sc-fi way. Imagining myself playing it around its initial release in Japan, I can see myself with all those devs you quoted.
Xevious looks like it's set in South America. In the arcade version there are designs on the ground that resemble Nazca lines. The game was probably influenced by "ancient astronaut" theories that were popular in 1970s.
WOW. You never played legendary wings? I can’t say I ever found it to be a great game, but it was very typical of NES games in the way that it excited the imagination of a kid. I remember playing it for the first time and it was all I could think about for the next day or so.
Ares no Tsubasa soundtrack on NES is an underappreciated gem in a Sea of megaman OSTs
Ayyyyy, Legendary Wings! Grew up with that one. Good times. Interesting to see the body of work surrounding it as well as it's inspirations. Cool vid!
I'd only rented Legendary Wings a few times back in the day, but it's funny how I remembered some of the music 30 years later!
Don't feel bad, I had seen Legendary Wings for rental but never touched it til the Capcom arcade collection this last year.
I had Xevious on the 7800, but as a kid I didn't get it. It probably would have helped if I had read the instructions, but as with many children of the 80s, I paid little attention to video game instruction manuals in the early days. Not to mention I was suffering from a not insignificant amount if console envy, as all my friends had the NES. I would have too, if not for the salesperson at our local K-Mart, who convinced my mother that Nintendo was a flash in the pan, and that Atari was the brand to go with. Maybe K-Mart had a deal with Atari to push their systems, or maybe that guy just felt like ruining some random kid's Christmas :p
If you thought the setting in Legendary Wings was muddled before, just wait until you visit a bonus round in the arcade game. They all seem to take place at a malt shop in the 1950s. czcams.com/video/r347WKucKmk/video.html
Thank you!
The horizontal scrolling sections of Legendary Wings were pretty different in the arcade version.
I believe it was my mom who got me Legendary Wings from Kmart in High Point, North Carolina circa 1988. It was very hard for me at age 6-7.
Maybe it's because I'm not huge on shmups as is on account of being consistently terrible at them, but Xevious is like, the ultimate "had to be there" game for me. I feel like I went from Galaga to stuff like R-Type back in the day, so Xevious is hard to imagine as blowing the minds of everyone at that time. Gotta still tip my hat though.
I've played quite a lot of Xevoius on NES but I actually didn't know of its impact or influence.
This is gonna sound sappy, but I've been sick for the past four and a half months (hopefully in recovery now) and I have to say, dropping one of these episodes onto the Internet for us weekly is a complete blessing.
Please feel better soon!
@@JeremyParish Aww, thanks!
Legendary Wings was one of those weird quirky titles that my Aunt owned growing up. She also had Karnov lol
It should be noted that R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 had its four teams inspired by Mappy, Xevious, DigDug, and Pac-Man.
11:08 That packaging was predicting the time that both Namco and Bandai will merge to form Bandai Namco Entertainment.
The face in Legendary Wings scared me as a kid for some reason.
Somehow Bacura has been more popular than Solvalou or Xevious itself.
It appears alot as cameo, whether it is official or just as a parody.
Whether you can break it with 256 shots depends on each instance but not in the original.
What a crazy chopping board.
My cousin had Legendary Wings and we LOVED playing it together. Also, none of the side-scrolling DANGER! sections are mandatory. You always have the chance to dodge the tornado coming out of the mouth, they just get faster with every level.
Hello keep up the great work I've been watching the channel for some time and I've been really enjoying every episode I look forward to seeing more of your episodes soon
Legendary Wings, like Strider, is one of those oddities that were released in America but not Japan. Who knows what happened there.
Also a little strange Bandai picked up Xevious over Dig Dug, which had/has _way_ more cultural clout in the US (up there with Pac-Man and Galaga imo).
legendary wings was an interesting one, for sure. would not mind having it in my collection! xevious I definitely cut my teeth on a lot over on namco museum vol. 2 ... IDK if I'm into it enough to get it on NES, but perhaps if I see it for a good price. Galaga I do remember owning at one point, I may need to get it for the collection again, I know it's one of my wife's favorites!
Back when I was a teen, Galaga wasn't as impressive as Life Force etc. Today, I see the fluent animation of the enemies as they make turns and I appreciate the game a lot more.
Xevious is one of those things for me... I generally appreciate and enjoy most of the foundational and historically important games. But Xevious... Played it on the NES in, I don't know, 1989? Even then it seemed crusty, though I didn't have the vocabulary or experience to really know that. Meanwhile, Galaga was one of my favorite games at the time, probably because the local pizza place had a cabinet.
I loved the 2p gameplay of legendary wings. It was so much fun back then. Also, as a tiny proto-gamer I always wished I had wings and could fly. So, dude with wings was such an awesome idea to little me. And the art style. So many NES shooters were mechasuits or spacrships fighting scifi or robotic enemies, not weird biomech scifi greek magic shit. Its art was unique the same way life force was.
12:15: "This is a great version of a great game released more or less unadulterated by Bandai, who definitely gets an upgrade here after dealing with trifles, like the Family Fun Fitness games and licensed anime mediocrity"
And seventeen years later, the two publishers put the ring on each other’s fingers
Is there any chance that all of Japan got together and said, “hey, wanna play a gag on Americans? Let’s convince them to at Xevios was huge here.
I played the crap out of this game back in 1988. I completed the game and found every hidden treasure room.
Capcom's giant heads remind me of Zardoz. There should have been a Zardoz NES game. Or not.
Not enough processing power to render mankini-version Sean Connery's body hair
As far as shmups go, I feel like Capcom has always been a bit behind Konami all throughout the NES era. Not to say Capcom's NES shmups were bad, but, man, Konami's shmups were the shit at the time! Late 80's were especially good years for Konami, seemed like everything they did at the time became instant classic (and that concerns not only shmups but many different genres).
the Galaga port on NES is so good, very addictive game
this game used to piss me off so bad. Loved the style of it though.
i think the NES port of Legendary Wings is better than the arcade - in the arcade all of the temples have the same set up, the stages have the same music, and there are no dragon mini-bosses or ending boss
the arcade require TWO power ups to get one level, and if you got hit you lost all of them, not just in steps - the NES makes the power up system much easier
i love that the landscape changes from nature to technology as you progress, too - i know the NES has different music for different stages, but i cant remember if the arcade did
Is Legendary Wings on NES a direct conversion of the arcade game? I played the arcade version through Capcom Arcade Stadium and thought it was almost unplayably difficult.
Also, Vulgus is really fun and plays pretty differently from Xevious. You have to deal with swarms of enemies while keeping the screen clear of power ups, which make the enemies stronger. The main scoring mechanic requires you to use missiles on specific enemy formations, but you have to line up the shot and its pretty tricky, which makes the game this neat combination of frantic action and very careful timing.
Legendary Wings always feel like an attempt to fit Forgotten Worlds on the NES. Fun and technically impressive, but all it does it make want to play the real Forgotten Worlds.
The arcade version of Legendary Wings predates Forgotten Worlds. They're both set in the future but make references to ancient myths. The sci-fi meets ancient civilization aesthetic can be seen in other video games from the 1980s: the Nazca Lines in the arcade version of Xevious, the moai in Gradius, Space Harrier, and Arkanoid, and the ancient Egyptian themed level in Life Force.
Never could get into Xevious. I appreciate it's heritage and impact but the music makes me want to shove sticks in my ears. I do love some Legendary Wings though!
I remember reading about Legendary Wings and seeing it at my favorite video & game rental place way back when but much like you said it was completely overshadowed by other games like Life Force at the time.
Ahhh Bandi, one of those publishers on the NES who's output was at times rather uneven in the US. If I'm not mistaken they had a pretty good reputation in Japan but I think the sheer number of games they were able to release there allowed for their gems to really shine and drown out the stinkers. Not so much with the big N limiting the number of games each publisher could release in the US.
Back in the 8-bit and 16-bit days my friends and I had a saying when it came to console game publishers, mostly because we didn't have a lot of money to spend at the time.
Fool me once - shame on you
Fool me twice - shame on me and I'm not buying your games anymore.
Fool me three times - I'm also not renting your games anymore either.
My guess is Pizza Hut why Galaga was so popular (that and being an awesome game)
We're officially going to have to change out the "Days Since a Heiankyo Alien Reference" sign for a "Days Since a Xevious Reference" sign huh?
Jeremy, I'm curious. Why do you upload in 720? Is it because it scales up better from 240?
Yes, 240p footage looks pretty lousy at 1080p in my opinion.
Galaga is legendary and to NES port was surprisingly close. However as far as arcade classics I’m a Millipede man.
I prefer both versions of “Galaga”. There was another game that predated “Galaga” was “Galaxian”, but it never ported for the NES and it was first released in the arcade in 1979, and then ported onto the Atari 2600, Colecovision and Intellivision, and of course, a “Galaxian/Galaga” ripoff, “Phoenix”.
Legendary Wings and Bionic Commando are in that weird middle era between the early bad box art Capcom and later Disney/Megaman heyday.
I like the U.S. Bionic Commando art, it has a nice ’70s-era Herb Trimpe look to it.
Legendary wings is amazing! A fun short romp. Was never a huge fan of xevious, seemed so bland. But I guess it was a trailblazer of sorts
Xevious is an classic arcade game. 😀👍🎮
I wonder if he's getting sick of xevious-inspired games at this point? 😖
Actually Legendary Wings is actually an arcade game, and the Famicom version had female characters, one of them is Michelle Heart, which later became an assist character in Marvel vs Capcom. The game is known as Ares no Tsubasa in Japan.
Edit: I got confused with the other one from MvC2, though, since both characters having the same last name.
There’s arcade footage in this episode.
Michelle Heart. Ruby Heart is someone else.
God how cringey.
There's always something funny about a '(well) Actually' post containing wrong information.
Galaga still kick ass today. 😀👍🎮
Wait, is it episode 85 or 86? I'm getting mixed messages here.
What does your heart tell you
That I should've just looked at the previous episode title and gotten my answer that way.
Or, as I will do instead, just insist that there are two episode 85s and that the number 86 is an illusion.
I love the Legendary Wings arcade, but the NES game I am rather ambivalent about. The NES version is easier in the sense you don't lose a life if you have powered up. But the side scrolling stages are drastically different on the NES. I feel it is a very poor translation of the game. It is okay but it is like eating a bologna sandwich when I want a steak.
The phrase tate mode has be ruined by Gamesack. I can’t wait for Bionic Commando that game was my jam.
It might be my favorite game of all time? I don't know how I can possibly express my love for it in less than 20 minutes.
Xevious:
(is released)
Japan:
👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀👌👀 good shit go౦ԁ sHit👌 thats ✔ some good👌👌shit right👌👌there👌👌👌 right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self 💯 i say so 💯 thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ💯 👌👌 👌НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ👌 👌👌 👌 💯 👌 👀 👀 👀 👌👌Good shit
America and Europe:
Y’all hear sumn?
I will play legendary wing.😀👍🎮