[00:00:00] Kitschall!

[00:00:29] Seasons greetings, superstars. Great start. Happy holidays. We're here for yet another High Score Heroes, the show where we play an arcade game and we talk about it and we get high scores. Sometimes, I guess this game doesn't really allow for high scores though, so omit that part. Editor, who is me?

[00:01:01] Hey Andre, what game are we talking about today? Windjammers, my absolute favorite Neo Geo game. So, I forget how this is voted on your Patreon or something. Thank you Patreons if that's the case because this is my absolute favorite Neo Geo game. You couldn't have known that, but you knew me somehow. It was almost Sunset Riders. I think it was decided by the flip of a donut. Oh, can't lose. Both classics.

[00:01:31] Oh my god. Thank god for donuts. What about a Frisbee, you mean? Oh, I should have flipped a Frisbee. God damn it, that would have been so good. I know. Flip a horse next time. I do have a Frisbee. I do have an orange Frisbee to flip, so we could have done that. And, yeah. Before we get into that, we'll talk a little bit about the history of the game and basically just, it's just extreme Frisbee kind of Pong developed by Data East, published by SNK. And it's good.

[00:02:02] It's really fucking good. Data East did work on Neo Geo, man. And this is the best of the best, but like, ah, they're Neo Geo games. I don't know. Whenever they started taking to that hardware in the mid-90s, just excellent stuff. Don't know if you ever heard of Spin Master, also an excellent game. Oh, with the yo-yos? Yes. Hell yeah. That's like my second favorite Neo Geo game.

[00:02:28] So, like, they did work on the system, but Windjammers is like the best. Oh, and they did Arrow Fight. Oh, no. Never mind. It's Astro Fighter. Never mind. How much Windjammers have you played in your life? Oh, man. Since it came out. When did it come out? 94? Like, it wasn't super duper popular at the time. I mean, like, it had its fans, right? But as far as like Neo Geo goes, it wasn't like Samurai Showdown 2 or like, you know, like.

[00:02:55] Like, it just wasn't like the hottest shit, but it did have fans. I did play it at the arcade quite a bit until it rotated out of our Neo Geo. And I completely forgot about it until it got re-released again in like 2017. I was like, oh, my God, this was like the best game ever. I can't believe I forgot about this. And the rest is history. Now we have a fucking sequel. Like, God, the timeline we live in. Yeah. And they added the ability to jump in the sequel.

[00:03:24] You can fucking jump and deflect the thing. Yeah. You could like, I love the thing where it's like the drop shot. You just kind of slap it real quick. And it just kind of. Yeah. Love it. That's my weapon of choice. It's silly how many mechanics are in this frisbee throwing sport game. It's a lot. It's really a lot. And you don't expect it to be that deep.

[00:03:48] I guess that's why it persisted within everybody's minds, because it's like you think like, OK, toss it back and forth. It's just like tennis. But with a man, it's pretty deep. It's pretty damn deep. It's it's it's shocking how deep it is. It's every time I see the CPU do something cool. I'm like, whoa, I didn't know you could do that. How do I do that? I want to be cool. Yeah. It's this is great stuff.

[00:04:14] Every single time I sat down to play this game, I thought, OK, I'll just get like like two rounds in and then fucking lose and give up like usual. But no, I got pretty far. I always use. Oh, I don't know the character's name. He is one of those characters that has like more speed over power, which I think that's really cool that each each character has their own, I guess, unique stats like this one.

[00:04:41] This one has a lot of power, but no speed or like the opposite and like that. That's pretty cool. I like that. The character types are pretty good. You are if you want speed over power and it's a male character, you're probably talking about Steve Miller. That sounds right. He goes, here we go. Yeah, that's him. Exactly. Sonic power. Shoot, dude. The voices in this game are insane. Can we like please? Because like they're almost all of them are unintelligible and it's perfect.

[00:05:10] It is absolutely perfect. I would never have it any other way. I'm so glad this is something that I understood for Windjammers 2. And they didn't try to like fix it or anything. It's like, no, this is what it sounds like. Like it's great. The sound design in Windjammers is so good. Not just the voices, but like the sound effects to that sort of like shotgun sounding ricochet off of like every surface. It's like perfect.

[00:05:38] It's unbelievably great sound design. That's before we get to the music. But like it's it's incredible sounding. What do you think, Tommy? They have like such a great attention to detail with like the tiny things like with how the nets shake back or the whole screen shakes when you score. Or like a guy beat me and he ran from the top to the bottom just shaking the ropes. And I was like, I didn't even realize those were ropes. But that makes total sense. And the animations and the flashiness, it's so cool.

[00:06:08] And that's and the I guess lady or ref or whatever. They're like just sitting in the chair and like throws the Frisbees at you and shit. Like all the animations are pretty fluid, even though she is just sitting there tossing a Frisbee to you. But yeah, they're fluid as hell. And it looked really, really good. But it's a game that if it released on its own, like today, no one would bat an eye thinking this is retro or anything just because it does such a good job at the sport it created. Yeah.

[00:06:34] How many how many games get to really make its own sport? That's exactly pretty unusual, I think. Yeah. So it's like, did they did? I wonder if they're like beach volleyball or disc golf or like whatever they are, the combination of the two tennis, I guess, like whatever they thought of. And it's like, oh, let's just man. What a what an inspiration.

[00:06:57] And having the goals randomly decide how much points are like the top, bottom and middle just to give you some more variety and strategy each game. That's a cool touch. Yeah. Oh, God. Speaking of Steve Miller, there's like a when when the when the five points are on the two edges. Oh, my God. His superpower because it just goes straight for the edge. So it's like, oh, no, he is the five point master right now. This is ridiculous.

[00:07:25] Yeah, that was also super cool. They gave each character a different like super move. Yeah. Steve is his the one that like sticks to the edge of the arena and then just like saw blades. Into the. Yes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And then that's what was happening. OK. And then fucking Hiromi. This is just like it just spins and like a fiery loop or whatever. Yeah.

[00:07:50] German German guy has the thing where it's like a does like it's like 90 degrees sharp turns right up your ass. It's like, holy shit. OK, it's like sometimes you can anticipate the angle and other times it's like it's like, OK, I enjoyed that. Even though I didn't play very many games, I felt like I was getting better. It didn't feel like an impossible sport. I started like recognizing the bounce patterns and and like being cognizant of where the opponent is for where I should throw.

[00:08:19] That's like the sign of a good sports game. Yes. All that stuff is very key. And then I mean, I understand we're talking about the original today being retro, but like that's why I love to is that they stack stuff on top of that. They don't try to change it too much. You just add more a few more mechanics and it makes it that much deeper. But there's nothing wrong with playing the original. The original is still fantastic. My favorite is definitely the American Gary Scott.

[00:08:49] I got to go. Fuck yeah, America. You know why? Because Gary Scott. He's the only one wearing pants, if you notice, and their football pants because America. Yes. Yeah, it's great. Gary Scott is our the American hero we deserve. Yeah, the real American hero. Yes.

[00:09:14] When I was looking at this game, after I played a few matches and I was just researching reviews and retrospective reviews and shit like that, there were a lot of people that compared it to Pong and said that the music was really repetitive. But fuck them. Yeah. I think the game is good and I think the music is great. Like, what the fuck? The music is insanely good. It's so good. It's so good. I don't know what people are talking about, man. It's wild.

[00:09:43] I have no idea how you can dunk on. Oh, and this is something they added later to the 2017 release is that the original release had the original Neo Geo music. But eventually in the menus, they added it so you could choose the Neo Geo CD music. Oh, yeah. Which is great. I mean, it's not super different. I mean, it is, you know, it is done in better quality instruments because CD-ROM.

[00:10:10] But it doesn't go super wild with it, but it has that nice touch. I definitely do prefer the CD music. Really good. That's kind of how I played it. I got the Neo Geo CD-ROM on my little emulator. Ah, nice. Okay. Yeah, it ran so smoothly. It was, yeah, I had a solid fucking time with that. That's awesome. Did it have like crazy loading time? Does it, see, you know, I've never played, I've never emulated a Neo Geo CD game. Is it like eliminate loading times or like?

[00:10:41] It depends on the game. Like Windjammers didn't have like maybe a second or less of loading time. But apparently there are some games that are super infamous for having long loading times. Like The Last Blade 2, apparently that has like two or three seconds of loading time or something dumb. I forget. Well, sometimes like older games. Well, not older, I should say later in the Neo Geo's life, the more animation frames. It just gets crazy.

[00:11:11] Like I remember a friend had Art of Fighting 3 on Neo Geo CD. And I don't know if you've ever seen that game. That is like one of the most animation rich games I've ever seen still to this day. Like between rounds it loads. It is crazy. And it's like 40 seconds. Because like he had the original. Yeah, because he had the original Neo Geo CD that's like 1x speed. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's the second one. Yeah.

[00:11:39] And there's like one that's like 2x. So it's like, oh my God. But I would imagine a game like Windjammers isn't too bad with you have 1x or 2x. Anyway, I don't know. Maybe it's just because I'm from California or something. But like Windjammers to me is like peak 90s aesthetic. Yeah, I can see that. It is incredibly 90s. It is the most. Whether it's like the beach or like just the color schemes on most of the courts.

[00:12:07] It's just like, look. And obviously it came out in 94. So it's high time for that. It's just funny that when I was so in 94, I was like 12. I didn't really think about that because that's what everything looked like. But now looking back on it, it's like, oh man, this was like. I miss the white colors. Yeah. Wind jackets. Oh, yeah. I had a. I had a. What team was it? Charlotte Horner. Charlotte Hornets.

[00:12:36] Like fucking, you know, like the purple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was like the shit at the time. I'm pretty sure I had a Charlotte Hornets jacket too when I was in like. Fuck seventh grade. I think it was like someone did. I didn't know it was you because I remember Charlotte Hornets. Wow. I didn't even know who they were, but I wore the. For the fuck. Nobody gave a shit. I mean, like I said, I mean, San Diego didn't have an NBA team, but like, you know, being the proximity, everyone was just a Lakers fan anyway. Like, yeah, it's it was just like. But no, everyone had that Charlotte Hornets.

[00:13:04] That was a thing nationwide for some reason. I could not tell you why, but it was. Oh, man. We have wind. When. Not to take us off the topic. I'm sorry. No, that's what we live for. But yeah, I'm glad that they did finally port it to more modern shit. What was it?

[00:13:29] The PlayStation 4 in 2017 and 2018 for Switch and all that stuff. I remember when they did port it over, there was a lot of hype around it. Like people that were playing it were like, holy fucking shit. Like this is the most addictive fucking thing ever. And I can absolutely see why. Like it. It's not. It's not like. I mean, no, I don't want to say it's not like super deep, but like it is pretty deep. It's just all around fun. Like it's just stupid.

[00:13:58] It's like one of those games where I can. Kind of turn my brain off. Like I still have to concentrate just a little bit. But yeah, it's so good. Yeah, it's it's interesting. Like you like you said, it feels like it's it is deep, but it feels like it's not. And that's the really big key. Like I've been really into Street Fighter six right now. And that's how I feel about that game. It's deep as hell.

[00:14:25] But when you're playing it, it really doesn't feel that way. You're just playing Street Fighter as you've always known it, you know. But there's just the layer so many things on top of it, new stuff where it's like that you have to account for. And it's great. Almost like, you know, like you said, you can kind of autopilot once you know what you're doing in your brain. But you're still very aware of all these like mechanics. Yeah. Oh, OK.

[00:14:54] What's your favorite super move? Because like as much as I'm a Gary Scott guy, I really love that German guys. Like I said, that 90 degree like sharp, like it's like, oh, my God, you fucking asshole. Like, I don't know. There's something about it that makes my brain freeze. That's like, oh, wait, do I? Ah, you know, and it's too late.

[00:15:18] There's um, I'm a really huge fan of that one that like, like the big like whirlwind bullshit one where it's like, zoos, zoos, zoos, like right down the middle. Oh, yeah. Somehow you can catch it. But then if you don't catch it, you get your ass fucking knocked out. I love I love the ones that are like hit you pretty hard that knock you into the goal. Yeah. Score. Yeah. It's just like, oops.

[00:15:47] Yeah, I got a all the all of it's great. Oh, did you know that in the Japanese version, it's not Steve Miller? It's a Korean guy. No, I did not know. They change it. Yeah. So for our version, for our ROM, it's Steve Miller. And for the Japanese one, it's a Korean guy. Something you why? Oh, I can't I can't remember. That's the one that I played, I guess. OK, so. OK, yeah.

[00:16:15] So that that would be the Japanese or I guess more Asian territories ROM, I guess. Look at that. You know what, though? I didn't know until like a couple months ago. They actually hide that guy in Windjammers 2 as well. Like you can choose him with a code or you have to hold something when you pick Steve Miller or whatever. But he's in there and I didn't know that for a long time. That game has hidden characters. It didn't tell anybody. It's it's crazy.

[00:16:43] Damn, I didn't I didn't know about this until now. Like I was just looking up looking up a few facts from our good friend Wikipedia. But this game was at Evo in 2018. Like that's fun, too. Yeah. Super cool. Oh, my God. To see just I don't know if you've ever seen high level Windjammers play. But no, those guys don't give up. They always time out their rounds because they never give up enough points. It is crazy how good they are at defense. It's unbelievable.

[00:17:13] I could never be that good. That is that is some crazy shit. As soon as we're done recording. Yeah, they're they're wild. You know, it's one of those things where you look up and it's like, you know, there's experts at every single game in the universe. But you don't really think about until you see it. Like, oh, man, what does a backgammon tournament look like? Right. And then these guys are like hitting around the board like, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, my God, who knew people would play backgammon this way? It's the same thing with Windjammers. It's like, oh, of course.

[00:17:43] But, you know, that's pretty much all I had for this. I really I really enjoyed this one. It was really, really solid. I know when I beat my arcade mode, I had over 200k points. I know we're not counting points today, but I just, you know, it's it's it's not really one of those games. Oh, we got it before we go. We got to talk about the bonus games in arcade mode, like the dog frisbee catch. I never found that.

[00:18:11] And then the bowling matches and kept lost. And then that's it. OK, yeah. If you make it a few matches, you can play like disc bowling or like the dog. Like you throw the frisbee and then you can't then you control a dog and you catch it on the beach. But you can't run into people on the beach or you'll slow down your dog. That's right. Or whatever. Yeah, that's that's pretty that's pretty fun. I think the PS4 and switch versions just that you play the mini games if you want to. You can just like choose them.

[00:18:40] So like if you come across that, like definitely try it. It's fun. Yeah. OK, now I'm out of experience that. Yes, for sure. I'm a I'm really surprised I didn't add like a like a brick break mode or something like that to this game. That'd be kind of cool, but I guess. Yeah, that'd be pretty sweet. Look at you on the ball thinking of Windjammers 3 ideas. Please hire me, Data East. I'll do anything.

[00:19:09] Or Dot Emu now. But yeah, they got. Oh, that was one thing. I know. I'm sorry. I keep talking about Windjammers 2. I love that they still. They I don't know if they just they must have just had the rights. They had like Data East insignia and stuff in Windjammers, like in some of the courts. I was just like, that's great. I know Data East, rest in peace. But like that was excellent that they got to do that. That was I was really glad to see that. Hell yeah. Yeah. It made me it made my heart made my heart smile.

[00:19:39] Yeah. I'm kind of a I'm kind of scared through the rest of this series because like we got this awesome one out of the way. And I guess I guess there is like King of Fighters and like some cool shmups on the list. But we'll see what the patrons vote for for the next episode. We'll see what the patrons decide to make us do. Yeah, exactly. I want to play some crap. I like I like playing crap sometimes. So it's OK. If we get a crappy game, I'm I'm here for it.

[00:20:08] Maybe we'll get Spin Master. Hopefully we get Spin Master. Oh, yes. Vote for Spin Master. Spin Master. I don't know why I say it. That's OK. Any any parting words? Um, listen to fine time. Go search fine time on your pod. That's about it. How about you, Tommy? I'm bad at wind jammers. But you love it. Yeah.

[00:20:38] Oh, I had fun. I had fun losing. OK. I also was pretty bad. I at least got to the dog minigame. I went like three or four rounds. OK. And also, I really want some KFC now. Let's do it. Let's get some KFC. Let's head to KFC. All right. All right. Goodbye, everyone. We're going to go to KFC now. Bye. Bye, everyone. Toot toot.