I'm sp from Better Podcasting, a show dedicated to help make your podcast better, and it is part of the Guinea Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other insightful and wonderful geeky shows@gunageeknetwork.com and welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today we're going back to visit the crazy Spy World of Golgo 13. And I have Dean Guadagno here from the Video Game Library to talk about it with me. Dean, how are you today?
Doing great, Chris. Thanks for having me on. It's exciting.
I'm so glad I found out about your project. To be perfectly honest with you, I can't remember how I found out about it. It was probably just looking at things people were liking, saying, oh, that's a cool thing. Let me go look at what it is. And then all of a sudden, here's all these books that don't necessarily have pictures about video game stuff. And that's just super cool.
Yeah, that's music to my ears. That's what I want is people who maybe aren't familiar with the library project but are looking for literature or just content that's about their favorite games from their past, their favorite creators, their favorite topics. Really, the library is a collection. It's over 10,000 books right now. Just a database online of anything and everything you can think of, video game related and all the tangential lines that are drawn to psychology and game studies and cookbooks and comics and everything. So I love that you just sort of stumbled over it and discovered something new, hopefully.
I know. I was digging through it, Honestly, I was digging through it to see if there were things from people that I know, and everything that I was looking for was there. So, Patrick, Yes. All of your stuff is there and listed. You're fine. Everybody knows that. I showed my wife. I don't know if she was excited as I was, but I kind of set the bar pretty high on that one, so that's not a bad thing at all. She's more into the fantasy sci fi stuff and doesn't care if it's video game related.
That's totally fair. Yeah, we. We have a small section labeled fantasy for anybody that's interested in that. But of course, the key criteria there is that it has to be related to a video game ip. So I'm glad you were able to find all the books you're looking for. But to you and any of the listeners, if there's ever a time you know about a book that you can't find on there, let me know. I'll get it up as soon as possible. There's. There's new books being added daily by the team.
One of the things I was excited to get you on for is you fully understand my pain of trying to match things up across different mediums. And that's what we're here mostly to talk about today is how you take this super long running manga that has been going since not too long after my mom was born. Please nobody tell her I said that. And still going today. And yet we have very, very small number of games relating to the Golgo 13 franchise over here in North America.
Yeah, to be honest, I didn't even realize that the Mopit conspiracy was a Golgo 13 product. And I don't know if that was intentional marketing or if that was just a miss, but it wasn't until I booted up the game that I saw the name golgo13. I was like, oh, I recognize this from the Top Secret episode, which is another NES card that's been collecting dust on my shelf for many, many years.
That was some of the criticism that I saw a lot as I was getting ready for this one. Was a lot of people, you know, just here's this random game with this kind of cool cover, admittedly, but there is nothing tying it to Gogo 13 there on the front. If you're old like me and I'm assuming Dean, then you'll remember Toys R Us and the giant wall where all you can see is the front cover. You don't even get to really look at the box. You might be able to flip the card over and see the back cover. That's what you have to buy a game off of that and whatever your friends have told you and trying to convince your parents that yes, you need to buy a game that you can also go down the street and play at your friend's house.
Yeah, and that's again, that's really all the familiarity I ever had with this game is I totally recognize the COVID I've seen it many times in many books online and on my shelf. But I didn't even have that backup cover. You know, maybe naively just thought, you know, you see a lot of great NES cover art that that's not necessarily indicative or representative of the gameplay. I was maybe expecting sort of a Chibi platformer or something like that. But I was, I was quite impressed that, you know, the maturity that you see in the COVID art is kind of reflected in the game itself. It's a. It's a, you know, heavier themed game than I was expecting and had, you know, a lot of more serious tones that I think again were reflective of the interused in the marketing.
Golgo13 as a manga franchise, as I said, has been going since 1968. The original guy creating it, Taco Saito, whose name I probably mispronounce because I don't do Japanese very well, did it from 1968 until he died in 2021 and it has continued to run since then. And where pretty much gonna just call the character a mix between Golgo 13 or Duke Togo. Because Duke Togo there in the story is the alias that he seems to be going by the most often being a spy narrative here. Who knows if that name is real or not. Who knows how many names he has going for him. But that is the one that seems to have caught on everywhere, at least over here in the English translations.
Yeah, I was, I was sort of learning and I was go as I was going through the game and it doesn't explicitly call that out but you know, every once in a while he'd be referred to AS Togo 13. So I just sort of likened it to a James Bond or a 007. Just different code names. Yeah, it's cool. I'm actually really surprised to hear it's been been going since the 60s. I thought it might be a more sort of blatant take off of a James Bond after, you know, years or decades of success. But it sounds like it started not long after the series.
So some of my friends are going to give me a bunch of crap because they've told me when the James Bond books started existing. And I can't remember where that lines up timeline wise here, but James Bond really is a good comparison here because you've got a guy who is going around being promiscuous, which actually shows up in the games every once in a while, but shows up in the manga a lot. So like, if you're one of those people who has the opportunity to give this to a small child and say, hey, you like the game, Maybe you should read the comic, maybe you should not do that because there is killing and sex stuff and all kinds of things like that that you probably don't want to give to your small child. I don't have kids though, so I don't have to worry about that.
Are there any sort of other media like anime or any movies that were based off. I feel like it's. It's a really good candidate for, you know, some sort of not, maybe not live action, but, you know, animated animated show or ova.
Funny you should say that because there actually was a live action that they made back in the 70s. I haven't had a chance to catch it anywhere, but it's definitely something I'm wanting to find. Even though, like, I will have absolutely no reason to watch it other than my own enjoyment up until I think it's the Nintendo DS. There's another Golgo 13 game over here, but there's an older anime series, there's some other movies that they made. And you know, of course there's video games, which is what's getting us to talk about it here. This seems like a really easy one to do a live action with because you don't have a bunch of weird superpowers or anything. You just have a guy who is really good at being a spy and an assassin.
Yeah. I was gonna ask you, like, what's the tone of the manga? Because playing through the game, it seems like a pretty grounded in reality universe, if you want to call it that. I mean, he jumps really high. He jumps 14ft in the air. But aside from that, you know, he's just got regular guns, he's regular tools. He doesn't do anything particularly superhero ish. And everybody's, you know, pretty. Pretty mortal, I guess. So I'm just wondering what the tone is of the manga. Could it be done live action?
You're on like the James Bond Sherlock Holmes level of reality. Like, you're probably never going to find a person who is that good at that many things, but you can definitely find people who are good at all those things. So, you know, it'd be pretty easy to do. Maybe not as easy to find somebody in real life.
In the instruction manual, there's a little excerpt about Kept Your says he's GoGo 13 is 99.999% accurate in his kill rate. Which, you know, if you're doing the math, that's 10,000 kills under his belt at least. Missed one guy, but yeah, pretty talented.
And knowing how golgo13 is, he probably got the guy within five seconds of missing him anyway.
Sure. Yeah.
So I know you said you aren't familiar with this specifically as a franchise. How familiar are you with spy things like this in general?
There was a time I got really into James Bond funnily enough, it was. It was instigated by video games. It was when goldeneye was getting a re release and I thought, you know, I should probably know more than the Pierce Brosnan world of James Bond. So I took a little dive down there. I've never really read a lot of, you know, espionage books or spider books or anything, but I do appreciate the storytelling behind those. And be honest, playing this game has really sort of lit a fire to get around to the top secret episode and maybe some other other games that have come out here. West.
How likely are you assuming you can find it at a good enough price to go check out golgo13? Also assuming you can find it in English, the manga.
Yes, I can find it in English. I happily read it. I was. I was big into manga just after high school and that lasted a good 10 years. I haven't read a whole lot in recent years, but I do enjoy them. So there's an easy pen translation to get a hold of. I think this would be a great sort of storyline to follow sort of bite sized missions throughout his career. It sounds like at least there's. There's some names that appear in this game that he seems familiar with. So I imagine they sort of follow him along similar to Moneypenny Q, James Bond characters.
Most of my research here has to have been the anime just because of how things have been going here and what I've been able to get done. So I'm excited to go find the manga myself because I want to see the super like central origin of everything. Because as much as the anime for things can get them right, you do have to adapt them from the manga and there's things that you're either adding or taking away because of that medium change in there. And that's something that I just always find fascinating.
Yeah, I'm wondering if, and maybe you know better but you know, this game centralizes around sort of a core story of, you know, a satellite drops out of the sky. This terrorist group known as the Moffat Group, Moffat Conspiracy. They sort of blackmail America and Russia. Sort of that America versus Russia theme that we saw early on in 60s, 70s, 80s. And it's essentially up to Gogo 13 to infiltrate that group. I wonder if is Moffat sort of a recurring organization throughout the manga or any of the other media? Or is this sort of an isolated story that is just meant for the Famicom or the NES game?
It's at least not a recurring thing from what I've been able to find. So I'm pretty confident that they're made for this or at least don't appear a lot in the manga. But you know, if I'm wrong, then somebody definitely please come tell me I'm wrong because I don't like to be wrong about things like that. Tell me I'm being dumb. It's fine.
Yeah, like I said, this was my first time playing. I didn't really know what to expect. I was really impressed not only with, I guess, the complexity and the maturity of the storyline, but also all the different gameplay elements that they shoehorned into this NES cart. You've got your side scrolling sort of action beat em up, but you also got racing sections where you're almost like Rad Racer outrun in your Ferrari. You've got little sniper snippets where you're taking out enemies in sort of a first person view. You got your first person's 3D mazes. There's a lot here that, you know, changed up the gameplay across the six acts. And I was, I was actually pretty, pretty, pretty impressed with that.
No, we're going to try to wrap our heads around how the NES can pull off all of those different things in one small little cart while I drop some promos for a few other things. Hey, everybody, this is Brandon Cruz. And that is my friend Travis over there that you can see because it's audio. I'm over here. Hey. And we're here. And we're here to talk to you about Apathetic Enthusiasm, a fortnightly released podcast where we talk about all sorts of things not to be limited by pop culture movies. I just want to make sure that people don't think, because you said the show comes out fortnightly, that it's a podcast about Fortnite. Like, I know, I know we're really trying to tap into like search engine optimization and stuff, but this is definitely not a Fortnite podcast. I just want to. Just want to make that clear. This promo is SEO'd with the word Fortnite and also Apple podcasts and any other place podcasts are distributed. Remember, Apathetic Enthusiasm, Not a Fortnite podcast.
Hey, welcome to the Last Comic Shop podcast.
A comic book podcast that actually talks about comics? Yep. Each week we open the shop up and read and discuss a comic. Sometimes we pair that up with comic book movies or TV shows or not. Lots of times it's just comic books and sound effects.
Oh, yes, definitely, lots of sound effects.
So tune in on all the major podcasting platforms, the Last Comic Shop podcast, or check out our Library of evergreen shows@www.lastcomic shop podcast. Those are some great things to check out. But first let's finish up here. So Dean, we need to back things up just a tiny bit because we want to set the stage here really for what we're looking at here in the Moffat conspiracy. This was an NES game released over here in North America, at least in June of 1990. It was made by Vic Takai, who were the publishers of the top secret Episode game. But ICOM were the developers here who, they're new to the scene here, but I think they did a pretty good job, especially considering the giant scope of everything this game encompasses.
Yeah, I would totally agree. It's sort of unique. You turn the game on and rather than, I mean you get the splash screen, but once you start up a new game, you're just getting this massive exposition dump in. Just it goes on and on and on. It really sets the stage and it sort of sets the tone for what you're going to get throughout the rest of the game. There's a lot of dialogue throughout this that helps with the storytelling and sort of these Ninja Gaiden esque cutscenes. It's really cool.
I really like when the old games like this have these cutscenes. I mean, don't get me wrong, voice acting and stuff in games is a lot of fun, especially when once you get into probably PS2 or PS3 era and people are actually doing a good job with it. But there's a certain charm in these just old 8 bit, 16 bit games where you, you know, you can't do the voice acting so you do something that your technology can actually handle. And these cutscenes are what the NES can handle, but they do it so, so well. Which, you know, helps because it's a 1990 NES game and super late in the console's lifespan, developers knew what they could get away with doing. But I just, I love these cutscenes so much.
Yeah, I think it really helps with a lot of the dramatic elements. There's, I almost want to say it's, it's maybe, maybe it's a spy theme, but it almost seems like film times where you have sort of shadows and you know, really good facial expressions when things are happening or backdrops of city lights, you know, against somebody who's, who's talking. It's not just your generic, you know, face staring at the screen with a black background. There's a lot of character, a lot of ambiance. And I think it really helps again with the tone and telling a mature story that keeps you engaged.
And speaking of a mature story, this one tones down a little bit of what Nintendo of America, I think, surprisingly let stay in the Top Secret episode this time more or less explicitly see Duke go up and have a good night with a woman. You see them kind of fade off the screen, and you just left to assume that that's what's happening. Back in the Top Secret episode, see the lights up in the hotel room from far away. So it's not like you really saw anything. But, you know, they did kind of tone things back with this one a little bit. And, you know, as much as I think kids don't necessarily need to see that kind of thing, I also think if it's in the source material, maybe you should keep it in there so you can be consistent with what your kid is able to see. See. But also maybe you want them to see some stuff and not others. And it just makes me glad that I don't have to worry about that kind of thing at all.
Yeah, yeah. I didn't have anything sort of analogous to look at with the others in the series. I didn't know how mature the rest of them got. But I was really surprised when that scene was happening and it was sort of leading that way and it took time to sort of get there, but I was like, are they doing this? They're gonna. Okay, great. So I was. I was actually really surprised that that was even. Even as toned down as it was, was still part of the NES version.
With all of the crazy things that the NES won't let happen, like, let's not even have crosses on buildings kind of thing. I just always like it when that kind of thing slips through here.
Sure.
But also, as you were saying before, this game has a nice little plot to it. It's not just, hey, let's go do a bunch of adventures. It's, hey, here's your one adventure to do. In this one, you have that satellite that's been snatched out of orbit. You have the Moffat terrorist group going in and saying, hey, us, but also Soviet government. You guys better both do what we want you to do, or we're going to make bad things happen.
This story, and it's not even just sort of surface level, hey, something bad happened. You know, America versus Russia, go. It explains the type of satellite and the project behind it. And you know, the science base and there's a lead scientist who's suddenly kidnapped and, you know, the Americans need to give up. I think it's A like a submarine location or technology. The Russians have to give up some like electromagnetic wave technology. So then Gogo 13 gets involved and there's a little bit of history there. Like it's a really elaborate, I think, you know, really expanded story on top of, you know, just the usual sort of one or two sentence lead ins that you get in an instruction manual to an NES game. So I think all of that together really lent itself to again staying engaged with the story the whole way through and getting to know the characters and some of the quote unquote villains that were, that were sort of all part of this conspiracy.
A lot of the games from back then I feel like would have just leaned more into like Golgo is doing his thing and it's just super like he's on the US side and he's going against the Russians. But the fact that they get into the CIA and the KGB both thinking that it's really the other group who's doing everything and Golgo having to go and kind of play both sides a little bit because he has to get the cooperation of both of them because they're both getting blackmailed here. The fact that you have a doctor involved and bringing that into everything, just another party into all of this. I mean this is a really complicated storyline for a game where you can fit an emulator in multiple games on a 3 1/2 inch floppy disk.
Yeah, totally. Yeah, you're right with those, those characters, you know, you got, you got James from the CIA, you got Gurbich, he was in the kgb. You got the doctor, you got that Ahmed, Ahmed Khan guy from the terrorist group itself. Like a lot of like named individuals as well that you know, have sort of prominent roles in the story. Yeah, just really cool stuff.
And then there's just the gameplay styles in there. We're starting to get into it a little bit before and we've looked at a couple other games on the show here where they had multiple gameplay styles with different levels of success. And I would say this is definitely one of the ones that pulls it off a lot better.
Yeah, I was, I was super impressed. I didn't know even what genre this game was before I put it in the pnes. And you know, you start off with sort of a side scrolling platformer. You got some pretty big sprites. You got gogo13 with his hand in his pocket. You can just kick people. And then you get to get a gun. You know that, that in itself was great. But then it sort of changes things up with I Think the car racing one was next where you're, you're in your Ferrari. And that could have been a whole game in itself, like with great granted. But there were, there were a couple mechanics there where I was like, this is only used for two levels in the whole game. That's, that's crazy.
And the fun part is almost all of them could be a game in themselves.
Yeah, yeah, totally. That, that sniping stuff, it, you know, it's not just, you know, affix your crosshairs to a head. It's, you know, there's like wind resistance and you know, you have to sort of steady your M16 to get the right shot. You know, they added a couple of these elements, these mechanics to really flesh out something that could be otherwise quite simple.
Having a spy game where you have to go through mazes. You know, there's only so much you can do to make a maze type game back here because I think the only other tech they could have possibly pulled off would have been just completely top down. And that's almost pointless. But the fact that they could pull it off as well as they could is pretty amazing.
Yeah, I mean I was surprised. So as soon as I got to that first maze section I went on. Funnily enough, I went on the site the video game library to see there's got to be a strategy guide for this because there's no mini map, there's no sort of in game help. And I looked and there's about 10 books about these 20s games that have been released. A lot of them are compendiums. One of them is a full on strategy guide for the top secret episode. But there was nothing for the moth conspiracy. How is there no literature with the maps published in there? And that's when I realized the instruction manual that comes with the game actually has the maps in there that you can follow along. So that was pretty key for me in getting me through not only the first one, but that last one.
Did you have the actual instruction manual there while you were playing it or did you have to go find it somewhere else?
Yeah, I just grabbed a PDF of it online. I do have the, the cart here, the NES cart, but I did not have the instruction manual. So just put it up on a PDF. That was helpful.
Yeah, I'm in that same boat with almost all of my NES games. Like the only things I have complete in box are either so common it's not worth mentioning or the games are so horrible I'm never going to play them anyway.
Right. Yeah. It would have been fun though. You know, there's. There's always those back few pages that have notes, you know that once upon a time these gone. Used to use those all the time. Would have been fun just to flip open a page and try to follow that along through the map section.
Yeah. Finding all of the notes that people had written receipts from when they bought it. That is honestly one of my favorite parts of buying used games out places. And why I like getting them at the flea market instead of at retro game stores. Because a lot of times those retro game stores will take that kind of thing out.
Yeah, no, I'm the kind of person, I'll keep the sticker on. It's Johnny's video. You know, here's the phone number for this now defunct store that existed once upon a time. I'll keep that on the cartoon that adds character.
The thing that really gets me on this one is how did we get two different golgo 13 games over here in North America and not really any of the other golgo13 material to go with it. It's just, hey, here's these two games. Have fun. But then also these games work so well by themselves and I feel like not having any of that background information doesn't really take away from the game too much. Like obviously it's better if you can know everything that's going on behind the scenes and stuff. But it's not like you're really hampered by not knowing the Entire History of Golgo 13.
No, I thought it did a great job being a self contained story that was, you know, just enjoyable beginning to end. I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything in particular. I could sort of read between the lines, but I totally agree. I'd be curious to know what the sales figures were for the original. They say the original, but the Golgo 13 Top Secret episode, the first one that came out in the west and wondering if they were bad enough or if marketing felt like they should just drop that Golgo 13 title altogether and sort of rebrand it as the Mafia conspiracy.
And also just the fact that they're making the game for the Japanese audience. Anyway, you have to go and do all your translations and localizations and everything. I know that takes time and effort and money. I really wish we could find somebody who worked on the game so we could both ask them for our own respective projects. Like what was the thought process in bringing it over? Not only the first one, but I think even more so here the second one in the Moffat conspiracy, do you.
Know if the localization changed up any of the story? Is, you know, is Duke Togo an American in, you know, the manga, or does he work more for Japan? Is there sort of a Japan other country rivalry? And it was just made an America, Russia, Russia rivalry in this, this game support.
As far as the US Russia thing, I haven't been able to find much of anything there in the manga, so I think that was more pulling from current events kind of deal. But as far as Duke Togo himself, it's kind of ambiguous where he's from even in the manga, so you can slot him into a bunch of different places. There's been a lot of people that I saw looking around that are thinking, oh, he must be Japanese because he looks kind of Asian. That's the way I read it. Nobody come after me for the way I phrase that, because that was exactly what I was seeing said by people most commonly. I. I don't think that's entirely the best way to say it either. But, you know, he's just kind of a dude who's there and every country is going to have somebody kind of like him, so I don't think they worry too much about super making him from anywhere.
Right.
Also, he goes around the world a lot, doing a lot of these things, so he probably has a bunch of kids all around the world.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Womanizing his way around. Around the country, around the world, I guess. Yeah. Back to your point, like, if you think about it, this. This thing's been around, you said, since. Since the 60s, and it finished in 2021. That's got to be one of, if not the longest manga series out there. And it's, I would imagine, relatively. And I've certainly never seen it on West End shelves. It's amazing that something like that hasn't made its way out here with. With such a, you know, broad audience that it could have. Everybody loves, you know, spy thrillers. Why. Why has that been so sort of excluded from. From the Western market? I'm curious.
I'll need to ask them when I go to the comic store this week. First off, if it's even possible for them to get it. But also with as much content as there is, how would they even decide where to start? Start is what I see them with on the shelves is either current things or like classic things, where there's your run and that's it, your death notes and stuff like that. Where that's your run, that's it. That's all you're ever going to get. It doesn't take up a ton of room on the shelf, so there's room for lots of different things. And like, even when I saw their complete run of my hero academia stacking the books up, I want to say they would have gone like a little past my elbow. That's not a ton of books, but hopefully editor Chris will be able to edit something in there later.
Yeah, just like an anthology of like the best of Golgo 13 English. I think that'd be pretty cool.
I think it'd be a really great way to introduce people there because I know that they make like best of each individual Ninja Turtle collections. They have Best of X Men character collections, so there is a precedent for that kind of thing for sure. Normally this is where I would ask what this game gets right and gets wrong about the franchise, but your experience with it beforehand is basically none. And mine is probably not enough to make any big answers there. But just spy things in general. I think this game really locks in those pretty central themes and tropes and everything.
Yeah, I mean, this is. Yeah, this is a sort of a textbook spy thriller through and through. It's got all the right ingredients. It's got, you know, the love interest. It's got the CIA and KGB and Gallup eventing around Europe in Venice and Rome and all those places. So yeah, it definitely stacks up to other stories. 1. One thing I noticed in the dialogue that I was. I was pretty surprised about and I wasn't really sure what it was trying to convey is Togo Duke Togo 13 has like an obscene amount of lines that are just like, he is giving the silent treatment to everyone. And it's not just like convenient or lazy localization effort. Like there is. There are scenes that show one person's face and they say, you know, a big line of exposition and then the graphic will actually switch back to Gogo 13 with a different facial expression and the dialogue line is still just. So I'm wondering, like, is he. Is he sort of like the strong silent type in the manga series? And that's what they were trying to convey here because there's seems like a lot of effort to put into a development when you just don't have anything for him to say.
From what I've seen, he actually talks. So you definitely don't have like a link situation here where everything is just facial expression reading.
Yeah, it was really interesting. I think I would challenge anybody, any of the listeners here, even just to watch a quick playthrough of it. And just count how many times it is, you know, dozens and dozens of times throughout the game. And the game's not super lot, but yeah, it was just a really interesting way to convey somebody's personality. It's just sort of either not caring or I don't know. Yeah, not. Not understanding, being surprised. You know, I didn't. I didn't fully understand the character element behind that.
I'm right there with you on that one, though. I was surprised when they did that. If this was an rpg, I would be thinking, okay, they just don't know how you as the player are reacting, so they're leaving that open. But this is a pretty straightforward, linear game, so there's nothing that jumps out to me as far as a reason for why they would do that unless it was something having to do with development. And that was just an easy thing for them to cut out.
Yeah, maybe. One thing I learned while playing this, so I pulled a couple books off the shelves just to see which books might have mentioned the game. Chris Scullion, he wrote a book called the NES Encyclopedia. It's just sort of a compendium of all the NES games that came out in America and Europe. And he has some little fun facts in there. And in there he mentions that Gold War 13 actually had three Japanese exclusive light gun games where you play with sword, with a sniper rifle. I haven't seen any images of those, but I thought, man, that'd be pretty. I think that would be a pretty good, you know, gameplay element as well. And I know they've thrown enough here into the NES card. I don't expect them to throw a zapper into the mix by Ubili, but it was. It would be pretty cool to see those in a western arcade.
I saw some of the arcade releases that did that. I couldn't tell with what I was seeing if they were Japan only or not. So we might have been seeing the same things there. But they definitely looked better graphically, which doesn't mean much because it is an arcade. So you're making a machine dedicated to playing this one game. But, man, you could have popped some of those over here and had the same kind of thing. Like, who cares if you know what the franchise is? You're just going around shooting things with the light gun and that's always fun. That's why my brother and I would continue to play the Aerosmith shooter when we went to Chuck E. Cheese.
Right? Yeah. Do you know if this game has been sort of revived or ported over the years? Is there another Way to play this Nintendo Switch online or in some collection along the way. I don't recognize Victor Kai from too much. I think they did Clash of Demon Head. That's probably the one that stands out to me the most. But you know, either on the Everdrive or. Is there anything. Is there any way to play this outside of having the NES cart or emulation?
As far as I know right now, it's have the cart or emulate it. All of these license things get really interesting with rights. And who can say that you can do it or not? But one thing that this does have going for it is that it is still a currently running manga. So somebody definitely has the rights to the franchise. So the video game rights might be weird, but the franchise exists, so it's not like you have to go and figure that part out. And like I said before, they made games for the Nintendo DS. So as recently as 2009, somebody was able to make a game. Granted, it wasn't either one of these, but it was still related to Golgo 13.
That's cool. Yeah, I didn't realize it was a DS1. And so you say there's still. What was Taco Sato? Is that what you said? The creator? Anyway, he said he passed away in 2021. But they're still, they're still going forward with the manga?
Yep, they're still making it. He. He specifically said he wanted people to still make it after he died.
Wow. Cool.
If you knew somebody who wanted to get into Golgo 13, like it sounds like both of us do, would you hand them this game as a bit of a primer course?
I think. Yeah. Like I said, this is, this is a really great self contained episode that shows you sort of the complexity behind what I imagine the other stories are like, introduces you to a couple key characters and a couple key, I imagine, recurring themes with his, you know, M16, his sniper, this trademark scene that we see throughout the game. And it's, it's just fun. It's. It's fun. It's not particularly hard. I think, you know, compared to some of the other challenging NES games out there, this is a pretty accessible one. And I would imagine this is probably sitting on a few more shelves than we expect and just hasn't been plopped in the cart because it's not a super fun, colorful, whimsical, you know, popular ip. But I think if you were to just, you know, pull in the cart a little bit and throw it in, it's, it's a pretty fun game. Right from the get go. That opening theme, that music is great. I really enjoyed music in this game. So if anything has that going forward.
Too, I'm right there with you. Like, it's definitely a dumbed down, toned down story for everything, but that's what you're going to get for any NES game no matter what it is. So you got somebody where it's like, okay, if you like this level of it, then let's just jump into the deep end. And if you don't like it, then it wasn't a huge commitment to play this game anyway.
Exactly. Yeah. And there's enough variation in the first, say half hour of the game where you're going to get a lot of different elements to cling onto. So, you know, if you're not a huge fan of the car racing, just wait a little bit. It'll be in a maze. Just wait a little bit longer. You'll be sniping somebody from a rooftop. So it's constantly changing. It's not, there's not a lot of monotony in the game.
And finally, if you could make your own spy thriller, but your main spy was a Muppet, which Muppet would it be?
That's a good one. You know, I would say, I would say Statler and Waldorf would be part of it. They would be either the ones giving you the mission or ones giving you health throughout the mission. I think they've done something with Gonzo Alt B where he's some sort of secret agent. I wouldn't mind having like a, like a Fozzie or something who just sort of has to try his hardest to put aside his, you know, his comedic chops and be serious once in a while. And just sort of the dichotomy between having to be serious and you know, being just generally a funny character. I think it'd be cool to see a secret agent, Fozzie.
I would be all over that. Well, Dean, it has been great talking to you about all of this. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet?
Yeah, I'm on all the social media sites, these things, 220 of them. You can find me at the VG library or the video game library. Go to www.thevideogamelibrary.org. like I said at the top, this is an ongoing database where you can type in a game, a creator company, anything about the video game industry you want to know and it'll show you all the books that have been published since the 70s. About that particular topic. We really strive to make it as accessible as possible. There's over 10,000 books in 25 different languages. Really meant to be a global resource for fans and academics. You know, wannabe cooks. Anybody out there who just wants to learn a little bit more, there's a lot of stuff online right now. I get that. Give it a look, browse around, go down the rabbit hole, see where it takes you. You'll learn something new.
And I know I can't wait to dig through there some more and find things that I didn't know existed. Find that Sonic book that I had in elementary school. So we'll see how it is.
Yeah, that was that. Honestly, that was one of the impetus. So I had a book called Friend or Foe. It was, I think, a 1990 troll book from. From the Scholastic Book Fair. And yeah, that was one of my very first video game pieces of literature. You can find all of those Sonic books from the golden look books to the, you know, the Where's Waldo type, Where's Sonic books to the old coloring books. You can find them all on the site. Everything right to the new Knuckles books that are coming out for the movie.
And just like always, we'll have links to all all that stuff down in the show notes. Because clicking links is so much easier than trying to remember how to spell things.
Awesome. Thank you.
As always. If you want to hear more from me, you can head on over to playcomics.com where there's links to all the social media things. Although I've pretty much decided that Blue sky is going to be the main place that I'm hanging out. So that part is going to be pretty easy to get figured out. At least for me. If you would like to be on the show yourself, or if you know somebody else who you think would like to be on the show, there's a link down in the show notes for what I am looking to get booked the soonest. It's a lot of really weird stuff right now, which could be good. I mean, they're probably good anyway and they're going to be good episodes because those usually are good episodes. But that could be good for you, specifically because you really like weird things. And I just know that about you because I am looking into your brain from the past and seeing that, yeah, we're just going to roll with that. If you want to help support the show, then you can be like, oh no. Lit class or Dan McMahon and give the show money, which is always appreciated. It does cost money to run a podcast, but I'd be doing this in a way because it's cheaper than going to the flea market all the time. But you can also just share it with friends, share it with family members, share it with random strangers on the street, and just tell them, hey, you should listen to play comics. It's pretty cool and I think you'd enjoy it. Speaking of things you'd enjoy, head on over to Gunnag.com where you can see not only that I am a member of the Gunna Geek Network, but other wonderful shows are also a member of the Gunny Geek Network, like Legends of SHIELD where you can hear me talking to people about what if? And eventually I'm going to stop making that what if we do this thing where we talk about what if Joke because we're almost done looking at the season because it's ending and then there's not gonna be any more until they decide they're gonna make Mark. So. So, you know, whatever. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of right now, head on over to BackingTrack GG to check out that music and maybe grab something for your own project, because that's why it exists and it's really cool. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, and go find yourself a new favorite character. Those are some great things to check out. First, let's fit. Wait a second. I think my mom has those same glasses because it looks like the dots disappear when there's liquid behind them.
Oh, yeah, totally. I'd never noticed that. Yeah, I've had these glasses a long time, but I will ask my wife where she bought them.