Wrecking Crew retrospective | Mario's final temp gig | NES Works

[@ValthorEldr]

you know what... I NEVER subscribe to anyone. But for you.. You are one of, if not THE most underappreciated creator in the gaming community. You have my respect, and my subscription!

[@doctorhandsome]

I love that the cover art for Mario Maker has Mario dressed in the same colors as he is in Wrecking Crew. I assume that's a deliberate nod to this game's level editor feature.

[@megadoyourmom64]

I'm so confused

[@NemeanLion-]

I found this game to be one of the true hidden gems of the 1980’s home system craze. I agree that its overall dynamics felt a little bit like it’s a knock off or that developers gave it only a passing level of attention, but it’s definitely an unsung hero imo. It’s level of intricacy, creativity and playability, was ahead of it’s time for this type of puzzle genre. But the unforgettable aspect of this game imo was that you could create your own levels. This was almost unheard of at the time. Excitebike was known for this as well, but it didn’t really allow for the same level of creativity and intricacy to really get your imagination going. From what I remember (it’s been so long ago), I think you could only save one level at a time and you had the option to give it a title. Mine was called “Death Wish” and I continually improved upon it. My brother used to love playing my created levels. If you lived during this time, you’d know it’s a very underrated game.

[@erikbihari3625]

And this without mentioning his animated appearence, despite the fact that his less well known with casual audiences than bowser! Maybe some fan sneaked him there,maybe miyamoto promoting his past work, who knows?

[@NemeanLion-]

@@erikbihari3625 could be. Good observation

[@erikbihari3625]

​@@NemeanLion-. Just making wild guess.

[@dcashley303]

Love Wrecking Crew! Wish it got more love.

[@riddleiddle]

2nd nes game I played after Contra.

[@esmooth919]

I have always had a penchant for puzzle games, and it wasn't hard for me to fall in love with this game as a result.

[@LorenHelgeson]

I would have preferred it on the NES Classic over Ice Climber's inclusion.

[@subtlewookiee]

You are seriously making me want to go pick up a lot of these old carts for my NES. This whole series has been excellent. Thank you for your hard work on these important pieces of NES history. I got my NES in '88 (as a lot of kids did, I suspect) and jumped right into SMB2 pretty soon after getting my grubby mitts on a unit. As such I barely appreciated SMB1. Sure it was fun but SMB2 had so much better graphics and I drawn into that. I certainly did not appreciate what an amazing feat SMB1 was as I had no frame of reference to realize how revolutionary it was. This series has been really eye opening in giving SMB1 the proper context to appreciate what a watershed moment in game design it was.

[@JVeg199X]

I find Eggplant's AI to be the easiest to understand. It simply walks forward, climbing any ladders it meets. If it runs into an obstacle while walking or climbing, it will begin to walk or climb in the opposite direction. The reason they're hard to predict is simply because every level has a different landscape, and breaking ladders or knocking down barrels changes that landscape. Vs. Wrecking Crew is a similar yet slightly different game. Two players play simultaneously and race against each other to clear the level. It was one of the Vs. games that requires two screens- one for each player. These are great videos. Keep it up!

[@lemmingliquidationlicense1193]

You've obviously never had a real life encounter with an egregious eggplant man because if you did you would find out that they are not as autonomous as they look.

[@Gadzooki]

A classic! So glad you gave it the attention it deserves. Also, that soundtrack, all two tracks or so of it, is just awesome. I always thought it was Hip Tanaka for sure, but from your bit on it it sounds like that might be up in the air. It definitely has all his signature compositional techniques from that era though, particularly his reggae/dub influence heard in the level theme, and his liberal use of staccato throughout. Thanks Jeremy!

[@JeremyParish]

A few sources credit someone besides Tanaka, but I'm pretty sure it was him.

[@Sambeck63]

Seriously this is the best channel on retro gaming! It deserves 1 million subscribers!!!

[@ryandevan2793]

The game also shows a lot the influence from old cartoons had on Mario in the early days of the character. In an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto stated that He noticed that how in cartoons like Popeye, characters would take on different roles depending on the cartoon. The same thing applied for Mario for his first couple of games from 1981 to 1985 before Super Mario Bros made him the Italian plumber we know and love today.

[@underwaterlevelz1947]

One of the most criminally underrated NES games, and a top tier black box game for sure. Wrecking Crew is one of my favorite all-time score chasers.

[@erikbihari3625]

You knew spike appeared for the new Mario movie? And this time, actually wrecking crew, actually mario's former boss!

[@Tommi1981]

Cool and revolutionary and creative concept actually. The music and sound are awesome. They made something new here and groundbreaking i guess.

[@esmooth919]

Wrecking Crew is actually one of my favorite black box NES titles, simply because of the fact that it is a puzzle platformer, And I've always had a penchant for brain teasers.

[@erikbihari3625]

Need more games like these nowdays. Not another boring open world game that plays and feels like r.p.g.! Why explore those when already have the real world?

[@kabutops87]

One of my favorite black box games.

[@Rubberman202]

It was recently revealed via interview during episode 476 of "Bertcast" that actor and comedian Sebastian Maniscalco will be playing a role in the Super Mario Bros. animated movie, specifically "Spike" who he describes as "their [the brothers] boss". Some people will probably immediately think of the little green enemies, but given the context of this description and the history of Mario, it sounds like he's going to play Foreman Spike from Wrecking Crew. That's... a surprisingly deep cut for the Mario movie to make, considering how obscure Wrecking Crew is nowadays. Hopefully this means Foreman Spike will be in more things (and that he'll have a beard and doesn't look like he did in Wrecking Crew '98, which is basically just a buff Waluigi).

[@FFmaxxx]

Lol I just got pointed to this video because they make a reference to spike giving the Mario bros a bad yelp type review on the website for the bros plumbing service lol

[@jamiecampbell8855]

Vastly underrated game. It has that largely experimental flavour of early Nintendo Nes games. Great puzzle elements occasionally let down by the times you get trapped in a level with no way out. Still love it despite its flaws.

[@marcomorote2175]

First time I played this was in peru back in the 90s stop play it here and there

[@robintst]

Always thought there was a bit of a canon to Mario's various jobs he had in the real world prior to ending up in the Mushroom Kingdom. American material inferred this such as the Super Mario Bros. Super Show but even Nintendo themselves do seem to loosely acknowledge he had a history in the real world prior to his SMB outing as a true hero just by looking at some of their smaller later games like the Mario Vs. Donkey Kong series.

[@DanielSong39]

Excellent puzzle game and I'm somewhat surprised it didn't get additional games. Then again, good puzzlers are hard to make.

[@ChrisGorski]

dilettante, penchant, picaresque, dissonance, ersatz, jaunty and inexorable ... I will command all my high school juniors to watch this video while prepping for the SAT haha

[@JeremyParish]

English is a language containing many words!

[@ChrisGorski]

And put to such good use in your videos :)

[@BIayne]

Wrecking Crew is my favorite game so far.

[@Rubberman202]

I always thought Wrecking Crew was quietly underrated. Hopefully one day it'll get it's dues.

[@polaniecj]

lots of memories with this game. still can't beat the last few levels.

[@sonicmario64]

I think you forgot to mention about Wrecking Crew also being featured as a playable stage in "Super Smash Bros." for the Wii U, which happens to be one of my favorite stages to play in the game, and I'm also stoked to learn that it's going to make a comeback in the new Smash Bros. game that will be coming out this holiday season as well. :D

[@BlazeHedgehog]

The way I'd heard it, it was less that Foreman Spike was supposed to be Wario, and more that Waluigi was created because Foreman Spike was going to appear in... Mario Tennis? I think? Something like that.

[@rowtow13]

There have been some weird little attempts to loosely link Foreman Spike and Waluigi together. Like Waluigi's default kart in Mario Kart DS being a backhoe, and his song in that Mario Dance Dance Revolution game being a remix of the Wrecking Crew theme.

[@beauwalker9820]

Foreman Spike was in Mobile Golf a Japan-only GameboyColor game.

[@todesziege]

Foreman Spike was obviously not "meant to be Wario" as Wario wasn't invented until several years later, but that doesn't mean Wario wasn't inspired by and an evolution of Spike. His appearance, color scheme and role as an "Anti-Mario" is too similar to be a coincidence. You could also argue that Jumpman and Mario isn't the same character, but that would be retarded. These games were never narrative driven and the "characters" aren't that well defined.

[@katt-the-pig]

I never heard of this game before discovering it on the Virtual Console. It's pretty fun, but man, does it get hard.

[@RetroPowerUp]

I have never seen this game before. It looks like it can get quite challenging! Though adding a level editor is a very nice touch! Absolutely loved games that included them (looking at you Excite Bike) and being able to express some creativity... or madness/chaos!

[@DrMrProfessorPatrick]

Correction: Mr. Game & Watch did not actually originate from the Game & Watch handhelds, he's simply an amalgamation of them created specifically for SSBM. There had never been a character with that name prior to Melee. Generic characters in Game & Watch handhelds hardly ever received names in the manual or otherwise, only recognizable or licensed characters were referred to by name, i.e. Popeye, Mario, Donkey Kong, Mickey Mouse, and so on. The most they'd usually get is generic titles like "the wolf" in Egg and things like that. There are rare exceptions to this, such as in the Squish manual where the protagonist is called "Ziggy the Mazeman" and the antagonist "Grumpy", but most of the time this isn't the case. Source: Me, collector of CIB Game & Watches and overall G&W fanatic.

[@mikehunt9884]

game had cool music

[@_captain_N]

he is a carpenter in the original donkey kong. here he is a construction worker actually.

[@Hellwyck]

Great video.

[@oaf-77]

The SMB movie was an uneven affair, but I did like that they referenced his Wrecking Crew past

[@michaelsegal3558]

The purple wrenches move faster than the orange ones I didn’t know the enemies were wrenches and eggplants before watching this video and I’ve owned this game for a long time now and I thought Foreman Spike was Luigi

[@FloatingSunfish]

Those were *_eggplants!?_* I always thought they were robots or spacemen. 😅

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

They could easily be Hazmat Suits, but that isn't mad enough for Japanese games of this era, so aubergines it is.

[@Jinx_Skeel]

that spike dude is no one other than wario's first ever appearance

[@absolite6]

Mario really was tackling more job occupations than Wallace and Grommet back in the day huh? Foreman Spike kinda reminds me of Wario, design-wise anyway.....

[@Rubberman202]

You know what? I wish Nintendo would revisit Wrecking Crew. I like the idea of Mario having different jobs, or rather doing things not necessarily related to fighting Bowser. I mean, there WAS a stage based on Wrecking Crew in Super Smash Bros. (it even got it's own series symbol separate from the Mario one, even though it's a Mario game), and it was even a Masterpiece on the Wii U version! Maybe that got people's attention... Though I might be saying all this just so Foreman Spike can come back into the Mario canon. What can I say? I like his design! ...His bearded design, that is, not his Wrecking Crew '98 design design where he basically looks like a buffer Waluigi (who would make his debut two years later). Hey, he'd be another character to use in spin-offs so Nintendo wouldn't have to resort to using generic enemies, babies, or variations on the same character like Metal Mario and Cat Peach! #WreckingCrew #ForemanSpike

[@Sixfortyfive]

Sometimes I think you really ought to be giving the VS. System more credit as a distinct platform in its own right. Wrecking Crew was one of the games that appeared there before it did on NES, and it had a dual-screen release that made it feel like a very different game. The second player played on the opposite side of the playfield and, much like how Spike acts in the NES release, could hinder the first player's progress and vice versa. It basically carried on the "cooperative and/or competitive" style of gameplay from Mario Bros.

[@BagOfMagicFood]

Right, the whole "Open a door to lead enemies to the shadow side" thing had a greater sense of purpose in the arcade game, where the players were sending enemies to each other's side!

[@unoclay]

Getting a little tired of typing compliments on these videos....can you please stop with the quality releases? In seriousness, this time, the factoid i learned was Wrecking Crew 98--never heard about that one, so thank you!! Perhaps someone can track down the reason for all the Eggplants in nintendo lore.

[@ronfirle6659]

you can reply to comments that are replys well guess you learn something new everyday

[@DanielSong39]

Wrecking Crew was an excellent puzzle game, kind of surprising it never got a followup Good puzzle games are hard to make though

[@mario64remix]

It looks like Wrecking Crew '98 also includes the original NES game. That's kind of unusual, right?

[@JeremyParish]

Yeah, Nintendo remade a bunch of games for Super Famicom with enhancements, but this was the only straight port they produced so far as I know. It's literally exactly the same except for a new "exit to title screen" menu option.

[@mario64remix]

Jeremy Parish Indeed it would have made more sense if they remade the game, like with Mario All-Stars. Even the menu animations are the same as All-Stars, which makes me think they ran out of time or something.

[@comradeinternet467]

Wait, Mario had a stint in the army? Bloody hell, I wish we would get a callback to this in some capacity. A 4X, RTS, or gritty tactical RPG(ala Jagged Alliance 2) in the Mushroom Kingdom would be wild.

[@JeremyParish]

You just described Mario + Rabbids

[@matthewlane518]

Master Higgins hates Eggplant.

[@Jopo1226]

What was the third game that allowed you to create your own courses?

[@JeremyParish]

Excitebike, Wrecking Crew, Mach Rider.

[@EfrenBlackjack]

“Shoulda had your money on WRECKING CREW!”

[@chazmaru9583]

1. Thanks for your amazing videos over the years. I am baffled they do not have more views. 2. I was wondering if you could come back on earlier videos and re-evaluate some of the Vs. titles such as "Vs. Wrecking Crew" in future Gaiden episodes; I think about this game specifically because Hamster has just released it on Switch a few hours ago and I wanted to check back what you said about the game. In this old video, you dismiss Vs.WC as a simple arcade port of the Famicom game, but as you probably know better four years later, it is actually quite different from the Famicom version and precedes the Famicom version by a year. Vs. Wrecking Crew was truly designed from the ground up to make clever use of the Vs. System's two opposing screens: player two is on the "other side" of player one's stage, and both act as a Foreman Spike to each other. The console version is in fact a puzzle-oriented adaptation of the arcade game. Once all the above is put in perspective, the game design connection with Mario Bros. is even more obvious, and WC98's evolution into a vs puzzle game / "ochige" also makes more sense.

[@JeremyParish]

It's on my to-do list, but as a word of warning, Atari Lynx and Sega Game Gear have been on my to-do list as well for more than five years...

[@maxxrenn]

@@JeremyParish Not mentioning the game this was based on (Vs Wrecking Crew) seems like an oversight? Its a totally different game yet uses the same mechanics. One is an action game and one is a puzzler.

[@Jasonliggett69]

I’ve never heard of this game…seems like concept for Wreck it Ralph!

[@THEmuteKi]

love that wreckboy

[@michaelsegal3558]

2:11 I thought that was Luigi being the ref on Tennis not Mario but Mario was the ref on Punch-Out though

[@axtrifonov]

8:39 i thought they are welding masks

[@Naminski1a]

I like to play Arcade Archives: Vs. Wrecking Crew on Nintendo Switch Lite.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I own the golf game and I didn’t know that was Mario being the golfer

[@phaze7269]

This actually sounds like a fascinating game that I never had the opportunity to play!

[@michaelsegal3558]

I wonder if Waluigi was based off of Foreman Spike just like Mario came from Jumpman

[@esmooth919]

Mario didn't come from Jumpman; he IS Jumpman

[@michaelsegal3558]

@@esmooth919I see

[@severeerror52]

damn that smash bros gameplay was sick

[@RetroPowerUp]

G&W wiped the floor!

[@Froggy711]

I wish someone would ask Miyamoto "what's with all of the eggplants?"

[@MissAshley42]

I'm surprised Nintendo hasn't revisited this since that oddballl Super Famicom game. Despite the title, it seems like a franchise it could easily build upon.

[@BriansManCave]

Kicking myself for not knowing that this Mario Game existed!

[@michaelsegal3558]

So in Wrecking Crew player 2 is Luigi I always thought in Wrecking Crew Luigi was that other carpenter that runs in the background trying to kill you

[@esmooth919]

No. That would be Foreman Spike.

[@michaelsegal3558]

@@esmooth919I see

[@TheDansonT]

Are there any indie games that mimic this gameplay? Anything on Steam?

[@FallicIdol]

I wish they would retcon Spike to being Wario

[@Krisipoke]

I'm pretty sure Mr. Game & Watch is just a character Sakurai made up for Smash Bros. I don't really think Gunpei Yokoi really thought that all characters in all Game & Watch units were the same guy. There are some, like Mario Bros. and Mario's Cement Factory where we know for a fact who the main characters are supposed to be, and they are not Mr. Game & Watch.

[@uljk5699]

No Golden Hammer music? Awwww....

[@sonicmario64]

I think you also forgot to mention about Wrecking Crew also being featured as a playable stage in "Super Smash Bros." for the Wii U, which happens to be one of my favorite stages to play in the game.

[@TheSmart-CasualGamer]

I like that they entirely remade it, unlike 75m or Mario Bros.

[@michaelsegal3558]

I always thought foremen spike was Luigi

[@Kyleeeeeeeee]

I think he was meant to be, since Waluigi’s kart in Mario kart DS is the same as something that Spike has in the 2001 game, mobile Golf

[@michaelsegal3558]

@@Kyleeeeeeeee I see

[@michaelsegal3558]

I have this game

[@nonewmsgs]

These games mario bros, donkey kong, ice climber, and wrecking crew seem like a generation away from super Mario bros and I associate the former with colecovision and the super Mario, zelda, metroid on with NES. Did these games go far back to coleco? Was the NES not much more advanced and was it just the ideas hadnt grown yet? Could super mario work on coleco

[@KuraIthys]

The NES is moderately more advanced than some earlier systems (can't speak for the Colecovision specifically) - though things like the Commodore 64, atari 800XL, and Atari 7800 are on a very similar level technically (and the Sega Master system is notably more powerful.) But you have to remember one of the most frequently overlooked technical improvements that the NES in particular had (which went almost unnoticed, because it's hidden inside carts that look identical from the outside) is that they simply got more and more storage space. An unmodified NES tops out at 40 kilobytes of memory. This limit is essentially what the first Super Mario Bros game represents (it's essentially the answer to the question: How far can you push a 40 kilobyte game's complexity?) Many of these earlier games are less than 40 kilobytes. As a point of comparison, Atari 2600 games are 4 kilobytes, except for the handful of rare ones which are 8-16 kilobytes. It probably won't come as a huge surprise that the larger games are things like pitfall, with it's multi-screen scrolling with unique graphics on those screens. So what about the NES? Well, Super Mario was that 40 kilobyte game... But from then on many of the games were larger than that. This is only possible because of the memory mapper chips, but suffice to say it has huge consequences. Why is mario 3 so much more impressive than the first game? Well, better design aside, the main reason is that it has 384 kilobytes of ROM to work with instead of 40. Zelda, with it's 8 dungeons and huge overworld is 128 kilobytes. But, as large as that game is, you might notice the actual design of the world is very repetitive. Kirby, from 1993... Is 768 kilobytes. And at that amount of storage space, it starts to resemble a SNES title. So... That should give you some indication just how important storage space is to these games. Strictly speaking, a game like Wrecking Crew and Kirby are running on different hardware. Might not look like it, but they are. The NES would never have been able to have the Kirby game it got in 1993 if it had to be released in 1986. This also goes in reverse. While I don't doubt the NES is more capable than a Colecovision in general (though both are 8 bit systems), this difference may have been a lot less impressive if Colecovision games had ROMs with as much storage space as the later NES games got... Because of this overlooked factor, it's easy to get a misleading idea about the relative power of various systems. Sometimes it's genuinely the hardware as a whole... Sometimes it's really just that the game has more storage space. (The home computer games are a great example - a game loaded from tape faces two problems that limit practical game size - first tapes load slowly. The bigger the game, the longer players have to wait. Secondly, because of how slow the loading process is, you really can't go past amount of RAM the system has. A c64 game that loads from tape cannot reasonably be more than 64 kilobytes in size. And that doesn't compare favourably to say, a 384 kilobyte NES game, even though the C64 could probably create a game of similar quality to an NES otherwise... Storage space is the missing link to the technical progression of games. A major technical limit, but one which is somewhat invisible because of how the improvements came about over time.)

[@jamesmoss3424]

I will play wrecking crew. 😀👍🎮

[@MrYancakes]

Eggplants got dat colour.

[@thomasmessina1977]

I have all these games and more about 100,000 on my retro pie and I have 3 arcade machines to I probably have every retro game in the world or as least close to it

[@Outlaw7706hectorpch]

ok

[@KuraIthys]

-shrug- That's not very impressive honestly. It took me all of 5 minutes to locate, and about 2 minutes to download a file that contains every single SNES game ever released. Meanwhile it's taken me 3 years to get about 45 actual games...

[@MaxW-er1hm]

I never really "got" this game...I will admit it confuses me...