Nelson: (BURP) Oahhhh.
Andrew: I think that counts for our clap.
Ethan: That’ll do it.
Nelson: Are you sure?
Ethan: That’ll probably spike your levels enough to sync.
Andrew: Can you sync it?
Nelson: …Yep.
Ethan: Alright.
[“It’s morphin’ time!” + intro music]
Ethan: Minna-san, yokoso. Welcome to your favorite cross-cultural deep dive analysis and recap podcast covering Super Sentai and Power Rangers, Kenkyuu Sentai Podcast Rangers. My name is Ethan; I use he/him pronouns, and with me is my usual co-host, Andrew.
Andrew: Hey everybody, my name is Andrew. I also use he/him pronouns, and I am shooting behind the scenes footage, so I’m going to be filming the camera the entire time.
Ethan: Yeah, try not to get distracted by his fidgeting.
Nelson: Yeah.
Andrew: Nelson hates it.
Nelson: I just don’t like the noise it makes.
Ethan: Yeah.
Andrew: I made this one stop making noise.
Nelson: Oh, okay. Well, then I don’t care.
Ethan: And Nelson’s also here again!
Nelson: Yeah, hey, what’s up, guys? I’m Nelson, and I have memorized the entire theme song to Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger. It’s just such a fun song.
Andrew: Are you going to sing it for us right now?
Nelson: (singing) Zyuranger, Zyuranger… I’m not going to f*** ing sing it.
Ethan: I always like… the like, shout at the very end of the ending credits.
Nelson: Yeah.
Ethan: I always do that.
Nelson: (singing) Jumbo, jumbo, jumbo.
Ethan: UY! I always do that.
Nelson: (vocalizing “Under the Sea”) It’s not under the sea.
Ethan: Right. But it’s close!
Nelson: It’s so close!
Ethan: Today, we’re discussing Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger episode 12, “Papa wa Kuketsuki?! (Papa’s a Vampire?!),” and Power Rangers, season 1, episode 12, “Power Rangers Punks.” We had a lot of further ado on the last episode’s intro, so I don’t think we have any ado this time.
Nelson: Yeah, let’s dive right into this juicy episode.
[“Go! Go! Power Rangers!”]
Andrew: Yeah, so today, we’re going to be talking about episode 12 of Power Rangers. That is “Power Rangers Punks.”
Nelson: Yeah.
Andrew: “Power Rangers Punks” was written by Mark Hofmeier and directed by David Blythe. This is Hofmeier’s second episode, having also recently- also written the previous episode “No Clowning Around.” This is Blythe’s second episode as well after having previously directed “I, Eye Guy.” So straight up, off the bat-
Ethan: Strong production crew.
Andrew: Yeah, right out of the gate, these two people have been involved in two of the best episodes so far. Not necessarily the ones that like I’ve enjoyed the most, although I loved “I, Eye Guy.” But two of the most mechanically sound episodes of Power Rangers so far were written and directed by these guys.
Nelson: Yeah, they’re cookin’.
Andrew: So I came in with high expectations, and they were met.
Nelson: Oh, they delivered on this one. I’ll tell you that much.
Andrew: So, episode starts. The Rangers are playing volleyball. They’re just playing volleyball. Some Putties show up and start fighting them. This is a distraction. During the fight, Baboo implies that Rita owns many planets.
Ethan: I think this has come up before? “Oh yes, we used that monster to great effect on blah, blah, blah.”
Andrew: Oh, we’re not even there yet, because they do that in a minute too.
Nelson: But they’ve all- no, they did that in “Happy Birthday, Zach.” Yeah. With the, yeah, with the other ones. So they’ve implied that.
Andrew: But Baboo’s like, “Rita’s going to give me a planet.”
Ethan: Uh-huh.
Nelson: As a reward. As a little treat.
Andrew: Yeah, as a little treat.
Ethan: Vampires- weird vampires can have a little planet as a treat.
Andrew: During this fight, there is just so much slo-mo.
Nelson: I was disoriented by so much slo-mo.
Ethan: I think this was the one where they also did a bunch of like, lightning cuts too.
Nelson: Yeah. There’s a lot of light wipes and a lot of like, slo-mo. Like I’ve had stuff like moving so fast that I can’t keep up, but I’ve never been so disoriented by slo-mo.
Andrew: Yeah, I think they were trying to make this look more like Sentai.
Nelson: Oh, they did a terrible job of that then. Jesus.
Andrew: And I think it didn’t work. And so to make up for the fact that they failed, they have added all the slo-mo over the top. But Ethan, to your point, yes, they do a lot of those like double and triple cuts where they show the same punch over and over again, and that’s a very Tokusatsu thing, but they did it wrong. Anyway, during the fight, Baboo puts a potion in the Rangers’ water.
Ethan: He’s riding Rita’s penny-farthing flying bicycle. It’s giving him a rough time of it.
Nelson: He’s so big on a little bike… Like, she could have put a motor on it!
Andrew: The Power Rangers beat the Putties, and Billy and Kimberly both go sit down on the table under very thirsty, so they drink the water, the water which has the potion in it. In that instant, they’re transformed into punks.
Nelson: They’re immediately evil.
Andrew: Yeah. To demonstrate this, Billy screams, “You guys are dorks!”, which is just one of the best scenes in the show so far. They also throw the rest of the water off the table so nobody else gets poisoned, which was very considerate of these punks.
Ethan: David Yost has just got this great, like, sneer. I mean, you can just tell he’s been waiting to unleash it. And now he’s finally getting the chance to, like, act a little out of character, and he just seems to be having a blast.
Andrew: Oh, he’s chewing the scenery hard, and it’s wonderful. Rita, meanwhile, orders Finster to make a monster. Finster talks about the last time they used the Terror Toad. We cut to the Rangers at school. Skull is holding a skull, which was wonderful.
Nelson: Skull is holding a skull!
Andrew: And as we learned in one of the episodes that Violet was on…
Ethan: Shakespearean-trained!
Andrew: Yeah, he’s a Shakespearean-trained actor. So, like, I have to imagine that in between scenes, he was just doing Hamlet monologues.
Nelson: Oh, man, yeah.
Ethan: Interspersed with his horrible laugh.
Andrew: Bulk struggles to open his locker. And when he opens his locker, it’s full of food that explodes everywhere, and this is not explained.
Nelson: It goes on for so long.
Andrew: Yeah, it was a really weird, kind of awkward scene. I don’t know if this was supposed to be part of the punks, that they have pranked him by filling his locker with food, which would make a lot of sense, but then they don’t acknowledge it. So, the implication is that Bulk has just been storing raw meat in his locker.
Ethan: Loose popcorn. Not even, like, a bag of popcorn, just, like, loose handfuls.
Nelson: Maybe it was in a bag, but the bag broke.
Ethan: I don’t know. There’s so much of it.
Nelson: You know those big, like, fair bags of popcorn that are, like, you know, like a foot long?
Andrew: Maybe he got it from the fair.
Nelson: Yeah, maybe he got it from the fair for his locker.
Ethan: Aw man, now I want kettle corn.
Nelson: Oh, man, a big old tin of holiday popcorn!
Andrew: The way that this scene plays out continues the theme of them, like, insulting Bulk with food specifically.
Nelson: Yeah, it sucks.
Andrew: But it’s the least effective that we’ve seen it so far, because it just kind of happens, and there’s no reason for it.
Ethan: Yeah, pretty flat.
Andrew: Anyway, Billy and Kimberly show up, and they find somebody who looks even dorkier than Billy, and they start beating him up, and it’s just a great scene. They’ve got him picked up, and they’re being mean to him, and I normally don’t like bullies in film, just as a rule. But this I loved. Kimberly flirts with Skull, and frankly, I mean, Amy Jo Johnson doing the whole, like, ‘No, I want a bad boy…’ It worked. Yeah, it worked.
Ethan: No, she sells it for sure.
Nelson: It was doing something.
Ethan: Loud gum chewing. Like, mouth wide open.
Andrew: Very, like, late 80s, early 90s.
Nelson: Her villain quality is that she chews gum. It’s great.
Andrew: Billy picks Bulk up, and throws him up against the lockers.
Ethan: Like, elevates him vertically a good couple of inches, and Bulk immediately is like, “Oh no.””
Andrew: It’s one of the best moments that David Yost has gotten in the show so far, just getting out of character, not being the punching bag, and, like, throwing his weight around a little bit. It was a good thing to see. It was way out of character. It really sold the ‘they are punks’ thing. In the meantime, Zordon and Alpha… panic.
Nelson: That reminds me, there’s a part in this where Zordon says it, “Billy and Kimmy have gone punk. Oh no!”
Andrew: Yes. Yeah. I have a couple of quotes pulled out here, and that is one of them.
Ethan: Going back to episode, I think it was nine, with the flea circus. Like, you can tell that the people writing these scripts and making the show are from a specific generation.
Nelson: Yeah, the punks are like, oh my, what are we going to do with these rock and roll kids?
Ethan: Wearing black and just sort of being churlish is like, the worst fate that can befall a human being, a bright young student… goofy ass.
Andrew: Zordon and Alpha lock Billy and Kimberly in a force field. Zordon then explains how they have turned punk from the potion, which means that Zordon knew about this before.
Ethan: Can he just sort of scroll?
Andrew: Right. Like a full day has passed.
Ethan: Right. Does the viewing orb have just like a rewind function?
Andrew: Did he see that they were doing something weird and then go back and find out what happened?
Nelson: I think that’s what happened, because he’s got a whole plan at this point.
Andrew: Yeah. So, Zordon explains that the singing squash is the only thing that can save these Rangers.
Nelson: The sap of the singing squash.
Andrew: He uses a flashback in the viewing orb of some of the Japanese footage.
Nelson: You get a Barza sighting.
Ethan: Yeah. So I think this is the first time we see it in the show, that that’s Barza footage to be pre-time-warp Zordon.
Andrew: Right.
Ethan: Specifically pulling up, I don’t remember what Sentai episode this is from, but he’s specifically pulling up Mandrake roots for something. This is like a classic mythological plant. It’s a horrible plant that screams when you pull it up.
Andrew: So calling it a singing squash is not that far off and it was like unnecessarily close. There was no reason for it to be that specific, but then using the Barza footage and making Barza pre-time-warp or time-lock or whatever Zordon, that worked really well. It’s one of the best Japanese-American footage integrations that they’ve done.
Ethan: They go through a lot of trouble not to show Barza’s face.
Andrew: While all this is going on, the Terror Toad appears. The Rangers morph and then teleport without actually teleporting, which is a common thing that they do.
Ethan: I think I prefer the morph scene transition to the instances when they are in their electricity blur forms flying over the landscape and somehow talking. I think I prefer that.
Nelson: Do you? I kind of prefer this way. Also in this, I noted that we get like some of the most casual, “It’s morphin’ time!”s ever.
Andrew: Yeah.
Nelson: Because like Jason’s just like, “It’s morphin’ time.” And then they’re just there. It’s like, come on, give me some, give me some oomph.
Andrew: Alpha at this point goes, “Ay, ay, ay, that Toad is a real terror!”
Nelson: He’s the Terror Toad.
Andrew: Yeah. He’s the Terror Toad. Zordon sends Alpha to retrieve the singing squash, which he does so immediately. There is no tension, no…
Nelson: I mean, there is tension, but Alpha, you know, to steal Ethan’s line here, Alpha hits em with that motherf***ing doohickey.
Ethan: He is a stun gun.
Nelson: He came over, like they have no chance.
A No, Alpha shows up, takes the roots, and leaves.
Ethan: Yep. The electrified skin thing is really funny. In Power Rangers HyperForce, they have Alpha 55, and he has a chest cannon that blows a hole in the side of a battleship.
Nelson: Nice.
Ethan: Like an absolute emergency thing. He can’t just bring it out whenever, but like…
Nelson: It’s like with Star Wars, you know, how R2D2 is a straight up murderer, you know, like I’m not a killer, but don’t push me. That’s Alpha.
Andrew: The Toad fight continues. And while the Rangers are fighting and losing to the Toad and being eaten, Alpha makes squash juice. He serves the squash juice to the Rangers.
Ethan: There’s this really cool effect when he pushes his hands…
Andrew: Through the force field.
Ethan: Through the force field, where it’s kind of like buzzing around his sort of forearms and you can see the force field. Because Kimberly and Billy tried to get out earlier and it will like flash and disappear and he sticks his hands through there and like he’s got a Faraday cage sort of situation.
Nelson: Yeah.
Ethan: I found myself wondering a lot about not just Alpha’s technical capabilities as the character, but who the suit actor is.
Nelson: Unsung hero of Power Rangers, because unfortunately Alpha does not get a show credit.
Andrew: Yeah.
Nelson: Like I’ve never thought about it until you just brought it up. Like there is definitely a suit actor there who just goes uncredited. That’s crazy.
Ethan: Well, I looked it up. It was somebody Sharf. I thought I made a note of it in here, but I don’t see it now.
Nelson: Honestly, I don’t think I ever remember seeing Alpha get like a show credit.
Ethan: Romy Sharf is apparently the suit actor.
Andrew: Okay.
Nelson: That’s a research topic for a different day.
Ethan: Absolutely zero information. “Romy Sharf was an actor who starred in Power Rangers as Alpha.” And that’s all the information I could find this morning.
Nelson: Okay.
Ethan: Different actor for the voice.
Nelson: Who’s the voice actor?
Ethan: I already forgot.
Nelson: Wow.
Ethan: I can look it up again.
Nelson: Nahh, let’s keep going with this Power Rangers recap.
Andrew: Okay. Alpha makes squash juice. He serves the squash juice to Billy and Kimberly. There is a neat effect there with the animation of the force field. They are immediately normal again, look a little embarrassed, morph, and teleport.
Ethan: They’re like, “How did we get here? What’s going on?” So it seems like they haven’t remembered anything.
Andrew: Which is a real shame.
Ethan: It’s really funny.
Andrew: Yeah. They teleport immediately. Billy gets eaten by the toad pretty much as soon as they get there. Kimberly gets attacked by Baboo and then has to save the other Rangers by herself.
Nelson: Well, because the Toad’s got a horn that they’ve got to cut off, and then they’ve got to get to his weak spot.
Ethan: Which is just in the fold of his neck.
Nelson: Yeah. And so Jason’s cut off the horn already and Billy and Kimmy get there, Billy immediately gets eaten. And then, yeah, Baboo’s there for some reason.
Ethan: And then she Gets. Him. In a big way.
Andrew: Oh yeah.
Nelson: She just starts putting these arrows.
Ethan: Four arrows like straight to the throat. It’s brutal.
Andrew: Yeah. No, it’s one of the best non-zord fights in the show today. Yeah. I’m really looking forward to seeing this episode in Sentai. It’s wonderful. I mean, it was really well executed. At the same time, Rita has a headache. This is becoming a theme. I hadn’t really noticed it as a kid, but the last several episodes in a row, when Rita is defeated, she goes, “Oh, I have such a headache!!”
Ethan: I feel like there’s something there about, like, ’90s perceptions of femininity as frail or… I don’t know. There’s something underlying that.
Andrew: I don’t like it.
Ethan: No, no, no, I don’t like it either.
Andrew: So we cut to the youth center where Kimberly and Trini are doing some gymnastics. This scene had a lot of, like, male gazeyness going on with it.
Nelson: Sure did, bud. Sure did.
Andrew: There was no need for it.
Nelson: This is a kid’s show, folks.
Andrew: Yeah.
Ethan: It’s funny you say that, Nelson, because in every Sentai show, probably at least since Zyuranger, there has been one evil character who is a hot lady. She hasn’t shown up in this one yet, and this is hearsay, but the thing that I have heard is that the studios specifically include one hot lady in every monster team so that dads will have somebody to look at while they’re watching the show with their kids.
Andrew: Think about Power Rangers the Movie.
Nelson: Dude, Power Rangers Turbo?
Andrew: No, just the motion picture.
Nelson: Oh, yeah, the hot lady on the other planet. Yeah. Mhm.
Andrew: I remember my dad going, “Oh, they added something for us,” and I had no idea what he was talking about.
Nelson: Like, have you seen the Turbo movie?
Andrew: Yeah.
Nelson: Jesus Christ, man. I mean, yeah, it goes from there with, you know, In Space and Lost in Space.
Andrew: They push it.
Nelson: They put some hot ladies in these shows.
Andrew: Anyway, Skull shows up for his scheduled date with Kimberly, and the Rangers’ bully Bulk and Skull.
Nelson: They settle it with volleyball.
Ethan: Bulk and Skull and being weirdly good sports about that part. Yeah, we’ll play volleyball. I want to talk about Skull’s outfit for one second.
Nelson: Yeah.
Ethan: He’s probably not even changed his shirt. He’s lost the leather jacket. He’s put on, like, a gold waistcoat and then a tuxedo jacket over that.
Nelson: A Frankenstein size tuxedo jacket.
Ethan: He still got the jeans with, like, the wallet chains. He’s probably got his Doc Martens on.
Andrew: He looks like a Dick Tracy villain from, like, the 1993 Dick Tracy movie.
Ethan: And he says, “You want to get some frrrog legs?” Who is this man? Who is this man?
Andrew: So ultimately, I loved this episode.
Nelson: It’s good.
Andrew: I hate to say it, but it might be my favorite episode.
Nelson: It’s up there. It’s definitely one of my favorites because, like, from the opening, when they were playing volleyball, I remembered this episode cause, like, when we started this, I watched, like, a recap of the whole season. And this was one of those episodes that I was like, “Oh, all right. I can’t wait to get to this one.” And it definitely delivered. It delivered. Again, if the last episode was a jumping off point, this is where I feel like they’re hitting their stride. They’re rolling.
Andrew: You couldn’t start somebody here, though, because it requires knowledge of all of these characters.
Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. And I’m saying this is, you know, where you go to after, you know.
Andrew: With what we’ve learned about the production schedule, we know that this one was made early in the production schedule, that it was made alongside some of the very first episodes. The show starts really strong and then has a string of really weak episodes. And I’m wondering, based on what we’ve learned now, if those weren’t very rushed productions compared to these other episodes that they were able to take more time with.
Ethan: There’s also a sense of playfulness in this one. Like we’ve talked about with David Yost’s, like, terrible sneer. This plot is lifted entirely from the Sentai episode number 26, “Be Careful of Shaved Ice.” I mean, who knows if all the actors were able to actually watch that footage. But somebody on this team watched that episode and said, “You know what? No notes. So we’re just going to do this one.”” And then they all do it and they do it so well. There’s like some tense moments where like Billy like taps Jason on the chest really hard. And Jason’s like, “If you touch me again, it will be the last time.”
Nelson: You get one.
Ethan: You get one. And we’ve seen that with him in bulk too. Like, I mean, Jason is like a very strong dude and it’s like clearly like a physically dangerous person.
Nelson: He’s huge.
Ethan: And so he just has this look like, “Is this how you want to spend your life? Cause you will spend your life.”
Andrew: A lot of the episodes we’ve watched up to this point, I’ve been just kind of waiting for them to be over so that I could watch Super Sentai a little bit.
Ethan: Lil bit, lil bit, yeah. I always watch Sentai first so that I’m like on a high point, in a good mood.
Nelson: Yeah, same.
Andrew: I have to do it the other way because if I don’t, I won’t take my notes. So I watch the Power Rangers episodes first and up to this point, a lot of them have really just been like, okay, yeah, yeah, sword, great. We’re done. This one, it was wonderful. This one was a lot of fun. No Megazord and I did not care. Kimmy coming in and it was a great moment for her. When they started doing the VHS releases, they did Ranger specific episodes.
Ethan: I remember that. I can picture those covers in my mind.
Andrew: And the Pink Rangers episode was not this one.
Nelson: Really?
Andrew: It was “No Clowning Around.”
Nelson: That’s a Yellow Ranger episode!
Andrew: That is the episode that they put out for Kimberly’s VHS.
Nelson: That’s so weird.
Andrew: It absolutely should have been this one.
Nelson: Yeah, weird. Because I was thinking today, I was like, this is a real Pink-Ranger-focused thing.
Andrew: I mean, it’s such a great moment for Kimberly.
Nelson: Yeah. Weird choice, production people in the 90s don’t know why you did that.
Ethan: Looking at some of these VHS covers… Nelson will probably put it up on the video, but just in case you’re not watching or you’re just listening, there’s like five faces. There’s like a drawing of Jason on the far left. There’s the Tyrannozord on the far right. There’s Jason in his morph state in the center. And then in between those two…
Andrew: They Animorphed him.
Ethan: Like an Animorph type situation. So I remember seeing those as a kid and being like, what is the deal here? Of course, it’s not explained or addressed at all. It’s just artwork they only did for the VHS covers, but-
Andrew: Anyway, that’s this episode. This episode of Power Rangers was great. If you remember Power Rangers and you’re looking for an episode to be like living up to your memories, go for this one.
Ethan: On the goofy to cringe-ness scale, it falls just far enough on the goofy side to be enjoyable.
Andrew: Yep. Tons of scenery chewing. And if you don’t enjoy that, then what are you doing watching Power Rangers?
Ethan: Right?
Andrew: But I have very few notes for this episode. I have two notes. One note is that they didn’t have to be so mean to Bulk with the food and his locker. I don’t like it when they do the food stuff with him to begin with.
Ethan: And there’s a lot of it.
Andrew: But this one was especially bad because it was just contextless, you know? And then the scene at the end where they’re doing gymnastics didn’t need the slow lingering pan up. They just didn’t. But other than that, excellent episode. All right. Sentai.
Ethan: Sentai recap.
[“Kyoryu Sentai… Zyuranger!!”]
Ethan: Okay, so “Papa Wa Kyuketsuki” was written-
Nelson: Vampire dad.
Ethan: Yeah. “Papa’s A Vampire?!” It’s got an interrobang on the end. It’s like, supposed to be shocked.
Andrew, shocked: “Papa’s a vampire?!”
Ethan: “Papa’s A Vampire?!” was written by Takaku Susumu and directed by Watanabe Katsuya. So a new writer on this one. We open on Totpat being a total weirdo and thirsting for human blood.
Nelson: Well, he’s a vampire.
Ethan: He says, “I have vampire blood, but I’ve never tasted human blood.” And it’s like, what are you talking about?
Nelson: I am a vampire. I must feast. He got his bloodlust.
Ethan: He gets spotted by a prospective victim, who screams, alerting the local baseball-bat-wielding preteen monster hunter, Michi. I love this child. I think she kicks ass. I wish her victory in all of her battles.
Nelson: Yeah, it’s a real… buck, bucking to the system kind of kid.
Ethan: Yeah, she’s just out there with her, like her loud whistle and her binoculars and her bat.
Nelson: Real take the power back kinda thing.
Ethan: She’s got like her utility pouch on the front of her overalls that we’ll see later and-
Nelson: Full of stuff.
Andrew: Possibly the best non-Ranger character to come up so far.
Ethan: Yeah.
Nelson: Yeah, I mean, besides Barza.
Andrew: Barza is just so weird.
Ethan: Barza is pretty weird. I mean, I like Gnome.
Nelson: Yeah.
Andrew: Yeah. Gnome’s pretty good.
Nelson: She’s third down there, because Gnome is at the top of the list of non-Ranger characters for me. Waiting for Gnome to come back.
Ethan: Anyway, Totpat narrowly escapes being beaten to death by a child and while Michi is looking for him, she runs into Dan, who agrees to help her look for the monster. Totpat meanwhile has returned to the moon, hoping to enlist the help of another Dora monster in his blood quest. Pleprichaun has already created Dora Argos, who will use his hypnotic powers to help Totpat fulfill his vampire fantasy.
Nelson: The noise that I made when I remembered which episode this was. I was just like, “Oh, god dammit we’re back here with this. This fuckin eye monster!”
Andrew: I love Dora Argos.
Nelson: Oh, as soon as it came back, I was like, “No, ugh!”
Andrew: It was so good.
Ethan: He’s got this like multi-tonal voice effect going for him that’s very good. Like I said, in that episode, he was well utilized in the Power Rangers episode. I think he’s even even cooler here.
Andrew: Even better.
Nelson: No, he’s great here. I just, I-
Andrew: Oh, he’s gross.
Nelson: I wanted to be so done with it after “I, Eye Guy.” And then we got here and it was just… (sigh)
Ethan: Back on Earth, Dora Argos captures Michi in his pocket dimension and shows her a vision of her father as a vampire, which she finds absolutely convincing. Dora Argos returns Michi to Earth, but now she’s convinced that her father is the monster she’s been hunting all along. The Rangers are confused by this and try to gather more information. Their doubt hurts Michi’s feelings and she runs off.
Nelson: Yeah. They straight up just don’t believe her.
Ethan: Well, they’re like-
Andrew: They shouldn’t!
Ethan: Right, they’re rightfully confused by this. They’re like, well, we met your dad. He’s just a regular bike cop guy. He seems harmless. They’re like, let’s figure out what’s going on. But because they don’t believe her immediately and because her dad has already told Dan, “Oh, she has an overactive imagination. She talks about all kinds of stuff all the time. You don’t have to like put up with it.”
Nelson: Yeah, fair enough.
Ethan: So her feelings are hurt. Dan follows to console her, but they’re both captured by Dora Argos’ hypnotic eye. Dan fights his way out, but Michi is trapped as the battle between the Zyurangers and Dora Argos begins in earnest. Then the main eye kind of weeps out Michi so that Totpat can finally fulfill his dream and drink her blood. But Dan is already there waiting to strike, having realized that damaging the main eye was their only path forward. Bandora turns Dora Argos into a giant and the Rangers summon Daizyujin to defeat him. There’s one last suspicious moment with Michi’s dad, but all is well between them in the end.
Andrew: Yeah, I loved this.
Ethan: It was a good one.
Andrew: It was great.
Ethan: The image of the, you know, probably 10 or 11 year old girl chasing around her dad, who is an armed police officer, with a baseball bat directly in front of the station, and he’s like hiding behind Dan like, “No violence, please!” It’s like, bro, you’re in the wrong line of work. You picked the wrong job.
Nelson: The match cut at the end, that was, that was a real nice touch.
Andrew: I didn’t love the last Sentai episode. It was fine, but I just, I had a hard time focusing. This one had my attention the entire time and part of it was that I looked ahead and I knew that we were going to see the Eye Guy again and I love the Eye Guy. I love the Eye Guy, but no, this was great. No notes. Michi’s great. The episode’s great.
Ethan: I love Michi.
Andrew: The fact that she’s threatening her cop dad is great. I wish I could spend more time threatening my cop dad.
Ethan: I hope she continues to do that.
Andrew: My dad’s not a cop anymore, but I should have spent more time threatening him.
Ethan: Why does she have a crucifix in her overalls pocket?
Andrew: Because she’s a monster hunter.
Nelson: Yeah, she stays prepared.
Ethan: I have here written: “Get his ass, Michi-chan.”
Nelson: Yeah. No, yeah. When she like comes out with the bat, it’s like…
Ethan: She’s like, ready! “I’m going to find you.” And she’s like, she has stepped unwittingly on Totpat’s foot and is like grinding it into the pavement.
Nelson: Yeah, and she’s just talking shit. She’s just like “Ima find you, and ima beat you.”
Ethan: And he’s like, biting tree branches to keep from crying out. It’s so funny.
Nelson: Oh yeah. No, she was about that business the entire time. It is great.
Ethan: And then I want to shout out again: the like, weeping effect on the last time that Michi comes out of the eye is like very gloopy and slow and gross. Very, very cool, incredibly well done.
Nelson: Also, honestly, this was probably, like cinematography-wise, my favorite episode. Just like the wide shots in front of the fountain, you know, like the match cut, you know, with her dad helping the lady at the end and like the vampire, like just a really well-directed episode.
Ethan: There’s also an ice-cold moment from Dan when he shoots Totpat straight in the back with the Ranger Gun. I wrote: “Totpat found dead in Tokyo.” I mean, he just like, nails him in the center of the spine. And then the first time Michi gets abducted, I said, “Don’t let him put you in the space camp gyroscope puker machine!”, which did not feature in this episode.
Nelson: That’s a clearly American invention.
Ethan: Yeah, addition, invention, whatever. But I was worried for her for a second, but they didn’t do that. They did something else. Yeah, no, this is this another great little episode. Definitely, I would say on par with or if not better than “Kyofu! Shunkan’ui” with Dora Circe. It’s just like if a kid sees a strange vision, she might just believe it. I mean, you know, media literacy and all that, we’ve had long conversations about that. And you know, that’s Dora Argos’ sort of hypnotic powers to able to convince her that this is the truth when she already has such an active imagination. It’s just good.
Andrew: Yep.
Ethna: And it’s not miserable in the way that Tohru was miserable. The kid whose dad was in prison, and whose mom died, and just wanted to give this ugly caterpillar to his friend… Like that kid was like miserable. This kid’s just like, she’s got some problems in her life, but she’s also got a baseball bat and she’s going to make it everyone else’s problem.
Andrew: She’s solving problems.
Nelson: She’s willing to solve it.
Ethan: Really good. I really like this one.
Nelson: Who’s got the research this week?
Andrew: I’ve got the research this week.
Andrew: As I’ve mentioned at several points over the past six episodes, I’m going to talk about video games. Specifically today, I’m going to talk about the first three Power Rangers titles, which are actually 10 different video games. Well, that’s not true.
Ethan: Is that just like a systems thing or…? I mean, I guess-
Andrew: You would expect it to be, yes. But no. Today, I’m going to talk about five of them and in a few weeks, I’ll talk about the remaining five. Today, we’re going to talk about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: the Video Game. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: the Video Game is the title of five separate video games, all released in 1994.
Ethan: So these are five distinct, non-port video games.
Andrew: Yes.
Ethan: That’s buckwild.
Andrew: But they are all called Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: the Video Game. They were released on the following platforms: the Sega Genesis, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy, the Sega Game Gear, and the Sega CD. In spite of being all released at the same time and under the same name, they are entirely different and wholly unique games.
Nelson: That’s gonna be real fun to find footage for.
Ethan: So were these all developed by Bandai?
Andrew: No. The Nintendo versions of the games were released by Bandai. But the Sega versions of the games were developed by Sega itself and then released by a Bandai subsidiary.
Ethan: Interesting.
Andrew: The Super NES version of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers is a side-scrolling action game composed of several stages with two different gameplay styles. So you’ve got like Power Rangers play and then you’ve got Megazord play.
Ethan: I was playing a little bit of this on my Odroid Go not that long ago.
Andrew: It’s an arcade-y kind of game and it’s really unpolished, very repetitive and pretty short. But you wouldn’t know it because it’s also super hard, like shockingly difficult.
Nelson: As most side-scrollers were back then.
Andrew: Sure, sure. But, like-
Nelson: There were some that were like, fair, but then you have like, the Aladdin tie-in game.
Andrew: Yeah, so that gets into a whole other thing, because that was a difficult Japanese game that was brought to the US and reskinned as an American game.
Nelson: Reskinned as Aladdin, yeah.
Andrew: And you end up with the same thing with like DuckTales, the DuckTales games for the NES. They’re incredibly hard, because they were not casual children’s games.
Nelson: No, they sure weren’t, bud! They sure weren’t.
Andrew: Power Rangers should have been a casual children’s game and it is unforgivably difficult.
Ethan: Before we get too much further in, I know the SNES one was explicitly a Power Rangers game. Were any of these Zyuranger games that were adapted?
Nelson: Ooooh!
Andrew: Not exactly.
Ethan: Okay, interesting.
Andrew: So the Game Boy version is also a side-scrolling action game, but with different levels and a vastly changed gameplay style. I also found it to be unfun and very short. It’s much easier, but it’s still just not a very good game and this is pre-Game Boy Color. This is during kind of the doldrums years for the Game Boy. The Game Boy was kind of a dead platform at this point.
Ethan: I don’t think I ever played this one. I had the Lightspeed Rescue Game Boy Color game.
Andrew: Right.
Nelson: Yeah, I think I remember exactly what game you’re talking about.
Ethan: But I don’t think I had this one or played this one. I definitely played the SNES game.
Andrew: Many Game Boy games at this era were just really bad because basically the only people who had Game Boys were young kids. Older kids were playing with the Game Gear. And it was not until Pokemon came out that the Game Boy really saw its resurgence, and that’s not for another two years.
Nelson: Yeah, because I didn’t have the Game Boy until Pokemon came out.
Pokemon Blue.
Andrew: So, the game that I was playing the most at this point in my life was Donkey Kong ’94. Came out the same year.
Ethan: That tracks.
Andrew: Probably one of the best puzzle platformers ever released. It’s just an excellent game. And that’s a Game Boy game. And to compare that alongside Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, to know that these were developed by people who had equivalent fluency with this hardware, it makes the Game Boy game in particular seem unfinished. Both of these games seemed like they were made by people who barely knew what made Power Rangers work and didn’t have enough time to finish the games. They play like proofs of concept shipped to market months too early. There’s probably a good idea hiding in these games, but it’s hiding really well.
Nelson: So I mean… hiding so well you think might not be there.
Andrew: So the Sega games are another story entirely, though. They are wildly different from the two Nintendo games. And the Sega games are another story, though. Unlike the Nintendo games, two of the Sega games might have been an attempt to make the same game on two different platforms. So I’m going to start with the best one, and I’m going to work backwards. Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers for the Sega Game Gear is a good, finished, reasonably polished fighting game. Of these first five Power Rangers game, it is the only good one.
Ethan: My cousin had a Game Gear, and I remember playing Sonic on it once or twice, and that’s the extent of my experience.
Nelson: I got no memories of a Game Gear.
Ethan: That was before your time, my friend.
Nelson: It sounds like such a made-up console.
Andrew: The Game Gear is like this big, and like that thick.
Ethan: It looks like a Steam Deck.
Andrew: Yeah, it looks like a Steam Deck, except it ran on like 20 batteries.
Nelson: Oh my god.
Andrew: Specifically, the Game Gear took six AA batteries, and those six AA batteries got it four hours of battery life.
Nelson: Only four hours.
Andrew: Now, compare that to the Game Boy, which ran on four AA batteries.
Ethan: Was it four?
Andrew: On the original, on the DMG.
Ethan: Oh, the big one.
Andrew: Yeah, the big one.
Ethan: I started with a Pocket.
Andrew: The original ran on four AA batteries for 30 hours.
Ethan: Mhm.
Nelson: That’s crazy. 30 hours?
Andrew: So basically-
Ethan: Oh yeah, the Game Boy, if you look into like the technical specs, the whole Game Boy line was like-
Andrew: Incredibly underpowered.
Ethan: Incredibly… not just, I mean, not merely underpowered, but like hyper-efficient with the way that it worked.
Nelson: No, because I remember, yeah, as a kid, like, I would mainly- I would maybe change my batteries like once a week on my Game Boy.
Andrew: So yeah, less than that, maybe once every two or three. And that was, again, on my DMG, four batteries. So you’d be a little more often on a Pocket or a Color. But the Game Gear- there’s, there’s a reason that, and I hadn’t intended to go down this Game Gear kick, but since we’re talking about it and I realized that a lot of our audience might be unfamiliar with it, there’s a reason that the Game Gear was so power hungry. The Game Gear was not designed to be a portable console.
Ethan: That makes sense.
Nelson: It is supposed to be like stationary?
Ethan: Did it have an AC adapter?
Andrew: Yes, it did.
Ethan: Could you run it off- okay.
Andrew: It is the Sega Master System, Sega’s 8-bit console, their NES rival, shrunk down and put in a handheld box.
Ethan: So they were on some Nintendo DS s–t, like 30 years early.
Nelson: That’s crazy.
Andrew: They took what was the most powerful console of the 8-bit era, and they said, let’s put it in your backpack. Not in your pocket, because it’s too big, but in your backpack. So that’s the Game Gear. It debuted in the U.S. in 1991. It was still new. It was competing with the Game Boy, but the Game Gear was winning.
Nelson: Yeah, that’s definitely before my time.
Andrew: It was a much better console, aside from the battery life. So everybody I knew who had one, because I never had one, but everybody I knew who had one had the AC adapter, kept it plugged in. You used it like you would use a laptop today.
Ethan: Yeah! No, I mean, it’s almost like a Switch.
Nelson: It’s funny because your laptop’s not plugged in.
Andrew: No, it’s not.
Ethan: Oh, I just put a new battery in mine a few weeks ago, so we’re f–kin rolling over here.
Andrew: And I’ve got 12% left, so we’ll see how long that lasts. But the Game Gear was a kind of interesting console in that it was, like I said, it was basically just the Sega Master System, which meant that people who had developed games for the Sega Master System had like six or seven years of development experience by this point, on the exact same hardware that went into the Game Gear. So when Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers for the Sega Game Gear came out, of course it was the best one, because everybody who was developing for it had the skills and ability to make it a good game. So Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers for the Sega Game Gear is a good, finished, reasonably well-polished fighting game. It has a single-player story game which features a series of plot-based battles against an assortment of enemies, a single-player versus computer mode, and a two-player link game using Game Gear link cables.
Ethan: Interesting.
Andrew: Yes. The single-player story mode basically plays like single-player mode in Smash. It’s a series of events that you have to do using the fighting game physics and mechanics, but it’s not just straight fighting game levels. And of this first generation of Power Rangers games, it’s absolutely the best. The Genesis game is also a 2D fighting game, and it looks like it may have been intended to be a port of this Game Gear game, but that’s not what you end up with. It has way more moves, fewer levels, and basically no balance. It also barely has a story mode. The story mode is like an arcade mode where you just fight each of the enemies in order.
Ethan: Is this the one where you are enamored with the…
Nelson: The Blue Ranger.
Andrew: The Blue Ranger, yeah, the lance.
Nelson: Because it’s the most powerful thing in the game?
Andrew: Yes.
Ethan: I mean, I think you said it’s like the longest-range attack in the game.
Andrew: By a wide margin.
Ethan: So you just… “No, you stay over there.”
Nelson: Oh, man.
Andrew: You can just juggle enemies, because he’s got this massive lance. There’s two or three different button combos that you can use to pull the lance out, but unlike a lot of these things which require like three-quarter turns, the Blue Ranger’s moves only require a quarter turn or a half turn, which is just much easier to pull off than the Genesis controllers.
Nelson: That’s like Kilik in Soul Calibur. You know, you just keep them back with that big stick.
Andrew: Uh-huh. So you can just juggle people with this. So the Genesis game, it’s a 2D fighting game. There’s more that you can do. I don’t remember how they compare in characters, and I should have written that down, but it doesn’t matter. It feels like it was based on the same design document as the Game Gear game, but by a team that had never made a game for the Genesis before. It feels like my first Genesis game. It’s objectively a pretty bad and a very difficult game, but that doesn’t matter, okay?
Nelson: It’s okay.
Andrew: What matters is that you could get your friends together at a sleepover and make the Megazord and the Dragonzord fight on the family TV.
Nelson: That’s what it was all about back then, you know?
Andrew: This would make a horrible game for a serious tournament. You would not be able to have serious players playing this game because it would just be two different people playing as Billy, standing in opposite corners, trying to stab each other with the lance. It is incredibly entertaining for a casual game night. You get some friends together, especially young kids, and the game is pretty easy to pick up. There are a handful of moves that you could stumble across accidentally, and there are a bunch that you will never find no matter how hard you try, because it’s like three-quarter circles and full circles on the joystick and like- or on the D-pad, and nobody does that. Who does a full circle on the D-pad?
Nelson: If you’re button mashing, you might just pull it off.
Andrew: Maybe.
Nelson: It’s possible.
Andrew: This is a fun game to pick up and try, and we will absolutely at some point do a tournament because it is fun for that, but it’s not good. You know, if you want a good game, go get the Game Gear game. Play it in an emulator, not on an original Game Gear, because dear god, who can afford the batteries?
Nelson: I mean… yeah.
Ethan: You got your rechargeables.
Nelson: Or you can just plug it in.
Andrew: Or you can just plug it in. Anyway, that brings us to the final game to carry the name Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.
Ethan: The Video Ggame.
Andrew: The Video Game. This is for the Sega CD. (to Ethan) Do you remember the Sega CD?
Ethan: No.
Andrew: (to Nelson) Do you remember the Sega CD?
Nelson: If Ethan doesn’t remember, what makes you think I will?
Ethan: My friend Will had a Dreamcast; my cousin Jake had a Game Gear; I never knew anyone with a Sega CD.
Andrew: Okay, so the Sega…
Ethan: I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one of those.
Nelson: Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen one of those.
Andrew: I have owned a Sega CD, contemporary to them being out. Back in the day.
Nelson: I gotta to see what these things look like.
Andrew: So the Sega CD was an add-on for the Sega Genesis. The Sega Genesis had a lot of add-ons.
Nelson: Oh wait, so it was the attachment that you put on the Sega Genesis?
Andrew: So there were two. One was called the 32X and it went in the cartridge slot. And it was just a bunch of support chips for the Genesis.
Nelson: Okay.
Andrew: And in the Sega CD, the Genesis docks into the Sega CD and it sits to the side. And-
Nelson: Okay, I see what you’re talking about. See, I’m thinking about the other one, the cartridge thing that you put into the Sega…
Andrew: The 32X.
Nelson: Yeah. Oh, this thing looks crazy.
Andrew: So the Sega CD added a CD drive to your Sega Genesis. And that meant that you could get a CD quality audio. And it adds some extra processing power and some other stuff. But it also meant that you could get, if you really wanted it, full motion video. Now, I don’t recommend getting full motion video on a Sega CD.
Ethan: (laughing) 16-bit…
Andrew: Because you’ve got a 16-bit console trying to render full motion video off of a CD that only holds 600 megabytes of data.
Nelson: Jesus.
Andrew: So that brings us to Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: the Video Game for the Sega CD. The game was produced by a Sega subsidiary called True Video. Can you see where this is going?
Ethan: Uh-huh.
Andrew: Well, it’s barely a game. It is a series of quick-time events played over footage from nine Power Rangers episodes. But badly digitized and compressed all to hell. The game also commits one of the biggest gaming sins, in my opinion. The game has a total of ten levels, but levels six and seven are not reachable on easy mode. And levels eight, nine, and ten are only-
Nelson: Wait, so it’s like a point-and-click game, but still has hard levels?
Andrew: Quick-time events.
Nelson: Okay. So I’m thinking of what a lot of CD-ROM games are going to be.
Andrew: No, it’s not like a point-and-click adventure game. It’s like video plays out in real time, and then you have ten seconds to press the right button to advance to the next video clip or your player dies.
Nelson: Oh, that’s real dumb.
Andrew: It’s horrible.
Nelson: How do you have quick TE with such low processing power?
Andrew: So on the-
Nelson: Like that long ago?
Andrew: On the easy version of the game, you have a long time. And on the medium version of the game, you have a shorter time. And on the hard version of the game, you’ve got like one second. So levels eight, nine, and ten are only playable on hard mode. I hate when any game does this, but it’s especially unforgiveable in a kid’s game.
Nelson: Wait, why are they only playable on hard mode?
Andrew: Because if you’re playing on easy mode, you can’t get to level six, seven, eight, nine, or ten. You just can’t do it. (Nelson stares.) Uh-huh.
Nelson: Why not?
Andrew: Because they have chosen to lock you out of those levels. They have chosen to make those levels only accessible on normal and hard mode.
Nelson: Why would they do that?
Andrew: Because they hate children. This is not a super uncommon thing for video games from the 80s and 90s. It’s weird in a game that is just quick time events over video, but it’s not especially uncommon. But it is absolutely unforgivable in a kid’s game.
Nelson: It’s a kid’s- It’s a Power Rangers game. Geez, man.
Andrew: So this is by far the worst of all of the Power Rangers games to carry the name Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. It’s bad. And I said nine episodes; it uses footage from nine episodes, but it condenses them all
really heavily.
Ethan: I’m sure.
Andrew: So the Genesis games all feature the Green Ranger.
Ethan: Okay.
Nelson: I mean, you gotta put your best foot forward.
Andrew: The Nintendo games do not. Neither of the Nintendo games features or mentions the Green Ranger at all.
Ethan: Not even as a unlockable?
Andrew: Uh-uh.
Nelson: So these were done way before that.
Andrew: He’s not there at all. But in all the Genesis games, he is there.
Ethan: Okay.
Andrew: You asked if any of these were reskinned Sentai games.
Ethan: Yeah.
Andrew: I don’t know what the Sentai game space looks like. That’s something we’ll have to talk about in a future episode, but at least the Genesis game uses assets that were clearly intended for a Sentai game. They don’t fight in front of Rita’s Palace. They fight in front of Witch Bandora’s Palace.
Ethan: Interesting…
Andrew: With the signage up.
Ethan: Interesting!
Andrew: And there are several other Japanese characters that sneak their way into the Genesis game, to the point that it looks like maybe they were actually working on a Sentai game and scrapped it to make a Power Rangers game so that they could make more money.
Ethan: Yeah.
Andrew: It’s a really kind of odd thing. So yeah, that’s the first five Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers games, the ones that were released under the name Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: the Video Game. They’d be followed up a few months later by two more titles that are actually five more games. And I’ll talk about those in the next segment and then I’ll get into the Japanese games. But if you were a Power Rangers fan circa 1994, 1995, you were bound to be incredibly disappointed by these, unless you also happened to be the kind of insufferable rich kid who had a Game Gear.
Ethan: Yeah. I mean, my cousin definitely wasn’t rich, but like I got a Game Boy; he got a Game Gear. Those were just the decisions that we made for what we wanted.
Andrew: The Game Gear was more expensive and ate batteries. So like in order to actually play the Game Gear, you either needed the AC adapter or you were just spending a ton of money on batteries.
Ethan: And this is well before like, these Ni-CAD rechargeables that Nelson has brought for his cameras were like common.
Nelson: Oh no, these were here when I got here.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I just keep a bunch of AAs everywhere because I use a bunch of stuff that just uses AAs. Like these cameras that I’m shooting are…
Nelson: Yeah, no, it’s funny because I got here, as soon as I got here, I was like, ah, s–t. Because that was the one thing that I forgot because you gave me a pack of these the last time I was here and they were just sitting on my desk.
Ethan: Rolling back to insufferable rich kids, one of the kids at my babysitter’s did have–I’ve mentioned him before, his name was Brad–he had every toy, every thing, and one or two days he brought his Super Nintendo and let us play the Power Rangers game on the tiny, tiny little TV.
Andrew: So was it Mighty Motion Power Rangers: the Video Game or was it Mighty Motion Power Rangers: the Movie: the Video Game?
Ethan: It was definitely not the movie version.
Andrew: Okay.
Ethan: It was the earlier one. This was before the movie came out.
Andrew: Okay.
Ethan: So that’s like one of my only memories of any of these Power Rangers video games before like the year 2000.
Andrew: That is the distinction for the next one. It is Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: the Movie, the Video Game.
Nelson: Yup. That’s one with the White Ranger.
Ethan: As we know, movie tie-in games are always awesome and great and there’s never any problems with them.
Andrew: So, I played these, including the Sega CD one. I mentioned earlier that I had had a Sega CD. I ended up with it in like 2002. It was a friend of ours. I picked up the Sega CD from him at a yard sale and the Power Rangers game. But I feel like I have to talk for at least a second about the other full motion video games because you had mentioned the other CD-ROM games and you were asking how you do a quick time event in a game like this.
Nelson: Yeah, how do you do that?
Andrew: So this kind of game predates the CD.
Nelson: Oh lord.
Andrew: This kind of game was pioneered on the LaserDisc. Familiar with LaserDiscs?
Ethan: Yeah.
Nelson: Barely.
Andrew: Okay. So for those who don’t know, because there’s a lot of reasons why you wouldn’t, a LaserDisc is a 12-inch optical disc, double-sided, that plays movies at basically VHS resolution, although they tend to look a little better than a VHS.
Nelson: LaserDiscs. Man, that’s… Wow.
Andrew: They were huge.
Ethan: Not just in size, but like extremely popular.
Andrew: Yeah, that too.
Ethan: Especially in Japan, as I’ve learned, lots of Gundam shows prior to 2000-ish.
Nelson: Were on LaserDisc?
Ethan: Yeah. They’ve got tons of LaserDisc releases.
Andrew: So LaserDiscs, much like a DVD, you could seek. You could jump to a specific segment of the disc. And-
Nelson: Like they had the option to do that?
Andrew: Yeah. There were certain LaserDisc players that had wired remotes.
Nelson: So you could like, chapter hop.
Andrew: Yeah. You could press a button on the remote to hop to a specific chapter. And there were a couple of LaserDisc players that you could connect to a computer. The computer, over its serial port, would control the LaserDisc player, and make it play specific segments over and over again, or make it jump between segments, or trigger other events, okay? So some enterprising dude, Don Bluth is the dude’s name.
Nelson: Don Bluth? You talking about the cartoonist?
Andrew: Uh-huh. Don Bluth made three cartoons. One of them is called Space Ace, one of them is called Dragon’s Lair, and one of them is called…
Nelson: I know about Dragon’s Lair. “Dragon’s Laaaiiirrr!” Yeah, I know about Dragon’s Lair, man. Notoriously hard game with impossible-to-get-to last level.
Andrew: I don’t know the last one, but regardless, these games were not video games. They just weren’t.
Nelson: Okay. So if it was like a quick time thing like Dragon’s Lair, they’re like, okay, so I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Andrew: So these were released in arcades, and it was a cartoon that you could only watch if you paid $2 and then completed all of the nonsensical rhythm sections. And the way that this worked, basically, is that you did not have enough time to react. You just didn’t. So you had to play it over and over again and memorize it.
Nelson: That was the problem with Dragon’s Lair, like the impossible-to -get-to last level was because it was just so, you know, so quick that like, yeah, you’d have to memorize it, and then still- it’s still…
Andrew: And it was a dollar every time you played it.
Nelson: So like, it’s just hard enough that they would get you coming back.
Andrew: And it was beautiful compared to any other video game on the market. I mean, it was hand-animated by Don Bluth, you know, like, it looked fantastic. So what Sega did was to take that concept and bring it home in all the worst ways. It looked worse; it was less functional. Now an interesting thing about these LaserDisc games that you’ll find as you start digging into them is that they were brutal to the LaserDisc players.
Ethan: Oh I bet.
Andrew: And when you find these arcade games out there now, they do not work, because the act of running the game just destroyed the hardware that was supposed to be running the game.
Ethan: No, right, you’ve got that little motorized spindle, and for a CD that weighs an ounce, you can spin that in any direction, at any speed, and you are never going to…
Andrew: But you’ve got some inertia here.
Ethan: But the LaserDiscs are like, weighty. They are weighty. That little spindle motor…
Nelson: Gonna start a fire in there.
Ethan: Potentially!
Andrew: And then you’ve got the read head that is shooting back and forth and trying to read both sides at the same time, and these machines would just destroy themselves.
Nelson: Yeah, that sounds like it would wear something down.
Ethan: And then, correct me if I’m wrong, but the LaserDiscs in their, like mirror coating, had like an organic component that would also decay over time at varying speeds and varying rates depending on usage. But there’s like a lot- there’s a huge portion of LaserDiscs today that just don’t work anymore because the organic, I don’t know if it’s a glue or it’s something else, but it’s just decayed over time. Yeah, very, like I said, a beefy medium.
Nelson: A beefy disc.
Andrew: So yeah, that’s the Sega CD game. Anything else?
Nelson: That’s a lot of games.
Ethan: I think that’s really interesting that they were all developed separately; none of them are ports of each other. I don’t know, there’s like a weird middle ground here because like Breakout, for example, has been ported to every game system known, and probably several that have never even been heard of. And then today, I mean, you have some console exclusives in video games today, but by and large, things are mostly on at least two: PC and Xbox or…
Andrew: And the way that we’re able to get away with that today is that these games are developed for an engine, and then that engine has been ported to these multiple platforms, and at the time, especially early on in the 16-bit era, these 16-bit consoles were entirely incompatible with one another, and there were a ton of console exclusives.
Ethan: And everything was built from scratch.
Andrew: So if you wanted to go wide, you either had to release one first and then painstakingly port it over, or you had to release two different games, and it was a really common strategy for merchandise tie-in games to just pick existing games on either platform, reskin them and release them as if they were the same game, when they were wildly different. All of the Disney games are like that, The Lion King and Aladdin.
Nelson: Oh, don’t even get me started on that Lion King game, god, man. I feel like it was a reskin of a Kimba of the White Lion game, because if it is, that’d be so funny.
Andrew: I have absolutely no idea. But what I do know is that even for games that were developed from scratch, like Toy Story- Toy Story for the Sega Genesis versus Toy Story for the Super Nintendo, they are just different games.
Nelson: Those are completely different games, yeah.
Andrew: And they have basically nothing in common. So this was just the strategy. You got different versions of the game depending on which platform you were on. But I’ve never seen another platform that went so wide, five different games in development at once.
Ethan: Yeah. And none of them having anything in common, you know, they’re not sharing assets.
Andrew: And we’ll pull five more out in my next segment.
Nelson: All right.
Ethan: Wow.
Nelson: Well, I think that wraps us up here for today.
Ethan: For sure.
Nelson: We’ll be back with another episode in two weeks. Ethan, you want to tell them what we’ll be back with?
Ethan: Yeah. we’ll be back next time to discuss episodes 13 of Zyuranger “Ute! Ogon no ya (Fire! the Golden Arrow),” and Power Rangers, “Peace, Love, and Woe.” If you’ve enjoyed this show, please feel free to send me $5, and if you want to find me online, don’t. But you can follow the show on the Fediverse @KenkyuuSentaiPodcastRangers@Meet.CommunityMedia.network. Andrew, what do you want to plug today?
Andrew: You can follow me online @AJRoach42 on most platforms. I’m at retro.social on the Fediverse. You can also buy my music from analogrevolution.com.
Nelson: Yeah, buy some records.
Andrew: Yeah. We’re in the process of releasing Michael Cera Palin’s first two EPs as a new special vinyl release.
Ethan: Nice.
Andrew: And it’s going to be gorgeous. And they’re good dudes…
Nelson: And folks.
Andrew: Yeah.
Nelson: Cool.
Ethan: Nelson, whatchu got?
Nelson: Me, hey, I’ll keep it simple. Keep it 100. Keep it a buck, as the kids say. I’m working on a couple different things. Hopefully by the time this episode comes out, my video, the story of slash reaction video to My Friend Power Five will hopefully be done.
Ethan: Oh!
Nelson: Because we mentioned it in an earlier episode, I was just sitting on the side producing that.
Ethan: That was like episode two or three, I think.
Nelson: Two or three. And I pulled it up on YouTube and was immediately disgusted and elated.
Ethan: Fascinated.
Nelson: And so I recorded an entire reaction of me, like watching that video. And there’s some historical information, so it’s not just me dunking on this movie.
Andrew: There’s a lot to dunk on.
Nelson: There’s a lot to dunk on. But there’s that, Working Class Music. You can watch that here on New Ellijay TV, buy some records from Analog Revolution.
Andrew: Maybe one day we’ll get a John Thefruitman tape.
Nelson: Maybe one day you’ll get a John Thefruitman tape. Maybe, I don’t know, I’ve got some electronic music under the title Fixing Nothing. You can find that on Bandcamp. Do you have any of that? Do you have any of that? Any of the electronic stuff?
Andrew: I don’t.
Nelson: I’ll send it to you.
Andrew: Okay.
Nelson: It’s, yeah.
Andrew: I’ll use it.
Nelson: Sure. I mean, there’s plenty to use. I made a lot of it, but yeah, that’s it for me.
Ethan: Awesome. Thank you. That’s all the show we have for you today. Thank you so much for listening and thanks also to Hurly-Burly and the Volcanic Fallout for the use of their song “Colossal Might (totally radical instrumental version)” for our intro and outro music. Kenkyuu Sentai Podcast Rangers is licensed CC-BY-SA and produced in collaboration with New Ellijay Television at the Ellijay Makerspace, which stands on the ancestral, unceded, stolen, and occupied lands of the Cherokee people. You can learn more about the Makerspace by visiting EllijayMakerspace.org and you can learn more about the Cherokee people by visiting Cherokee.org. Strength, love, and solidarity to all oppressed people and in the words of a wise man, f–k capitalism, go home.
Nelson: Yeah!
