Secret Service, secret scrolls: Bad Dudes & Flying Dragon | NES Works 138

[@billcook4768]

“The president has been kidnapped by ninjas” is one of the great opening lines. Up there with “It is a truth universally acknowledged” and “It was a dark and stormy night.”

[@JeremyParish]

How come all the classics use passive voice? My English teachers would absolutely plotz

[@andrewkaye2108]

Agreed. Those pesky shadow organizations!!! Get em Bad Dudes!

[@gluttonousmaximus9048]

"In AD 2101 War was beginning."

[@nfugitt89]

The tongue in cheek horror that the Japanese had even swiped Americans' xenophobic existential fear of them was insanely funny to me

[@jasonx1580]

They were simply pandering to what they assumed American kids thaught was "Cool", "Gnarly", or "Radical".

[@trapmouth]

“Ninjas have kidnapped the president!” We really used to live in such a different world.

[@EdwardoFE]

I appreciate the deeper look into Karnov lore. Curious to see how Karnov's Revenge will fit in once Neo Geo Works covers it in 2030.

[@malkneil]

I like how everyone ups their vocab/grammar game when commenting on JP's videos. Iron sharpens iron.

[@pennsworth996]

Indubitably, apposite lexicon is requisite for palavering, dude.

[@malkneil]

@@pennsworth996 eschew obfuscation please!

[@pennsworth996]

@@malkneil My magniloquence repudiated! Ack!

[@timallenbrown]

I'm losing my perspicacity!

[@BanditTheCat2017]

Me likes dis yootub vidoe

[@RabbitEarsCh]

Realizing Seinfeld started in 1989 hits like a brick. Somehow it crossing the threshold into the 80s makes it feel infinitely more ancient. I never gave too much thought to Bad Dudes beyond the memes before now, but it seems like a perfectly cromulent game with Data East's coolness all over it. Data East games aren't always the best, but man did their artists go all in with every release, especially stuff like the Fighter's History series later on. The Matt Alt shoutout is very appreciated. The book is fantastic, and does a great deep dive into the anxiety felt in the US at the time of this game's release; I had no idea it had gotten that bad until I read his book. I highly recommend anyone who enjoys these retrospectives to read it, as it gives a level of context to so many things you otherwise might not even think about.

[@kennethchia4194]

As "The Seinfeld Chronicles" IIRC. But it didn't stick with NBC right away?

[@fangjokerLS]

"The President has been kidnapped by ninjas. The only people who can save him are two dudes in zubaz fresh from the gym who keep dropping their nunchuks." BAD DUDES really feels like a game that adapted a Godfrey Ho movie, though the retail price for a Bad Dudes cart was more than triple the budget for one of his movies.

[@shoplifterfpd]

I played a *lot* of Shanghai Kid as a youth, and immediately connected the two games when I saw Flying Dragon in Nintendo Power. I absolutely *adore* Culture Brain - I've always been the type to appreciate genre fusion or bold ideas, and they had it in nearly every release. I was lucky enough to be able to visit their office (I actually just showed up at the door and they let me in for an hour to pick their brains) back in 1999 and it was a high point for me as a gamer.

[@chazmaru9583]

Huh! As a European kid from the 80s, I had never really considered the US vs. Japan angle of pitches like Bad Dudes (and the "ninja" menace as a whole in Western media). Fascinating angle, JP.

[@larryb5677]

Really is strange that there is a game called Contra, and it ISN'T the one where you rescue Reagan

[@rootbeer_666]

No need, Ollie North was already busy doing that

[@Supadupanerd]

Didn't it involve skateboards and you had to ollie north to advance?

[@larryb5677]

The sequel to Gleaming The Cuban Missile Crisis

[@JeremyParish]

@larryb5677 Underrated comment IMO

[@baardbi]

I love that you talk about politics and all sorts of things to put the games into context of their time. That's one of the things that makes this channel unique.

[@cashnelson2306]

It’s depressing that’s a unique feature

[@pheenmachine]

Exactly. Art isn't created in a vacuum

[@YOUCANTDOTHATONROBITUSSI-sl6em]

Same. A games journalist who is able to critically review games on their artistic and technical merit, and also apply a critical dialectical material analysis is criminally rare. Jeremy is a treasure.

[@mendez704]

"Because the idea of an American president serving actually fast food burgers at a White House function was farcically stupid in 1989" You nailed it! LOLLLL

[@subtlewhatssubtle]

As a student I visited the White House once on one of those "hey kids, see the workings of government" tours they used to hold more of before 9-11. In my mind I always perceived it as a 'fancy' place, with the feeling that something built with such Enlightenment-era sensibilities would always have at least *some* inherent classiness. I suppose time makes fools of us all.

[@sparetireXGE]

Fwiw hot dogs and beer were served by FDR

[@andrewkaye2108]

Hmmmm. That sounds familar....

[@tsvtsvtsv]

​@@sparetireXGEthose were CLASSY hot dogs and beer

[@subtlewhatssubtle]

@@tsvtsvtsv I get this is a joke, but it was actually still classy in that it was a private, friendly affair with no pretense or ostentation. Unlike certain events, it was not a displayed spread attempting to impress but a small picnic on White House grounds. It was not only a shared moment of friendship, but also a means to allow the King and Queen of England (stressed out for obvious reasons in 1939) to enjoy some small amount of time as people rather than being heads of state. A person can be classy in showing empathy and being an understanding host who eases the burdens on his guests.

[@devmech]

"Save the Princess-in-Chief" 🤣🤣🤣 you have out done yourself, sir. Bravo!

[@thewolfgabe3656]

"Politics don't belong in video games!" Sox the Cat: Am I joke to you?

[@angrytheclown801]

I once described this to a younger friend as "Two street toughs allergic to sleeves and a deep love of pajama pants fresh from their class in the mall dojo have to rescue the president with the laziest army and secret service ever from a clan of ninjas with no sense of stealth. Yet it's fun!"

[@MrERLoner]

Rex Kwon Do practitioners

[@Retroman8000]

Kickboxer 2 3 or 4 basically anything Sasha Mitchell lol

[@mark6302]

damn. we will never have a NES game portraying Chiquita Banana financing The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia :(

[@JeremyParish]

There's probably a Yo! Noid ROM hack in there somewhere

[@BanditTheCat2017]

In Bad Dudes, hold down punch, you start glowing, release and you do a fire punch

[@makaveli4205]

I played that game all the time. Never knew that.

[@timothyrothrock7087]

I was just going to say that myself...makes the game a whole lot easier.

[@cswiv]

really great how you immediately and directly situate your historiography at the top of the vid--and my god, you actually are doing Reagan Works! pure wish fulfillment.

[@timallenbrown]

Having Reagan at home seems terrifying

[@JeremyParish]

Bad news about the Panopticon

[@stopmikeandjim3196]

2:20 I remember when I first saw this cutscene in John Elway's Quarterback. I was so confused as to why it had FMV of Japanese royalty in the game, but it looked cool nonetheless. I wonder if the FMV took up too much storage space, which might be why the game's character models look so bad

[@wyvern2917]

I prefer to call it by its original Japanese title, John Elway's Imperial Transfer of Ceremonial Power.

[@HydefHyde]

My Wednesday morning routine: A nice bagel, a coffee, and a new NES Works video. Thanks as always, JP.

[@BillyTBum]

I also just realized that, while you commented on the arcade's 2-player co-op, you didn't mention that the NES version was limited to 2-player alternating mode instead (another one of the compromises made in translation). That's budget cuts for you, I guess, when you can't even spare the CIA to go rescue the president so you just inspire a couple of street toughs to do it on the cheap by questioning their badness.

[@JeremyParish]

I wasn't able to test the NES 2P version due to my second controller being in storage, so I just kinda glossed over it. But given how hard this port pushes the console, it probably would have been too much to expect simultaneous play.

[@marxisttheoryandlore]

Don't blame me, I voted for the ninjas

[@robintst]

The stuttering and flickering movement of the game is trademark Data East.

[@XanthinZarda]

Data East: Better than Micronics...but not by a whole lot!

[@makaveli4205]

Lot of earlier Nintendo games slowed down and flickered. When to many objects are on the screen.

[@sebastiangorka200]

@@makaveli4205 one can adapt to consistent slowdown easier than to stutter. sometimes consistent slowdown is a blessing in disguise, a poor man's bullet time.

[@BillyTBum]

1989: "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?" 2024: "The president has been rescued by dudes. Are you a bad enough ninja to kidnap the president?"

[@rhombusx]

It's funny, as a kid, I never really read the ninjas that were so ubiquitous in 80s and 90s cultures as actually Japanese. I know that sounds silly, but "ninjas" were everywhere in games and movies, and often portrayed as some kind of themed street gang - more like something you'd see in The Warriors, or like the Foot Clan being a bunch of wayward American teen punks in the TMNT movie.

[@intergalacticwalrus]

Wait, I thought the NES version of Bad Dudes didn’t actually have simultaneous 2 player? I definitely remember being super disappointed about it, since my first experience with the game was the original arcade version.

[@StuffedVulture]

It doesn't. It has alternating style, just like Kung Fu. I'm not sure why Jeremy kept talking about playing it with two players, but then showing footage of the arcade version whenever he did. Weird choice.

[@jandrem]

@@StuffedVulturehe probably just assumed it was 2-player simultaneously since the arcade did, and the NES version has a 2-player option. Minor oversight.

[@AverageDrafter]

My favorite observation of the Jan 6 rioters were "they were expecting to have cheeseburgers with Ronnie at the end".

[@XanthinZarda]

Cheeseburgers, and a coupon to -Babbages- -EBGames- Gamestop!

[@apollosungod2819]

And when they all got arrested, most of them pretended to be vegans with specific diets while denying they worshipped a steak brand and fast food salesman.

[@DirtiestDMusic]

*insurrectionists

[@michielkroder4031]

I always thought the NES version of Bad Dudes felt, well, bad to play. Like it has all these animation frames missing and strange sticky and choppy movement. It must run at some lower frame rate where it concerns the movement of the player characters and even the enemies..? EDIT: oh you did touch on that! :D

[@thecunninlynguist]

I'm a bad enough dude to rescue the president from dragon ninja!

[@owlyus]

The Shanghai Kid looks like a French Savate master. My head canon is that he's Vega before joining Shadaloo and donning his mask and claw

[@Obscusion2]

The amusing thing is that, since the dissolution of Data East, Karnov has been split up between companies. Paon DP owns the rights to the OG Karnov from the arcade & NES games, while G-mode owns the Karnov that's seen in both Bad Dudes & Fighters History. However, neither company has seemingly produced any new game that truly brings Karnov into the modern day, with the closest being Garou Densetsu vs. Fighter's History Dynamite, a an old mobile phone beat-em-up from G-mode that I believe is just based on Karnov's FHD sprite. Really makes you wonder which company actually owns the rights to the character himself.

[@makaveli4205]

Karnov was a really hard game. I couldn't get far in the arcade.

[@mendez704]

There is also something to say about a Japanese made game that not only exalts xenophobic anti-Japanese feelings in the US, but that is also played in a Japanese made console that absolutely dominates the American market at the time...

[@jasonx1580]

They were simply pandering to what they assumed American kids thaught was "Cool", "Gnarly", or "Radical".

[@LakituAl]

This reminds me of Metal Slug 3. One particular secret route has you run through an underground cave claimed by what's implied to be a Japanese army branch that doesn't know the war is over and has been stuck there since. Their tanks no longer have threads and they ride them Fred Flintstone style. The whole things ridiculous down to some goofyass music. You would think whoever made the game really didn't like the Japanese, yet it's SNK. The N in their name stands for Nihon, even!

[@walylama1672]

In 1988 I was 7 years old. I was 100% convinced that if it came down to it, I could emulate the kid-karate I saw in movies enough to destroy a full grown man . 😅

[@theironfox2756]

There needs to be a movie adaptation of Bad Dudes. It needs to be a comedy that rips the 80s.

[@waxknucklebearingjuice5592]

Have you seen "kung fury" ? If not , go watch it now!

[@gfhrtshergheghegewgewgew1730]

videogames spring from some pure realm where things like money and politics don't exist /s no, i'm glad you actually talk about the surrounding topics, because it helps preserve the history, especially and specifically when it comes to the games, your journalistic work in these series is spectacular, even if it's underappreciated or much maligned among certain people, but i appreciate it a lot to be honest with you jeremy

[@gfhrtshergheghegewgewgew1730]

ah, so this is the gensis of hiryu no ken, it actually has some sick fighting games on monochrome game boy

[@jessragan6714]

Flying Warriors had a series of totally bananas comics in GamePro magazine ("Gosh! I must defeat you!"), along with a comic series starring the Little Ninja Brothers. Early 1990s print media sure was an experience.

[@wyvern2917]

Those comics are why I can't wait for this series to get to Culture Brain's later output.

[@SetTopGames]

... Jeremy. Did... you not know that holding down the punch button in Bad Dudes charges up an attack that can instakill any normal mook or push back a boss to give you some breathing room? And that you could destroy the caltrops by kneeling and pressing attack? It seems a bit odd that you didn't bring that up, especially the caltrops kick, it's very helpful in the truck stages so you don't have to fall down to the road to get around them.

[@PaulSoth]

Bad Dudes is such a wonderful absurdity of the era. With all the beat-em-ups and run-and-gun games, you can see how Japanese developers were utterly enthralled with 80s American action films and Bad Dudes is utterly satirical with its approach to this formula. Considering that Data East would later produce Trio the Punch, you can tell that they just loved being ridiculous for its own sake.

[@rodneylives]

Not only are video games inseparable from real world events.... I play a fair number of board games, or try to anyway, and there are several categories. My least favorite kind are the sadly common super pandering type that's all about killing zombies or being a pirate or so on. My favorite kinds, however, are those with a historical basis, like Caylus (medieval French town building )or Puerto Rico (island colonialism, which has its problematic side, yes), or the various works of Uwe Rosenberg, like Agricola (medieval subsistence farming) or A Feast For Odin (viking exploration, trade and rading). All of these games are highly abstract, built off of a pile of interconnected game systems that only looks like reality if you squint. But still, ultimately, one of the reasons those games are interesting is that they lean into their connection to past history. All games, board and video, without exception, are abstract contests that recreate their subject matter through artificial mechanisms. It's largely the point of them. But there is a universe of game ideas that, being wholly abstract, are basically unplayable. Our understanding of our world is a tether into that one that prevents us from drifting away into nonsense, presenting an interface by which we can grasp those mechanics and translate them into a metaphor, both for the ostensible subject of the game, but also for their mechanics. It gives us an excuse to play with dolls, but also an excuse to play with numbers. Well. That was certainly a bunch of navel gazing nonsense! But ultimately, I think it's true.

[@fineandsmurfy]

I love watching your videos, been listening to Retronauts since early 1UP days. Thanks for making such detailed well thought out videos. Really great work you do.

[@KLGChaos]

I find people only tell you politics shouldn't be in something if they disagree with you.

[@lounowell4171]

Tho by the same token, people only seem to feel politics is pertinent when they agree with it

[@eldickboygrande]

"No politics" is code for "we don't want to get ridiculed for our abhorrent opinions"

[@teruienages962]

This is one of the more shockingly positive reviews I've seen of Bad Dudes. Usually this game is just lamblasted for being choppy, the physics being godawfully sluggish and clunky, and the bad control making the difficulty unfair. The majority of people aren't nearly as kind to this game as you seem to be.

[@chamchamtrigger]

My love of Flying Dragon, and the rest of the Hiryu no Ken games definitely comes from the fact that I played them as a kid. I enjoy playing those games, even now, but with that feeling of "why am I playing this" always in the back of my mind.

[@MrERLoner]

I'M ....GOOD??!!". Raises arms in triumph

[@gideonwaxfarb]

If I went to a White House event and there were McDonalds burgers there, I'd totally eat one. Or two. Maybe three, depending on how hungry I was :P

[@Bushidounohana]

Context is everything, and you NAIL it as always! Keep up the great (BAD, DUDE?) work!

[@sofubisamurai]

I’ve got a soft spot for Flying Dragon, it was one of the games I owned as a kid and I have fond memories of Saturday afternoons trying to finish it.

[@Nemo2342]

I thought the fighting tournaments were the best parts of Flying Dragon (and definitely the part I loved about it's followup Flying Warriors).

[@zachadams4310]

I'll be really interested to see you cover the later Hiryu-no-Ken games. Flying Warriors, like Strider, was one of the games i was obsessed with in the era where I didn't know what anime was yet but knew that I loved cartoons like Star Blazers, Robotech and so on.

[@makaveli4205]

Strider is one of the best arcade games of all time. The graphics still hold up compared to newer stuff.

[@chrisd6287]

Mario/Duck Hunt & Karnov were the only games i owned for the first 3 years of having my NES. Thank god for the rich kid next door and weekend rentals 😂

[@RadikaRules]

Funny how your ending remarks sorta describes my first experience with the Hiryuu no Ken series, it was a straight up fighting game, the N64's Flying Dragon on an emulator. One of the system's best ones dare I say

[@goranisacson2502]

Flying Dragon is ALSO part of this series? Didn't know that, or that the series stayed alive for THAT long... are there any other games for the SNES or other formsts that's also part of this franchise.

[@RadikaRules]

@@goranisacson2502 Yeah, by chance I found a Japan-only game for the Game Boy Color a while back. SD Hiryuu no Ken

[@shoplifterfpd]

@@goranisacson2502 there are three sequels just on Famicom alone - the second and third games got kind of mishmashed a little to release in the US as Flying Warriors. Then you've got Ultimate Fighter on SNES, along with Hiryu no Ken S, and SD Hiryu no Ken. On PS1 there was Virtual Hiryu no Ken, and on N64 Hiryu no Ken Twin (released in the US as Flying Dragon) and SD Hiryu no Ken Densetsu. Word that I got when I visited their office in 1999 was that there was a Dreamcast game in development, but it was never released. I literally just showed up at the door one afternoon on a trip from Nagoya, and they let me in :D. They used to run a game development school up until the early 2000s. I've always wondered where the people that went there ended up, and what projects they might have been involved in over the years.

[@thekusaja]

The existence of the Flying Dragon/Flying Warriors series is an actual thing that surprised me as a kid.

[@Tirgo69]

"save the princess-in-chief"

[@Belgand]

It might be less accurate but Marketing was insistent that it would sell better than Mediocre Dudes.

[@OldNick999-real1]

I borrowed Bad Dudes from a friend. I remembered seeing a code that granted 60 lives in Nintendo Power, and I beat the game that way.

[@CassiusZedaker-pr7kc]

I remember when I was a kid (I had to have been like 9) and another kid came up to me on the playground and asked me if I had played "Bad Dudes." I had not, but sometime later the convenience store by my house got the arcade version and I played it there. It was alright.

[@MrClawt]

...two three play at that game. That one caught me off guard!

[@johnnygrind77]

I have neither seen nor heard of Flying Dragon until this video. Thanks for teaching me!

[@shoplifterfpd]

Give it a shot - there's also a set of sequels. One was released outside Japan as 'Flying Warriors' and it's a total genre fusion game, with side scrolling, the shingen system (the fighting game with the targets on the body), and an RPG.

[@johnnygrind77]

@@shoplifterfpd I have absolutely played Flying Warriors! I didn't know there was more along with it, very cool!

[@FallicIdol]

I remember a lot of game magazines at the time had an ongoing Flying Dragon comic to help advertise it.

[@Titleknown]

Hot take: The ninjas did nothing wrong.

[@TeruteruBozusama]

Hot Take: you play as the bad guy.

[@Triknor]

The bad *dude*, if you will.

[@Dorelaxen]

Booyah. Neither did John Hinkley.

[@shane1489]

Lance and Prance or whatever those guys were called damn sure made em pay tho.

[@Jolis_Parsec]

@@DorelaxenBig yikes!

[@eelobrian6727]

I LOVE the Karnov theory!

[@makaveli4205]

Karnov used to piss me off when I was a kid. I really liked it but couldn't get very far.

[@CaptainXJ]

Literally everything is "political". anytime anyone says, "Don't talk politics." What they mean is, "I hate being called out on my shitty views."

[@SonofMrPeanut]

The description here makes me imagine such people saying "Video games just spring out of holes in the ground!"

[@JohnZyski]

Old Jellybean. That is funny.

[@chadwickjdillon]

Oh holy yes. I was raised on NES Bad Dudes. Fighting on top of speeding trucks? Battling sewer ninjas? Defeating the road warrior? Kicking the shit out of the last boss on the skiis of a helicopter?! Hell yes I'm Bad.

[@jaynoyes8526]

I love the history lessons and politics. Keep up the good work!

[@anon-soso-anon]

I loved the Double Dragon games. Bad Dudes never clicked with me for whatever reason but Flying Dragon absolutely captured my imagination although I never could finish it.

[@KingMcvert]

I believe Flying Dragon had a sequel thats ad campaign was like a 4 or 5 page comic that ran in Gamepro. Never got to play them but I remember the comic.

[@apollosungod2819]

Wow... wish I could have a time machine to tell Nintendo of America's staff to make the Nintendo Power Magazine one whole year earlier in 1987 and immediately make it monthly subscription based... as that factor alone could have saved the 1989 issues format style. That said Data East's Bad Dudes was an awesome arcade game that basically spoke to you and felt some little known imported Asian martial arts movie or that it had ideas that the few American martial arts mid 80s films got fairly close to but really wish they had because these were more common in Japanese action and fantasy martial arts TV shows like "Monkey" (or Sankukai) which had an English dubbed version broadcast in the U.K. but apparently wasn't broadcast here in the U.S.A. which featured a Ninja opponent who did the after image illusion technique. Politics is fine with Nintendo and especially SEGA systems and games because early on there was a lot of resistance and some of it kept persisting into the 90s by altering game titles too much and altering or censoring stories into dumbed down versions that were a stark contrast compared to comic book story content of the time if you got back issues. I feel that Data East's Bad Dudes had a lot of potential yet it is ironic because it doesn't seem like the NES game was as big of a hit as it could have been even though Data East's programmers are clearly pushing the limits of the NES hardware and ROM Cartridge size limitations so much that the only way for a better home version to have ever existed was if either Data East or SEGA had made a Sega MegaDrive (Genesis) version especially when this game really NEEDS the arcade voices to hype you up. Unfortunately it seems like the idea of a 16bit Sega version of Bad Dudes was seem as antiquated or just completely missed or maybe it would have needed a larger ROM Cartridge size like 8 Megabit which could have been risky. Culture Brain did have some good ideas and a lot of technical elements in their games... but I'm not sure if they were probably not selling as much or maybe they seemed like a weak developer compared to others at the time however they did manage to make a 16big Super FamiCom aka Super Nintendo version that I feel probably had the unfortunate bad timing of being released around the same time as Capcom had finally perfected their home conversion of Street Fighter II in 1992... maybe blame Nintendo of America's management staff for just not being ready to launch the Super Nintendo at least a minimum of two months after the Japanese launch in 1990? Something that I always questioned about them that never made sense since Nintendo of America's management was rock solid thanks to the fairly unchallenged (in terms of Sega subsidiary branch effort from rivals and Atari Corp arrogance and mixed messages) and could have given the Super Nintendo a bigger impact than it had because Data East was very capable at making some good Super Nintendo games. Also iirc the NES version was a longer game compared to the arcade version.

[@tsvtsvtsv]

1:15 slow down jeremy!! i had to double check i didn't have my player speed set to 'CHAAARGE'

[@RemnantCult]

I had family who still were pretty Japanophobic as a kid since they went through the aftermath of world war 2. People thought an ethnic group was the same as an entire state or something, so they feared the Japanese ever since then. Japan becoming a huge player in the world stage and suddenly being able to become the new big cheese scared the shit out of some Americans because of those memories. The fear was needless because the US would pull the plug on its development and cause its bubble to bust anyway. Imagine being an older dad or mom in the 80s and seeing your kid use Japanese tvs and Japanese nintendos and Japanese cars. This would lead some to go on a xenophobic fit for sure. Certainly doesn't excuse it, but there was a reason behind the 80s Japan fear besides just America wanting to stay number 1.

[@JeremyParish]

Yes, a big part of American Japanophobia in the ’80s was very much "wait, we beat them 40 years ago, why are they winning now?" The trade deficit between the U.S. and Japan was also a big deal, too-we took in tons of imports, but Japan's industry didn't reciprocate.

[@ridureyu]

Even your fireball special move is close range!

[@Ragesauce]

I used to play this with my brother, we had a lot of fun with it.

[@jamesmoss3424]

The arcade version of Bad Dudes is better than the nes version. 😀👍🎮

[@volvoguy804]

Definitely! I used to own the cab back in the early 2000s. But the display board took a crap, so I sadly had to sell it.

[@jorymil]

One of my great memories is beating Bad Dudes in the arcade. Beating arcade games was _not_ easy, even with a roll of quarters.

[@jamesmoss3424]

@@volvoguy804 that sucks for you.

[@jamesmoss3424]

@@jorymil cool 😎. 😀👍🎮

[@XanthinZarda]

I mean, this was typically the case with Data East, who was not exactly a power of the arcade in the first place.

[@andrewkaye2108]

I liked Shang Hai Kid. I thought fighting different opponents, with different looks, attacks and fighting styles was very interesting. Plus SHK had an unusual feature in that it would show places to strike the enemys body. I also loved when the crowd would chant the characters name " Shang Hai!" over and over again.

[@theironfox2756]

MArtial Arts enthusiasts flipped out at Flying Dragon and the Secret Scroll. It was the first time that many played a game with severl different martial arts showcased.

[@lucianonicolasgarcia7311]

Yup, gaming was, is and will be political. Thanks for pointing in your videos the global dynamics in a cultural industry emerged together with neoliberalism and globalization.

[@ChibiFighter]

Data East really deserves more credit than I feel like they were ever given.

[@makaveli4205]

Ya all their arcade games were awesome. I remember playing them a lot.

[@skuzzbunny]

in NES Bad Dudes at least, i think you can low sweep kick the caltrops, helps a lot.👍

[@JeremyParish]

Every time I tried to get rid of them I either took damage or did nothing... I'm the worst

[@skuzzbunny]

@@JeremyParish DEF been some while, i think it is a bit tricky, but fairly reliable once you get the hang of it...?? i think you try to line up the end of your kick to just hit them on the ground.....???

[@goranisacson2502]

As a Euro who was in daycare when this was released, I didn't really come to know Bad Dudes until it became an internet meme- never saw much reason to care before, and what I played on emulatord wasn't much compared to what I was used to back then. Interestingly I too didn't really see any "Japan vs US" vibes in the game because I too was never really aware of when Japan was such a powerhouse, and I think I had just kind of absorbed the US b-movie sentiment at the time that "ninja" are just kind of generic stand-in bad guys. Anyone sufficiently trained in martial arts and with the right-size pyjamas could call themselves a ninja in the world I grew up in. Having context returned to me does change my image of the game a little. Not much, but still. But Flying Heroes is brand new to me- we didn't even got it here in PAL land until Wii U virtual console. So if nothing else, execution aside, I'm impressed by it's ambition.

[@JeremyParish]

I don't think much of anyone read "Japan vs. US" into the game at the time. It's more of a reading that stands out with the benefit of hindsight.

[@spizarelli]

I’ll always have a soft spot for Flying Dragon. Fighting games for beginners, it taught me about high and low blocking.

[@Rando1975]

I may be wrong but I thought (in the arcade version of Bad Dudes anyway) you could do a crouching kick on the caltrops and it would destroy it with no harm?

[@jeremygregorio7472]

Flying dragon blew my mind as a kid. It has a ton of features and functionality.

[@godfreydrawsart]

I rarely feel my age, but I'll be damned if understanding the Paul Harvey reference doesn't make my bones turn to dust.

[@joeboo8626]

...and now you know the rest of the story.

[@JeremyParish]

I feel like every radio station in my hometown played Paul Harvey. That voice and those opinions were hard to get away from

[@godfreydrawsart]

@@joeboo8626 I feel this is my now dusty bones.

[@godfreydrawsart]

@@JeremyParish He haunted every AM talk radio station in the country somehow.

[@rootbeer_666]

@@godfreydrawsartsome say that, at night, when the lower-powered stations sign off so that the stronger ones have greater reach, you can still hear a phantasm of a voice, if just faintly, hawking Bose Wave Radios 👻 this has been Paul Harvey… good day! 👻

[@randysmith3008]

Flying Warriors is the sequel to Flying Dragon, I really liked this series.

[@SwiftJustice]

2025: The president has been kidnapped by-- Me: Good.

[@dendroleon]

i played bad dudes quite a lot as a kid but never grew to like it. never got good enough to beat it. i did like the look of the truck level, and still do. 'DUDES'

[@XanthinZarda]

Actually, wait...what was American Pop culture up to at this time anyway? Alf? Garfield & Friends? Atari, Coleco, Texas Instruments, Tandy, and other American... _shuffles index cards_ has-beens (Powers would imply relevance, see the United Kingdom's current state), couldn't have been producing anything of note by this point. Nobody except hacks like the author of Ready Player One or the alleged composer of Color a Dinosaur would even think to remember who Coleco was in the first place at this point.

[@Egganopolis82]

I owned flying dragon, It was actually not a bad game. Its a great way to introduce someone to how fighting games work for sure.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

Thematically, Bad Dudes fits, but I gotta wonder, source for the July 1989 US date for Bad Dudes? Wikipedia has an unsourced 1989 date with no month, and Mobygames says July 1990. Having played both games, Bad Dudes is the better game to Flying Dragon, which is janky but I just can't hate the game either. Looking forward to more Konami in their Ultra guise with Defender of the Crown next, the discussion on Cinemaware should be good.

[@JeremyParish]

Bad Dudes is given as summer 1989 in Computer Entertainer and Nintendo Power. Tips for Bad Dudes appeared well before summer 1990, and Computer Entertainer reviewed the retail release in their Aug. 1989 issue. As those were contemporary publications, I trust them more than online sources.

[@absolutezeronow7928]

@@JeremyParish thanks for the sources. I'll update the Bad Dudes page to reflect these sources.

[@Mikey-zj8bn]

I love flying dragon I forgot about it and found it again a year or so ago and I use to spend hours trying to figure it out, still love it tho

[@badtzmzo]

Is it a belt scroller if you can't move away and towards the screen from a 3/4ths view, as it were? I feel like it's definitely more like a melee Rolling Thunder/Shinobi game.

[@JeremyParish]

I don't know. I referred to Double Dragon as a belt scroller in some older videos and people got super pissed at me. Now I refer to Bad Dudes as a belt scroller and people get super pissed at me. There's no winning the Made Up Words Gatekeeper lottery, I guess

[@badtzmzo]

@@JeremyParish I'm not pissed at you! I would definitely say Double Dragon is a belt scroller, so someone there was being a jerk to you. From Wikipedia, the infallible fount of all truth: "Belt-scroll action game or belt-scroll beat 'em up - The most popular type of scrolling beat 'em up, these games use a belt scroll format, a side-scrolling format with a downward camera angle where players can move both vertically and horizontally along a horizontally scrolling environment." It's as made up as any other word, but I didn't think there was debate about it's meaning. Gamers, man.

[@JeremyParish]

See, the term belt-scroller always made me think of Double Dragon just because of the way you fight Abobos on a conveyor belt. So I was confused when people scolded me for calling DD a belt-scroller. But I also get random drive-by death wishes every few months from people who think I invented the term "metroidvania," so basically... words were a mistake.

[@badtzmzo]

@@JeremyParish Since the sub-genre was created by Kunio-kun I can't imagine Double Dragon not fitting the description (at least arcade.) I think the idea was that the ground has that perspective trick going on and looks like a conveyer belt from the side? Not the clearest definition, and the fact that these games do tend to have a lot of conveyer belts in them doesn't help.

[@anactualmotherbear]

ah, the peaceful transfer of power between presidents.

[@darktetsuya]

Didn't get around to flying dragon til playing a rom randomly, it's certainly a game that exists. bad dudes I probably played a little bit of, but didn't become a superfan til the nintendo switch re-release! never considered the street fighter comparison, but your chosen dude also has an energy attack if you hold down the attack button and release it! so not quite the hadoken, but definitely lines up nicely with the hurricane kick. as far as hamburgers at the white house well, I'd have to *want* to save the president first, is all I'm saying.

[@DefendYoungstown]

As "jank" as the game was, the so-called ambition of Flying Warriors (and, for some reason, that song that played during the main rounds of the tournaments) kept me hooked. Back then, we were a lot more lenient on shit controls. Most of the time, us kids pushed through because we thought it was _our_ fault. It was an early version of GIT GUD that unknowingly took the burden of bad programming off of the programmers. Thankfully, this is something that changed over time. Mostly. I'm looking at you, original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the Playstation. Seriously, I don't understand how I was ever good at that game... and it only got worse the more responsive and less stiff all the sequels got. By the time the series got to part 4, the first game felt like trying to steer an egg with sledgehammers underwater. Now take that, and rewind it by about 15-20 years, pare it down to an original NES controller, and you've got an approximation for Flying Warriors.

[@iwanttoseemrshow]

Love your vids, Jeremy! I absolutely love Flying Dragon and was actually waiting for your take on this. For me, the one-on-one boss fights at the end of the stage made it worth the punishment of the side-scrolling drudgery. I thought this game was unique and thrilling and never once made any connection to Kung Fu or Kung Fu Heroes---yikes.

[@JeremyParish]

I want to like Flying Dragon, but I had the opposite experience with the boss fights. They're so stiff and clunky as to bring to the game to a halt. I know the hero has some special moves to even things out a little, like a shoulder throw, but I cannot for the life of me pull them off.

[@shoplifterfpd]

@@JeremyParish When you block a high punch, there's a brief moment where you can press down+b to do the throw. You might notice a slight delay at the appropriate window. When the KO meter is full, press up+A+B to perform the Hiryu No Ken.

[@alex_-yz9to]

Wait wasn't the NES version Turn based 2 player instead of simoultaneous coop

[@JeremyParish]

Was it?! My second NES controller is in storage still so I didn’t get to try out 2P mode (the game won’t start until P2 hits Start), and I didn’t see any mention of alternating play when I was reading up on the game, so it never occurred to me that they would have Double Dragoned it. Dumb mistake on my part, I guess. I’ll definitely double check before putting the 1989 book together.

[@alex_-yz9to]

@@JeremyParish ok yeah i was reading up on HG101 and indeed the nes port goes the SMB1 route of having you switch player... but they also allow you to pick the ssme character so i guess they bad dudes are now capable of cloning eachother as a duo of Blades and Strykers take on the ninjas

[@JeremyParish]

Thanks for the heads-up. That totally blindsided me. I really gotta figure out where my second controller went to so this doesn't happen again.

[@Shadowity]

Come for the gaming history retrospective, stay for the based political takes. Many, many, MANY things are indeed Reagan's fault.

[@JJKoester]

Every time you show Rolling Thunder, all I see is a beta version of Codename: Viper that somehow got leaked.

[@JeremyParish]

This might be THE definitive NES kid observation