Nobody Knows who made This Cursed 80s Game

[@Geli1212]

Hungarian here! Indeed this is one of the four games that was ever published by Hungarians and even one of the first from the Eastern Bloc published by Novotrade at London organised by the Hungarian Trade Comission! And yes, at that time wearing jeans were indeed a status quo, as we were the most relaxed country at that time before the iron curtain fell. Nice to see my weird country represented by this weird little game haha!

[@hotaruishere2133]

How exciting!!!!! I love Hungary so much! I wish it got more of the attention it deserves!!

[@42p42p]

There is a terrific documentary about game development behind the iron courtain on Steam: it's called Moleman - Longplay. The studio behind the Dancing Monster is the main topic.

[@mycosys]

Am i in the ballpark thinking Dénes Baán is pronounced mode like Dennis Bahanne?

[@42p42p]

Just one more thing to add. This game is just as weird to us as to anyone. We don’t get it either.

[@sunderark]

​​@@mycosysthe s is more of a sh. The accents over the vowels are meant to be a long vowel. It's hard to explain to an English speaker what a long vowel is but the án is meant to be read like "aunt" with an English accent without pronouncing the t. Oh lord. Explaining accents over the internet is hard.

[@ShinoSarna]

Regarding point in the beginning, I would argue we went full circle. At this point literally anybody can make a game in Unity, Game Maker on Godot in their bedroom, and start selling it on itchio, or even Steam or App Store if they can scrounge up 100 bucks. And people absolutely make this kind of weird little games now as they did then.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

as Jim Sterling has shown, there is an awful lot of garbage on Steam that's sold as games, but is really just a weird mess someone seemingly created in a drunken and stoned haze. So there's definitely still a lot of weird games being made by lonesome programmers

[@ShinoSarna]

@@thesteelrodent1796 Look up video "Strangest developer you've never heard of". Or look up some games Vinny Vinesauce plays on sunday streams. You will find bunch of games that aren't even incompetently made, just completely bizarre.

[@anon_y_mousse]

Can't forget Unreal which is free to use if you don't make any money off your game. Of course there are also a lot of tutorials out there that just about anyone can learn to program and write their own game without using an engine at all. These days, I would advise anyone doing a 2D game to go that route and perhaps use RayLib or SDL.

[@Unregistered.HyperCam.2]

Even 20 years ago they were posting stuff like this on Newgrounds, made in Flash. 😛

[@MegaCygnusX1]

"The Princess in the Chest" quite literally comprises the opening cutscene of the first Witcher game.

[@melvoid01]

Came here myself just to say this, well spotted.

[@Skelosk]

I knew this was the Striga

[@RusticRonnie]

Its shrek

[@BromdenChief]

I'm both part of the traumatized youth from back in the day, and a fellow countryman of the developers. I don't know of any dancing elephant demons in hungarian mythology, but jeans were a big deal here in the 80's.

[@thesteelrodent1796]

jeans were a big deal in 80s Denmark as well, but in a different way: if you didn't wear the right brand you were a nobody

[@MikkoKuusirati]

That box art is my most genuinely favorite thing about this game. She's just so _done_ with this shit. I can relate.

[@adilsongoliveira]

"... gave his 12th daughter in marriage and burned the other 11 alive". W.T.F.? Fairy tales used to be horrific some times, I know, but honestly, this one got me because everything was so nice with magical forests, ballrooms, people dancing and then, BANG, princesses bbq 🤣

[@itwsntme]

A cautionary tale about not being wasteful with footwear if I ever saw one.

[@BlackburnBigdragon]

One thing I noticed about games and software produced by Commodore, back then, was that the vast majority of them seemed to be what we would call "shovelware" in the 90's. There was always a HUGE contrast of software and game quality between the games produced by actual software companies compared to the stuff that Commodore was selling. There are only a few small exceptions to this that I can think of. And I think this video gives the answer why. They were probably farming out software development to groups who were probably trying to produce the software as fast, and as cheap, as possible, pushing it right to the bleeding edge of fast and cheap.

[@Spellfork]

In the Hall of Mountain Mambo No. 5 That's some crazy OST choices for sure

[@Immopimmo]

Very evil choices!

[@kaviolalainen]

Just as a little curiosity, Dénes Baán made a television appearance a few years later in the show called "Mi és a computer" (he's in episode 32, which doesn't seem to be on KZbin, but you can find it elsewhere online). He spoke about networking solutions that his company was providing, and I don't think he worked on other games at all after this project. Most of the Hungarian game developers in this era moved on to more serious affairs after two-three years, because the crunch was absolutely unbearable.

[@beregitamas7777]

Hi, do you know by any chance where to get that episode for Mi és a számítógép? I didn't find it anywhere on the net...

[@kaviolalainen]

@@beregitamas7777 A Retróújság oldalon megtalálod az összes részt.

[@balazsvasvari9688]

I'm Hungarian, and i have no idea where the inspiration for this monster came from :D But the early years of c64 had quite a few games originating from here, like Caesar the Cat, Chinese Juggler, Arctic Shipwreck, or a bit later Scarabaeus (which you should check out if you haven't seen it yet, quite mind boggling for 85, and also full of wtf moments).

[@Asphodellife]

I never found (or saw) an original version of 'Arctic Shipwreck' ; so this is an Hungarian title? interesting.

[@exidy-yt]

Scarabaeus was a FANTASTIC mind-boggling game with some great music as well. Interesting that it was Hungarian developed but it makes sense, it had gaming concepts well outside the usual American/Japanese/British influences of most computer games of the era.

[@flummox3d]

A little slice of Hungarian game development history, can confirm, immediately recognized the Hungarian names. No idea why would a "creature with elephant's trunk" count as typical Hungarian sense of humour though. But what do I know, I wasn't alive yet back then. :)

[@RetroGameSpacko]

I always wondered WT actual F this game was about... never saw the manual. Thank you for solving this mystery for me.

[@thingsiplay]

Interesting avatar image. :>

[@Psychlist1972]

You went the whole video without making any of the obvious jokes about that nose. You are a credit :)

[@pushinguproses]

Gotta love it when the box art is a million times better than the game itself. Also why is she topless as the monster? Let her have her dignity!

[@TechIOwn]

At the risk of detracting from the sponsor, box art back in the day was always so amazing, as well as the detailed manuals, maps and add-ins you'd get to imagine the world, even if the game wasn't that great.

[@armisg5664]

I love it when some of my favorite creators converge :D

[@lancekross]

Thank you for the traumatic flashbacks... I was 5 when this game came out, and I got it for christmas with a brand new C64... I am not sure I ever completed it more than once due to dyspraxia, but I do remember beating it and feeling proud and somewhat empty. While the game was bad when you look at much later games, I felt it was the one of the least bad of a terrible bunch of bobbins of that era of home computers. Loved the video though!

[@twithnell]

That is an incredible amount of back story for such a simple game.

[@thanos_x23]

11:29 She does the "giggidy"

[@_The_Jim]

that was nuts. i expect the trunk etc came from the developers thinking "what can be moving parts to shoot off our monster." what im most surprised about is the "ending" where the monster actually turns back into a princess. I assumed up until that point that the whole "transformed princess" thing was something tacked on by the publisher to explain the nonsense in the game. Great video guys .

[@stevethepocket]

Until today, I had no idea that Commodore had ever published any games directly. And now, I'm starting to get a sense of why.

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

For a moment I thought you were going to cover Dancing Demon on the TRS-80. A weird piece of software with a tap-dancing demon made out of graphic characters. You could even enter your own tune for the demon to dance to. I believe someone converted it to the ZX81. An interesting video non-the-less.

[@JohnJones-oy3md]

Many a person's introduction to TRS-80 computers as this often ran on the demo machines at Radio Shack stores.

[@221b]

Yeah, I wonder if Dancing Demon or Dancing Devil (a clone of Dancing Demon for the CoCo) were an influence on this game.

[@JohnRineyIII]

I was just scrolling down to see if anyone had mentioned Dancing Demon. I actually have an original copy :)

[@daverapp]

The princess on the cover looks like she is so done with the wizard's bullshit. Like she's been listening to him incel-rant about "females" and anime for a week nonstop.

[@nightwheel]

Dear Lord, what was the summoning cost to get this video to come into existence. Someone must have spent a fortune on Ashen's Twitch.....

[@MrMegaManFan]

“Bobbins of a game.” Okay, so Octavius wrote the script. They’re a mad lad. 😅

[@BuddyCorp]

Gosh, this video feels like it was written by someone else trying to be Nostalgia Nerd. Maybe it's just me?

[@sn1000k]

You're weird

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

It was written by Octavius, who, having taken £25K of people's money to write her own book really should be writing for that not Peter..

[@OisEucalypt]

Looks like a weird version of Randy Feltface. I am concerned.

[@DaveF.]

Cracking - never played this as a kid - but it's not actually too bad for that early in the life-span of the C64. But - year - it looks a bit dull and repetative. Great to see you and hear Octavius's words too.

[@MeinenNamenSagIchNicht]

I wonder if the princess in the chest fairytale inspired the Shrek movies 🤔

[@dycebastion]

I was literally thinking this must have been written by Octavius before we even got the credits. Right up their street.

[@Tactical_Hotdog]

It says so in the description...

[@DevinGates]

I didn't look. I usually assume they did these days. Confirmed when I heard 'bobbins'.

[@blistlelo1700]

I remember it was briefly shown for only 20 second at AVGN's Commodore 64 episode and the nerd was just too baffled over it. I didn't know it was an actual shooting game and thought it was just a joke animation from some bored programmer.

[@andresbravo2003]

I mean, C64 couldn’t escape us.

[@ObviouslyMadeupname]

I’ve been aware of this game for decades but, never having owned a C64, had always assumed the cover art and story were slapped on the game retroactively to spice it up a bit. I had no idea the monster actually turned back into a princess when you finished the game. Incredible stuff.

[@frankowalker4662]

As soon as you said 'Bobbins' I knew Octavius had writen the script. LOL.

[@Tactical_Hotdog]

Or, you know, it says so in the description

[@frankowalker4662]

@@Tactical_Hotdog I don't bother reading the descriptions.

[@xxnoxx-xp5bl]

When did Nostalgia Nerd get all style over substance?

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Why is Octavius writing scripts for Peter and not pages for her crowd funded book?

[@roo72]

Fun fact, the first short story of the Witcher is based on the Polish version of this fairy tale.

[@duncanclark8933]

The He-Man erotica killed me, so funny

[@Aeduo]

The speech cadence and some other things of this video sounds kinda AI-generated...

[@neumi569]

Had to pause at the Thundercats / Masters crossover ... thanks for that :D

[@Alianger]

Pretty impressive graphics for 1983!

[@DanielTheFreak]

Man the way the keyboards were petted at the beginning was... uncomfortable haha

[@ShinoSarna]

16:30 That fairy tale is also the basis of the very first Witcher short story ever made. You can see an animated adaptation of that story as the Official Trailer for the first Witcher game.

[@Flashy7]

European fairy tales do have interesting and sometimes horrifying stories, but they rarely mention elephans in jeans. Interesting thing is that since this "game engine", the mechanics works, it would only have taken some background image, a few levels with gradually increasing difficulty and an end screen and it would have been a complete game. And maybe redesign the creature a lot.

[@MurderMostFowl]

Ok I LOLed at the Thundercats “story”

[@kirgahn]

Awesome video, loved the trivia

[@stuartcastle2814]

Our systems team at work have not only set edge as the default browser, they’ve banned other browsers and set Bing as the default search engine..

[@JunkerWoland77]

Wow, never realized that "The Princess in the Box" was lifted for The Witcher.

[@eleanorburns8686]

How on earth did I miss this classic in my C64 days? If David Lynch was asked to code a Shrek game...

[@guybrushthreepwood3054]

Great video! I hope you will continue with that content based on creepy/horror/supernatural/mystery stories in the tech & gaming world. I think it's a wonderful niche. Not much IT&gaming horror content around (especially not with the quality and humor found in your videos)

[@syrus3k]

Did octavius write the script to this video??

[@DaveF.]

What the bobbins makes you think that?

[@Aalienik]

Perhaps because the credits say 'written by octavius king'

[@iamboody]

Did you notice the drop in quality or was it something else?

[@Tactical_Hotdog]

and the description....@@Aalienik

[@syrus3k]

Lol oh yeah.. you can tell.

[@winstonslone2797]

Monster kind of looks like Dr Zoidberg

[@marcberm]

I think I'll go for a scuttle! Clack clack clack clack clack.

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

That legend of the princess actually also inspired an encounter in The Witcher. The first game, to be precise. Won't go into detail because spoilers.

[@42p42p]

There is a terrific documentary about game development behind the iroc courtain on Steam: it's called Moleman - Longplay. The studio behind the Dancing Monster is the main topic.

[@theParticleGod]

I have never seen a game that cries out more for a modern recreation.

[@thewizardmountain]

This might be one of my favourite episodes of NN ever! It's got mystery, intrigue, evil magical music, exotic folk tales, and an epic game! Not sure how you'll ever top this.

[@P1EX]

Oh man I don’t know what I expected but when the monster finally came on screen I laughed out loud and I never do that

[@TommyCrosby]

A game that have you save a princess by shooting at her? I can hear the Americans roar of happiness.

[@chris-tal]

Apart from a long dead climber and a fairly young looking software engineer of similar name, there's a Dékány who lead a team responsible for developing some unknown software systems and maintaining them at the Finance Directorate, University of Pécs in the mid 70s according to a pdf online, downloadable from the hungarian online library. There's a Baán who has taken part in writing a hungarian rulebook for the bridge card game at the Hungarian Bridge Players Association like 10yrs ago. He also looks to be a long time player, having what looks to be his first ever game on record in '88. Dékány could have been the developer and Baán the designer. :)

[@bjornskivids]

This is the type of weird stuff I'd pick up during the old HAM radio conventions my dad was always going to. You never knew what kind of nerdy thing you were going to find at them.

[@1337Shockwav3]

Suddenly: 53x Games - that one is well documented and the devs have been interviewed numerous times.

[@PapaVanTwee5]

Maybe this is the girl David Bowie sings about in "Blue Jean".... maybe.

[@aljusto]

Great video! @octaviusking did a great job! As usual! 😂❤

[@somethinggeeky]

Having grown up with an Atari 800, the fact that the game works as intended is a win all by itself.

[@t-race6023]

Came from bigstackD Casting he said your the best retro channel around :)

[@iamboody]

So how is the bar going?

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Ask Sam from Slice And Dice, oh wait, she's split from Barcadia, taking Barcadia staff with her..

[@thatguythatdoesstuff5899]

If I were the prince and the evil wizard told me that is the princess I'm supposed to save, I would just leave and go to another castle.

[@PlasticCogLiquid]

This and Intergalactic Cage Match made me the weirdo I am today!

[@Kumimono]

That "princess in a box" fairytale sounds familiar, I think I read a bunch of eastern European tales as a kid. The delightful dancing princess one, not so much, but the hero with magical stuff is such a staple. Also, Kwon is strong.

[@blistlelo1700]

When he says "but she's probably very hungover" I though he said "but she's probably very hungry" as if she haven't eaten anything when she was in her dancing monster form.

[@theflyingninja1]

It's strange to my ears that Octavius pronounces 'dance' like 'darnse' like a southerner. Must have spent time down south.

[@SegaCDUniverse]

7:00 "you would if you had robot ears."

[@dhanke2777]

I had the C64 and a few games. My ex-wife didn't appreciate the fact I could cheat games by altering the codes and giving myself immortality. I'm not sure why, but that kinda ruined it all for me and thus ended my gaming career.

[@8bitnitwit]

How could skeletor not fancy Cheetara? Some people have no taste

[@RetroGameSpacko]

In Commodores defense, we are talking about 1983, most games looked worse than this at the time

[@DaveF.]

Yeah my thoughts too - this isn't so bad for '83.

[@DavidRomigJr]

The Twelve Dancing Princesses? I saw a version of this in the U.S. as a kid as a part of Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics, animated by Nippon, and shown on Nickelodeon. Notably to me, the intro song was composed by Shuki Levy of Saban Entertainment. He composed half the cartoon intros of my childhood.

[@Sol-Cutta]

I have a beaut commodore but both datacassettes i have wont load a thing...anyone know how to rememdy? As they have no vokume ..i dont want pull apart to turn tbay screw???

[@kaiser9321]

Total Carnage’s Orcus cannot compete with this

[@artofnoise5013]

We need a follow up video when you find the developers. This is both eerie and fascinating.

[@Hiraghm]

Don't forget about the Max Machine

[@Lollero200q]

Who made "Piccolo Mouso" is better question 😂

[@Safetytrousers]

Traffic annoyingly slows down and goes around you if you go among it.

[@Christopher-N]

(7:00) Denim - A staple of high fantasy monster apparel. 👖 (8:11) *Argyrosis* is a condition in which the skin turns blue from exposure to silver.

[@TheDaleyChannel]

Ah, the Bish! David and I are friends / Ex colleagues, we worked together at Sky launching all those Sky Gamestar games, from Beehive Bedlam to loads of official licences, tetris, space invaders, the cartoon network stuff... great times... hours debating games play, sound effects, scrolling, character AI.. 😂

[@anon_y_mousse]

So basically, that's where the Witcher got that storyline from, a Hungarian folktale.

[@pix06pix06]

Subtly starting to speak more and more like Octavius haha

[@DJKC]

Definitely heard a few Bobbins just recently.

[@Tillyard86]

Did Ashens ask you to make this?

[@Dani_Jz]

Haha love the jeans tangent... Indeed, jeans were 'a thing' in Hungary in the 80s, with the domestic brand Trapper being a symbol both of western glamour and of inability to attain it, having to settle for the local knockoff... as exemplified by the following folk rhyme: "Trapper farmer, drága kincs Jó ha van, de jobb ha nincs." ("Trapper jeans, a great treasure Having it is good, but not having it is better.")

[@PixelsNcreatureS]

I wish I had this just to run in the background of my house on my Commodore 64 screen

[@Nostalgianerd]

Honestly, great idea.

[@elone3997]

I'm not joking - I'd wear a tee shirt with monster princess on. It's bloody brilliant!

[@robotbjorn4952]

Without a doubt the inspiration for Weebl's *"rub mah boobies."*

[@ShallRemainUnknown]

Clearly inspired Silence of the Lambs dungeon dance scene...

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Octavius should be digging in and writing that book she took absolute thousands for, rather than doing supposed research and scripts for your videos Peter..

[@paulklasmann1218]

I wouldn't be surprised if all that money was blown on wine and rats. If she's not going to do it, at least apologize and give the money back. That would be the decent thing to do.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@paulklasmann1218you need a decent moral conviction to admit to people the idea of writing a book was way too ambitious and beyond your skill set, Octavius will never do that. What remains of the money should be refunded and a full and public apology issued by her.

[@cheaterman49]

Forties? You or the writer? I'm having a hard time thinking you could have played this when it came out, hahaha

[@Nobe_Oddy]

I think hearing those Hungarian 'fairy tales' was MUCH MORE traumatizing than the game...but I think you have found the TRUE SOURCE of ALL childhood PTSD in the 80's

[@TheSOURSOUND]

Side profile of the monster looks a bit like a blue meanie

[@dannywhite9975]

I'm going through a lot but whenever this stunning channel talk about d C=64 golden age, it put a smile upon mt face 👨

[@jhutto1984]

You know, I can't lie, the game's music kind of weirdly slaps.

[@StayCoolKeto]

*Not a Hungarian here, but I've been to Hungary, and I like classic games and miss those days. There's my utterly pointless complement, cheers lol* 💪👍

[@BasVoet]

Cursed 80s game, instantly interested

[@bubbles46853-ep9if]

What is that “Get out of here!” audio?

[@danieldougan269]

They had more than 1,500 ideas, and THIS was the winner? 😂😂😂😂😂

[@CheekyCommodoreGamer]

I remember doing a video on this game... it's mental isn't it 😇🕹👌